A review by quietjenn
Absolutely Maybe, by Lisa Yee

2.0

Pretty disappointing, because I like Yee's middle grade novels so much. In a lot of ways this book reads very similar to them, except that the protagonist is older and has more serious problems. And yet, it doesn't feel like, as a character, she is that much more evolved or mature - she certainly didn't feel like a sixteen or seventeen year old to me. I also felt like she - Maybe - is a character to whom things happen and reacts, but does very little proactively. She's really passive when left to her own devices, not taking an active role in the way her live evolves, which doesn't really match what the other characters in the book tell us about Maybe - how she's such an dynamic, individual girl. Finally, there's entirely too much coincidence and things that seem to happen merely as plot devices. At best, said occurrences merely made me role my eyes in a sort of "yeah, right, like that would happen" manner, while at worse, they actually made me angry. So, at least there was some strong response happening. Points for that. Finally (and this is just for Laura), while it did make me want to eat some good Mexican food, I have a hard time with a book - on the foodie level and maybe on any other level - that seriously uses the line "it was like a party in my mouth" to describe the taste of something.