Review: MY LIFE UNDECIDED by Jessica Brody

Title: MY LIFE UNDECIDED
Author: Jessica Brody
Release Date: Out Now (June 7, 2011)
Publisher: Farrar, Straus, Giroux/MacMillan
Goodreads
Publisher: F

 SUMMARY:

PLEASE READ THIS! MY LIFE DEPENDS ON IT!

Okay, maybe that was a bit melodramatic, but I’m sorry, I’m feeling a bit melodramatic at the moment.

Here’s the deal. My name is Brooklyn Pierce, I’m fifteen years old, and I am decisionally challenged. Seriously, I can’t remember the last good decision I made. I can remember plenty of crappy ones though. Including that party I threw when my parents were out of town that accidentally burned down a model home. Yeah, not my finest moment, for sure.

But see, that’s why I started a blog. To enlist readers to make my decisions for me. That’s right. I gave up. Threw in the towel. I let someone else be the one to decide which book I read for English. Or whether or not I accepted an invitation to join the debate team from that cute-in-a-dorky-sort-of-way guy who gave me the Heimlich Maneuver in the cafeteria. (Note to self: Chew the melon before swallowing it.) I even let them decide who I dated!

Well, it turns out there are some things in life you simply can’t choose or have chosen for you—like who you fall in love with. And now everything’s more screwed up than ever.

But don’t take my word for it, read the book and decide for yourself. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll scream in frustration. Or maybe that’s just me. After all, it’s my life.

Brooklyn Pierce is horrible when it comes to making decisions. As a toddler, she went running after a lizard, fell down an old mine shaft, and was rescued on live TV as a national audience watched with bated breath. Now 15, "Baby Brooklyn" is once again on the news...and not in a good way. Caving in to a suggestion from her bff, the popular Shayne, she throws a rager at her mom's model home. While drunk, she decides that making fajitas is a brilliant idea...but all the vegetables are made of plastic and she manages to set the house on fire.

Led away in handcuffs and getting off with a "lenient" 200 hours of community service, brooklyn realizes that something needs to change. She can't make good decisions. Inspired by a Choose Your Own Adventure novel, she gets the idea to start a blog, one where her readers will be given two options and asked which path she should take. The first couple of times she posts a poll, the questions are simple: Should she read THE GRAPES OF WRATH or THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA? Should she eat lunch in the cafeteria or in the library? She moves onto asking about things she'd never consider doing in her previous life, such as trying out for the rugby team or joining the debate club. Soon, she's even polling readers on her love life. Her readership jumps from 11 to 52 to 105...until she's receiving thousands of hits each day after being featured on a big website. 

Brooklyn's life is still spiraling away from her, this time because she's a lemming blindly following what the masses tell her to do. Maybe the freedom of choice isn't such a bad thing after all!

MY LIFE UNDECIDED by Jessica Brody was adorable. I liked it so much that after reading it, I wanted something else light and fun, which the majority of my books...are not. In fact, I ran out to the library and was excited to see that they had Jessica Brody's THE KARMA CLUB, and I devoured that, too. Look for my review tomorrow!

Readers will really root for Brooklyn, who is an endearing protagonist. She grows a lot as a character throughout the novel. I like the way she really starts to enjoy things she thought she would hate--and even more when she makes these realizations herself. If you were undecided about reading this before my review, let me make the decision for you: You totally want to read this one. Like, yesterday!

COVER DESIGN:

Super cute! I love all of her jewelry and want it! I also really like her floppy hat and the pose/expression she's making. It such a fun look, and that perplexed expression as the model attempts to make a decision is so Brooklyn! Plus, there's so much purple. Purple just makes me happy!

Here is the book’s official trailer:

YouTube