Pearl: Your Classic Teen Novel
Pearl is a novel that follows the life of a young girl from manhattan. JJ, her mom, a retired pop singer, turned to drugs after her short lived fame lives off her royalty checks as her only source of income. Pearl was left to take care of her, but after JJ accidentally started a fire from trying to get in a smoke, her brother, pearls uncle, decides it’s enough. He sends pearl to a boarding school in New England and promised that’s where she’ll stay if she maintains her behavior and grades.
This book explores through Pearls life the complexity of trying to change when virtually all odds are set against you. The process is slow and convoluted and the book portrays it well.
One thing I enjoyed about the book is that it’s written with a love interest, but builds Pearl around it instead of through it. Sure he contributes to her character development, but is nowhere near at the center of it. Some elements of her life could mirror multiple teenagers, and I don’t see any other age group gaining much from it.
The book has a fairly common structure with a generic character arc. They were intriging, yet predictable. It goes through the motions of a standard teen realistic fiction novel, and features very little variation. As much as I enjoyed it in the moment, I wasn’t left with much to ponder when I finished reading as I tend to do with other books.
The writing was not complicated, but some of the content is suggestive and I would recommend it to high school age kids. This book may be good for an easy read on the airplane, but do not pick it up expecting anything you haven’t read in another teen novel. I give it a 4/10 because the plot line was engaging enough, but the overall structure and lessons were mediocre at best.
Amber Carey is a journalist for The Eagle Quill. You’ll often see her in sweaters or swimming. (She does not swim in her sweaters.)
