Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison
I didn't read this book when I was in middle school and all my friends were reading it because I thought my parents would flip out. I'm 24 now and my dad flipped out when he saw it.
Which I'm sure marketing thought would help it, but whatever.
I know this is supposed to be a hilarious series everyone loves, but maybe I missed my window on loving it. I totally see where it fits in with Meg Cabot and Megan McCafferty and other writers like that. But the whole time, I couldn't help but think, "What My Mother Doesn't Know was funnier."
I didn't hate it; it's fairly fun (though with rather a lot of internalized sexism on Georgia's part) and a very easy read, despite the gratuitous use of UK English slang, which borders on annoying but pretty clearly establishes who Georgia is: she's very much the kind of kid who wants to be in the know and in the thick of it, but doesn't always get it right.
I think part of my problem is that the boy-crazy 14 year-old genre just makes me so uncomfortable. Yes, I knew girls like that in middle school. Yes, I just said that I thought What My Mother Doesn't Know is hilarious. But I think the difference between Sophie in WMMDK and Georgia in ATaFFS is that Sophie's stream of consciousness poetry puts ALL of Sophie's insecurities on display, and she worries about a lot of things, including a lot of totally normal and totally bizarre worries about boys. Georgia, on the other hand, worries mainly about boys and her looks, specifically her nose, and in kind of a shallow way. And I get that part of the humor is meant to be how oblivious Georgia is to the way she treats her friends, but it just didn't work for me. I did really like the stuff about Georgia's family, and for some reason, as ridiculous as the way she basically forgets about her dad and isn't much bothered or affected by his move did strike me as funny.
Anyways, Angus was my favorite. There's one bit, early on, where Georgia says that sometimes he hears the call of the Highlands and then describes his weird cat freakouts, and if my cats where gigantic strays found in Scotland, I would totally start calling whatever the heck the Hershey-cat is doing right now "hearing the call of the Highlands."
