Gingerbread

Reader response to Gingerbread by Rachel Cohn

Inside cover reads:
" 'I have promised to be a model citizen daughter...I have confined my Shrimp time ot making out with him in the Java the Hut supply closet and quick feels on the cold hard sand at the beach during out breaks, but enough is enough... Delia and I are planning a party at Wallace and Shrimp's house and I am spending the night whether Sid and Nancy notice or not. I will be as wild as I wanna be.'
After being kicked out of a fancy New England boarding school, Cyd Charisse is back home in San Francisco with her parents, Sid and Nancy, in a household that drives her crazy. Lucky for Cyd, she's always had Gingerbread, her childhood rag doll and confidante.
After Cyd tests her parents' permissiveness, she is grounded in Alcatraz (as Cyd calls her room). But when her incarceration proves too painful for the whole family, Cyd's parents decide to send her to New York to meet her biological father and his family, whom Cyd has always longed to know.
Summer in the city is not what Cyd Charisse expects--and Cyd isn't what her newfound family expects, either."

My Rxn.

I am initially freaking THRILLED that the protagonist's parents are named Sid and Nancy. I wonder what teeny bopper will get that reference? Hopefully one that's attracted to this book because of the cover. It's what originally caught my eye.

She also hooked me with the first sentence and made me laugh aloud after I read it. LOVE it when authors do that.

There's a plethora of things to which I can relate in this novel. In fact, it's making a character start bouncing around in my head, and I'm thinking of writing one. Eeek. yeah. we'll see how that develops. It's written the way I like it- raw and real. a few sappy moments here and there, but I think that Cohn uses those moments to make the protagonist more realistic and less of a complete nutjob. Very short read. polished it off in about 24 hours. Deals with very mature issues. Not recommendable for anyone under high school age. I really liked it, but I'm getting stingy with the Word Nerd Seal of Approval. aw hell, why not. it gets one. I'm sitting here trying to justify a reason why I wouldn't give the novel a WNSoA, and nothing comes to mind. It's good. damn good.

Quote-a-licious:

"My so-called parents hate my boyfriend, Shrimp. I'm not sure they even believe he is my boyfriend. They take on look at his five-foot-five, surfer-shirt-wearin', baggy-jeans-slouchin', Pop Tart-eatin', spiked-hair-head self and you can just see confusion firebombs exploding in their heads, like they are thinking, Oh, no, Cyd Charisse, that young man is not your homes.
Dig this: He is" (1).

"The school is really just a dumping ground for rich parents' kids who aren't total social misfits but who also have no interest in being trend victim poster children" (5).

"See, I failed Latin, but I still know not to dangle prepositions. In English" (10).

"Anyway, I am not a mall junkie kind of girl who needs to save money for hair clips and glitter makeup and boy band CDs. Excuse me while I go retch at the thought" (37).

"How much would I have like to just spend the afternoon on the sofa making out with him and just fuggedabout driving and subways and everything else?" (98-99). Mickey Blue Eyes, anyone??

"Here at the Village Idiots, Danny and Aaron's cafe, I have a little pocket of belonging in this city of millions" (101).

"He was tall and chunky and scruffy, and for an upstanding homosexual, not that great a dresser, what with his faded decal Aerosmith T-shirt and his worn-out pajama pants he wore because of the oven heat" (103). LMAO

"Because even though Nancy and I aren't exactly going to be cat-walking at any mother-daughter fashion shows anytime soon, I don't hate her at all, despite what she thinks. She makes me crazy and I think she totally does not get me, but I know that in her mind, she tries to do what is right for me, even though what she thinks is right usually results in decisions I hate, i.e., boarding school, puke princess room, Alcatraz incarceration. I realized it must have been a huge leap of faith for her to let me come to New York on my own and find out things that I might not like. I wondered if, in her own way, maybe she was trying to allow me an independence that would nudge my growing up process along" (107).

"As I was talking, my skin was actually tingling from missing He Who Cannot Be Named" (109).

"You don't seem like one of those squealing teenyboppers who travel in packs and like to scream for pop stars in Times Square" (110).

"Pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that is Cyd Charisse started to feel like they were being identified and put in their proper place" (111).

"I know it's super-cool to be one of those hyper-achieving teens who kill themselves on extracurriculars and cram for SATs and write extra credit reports about saving the environment to get higher GPAs, but I am just not one of those people" (115).

"If Danny was the shorter, thinner, and happier of Frank, Rhonda lisBETH was surely the Nellie Olson version" (126).

"I am more of a Tar-jay (target) slash thrift store freak kind of gal" (151). I thought my family were the only people to call it that.

"I had liked being Justin's girlfriend. I did not want this trouble. I wouldn't say I fooled myself that we were in love--even then, I understood the diff between love and lust, even if the love part I'd yet to experience--but I liked that when I was with Justin, I was Somebody. I was not the weird girl with the unsmiling face and strange mannerisms. I was a pretty girl who people chose on teams and sat with at lunch, the girl hanging on to the varsity jacket of practically the most popular guy at school. I was admired. I could have done without the drugs and alcohol, but those were part of the Justin package, a price I was willing to pay. Believe it, I was the girl I would pass by on the street now and go, 'Yuck'" (159).

"If she hadn't leaned over to smooth my hair back, I might not have fallen apart like I did. But somehow that soft and tender touch from the one person in the world who can make you feel safe and loved, no matter what your differences, set off the tears. I did not outright bawl; no, it was worse; a flood of tears streamed down my face, out of control" (163).