[Review] Pretty in Punxsutawney - Laurie Boyle Crompton

Summary: Seventeen-year-old Andie is the type of girl who always comes up with the perfect thing to say … after it's too late to say it. She's addicted to romance movies but has yet to experience her first kiss. After a move to Punxsutawney, PA, for her senior year, she gets caught in an endless loop of her first day at her new school, reliving those 24 hours again and again.

Convinced the curse will be broken when she meets her true love, Andie embarks on a mission: infiltrating the various cliques to find the one boy who can break the spell. What she discovers along the way is that people who seem completely different can often share the very same hopes, dreams, and hang-ups. And that even a day that has been lived over and over can be filled with unexpected connections and plenty of happy endings. (Pub Date: Jan 15, 2019)

Honest review based on an ARC provided by Edelweiss. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.

I'll confess for this book I did something I avoid, read the reviews before I write mine. I'll explain, I'm not a giver, my ratings are usually lower than average. So I thought it was weird it had less than I thought it deserved. But let's talk about the story first.

Andie is a movie buff who has just moved to a new town. While going to the theater, she meets the part-timers and falls in love for one of them. On her first day at the new school, she notices her romance won't be that easy, reality gets in the way and things go pretty much all against her plans. That's when she starts waking up again on the first day, with a chance to get everything right—except she has no idea how move on.

I'm rating it 3.5, rounded down because it could have been much more. 

I had been reading some slow books so this upbeat atmosphere was very welcomed. Unfortunately, things can be very predictable, but I like how Andie analyzes the situations. There were also some very nice scenes and great dialogues that got me laughing. All in all, I ended the story with a nice feeling, which is exactly what I look for when reading YA.

Also, the book goes on about a good number of 80's movies for teenagers like Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club, giving them a more updated review. Of course, we hear a lot about Pretty in Pink and The Groundhog Day as well, though main plot and title aside, the first two seem to have given more inspiration to the author. Personally, I thought it was all very interesting; as a teenager, I also used to apply movies into everything I did in life, I saw myself a lot in Andie.

Now here's what I got from the criticism, the story got too heavy on the movie part, in a way that only those who know the movies would be able to relate—and that would limit the chances target audience would enjoy it. In my opinion, though I'm not a teenager, I don't think that's true. I'm double the age intended to read it, but I confess I hadn't even heard of Pretty in Pink before. I've heard of Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club somewhere but had the plot for the latter all wrong. Groundhog was the only one I really knew—and it's so mentioned everywhere I think teenagers nowadays know as much as I remember from watching it twenty years ago.

All that to say, I enjoyed the read anyway. In fact, I probably enjoyed it even more because I got to hear of movies I only vaguely heard of and I'd like to inform I finally grew up and streamed The Breakfast Club between seats.

What I mean to say is that I do think teenagers will like the book and will relate to the story independently if they've watched the movies mentioned or not.

I do think the other piece of critic withstands, though. Andie's view of cliques was a little bit too 80's/90's, I didn't even know there were still emos around, for example. Of course there are still groups but I felt the ones portrayed didn't ring true. And the characters could have been more diverse, if we're talking about people being unfairly stereotyped. On the other hand, do teenagers mind it that much? It was a missed opportunity to enrich the content but I don't think it will get in the way of the fun, except that it was more of the same. As I said, it did need to be updated, since it felt like that school was a copy-paste of a 90's TV show.

So in the end I'm giving it three stars, but keep in mind it's a 3+. It was more of the same but it was a very entertaining same. There's a reason cliches become so. Recommending to anyone wanting to have a good time with a YA read, especially if you like discussing movies.

Rating: 3 out of 5.