One that needs more than five stars, for sure. I can't believe people can write like this! ( )

Pretty Little Dirty is an extremely tragic story about two disillusioned girls.

Lisa spends most of her time with her best friend Celeste and her family. Things at home haven’t been good for years, and she envies the wonderful life Celeste has. One summer when Lisa and Celeste are bored, they make friends with two older men and spiral down a path of self-destructive. Boyden starts this book off with a relatively normal plot. It’s just two teenage girls making bad decisions. It quickly turns into a shit storm of bad decisions. It just made me sad. I definitely think there was a lesson involved, but Boyden went about telling it in the most depressing way she could. Bot characters were likable in the beginning, but by the end I despised them for being so utterly stupid. Boyden’s a great writer though. She has a gritty, matter-of-fact style that lends itself to this story. She also does a great job incorporating popular bands associate with the time in which the book is set. I might have a slight bias there because I used to love punk rock, and those are the kinds of shows the girls go to. The ending will break you, and is partly what made me hate the book for a while.

I think it has an audience, that audience just isn’t me. I prefer just a little light-heartedness with my grit. ( )

Do you know where your daughter is? Do you know what your daughter is doing? Who her friends are?
Pretty Little Dirty is a shockingly profound portrayal of the sometimes agonizing transition childhood friendships make into adulthood. What starts as the story of two adolescent girls born for success and living a charmed life soon spirals into an intoxicating novel of art, music, and self-destructive impulses.
Lisa and Celeste become” BFF” while taking an entrance exam for a prestigious prep school. Both their families are well off and while Lisa’s upbringing is less than perfect , she is effectively welcomed into Celeste’s loving and vibrant family where she spends most of her youth. The first part of the book is funny and reminiscent of my own awkward experiences as a young girl. But as the girls age into teenagers they happily dabble in things that slide them into drugs + alcohol, violent punk rock raves and sex with anyone.
The friendship Lisa and Celeste share is in many ways what young women desire, something steadfast, unconditional, protective, and loyal to the end. But Boyden also shows the envy, competition, fear, and possessiveness that will sometimes darken even the best of friendships. Pretty Little Dirty is ultimately about a loving friendship and its turning points. Where did things change? Who led and who followed? It touches on issues that all too many parents, including me, wish didn’t exist, or would simply go away. It is a raw and uncut interpretation of the problems facing female youth. Boyden addresses everything from educational stress and family dysfunction to the constant pressure to “hook-up”. The language used in this book is raw and could be shocking to some and if this isn't enough Boyden includes short inter-chapters written in second person within the story. At first I couldn’t figure them out. I wondered who this narrator is. But then it hit me, these inter-chapters are not Lisa’s or Celeste’s voices, they are voices of different girls whose lives are mirroring the later lives of Lisa and Celeste. These sections are effective but shocking to read, the language and imagery is so rough and real that it makes you wonder how anyone could let themselves get to that point in their lives. ( )

Wow. This book really shocked me. It doesn't take much to shock me, but this did it. Two best friends growing up together. They meet in sixth grade, while taking a placement exam to get into a prestigious prep school. Their friendship begins immediately.

The first paragraph:

I met Celeste in one of those lucky years of childhood you get before anybody significant dies-before Grandma goes, before your dad's secretary doesn't beat breast cancer, before the pharmacist gets into the car wreck. Celeste fit those years perfectly: me with my illusions of everyone living on into some hazy infinity of old age, Celeste with her surreal beauty, her otherworldly trust, her yellow eyes more gold than green, her skin, her lips, her-god!-her grace. You wouldn't believe how beautiful a sixth-grader could be until you saw her.

They are together every summer, and celebrate special moments together; their first kisses, first dates, first experiences with alcohol and drugs, then later their first sexual encounters. I envied their closeness....and knew that they would be there for each other no matter what. I think the best thing about this book is the end.....It blindsided me....never saw it coming.
This is a gritty, raw and surprising coming-of-age story that I will never forget. ( )

Gritty coming of age novel. Shows how easily it is for teenage girls to go off the rails when they have that special best friend/partner in crime. I've definitely lived through part of this, although thankfully not all of it!

I loved Lisa and Celeste's interest in food throughout the novel, and found my mouth watering at the elaborate dinner parties they used to throw at the Diamond's house every night. I wondered about the food inclusion quite a lot, why it was there, what exactly it all meant - until I came to the part where they were living off microwaved food and the odd bit of toast. And despite all the other stuff that happened in the novel, that's the scene that made me the saddest of all. I guess it struck a chord with me.

I love coming of age novels, and this is definitely more hard hitting than most. It doesn't hold back. Definitely worth a read. ( )