Kid Konnection: Not Exactly a Love Story
Things aren’t going too well for fifteen-year old-Vinnie. He’s got the worst case of acne his doctor has ever seen, his girlfriend leaves without saying good-bye, and his newly divorced mother has moved him from Queens to Long Island. The one good thing is that they’ve moved right next door to Patsy, the girl every guy loves. Of course, she doesn’t know Vinnie’s alive.
When Vinnie finds a scrap of paper with Patsy’s phone number on it, he decides to call her anonymously. They end up striking up quite a friendship – there’s a problem though, Patsy doesn’t know who he is. In the meantime, Patsy and Vinnie are getting to know each other in real life. Vinnie realizes that he will have to give up one relationship with Patsy in order to fully enjoy the other.
Not Exactly a Love Story, by Audrey Couloumbis is a delightful young adult novel. I adored Vinnie and felt for him. He was a nice guy but felt like nothing was going his way. Being able to call Patsy anonymously gave him some of the confidence he needed. It actually helped both of them – they were able to tell each other things during their late night calls that they didn’t dare tell anyone else.
I thought the plot of the book was really cute too. I think young readers will enjoy the flirty, romantic nature of Patsy and Vinnie’s relationship and will relate to at least one of the characters. I appreciated the fact that the book was clean, except for a certain word a time or two, so even younger YA readers can enjoy the book.
I listened to Not Exactly a Love Story and thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s expertly narrated by Maxwell Glick. He sound just like a teenager to me – at one point during the book, I looked him up to see how old he is. The audio is on 5 CDs and lasts approximately 6 hours.
For more children’s books reviews, go to Booking Mama’s feature, Kid Konnection. If you’d like to participate in Kid Konnection and share a post about anything related to children’s books (picture, middle grade, or young adult) from the past week, leave a comment as well as a link on her site.
I love the Cyrano plot take offs. So fun!
This does sound good and of course is a good lesson about judging people by their looks instead of what is really inside!
Sounds good.
This does sound cute and fun. Glad it’s a clean read too.
Love the sound of this one!
This sounds like a great book! Just fun, young stuff, nothing too heavy.
It sounds like a fun book…thank you for sharing!
Sounds like a winner!
This sounds like the perfect gift book for a teen!
I loved how this was set in the 1970s-it’s not a very popular time period for historical fiction but it was cool to read about especially considering that its target audience was not alive for that time!
Oh this does sound delightful. It’s probably not for me but I will recommend it to my niece.
what a fun book this sounds like!
Sounds like a really good listen.
Terrific review! I’m glad you enjoyed this audiobook. (I had fun trying this meme a few weekends ago, and want to do it again.)
Sounds like a wonderful book to feature near Valentine’s Day.
I’m always looking for great YA audiobooks, and I’ve heard such great things about this book. Glad to hear you enjoyed this, and that the narration was quality. Wonderful review!🙂
I need to remember this for when I’m feeling like a shorter audio book. SOme of the audios are so long and I have a short commute:)
This sounds good and I like books like this once in a while especially on audio.
This sounds really cute! I may even check out the audio version (rather than the paperback) as I’m quite bad at doing teenage boy voice overs in my head!🙂