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Jersey Angel Kindle Edition
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherWendy Lamb Books
- Publication dateMay 8, 2012
- Reading age14 years and up
- Grade level9 and up
- File size2543 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“One can almost smell salt and sunscreen in the air in this soulful and insightful coming-of-age story.”
Review, The New York Times Book Review, May 13, 2012:
“Whatever the resolution to Angel’s story, it is clear that with Bauman— whether she’s Judy Blume’s successor or not—the genre is in good hands.”
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
A whiff of seaweed blows in the window from across the bay, and the bed fills with sunlight. I reach for my sunglasses and have myself a long stretch. Maybe tonight will be a good time to see Joey, patch things up, and put a sweet ending on the day.
The screen door squeaks, feet dash up the stairs, and the kids charge into my room—Mossy with a meatball on a fork and Mimi sloshing Coke from a glass loaded with cubes, just the way I like it.
“Happy birthday!” Mimi shouts, plunking the wet glass on the dresser and jumping into bed with me.
Mossy hands me the fork. “I couldn’t decide. Heated up or not.”
“Cold is de-lish,” I say, sitting up and taking a nibble. What service.
“Gimme.” Mimi reaches for my sunglasses. She slips them on, curls on my pillow, and stares up at me. “Oh, I wish I was seventeen.”
“You’ll get there,” I tell her. Mimi’s short for Mimosa. She’s ten. Mossy’s eight. Mom was married to Tofu Bart when she had them, which should explain the names, and by the way, that’s Mimosa as in the flowering tree, not the champagne cocktail.
Mossy hands me a leftover valentine with hearts and Be Mine in big loopy letters. On the back he’s written Angel, treat yourself to something special and taped three dollar bills.
“Oh, my little man,” I say, throwing an arm around him. He smiles shyly, dropping his eyes.
“I didn’t make a card,” Mimi says. “And I’m broke, but I have a cheer.” She gets my shakers from the closet and stands at the foot of the bed in a purple bikini with a dirty white boa looped around her neck. She stamps her foot and waves the shakers.
“Angel is pretty!
Angel is great!
Angel is my sister
And she goes on dates!
Angel has a birthday
And we’ll have a cake—chocolate!
Angel has boobs
And they’re not fake.”
She crashes to the floor in a split.
“Oh brother,” Mossy says.
“Who has fake ones?” I say, chewing.
“Nefertiti’s mom. She just got them. They’re bazoombas.” Mimi crawls back in bed. “So, you like it? On a scale from one to ten?”
“Loved it. Nine.”
She stretches out on the bed and sighs. “If I was seventeen then I could do anything I want. Date boys and be mean to them when I feel like it and nice to them when I feel like it . . .”
“Why do you want to be mean to them?” I say.
She tilts her head. “Because!”
“I’m not mean to guys,” I tell her. I take a sip of cold, fizzy Coke. Bliss.
“But you break up with Joey Sardone.”
Mossy leans over and takes a bite of my meatball.
“Not because I’m mean. Because we need a little break now and then to spice things up.”
She closes her eyes dramatically, and her cheeks grow rosy. “Oh, I want to spice things up!”
“Angel,” Mom yells.
I lift the screen and hang out the window. She’s standing in front of the house in a lime bikini top and jean shorts, holding a bucket and mop. She has a bandana tied around her hair.
“Happy birthday, kiddo.” She shades her eyes. “How is it you’re seventeen? That practically makes me an old goat.”
“Hardly, Ma,” I say.
She shrugs. “Gravity’s getting the best of me.” Here we go. The truth is, with her long, dark hair, dark eyes, and upturned mouth, she looks kind of like a forty-year-old Kim Kardashian. We all look like Mom, especially Mimi. “Okay, cake later. Now we work.”
“I hate to clean!” Mimi yells, squeezing in next to me at the window.
“Me too!” Mossy whines.
“You think I like it?” Mom says. “We’ll do it fast. Let’s go. Mossy, where are my rubber gloves? Were you using them again for one of your experiments? Go find them.”
He rolls off the bed and trudges downstairs.
We own three houses on the Jersey shore. Every summer we rent out two to some of the tourists who descend on our little barrier island like a stampede, which means we pile together under one roof. During the off-seasons, at least, we get to spread out and breathe. Mossy and Mimi live with Mom in the House, and I get my own place.
But now it’s time to clear out. I grab a Walgreens bag and start unloading my drawers—bikinis, panties, bras, tanks, shorts, jeans. I throw it all in. I wad up my sheets and blanket and shove them in too.
Yup, we have three houses. My grandfather, Pop, bought the House years ago; then he won the Next-Door House in a poker game, or so the story goes, and old Mr. Zimmerman, who was a little in love with Mom, or a lot, apparently, left her the Corner House—my house. So three in a row, overlooking the bay. The moolah we make by renting has to last the rest of the year because Mom isn’t cut out for nine-to-five, or so she says.
“Here. Help.” I throw Mimi my duffel bag. “Take the closet.”
She steps into my spiky sandals and admires herself. “Fierce.”
I empty the medicine cabinet into a shopping bag—undereye concealer, eight tubes of lip gloss, hair gel, Tylenol, a couple of condom packets, and my birth control pills. In the bag it goes. I squeeze out toothpaste and brush my teeth as I chuck in shampoo, soap, three kinds of conditioner, a loofah, and a razor.
Mimi puts a sundress on over her bikini and swirls in front of the mirror. “Oh, I wish I was you . . . but still me.”
“So basically you?” I spit in the sink and toss the toothbrush and paste into the bag.
“Basically.” She teeters over in the sandals and looks up at me, her eyes all dark pupils. “Is it exciting to be you?”
I swish out my mouth with a handful of water. “What a question, Meems. Is it exciting to be you?”
“No,” she whines. “I don’t wear mascara. Or have a best friend like Inggy Olofsson. I basically hang out with Nefertiti. We just eat Popsicles and watch TV. I’m too pretty to be so boring.” She lets out a tiny sigh and collapses to the closet floor.
“You’re such a snot-nose,” I tell her.
She tips her face up to me. “I can’t help it.”
“Sure you can. Hang in there.” I lean over her and start dropping clothes off the hangers, some of them raining down on her head. “One day boys will come a-knocking and everything else too. And then there’ll be no look- ing back.”
“How exciting,” she whispers.
Have I been excited in a while? Maybe not. Maybe I’m due.
Product details
- ASIN : B005NKHBO0
- Publisher : Wendy Lamb Books (May 8, 2012)
- Publication date : May 8, 2012
- Language : English
- File size : 2543 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 210 pages
- Page numbers source ISBN : 0385740204
- Best Sellers Rank: #3,380,387 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
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So it is with Beth Ann Bauman's latest novel, Jersey Angel. If reading about teenagers partying and having sex makes you uncomfortable, then this is not the book for you. If, however, you don't mind, you will enjoy this fresh, realistic and lively summer read.
In one scene, Cork says "There's something I want to tell you," and Angel replies, "Make it good." He says, "See, I like that answer. That's why I like you..."
I'm with Cork. The snappy dialogue in Jersey Angel is a pleasure to read. And it's good fun to tag along with Angel to a variety of beach side settings, like the Bowl Bar Motel or the top of the slide on the board walk.
Look, Angel is no angel. She makes some mistakes. She's 17 and trying to untangle complicated feelings of love and lust, trying to figure out who she is and what she values. Early on, Angel tells Joey, "I'm changing before your eyes." By the end of the book, she promises to "do a lot better," and I believe her. She has a good heart and pays attention.
After reading and loving Beautiful Girls and Rosie and Skate, I had high hopes for Jersey Angel. I was not disappointed.
Jersey Angel was being publicized and came out in the middle of the Jersey Shore hype, which instantly put me off the book. That plus infidelity? NOOOOOOOPE. But then I saw something the author said about YA, sexually unapologetic girls, and how Angel here was a girl without precedent in YA. Suddenly, I needed this book like burning. While I appreciate the idea of Angel's character and her story, her actual character and story leaves a lot to be desired. A LOT.The cool thing about Angel is how much she owns her sexuality. She accepts her lust and loves sex and isn't looking for any kind of commitment. Girls like her tend to be painted as the awful mean girls in other books--and even in real life--but it's not used to portray her negatively at all and she isn't shamed for it. In our world, men have much more sexual freedom than women do; men get pressured to be hypersexual and women are pressed to be asexual but forced to be hypersexualized by the world around them. Angel is simply a girl who has the sexual freedom of a boy without the judgment usually reserved for a sexual woman and it's pretty awesome. SEX ADVENTURES. Plus there isn't any judgment of her unorthodox-by-current-standards life plan: not going to college and becoming a receptionist right out of high school instead.
Beyond that, there's not a lot of good to this book. It's an aimless novel because none of these characters--even Angel--really have a story to tell or get any character development. Who they are when the novel opens is who they are when you turn the last page. This novel seems only to exist to present us with Angel. While what she represents is great and all, she and her "conflicts" (wanting to get back with her ex-boyfriend for sex even though he wants to get a commitment from her while she's secretly having sex with her best friend's boyfriend) aren't strong enough to carry this novel.
On that subject, the infidelity is as much of a bookish turn-off as I expected it to be. Sure, monogamy is a social construct, but since most people want monogamy in their relationships thanks to how hard society pushes it, it's best not to get with other people without the significant other's permission. Cork? He just decides one day that he's going to have sex with Angel, she goes along with it, and they go on being bang buddies for a while before it stops as suddenly as it started. I'd be perfectly fine with their arrangement if he weren't dating her best friend and if Angel thought at all about how it might hurt Inggy if she found out what she and Cork were doing.
Ultimately, Angel doesn't change as a character. If she had and her friends and conflicts were more thoroughly developed, this novel would have been amazing and probably one of my favorite things ever. Sexually unapologetic girls = great, but that's the only part that really stands out. If you want to see what this novel does with that kind of character and see something new, try Jersey Angel out but be wary of what else comes with it.