(no cover image available yet)
I’m sort of dying to see the cover for this one, because the title isn’t one that will immediately grab teen girls, and the jacket copy, while cleverly done and ultimately very plot-telling, is written in a way that might not immediately grab either. So I’ve got high hopes that the cover will pull all three things together into one excellent marketing package, because this is a very enjoyable book that I’d like to see do well. Don’t get me wrong – I like the title, and I like the way the jacket copy is written, but both are a little unconventional, so this book definitely needs the right cover. (And deserves the right cover!)
Leigh has just begun her freshman year at Stiles College, an unconventional California institution where there are no grades and students can pretty much design their own majors. (Hers is psych, but you probably guessed that.) She sort of followed her high school boyfriend Andrew there – once she found out he was going there, she didn’t bother to apply anywhere else. Now that they’re actually at Stiles, though, Andrew is taking so many classes Leigh hardly ever sees him. He doesn’t invite her to spend the night, and she doesn’t know how to feel about that either, especially since they haven’t yet taken the “next step” in their relationship. To top it all off, Andrew and Leigh’s awesome roomie, Ami, didn’t exactly hit it off. Add the personal issues into your normal college adjustment period, and you’ve got one heck of a confusing situation for our protagonist.
Leigh’s also gotten coerced into taking part in a mentoring program for young girls. Some of her fellow students are doing it because it will look good on their grad school applications. Leigh doesn’t care about where she’s going to go to grad school – it’s only her freshman year. She’s more concerned with why Andrew’s roommate Nathan seems to loathe her; how to make her fellow students understand that she’s not interested in being hyper-competitive at this early stage in her collegiate life so could they PLEASE CHILL OUT; and how to continue to park her 1971 Gremlin, Gretchen, on campus without actually purchasing a parking permit.
Oh – and then there’s the pesky problem of the dream she had about Nathan.
And did I mention her mentee, Rebekah, who seems to think that Leigh is both an idiot and naïve?
Here’s the thing: Leigh’s afraid Rebekah might be right.
PSYCH MAJOR SYNDROME features some exceptionally strong writing from debut author Thompson as well as a main character who’s neither unbelievably life-savvy nor mindblowingly, over the top idiotic. A good balance is struck between slapstick-y perils for Leigh and true life difficulties. Her relationships are all realistically drawn and her internal life both moving and funny (without ever drifting into too much snark). I definitely look forward to more from this author.
We need more YA like this – books that contain college-aged characters but aren’t necessarily all about sex, drinking, sex, drinking, sex. I’m thinking of books like BASS ACKWARDS AND BELLY UP and 13 LITTLE BLUE ENVELOPES. Both have older protagonists but aren’t necessarily older subject-matter wise from YA books with younger teens in them. A lot of 14 and 15 year old girls like to read books with older girls in them, but I have a hard time selling their moms on the much-older content. Books like PSYCH MAJOR SYNDROME are an excellent way to bridge that gap.
Older content: there is some mild drinking which is referred to casually, and Leigh does a lot of thinking about having sex with Andrew (and talking about it).
*One bit of wording in the book that really bugged me – on page five, Leigh’s roommate Amy looks at the “rows of dime store novels” on Leigh’s bookshelves. How many teens are going to understand that a “dime store novel” is essentially a Harlequin romance book? I mean, they’ll get it from context, as the words “romance novel” are used in the above paragraph, but it seemed like a very odd, dated reference for this book. But that’s a nitpick! It certainly doesn’t hurt the book, it just bugs me. Somehow I think I’ll get through it, though.
