"My Ultimate Sister Disaster"
Author: Jane Mendle
198 pages
Publisher: St. Martins Griffin
Source: Cariboo Regional District Library
If there were a way to pick your family, fourteen-year-old Franny might not pick her own. Her father is a hipster boutique owner who's constantly 'friending' her on Facebook; her mother is off in Kenya jump-starting her stalled anthropology career; and her sister, Zooey, eleven months older and eight inches taller, is a precocious prima ballerina. Lately, Zooey's so absorbed with her burgeoning ballet career that she barely seems to notice Franny. And since Zooey attends a top ballet conservatory, Franny's on her own navigating the brutal halls of her Manhattan prep school, a first-year trying to get noticed at the school paper (and by its soulful, long-lashed editor in chief).But everything changes when Zooey breaks her leg and her dancing comes to a grinding halt. Her ballet dreams shattered, she begins to hone in on Franny's 'normal' life and friends. Franny feels terrible for Zooey, but when her encroachment starts to extend to Franny's longtime crush, Franny begins to wonder if her sister might just be her worst competition."
I found this a humorous read meant for a reader that likes a fun, quick and easy book! The beginning for me was the funniest part. It did continued to have humor (especiall at this one "scene") but the first few chapters were hilarious! This book combines all the elements of family, friendships, relationships and identitiy 'issues' in a way that I believe worked well for the story line. For I book I pulled out randomly, I loved it! Franny, I found was a girl I could relate to....which kept me going throughout the book. Though I found it hard to believe that her parents were that 'wierd'. I also really enjoyed the ending. I can see why other reviewers would say there might be a second one! I give this four stars and highly recommend it! :D
Excerpt:
"You don't happen to know how to do laundry, do you?
"You don't?" she asked.
"You seriously know how to do laundry?" Ecstatically, I filled my arms with as much dirty clothing as I could manage and stumbled to the laundry room, trailing shirts and underwear behind me like Gretel and her bread crumbs.
"Ok, this" ---Rhia gestured at me---"is a total problem."
"I know." I winced. "I just haven't figured everything out yet."
"Well, laundry is not that hard, Franny," Rhia said, dumping soap in and showing me how to work the dials. "But seriously, how are your dad and Zooey getting clean clothes? Like, someone has to be taking care of this stuff, right?"
First paragraph:
"It's not like I'm complaining. Really. Because I guess my life could be a whole lot worse than it really is. So all I'm going to say is this: If I were to wander into an old dusty junk shop somewhere in Greenwich Village and uncover a beat-up brass lamp stuffed in a corner that the owner would sell to me with a knowing twinkle in his eye, and later I were somehow to run my hand across the surface of the lamp and this magical genie appeared in a poof of smoke...
Well, I couldn't wish for anything."
