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A review by vickycbooks
Finding Felicity by Stacey Kade
5.0
4.5 stars
Finding Felicity revolves around Caroline Sands who, after her parents' divorce and her move to Arizona, isn't particularly good at making friends. Being the new girl was hard enough and her social awkwardness didn't help her case. Out of desperation, Caroline invented a whole life for herself with characters from the old show Felicity to assure her mother that she was okay.
But Caroline's secret gets exposed right before she goes off to college and she's left with an ultimatum: Prove in first semester that she can make friends (of the nonfictional variety) and thrive in a new environment or else she's to come back to living at home and therapy.
Caroline accepts the challenge, hoping college will let Caroline leave her old "life" behind and build something real. But she'll realize that the real world isn't as simple as her Felicity-inspired plan made it out to be.
I had such an awesome time reading this book. I have been searching for something like it for years now and I'm so glad that this book is getting published because it's just so important and something I think a lot of teens really need.
There's tons of YA out there talking about the high school experience and making friends and all sorts of things like that. But college YA is severely lacking and a lot of teens end up heading into that territory unprepared.
The only books that are very college-focused on the experience that I've read are Fangirl and Freshmen, and while Nice Try, Jane Sinner and American Panda and The Big F have a college setting, the focus does lie in other places besides the college experience.
So being able to add Finding Felicity onto the lists makes me so happy. This is something I related a lot to and I know a lot of other teens will be able to also relate to.
It's basically every teen's fears of college--whether than can make friends, are they wearing the right thing, what activities should you join, do you have to go to this frat party--jammed together into one book.
It was amazing.
Caroline's journey is just something so relatable and it's those high school fears that are put into one book. And I know for some people (you very fortunate people) her fears might seem super extreme, but for many others, they're legitimate worries.
Caroline does take it much farther than a lot of people--making up fictional friends--but the things she learns on the way really help shape the narrative. I found her to be wholly relatable and a very good representation of the anxious high school senior soon to be college student.
What I really loved was the timing of this novel. Kade could have told this story in a high school setting--writing about Caroline as she tries to keep the secret of her fictional friends--but she didn't and I think this made it to be a much more impactful novel.
I also loved how present the side characters are and how real they were. They didn't end up being just two dimensional clichés--the bad girl roommate, the party girl, etc.--but they had their nuances and backstories that helped really make them dynamic characters as well.
I sped through this novel in what felt like was only an hour. In twenty minutes, I seemed to have flipped through 75 pages. I thought it was paced really well and even though the plot is mostly character based, it had a very good balance of things that were happening in the real world and introspection.
I do think that some readers who can't relate to this as much as I could would definitely be less inclined towards this novel, but I think that it's a really great book. My only criticism would be that I kind of wished it was longer, which is something that I don't say often, but I wished there were more trials for Caroline to go through to give an even wider view of the college experience.
I feel like if this is a novel that seems like something you could relate to, you should definitely check it out. Finding Felicity should become a staple for all high school students as its message is a very good one that helps effectively emphasize that your hopes of a "new you" in college might not be the most stable idea. You can't just reinvent yourself in that way.
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Finding Felicity revolves around Caroline Sands who, after her parents' divorce and her move to Arizona, isn't particularly good at making friends. Being the new girl was hard enough and her social awkwardness didn't help her case. Out of desperation, Caroline invented a whole life for herself with characters from the old show Felicity to assure her mother that she was okay.
But Caroline's secret gets exposed right before she goes off to college and she's left with an ultimatum: Prove in first semester that she can make friends (of the nonfictional variety) and thrive in a new environment or else she's to come back to living at home and therapy.
Caroline accepts the challenge, hoping college will let Caroline leave her old "life" behind and build something real. But she'll realize that the real world isn't as simple as her Felicity-inspired plan made it out to be.
I had such an awesome time reading this book. I have been searching for something like it for years now and I'm so glad that this book is getting published because it's just so important and something I think a lot of teens really need.
There's tons of YA out there talking about the high school experience and making friends and all sorts of things like that. But college YA is severely lacking and a lot of teens end up heading into that territory unprepared.
The only books that are very college-focused on the experience that I've read are Fangirl and Freshmen, and while Nice Try, Jane Sinner and American Panda and The Big F have a college setting, the focus does lie in other places besides the college experience.
So being able to add Finding Felicity onto the lists makes me so happy. This is something I related a lot to and I know a lot of other teens will be able to also relate to.
It's basically every teen's fears of college--whether than can make friends, are they wearing the right thing, what activities should you join, do you have to go to this frat party--jammed together into one book.
It was amazing.
Caroline's journey is just something so relatable and it's those high school fears that are put into one book. And I know for some people (you very fortunate people) her fears might seem super extreme, but for many others, they're legitimate worries.
Caroline does take it much farther than a lot of people--making up fictional friends--but the things she learns on the way really help shape the narrative. I found her to be wholly relatable and a very good representation of the anxious high school senior soon to be college student.
What I really loved was the timing of this novel. Kade could have told this story in a high school setting--writing about Caroline as she tries to keep the secret of her fictional friends--but she didn't and I think this made it to be a much more impactful novel.
I also loved how present the side characters are and how real they were. They didn't end up being just two dimensional clichés--the bad girl roommate, the party girl, etc.--but they had their nuances and backstories that helped really make them dynamic characters as well.
I sped through this novel in what felt like was only an hour. In twenty minutes, I seemed to have flipped through 75 pages. I thought it was paced really well and even though the plot is mostly character based, it had a very good balance of things that were happening in the real world and introspection.
I do think that some readers who can't relate to this as much as I could would definitely be less inclined towards this novel, but I think that it's a really great book. My only criticism would be that I kind of wished it was longer, which is something that I don't say often, but I wished there were more trials for Caroline to go through to give an even wider view of the college experience.
I feel like if this is a novel that seems like something you could relate to, you should definitely check it out. Finding Felicity should become a staple for all high school students as its message is a very good one that helps effectively emphasize that your hopes of a "new you" in college might not be the most stable idea. You can't just reinvent yourself in that way.
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