false 3 0 false false Sun Aug 30 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Jun 24 09:33:08 -0700 2009 Thu Sep 10 10:06:50 -0700 2009 The description of this book gave me the impression that as far as Mina was concerned her story would be mostly about her and Craig Simpson. But Craig doesn't play as big a role as I expected him to. Mina spent a lot of time with her clique and a certain someone. There was much talk of sports (something I know very little about and have no interest in). I enjoyed the high school basketball game, though. The author did a good job with that scene.
I always like it when parents or guardians play a big part in a young adult novel, especially when they're good, caring parents like Mariah and Jackson Mooney. Mina didn't appreciate their rules, but if they didn't love her they wouldn't have any.
I was concerned for fourteen year old Kelly. It was nice that Angel (17) was respectful of her, good to her, but he was still a drug dealer and there's nothing good about that. Kelly didn't have a good relationship with her mother, Rebecca, and that wasn't good. In fact, her mother and stepdad weren't around much, but at least her mother did take time to give her good advice when she needed it.
There were quite a few scenes that took place at high school, where most of JZ's problems came from. He made a bad choice that didn't affect only him, but I was glad he did the right thing in the end. Michael and Todd were interesting characters.
And Jacinta- She lived with her Aunt Jacqi in the Woods (Suburban neighborhood) but she came from Pirates Cove (low income housing). This girl couldn't win for losin'. When she was with her friends in The Woods, her boyfriend, Raheem, who was from The Cove, couldn't handle it and when she supported Raheem she was treated as if she was being disloyal to her friends in The Woods. Jacinta was stuck in the middle and it was really her story that kept me turning the pages. I really felt for this girl and I just had to know how things were going to turn out for her.
Some of the IMs and text messages slowed my reading down a bit, but that's only because it's all new to me. It took a little while to figure out what some of the abbreviations meant just like it did at times when these young people spoke: nabe - neighborhood, `tude - attitude, hist - history, `rents - parents/ There is teen slang I have heard, but never any of these. This book had me checking a teen slang dictionary, but I didn't mind the extra work. I liked Don't Get It Twisted. I give it 3.5 ]]>