Review: Sean Griswold’s Head by Lindsey Leavitt.

Main Character: Payton Gritas
Love Interest: Sean Griswold
Series: None
Author: Website|Facebook|Twitter|Goodreads

According to her guidance counselor, fifteen-year-old Payton Gritas needs a focus object—an item to concentrate her emotions on. It’s supposed to be something inanimate, but Payton decides to use the thing she stares at during class: Sean Griswold’s head. They’ve been linked since third grade (Griswold-Gritas—it’s an alphabetical order thing), but she’s never really known him.

The focus object is intended to help Payton deal with her father’s newly diagnosed multiple sclerosis. And it’s working. With the help of her boy-crazy best friend Jac, Payton starts stalking—er, focusing on—Sean Griswold . . . all of him! He’s cute, he shares her Seinfeld obsession (nobody else gets it!) and he may have a secret or two of his own.

In this sweet story of first love, Lindsey Leavitt seamlessly balances heartfelt family moments, spot-on sarcastic humor, and a budding young romance.

First and foremost, I have to thank the author Lindsey Leavitt for sending me a copy of this book (I won in a Twitter contest) and I’ve got to say that it was mighty hard not to crack this sucker open the minute I got it because I had other books for review that I had to read first. First chance I got though, I was reading this book and loving every minute of it.

At first glance, this book looks like it’d be a light and fluffy read but once you dig right in, you find something a little deeper than that and I thought it was just great.

When I was a teenager, I had it pretty good. My parents worked all the time and my older brothers and sisters took care of me. They picked me up from school, made my lunches for me and went to my parent/teacher conferences. I fought with my younger brother up until we started high school together and we became besties. The only bad thing that ever happened to my family was in the middle of the night, the cops knocked on our door and I answered it. I was still wiping the sleep away from my eyes when the two officers asked to speak to my parents. When my parents came to the door, it was to find out that my older brother Seko has been shot twice (once in his back and once in his leg) and was rushed to the hospital.

Up until that point, I had never been that scared before in my life. I lived a charmed life. We weren’t rich by any standards but we were always laughing, we never went hungry and my family did a good job of shielding me and my younger brother from the harsher realities of life (the money struggles, etc..). But that night, my eyes would not close. I was awake when the cops told my Mom and Dad what happened to my brother and I stayed awake because I was so scared that my brother was going to die.

So reading this book took me back to that night and had me trying to remember if I reacted the way that Payton reacted to the news that her father had MS. She was scared and she pushed everyone away and in a way, I did the same. I didn’t tell any of my friends what happened and I wouldn’t really talk about it with my family members either and when nobody was looking, I cried. A lot. I’m not one to talk about my feelings and lucky for me, it wasn’t expected of me since we’re all the same in my family. When we’re happy, we’re happy but when we’re not happy, we’re quiet.

The one thing I didn’t get was Payton’s reasons for why she was so mad at her parents about the way she found out about her Dad’s MS. She was mad that they lied to her. They didn’t tell her because they didn’t want to worry her, they didn’t think she was ready and then they finally do tell her and she reacts the exact same way that they didn’t want her to react in the first place. There were times throughout the book that I wanted to smack some sense into Payton’s head but then I’d take a step back and remember that Payton is young.

The whole focus project thing and Sean’s head was a treat for me. Getting to know Sean and watching Payton’s feelings for him develop and then watching him finally notice Payton after all of these years was just too freaking cute.

There wasn’t too much about this story that I didn’t enjoy. I enjoyed the friendship between Jac and Payton. I enjoyed getting to know Payton’s family and I enjoyed the romance that bloomed between Sean and Payton. This book is filled to the brim with awesome-ness and I totally recommend this book to anyone who is in the mood for something cute but deep, at the same time.

For all my Moms out there, I’d give this book a rating of:

This book is more suitable for the 13 and over crowd as there’s romance in it. Teenage romance but still. There’s also mature topics like dealing with a parent with an illness that is more suitable for the 13 and over crowd.

..and that’s your scoop!

Buy the book: B&N|Borders|Amazon|Book Depository
Book cover and blurb credit: http://barnesandnoble.com

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