Pink by Lili Wilkinson

Oh, this book had such potential.

I like its concept, I really do. There are plenty of books about the shallow popular girl embracing who she really is and becoming different. I suppose that really this is just another story about a girl in high school finding her place (maybe that's why it disappointed me) but the protagonist Ava is already a gothic lesbian who is super alternative and hip. Rather than tell the story of someone realising they're gay, this story focuses on someone who is a lesbian trying to work out whether that's what they really are. I like the idea that it's just as okay for someone to change their mind and want to be like a stereotypical teenager as it is for someone to decide they want to be different. There's nothing wrong with wearing pink and being 'popular' if that's who you really are. Or at least, I think that's the message the book started off with.

Oh book, why did you have to let me down?

Here's my main problem with Pink-Ava is a goddamn idiot. Okay, so she changes schools so she can start again and find herself. That I can sort of accept for the sake of the book. But after that it's all downhill. She suspects she's not 100% lesbian so what does she do? Decide that straight away she's going to try to get a boyfriend at her new school. Without a trace of guilt or even a second thought spared for her current girlfriend who she claims to really care about but apparently not enough to care about cheating on. Sure, when she eventually does cheat she reacts with mild horror. But it's not like it was a surprise! She's been planning to cheat for about 50 pages by that point and only now is she thinking of her girlfriend???

Another part of Ava's plan is to get in with the popular kids. Miraculously, she manages it on her first day with three of the most popular girls in school taking her under their wing. So far so good. But oh no, all the popular kids are in the musical and force her to audition! After embarrassing herself at auditions, Ava decides that is it and she must resign herself to hanging out with the losers of the school...despite the fact that actually, none of the popular kids care that she failed her audition. Seriously, no one mocks her for it, her new friends aren't bitchy in the slightest and yet for some reason she acts as though they're being the stereotypical bitch squad of the fictitious high school world.

Okay, so Ava joins the loser squad and continues to mope for most of the book even though a) she still hangs out regularly with the popular kids and b) the loser squad is awesome. Ava mopes and mopes until the third act of the book starts and suddenly everyone is a bitch!

No, really.

Queen Bee girl starts playing the part (which seems really weird and out of place given how nice she is for the rest of it) and her girlfriend Chloe also dials up the bitch and makes unreasonable demands so the plot can justify Ava cheating on her. The whole thing is very messy and feels totally wrong since these aren't the characters we've been reading about the whole book. After everyone goes briefly mean, in rolls the (kinda) happy ending and almost everything is resolved/reverted to the status quo.

I say almost everything because surprise surprise, Ava doesn't actually get with the blatant loser love interest that she pretended not to be interested in the whole time even though she clearly was and he clearly liked her which explains why he was being so weird and distant and erratic. Nope, Ava actually insists that since she doesn't know what she wants, she just wants to be friends with the guy until she's figured out whether she likes boys or girls.

Erm, bisexuality is a thing book. Stop acting like she has to make some big choice, she's entitled to like both! It's actually more common than you think.

Anyway, I would like this ending except for the fact that Ava hasn't been able to make up her goddamn mind the whole book and so it just comes across as her being incredibly indecisive, as well as leading the guy on. She waits until he's confessed his love and she's confessed hers before saying that she doesn't want to be with him and even after he says he doesn't care if she changes her mind later, she still says no. This is a perfectly understandable course of action but my problem is with the execution. Instead of seeming smart and practical, Ava just seems to wimp out.

Ultimately, my main problem with the book is that at the end, Ava hasn't really learned anything. Sure, she fixes all the problems she caused (plus a few she didn't) but ultimately she's in the same position at the end that she is at the start. She still doesn't have a solid friendship group, she still hasn't figured out her sexuality and she's still moronic in all her basic decisions. Honestly, I could accept her being an idiot so long as by the end, she realised how idiotic she was. Instead we just have a story about an idiot who doesn't grow and doesn't really do anything remarkably worthy of a whole book.

I feel like I've been very harsh throughout this review so I would like to say that I didn't hate this book. The side characters were interesting and pretty varied, a welcome change from the usual cookie-cutter losers in high school fiction. I liked that the popular people weren't all bitchy and vapid. Sadly though, I couldn't help but be annoyed by it more than I liked it. In the end, its merits did not cancel out its faults.

Overall Score:

.5