Reviewer: Rowena All-American Girl (All-American Girl #1) by Meg Cabot
Series: All-American Girl #1
Also in this series: Ready or Not (All-American Girl #2)
Publisher: Harper Collins, Harper Teen
Publication Date: July 22nd 2003
Genres: Young Adult
Pages: 398
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Series Rating:
Samantha Madison is an average, cool Washington, D.C., teen: She loves Gwen Stefani (who doesn't?), can draw like nobody's business, and enjoys being opposite to her sister's annoying ultra-social personality. But when she ditches art class one day, she doesn't expect to be jumping on the back of a wannabe presidential assassin.
Soon the young hero is receiving worldwide acclaim for her bravery, having dinner with her family at the White House, and is even being named teen ambassador to the UN. As if this weren't enough, she and David, the president's son, strike up a friendship that everyone wants the dirt on, which starts to give her romantic "frisson" feelings.
Unfortunately, Sam thinks her sister's boyfriend, Jack, is the true love of her life, and she makes a few wrong turns that could screw up what she's developing with David. Will she ever stop following what she knows and start following what she sees?
Have I told you guys how much I heart Meg Cabot? Because I totally do. She never fails to amuse me and wrap me up in the little worlds she creates for each of her stories. I was just as absorbed in Sam’s world of black clothes and nerdy geeky art boys who are so cute as I was when I was reading about Jen Greenley and hottie newspaper editor Scott from Teen Idol and Mel and John from The Boy Next Door. Meg Cabot has this amazing ability to write stories that sucks me right in and leaves me wanting, MORE AND MORE AND MORE!
I’m a total Meg Cabot fan girl.
Seriously.
I kid you not.
Okay, I’ll quit it with the creepy Dylan and Skeeter 2-4 word sentences that drives everyone batty…and if you’ve read the Crazy series by Tara Janzen then you totally know what I’m talking about with that Dylan/Skeeter bit. =)
Anyhoo, so this book is about Samantha Madison who is living in D.C. and basically just hating her life. She hates that she’s the middle child and she the “forgotten” one next to her older and more pretty sister, Lucy and then her younger and brainier sister, Rebecca. Sam’s a social outcast because she gets tortured at school by her ex best friend, Kris Parks who is the bane of her high school years. And to make matters worst, she’s in love with her sister’s artsy “radical” rebel boyfriend. Jack doesn’t seem to love her or even see her the same way she does him and she’s waiting for that perfect moment, when he will realize it’s her that he’s in love with and has all the same things in common with her and not her sister, Lucy.
Lucy let’s it slip that Jen does these fantastic celebrity drawings for the kids at school, you know, she draws pictures of celebrities with whatever student at school and totally charges the kids at school that she doesn’t particularly care for, you know, like Kris Parks, to their parents and Sam’s parents then catch on to why Sam is getting a C- in German, because that’s where she draws all of her pictures for the students.
Sam is just trying to get her little hussle on, come on now… =)
Well, her punishment for drawing during class and getting such a low grade in the class is to channel all of that artistic energy into an after school class that Sam is totally against, getting art lessons from Susan Boone.
Enter David, the cutie guy that likes to wear band shirts.
Cool band shirts.
One of the main things that Susan tries to get Sam to learn is to draw what she sees and not what she knows. And that’s basically what this book was about, getting Sam to see things, really see things.
It takes a few tries, but by the end of the book, she gets it.
Meg Cabot had a sister like me, trying to see things for my damn self. I kid you not, I was sitting there while I was reading this book, trying to really “see” things about me and Nathan’s relationship. I was up in my room, with All American Girl sitting on my chest, while I stared up at the ceiling and tried to “see” where I stood and how things were with me and Nathan. Meg Cabot did that to me and I swear, I felt like the biggest idiot in the world, but it didn’t stop me from loving the hell out of this book.
It was filled with lots of laugh out loud moments, lots of AWWWW how cute moments and a lot of high school jibberish that made me laugh, remembering the parties that I went to when I was in high school. I was cheering Sam and David on throughout the entire book and I was such a huge David fan that the more he came into the story, the more I loved him.
I lub him, a lot. He was a great hero, I’m so effing glad that I read this book because I can totally feel it, guys…my reading mojo is totally back because I have already started the second book to this series, Ready or Not and I have Meg frickin’ Cabot to thank for getting me out of my horrible reading slump that I’ve been in the entire summer.
Grade: 4.5 out of 5