YA | Jessica Grixti Stanley

The Stigma Against Young Adult Fiction

Posted on August 31, 2020 by Jessica Grixti Stanley

If you’ve ever spent more than a hot minute on bookish parts of the interwebs, then you’ve seen the massive, roaring debate about whether young adult fiction is “proper” literature. The sheer majority of BookTube, the book reviewers and talkers of YouTube, seem to read and review YA, with the odd classic or “reimagined” classic smattered here and there. I came across this issue again recently when Christine Riccio, the biggest BookTuber, released the video ADULT BOOKS VS YA BOOKS. Way back in May, mind you. Thanks algorithm. But it got me thinking thoughts, and boy oh boy are there thoughts to be thought and things to say and words to be written about this supposed stigma against YA fiction.

An Ordinary Review of ‘Bad Girls With Perfect Faces’

Posted on June 30, 2020 by Jessica Grixti Stanley

Sasha’s best friend Xavier is finally getting his life back together, and it’s all thanks to her. It’s his birthday, and she takes him out to celebrate. Sasha’s planning on asking him out. But then his evil, scheming, cheating ex Ivy comes back into the picture and whisks Xavier away, and everything Sasha had built up with Xavier is over in an instant. Unknowing to Xavier, Sasha’s got a plan. She’s got to stop Ivy before she ruins her innocent, naive friend She needs to protect him. Without really thinking, she creates a plan: pretend to be a guy online to show Xavier the dirty truth. But that’s when things go completely out of control. Now Sasha doesn’t know who she it and what’s next, and is everything really as it seems?

Bad Girls with Perfect Faces is a 2017 young adult thriller by Lynn Weingarten, and it was one of the many books I hurriedly borrowed out from the library the day before everything was about to close way back in March. While I’ve read a lot more this year than I have in previous years, it still took me ’til the end of last month to finally get through to this book. I needed something quick and easy after I read The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, and while, yes, it was quick and easy, but was it worth it?