Review of Always the New Girl by Kelly Vincent

 

Welcome to the review tour for Always the New Girl by Kelly Vincent. Today you get to read an excerpt and my thoughts on this coming of age YA novel. Be sure to follow the tour for even more after you download your own copy to read. Best of luck entering the giveaway!

Knitting nerd Sarah Redmond is always the new girl, never the popular one.

Moving all over the country with her flighty mom seemed to be her lot in life, but her junior year at Sierra Vista High School feels like it could be different.

She's finally on the verge of a social breakthrough.

But when she gets publicly punked at her first party, she and her new friends find a creative way to use their shared obsession with knitting to exact sweet revenge.

And when their efforts lead to a lucrative business, Sarah knows she's set.

But when her deadbeat dad comes back around she starts to wonder if she should try for a different life, instead of following the paths her parents have chosen.

She'd always half thought her small-time knitting channel could grow into a big-time knitting channel, but maybe college as a backup plan isn't such a ridiculous idea, after all.

But is that something a girl like her can really make happen?

Read an excerpt:

To cope, I did what any reasonable person would have done—I holed up in my room after work and started a new series of knitted weapons. First I made a dagger because it seemed simplest, but it still took me a while. I stabilized it with cardboard from a cereal box.

Naturally, I recorded how to make it. I even demonstrated what I’d like to do with the dagger. Stabbity stab stab.

Screw everybody at school. My thousands of subscribers thought I was cool. There were more of them than students at the school.

Of course, the comments exploded with trolls from school, with things about my contortionist face. Which, again, was so stupid. Some of my regular followers were flip‐ ping out and fighting back. One of them said, “Do you know who you’re making fun of?” like I was a big-time celebrity. Someone else said, “I’d like to see *you* make a giant celeriac!” That cracked me up. Still, I had to turn comments off on my whole channel because of all the trolls, which sucked.

A couple days later I was called into the principal’s office. Mr. Peterson—a middle-aged balding man—gave me this stern look when I got there. I had to wait for my mom in this tacky and squeaky wooden chair with frayed blue fabric arms. My stomach was roiling while I waited, because I had no idea what was going on, and I’d never been in trouble before.

We went into his office, where they had matching wooden chairs.

“Sarah and Ms. Redmond, we take threats of violence very seriously here.”

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**My thoughts**

I have to start out by saying I am madly in love with this cover. It's gorgeous. It makes me wish I could knit. I can only crochet.

Now for the story...

Sarah may be a YouTube knitting star, but in real life, she is somewhat of a mess. I can't blame her because her father basically has never been around and her mom keeps switching boyfriends and moving her all around. It's hard to be the new girl.

We see into Sarah's life in bursts, starting with her junior year through the summer after her senior year, with more of a focus on that senior year. Reading this book made me feel like I was watching a movie that would fade into a scene and then fade back out again before jumping forward into another. It made it a little difficult for me to get into the first half of the book because it felt so disjointed. I honestly thought the book was going in an entirely different direction at first. I felt like this part of the book could have been fleshed out a bit more to turn this one book into a series.

Then as Sarah settles into her senior year, so does the story. It's still bursts of activity with time lapses in between, but we stay in each time period longer. And this is where I really started to get into the story.

Sarah is figuring out who she really is, in spite of her flaky mother and estranged father. She is discovering new passions in life. She is identifying her trauma and triggers. She is slowly learning to trust. She still has a long way to go, but is making some progress, which is comendable at that age and in her circumstances.

There are a few attempts in conversations between characters to bring this latter half back around to the first half. She goes through a few more coming of age experiences that I won't give up as a spoiler. There's a lot going on her life, which I know firsthand can actually happen. I just felt like some of those hurried scenes and experiences could have been further explored in some cases to make the whole story feel more cohesive to me.

But all of that being said, I still think there is value in reading Sarah's story. I think a good number of readers will recognize themselves in at least one of Sarah's predicaments and perhaps feel inspired to reflect and search for a solution. Different readers will definitely relate to this book differently than I did.

I received a requested review copy from the author and Goddess Fish. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Read my review of Kelly Vincent's book Finding Frances.

Read my review of Ugly.

Kelly Vincent wrangles data weekdays and spends the rest of her time playing with words. She grew up in Oklahoma but has moved around quite a bit, with Glasgow, Scotland being her favorite stop. She now lives near Seattle with three cats who help her write her stories by strategically walking across the keyboard, with her first novel, Finding Frances, a fine example of this technique. She has a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Oklahoma City University's Red Earth program    .

Website: www.kellyvincent.net

Blog: www.kellyvincent.net/blog



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Kelly Vincent will be awarding a $15 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

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