Story of a Girl by Sara Zarr

Story of a Girl (2007) (Little Brown)
Sara Zarr
Grade: C
Genre: young adult
Source: own

TBR RBC 2015: A prize-winning novel 

After being found by her father in the back of Tommy Webber’s Buick aged 13, Deanna Lambert became that girl overnight. Never mind the fact that Tommy was 17 and her brother’s supposed friend. Three years later and Deanna is still known as the ‘school slut’, her father has barely spoken to her since that night and tensions in their house might explode any minute. Deanna wants nothing but a life where one mistake when she was 13 doesn’t precede her. Through confronting the perceptions of the people around her, Deanna begins to realise that starting afresh begins within …

Sweethearts by Sara Zarr

Sweethearts (2008) (Little, Brown)
Sara Zarr
Grade: A-
Genre: young adult
Source: own

General RBC 2015: A classic YA novel 

Once upon a time, Jennifer Harris and Cameron Quick were best friends. Social outcasts at school, they came to depend on each other in a way that only they understood. When one day Cameron doesn’t turn up for school and Jennifer is told that he’s dead, her world is turned upside down. Now in high school, Jennifer Harris is no more. ‘Jenna’ has a happy family after her mum remarried, a close-knit group of friends and a doting boyfriend of three months. When Cameron returns out of the blue, Jenna’s life is thrown out-of-sync – again. As their relationship clicks back into place as if picking up where they left off, they are both forced to remember their shared history and Jenna’s new life suddenly hangs in the balance …