jayvall reviewed Sloppy firsts by Megan McCafferty
Review of 'Sloppy firsts' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
I decided to read this because it would fit in nicely with my first-in-a-series challenge, and I remember people really liking this series when it first came out. Perhaps, I'm just too old now, or maybe the book itself just hasn't aged well. Maybe we are just too PC these days. I'm not sure what it is, but I found a lot of the people characterizations borderline offensive. To be fair, Jess gives all groups negative nicknames, and maybe it's because she hates everyone, but I didn't like that everyone was either a Hick, Hoochie, Wigga(z), Dreg, the list goes on. I also found it odd/disconcerting that there was one black character in the entire book, but all of the main characters (especially Hy) spoke in a watered down variation of what I think of as street slang/AAVE. I had to keep reminding myself that these were white kids from …
I decided to read this because it would fit in nicely with my first-in-a-series challenge, and I remember people really liking this series when it first came out. Perhaps, I'm just too old now, or maybe the book itself just hasn't aged well. Maybe we are just too PC these days. I'm not sure what it is, but I found a lot of the people characterizations borderline offensive. To be fair, Jess gives all groups negative nicknames, and maybe it's because she hates everyone, but I didn't like that everyone was either a Hick, Hoochie, Wigga(z), Dreg, the list goes on. I also found it odd/disconcerting that there was one black character in the entire book, but all of the main characters (especially Hy) spoke in a watered down variation of what I think of as street slang/AAVE. I had to keep reminding myself that these were white kids from the suburbs.
Another part of the problem for me might have been that this was set in 2000 when I was 19. So the setting would have been familiar to me had I read this when it was first released. It would have been timely both in the high school setting and the decade. 17 years later, however, I don't have the patience for Jess and her issues. I don't feel like I wasted my time reading this; I was into it. However, I don't know that I have it in me to spend anymore time with Jess. I'm also not invested in the Jess/Marcus storyline but I can see how I might have been if I was reading this as a YA. The library had this as a box set, so I have the rest of the series. I'm undecided if I'll go back to it or not though.
