Starting off with a fabulous book!
I'm sure I heard about Pink through KTLiterary's blog, but I can't remember when. It has been on my too-read list essentially forever and then went on my to-read pile for a longer forever while I was line editing and couldn't focus on other people's books. I read it yesterday and it was worth the wait!
Ava (yes like Ava Gardner) is a goth who wants to be a pink-wearing girl. As someone who straddles the line between both, I completely understand. And that's what this book does so well. It shows how everyone straddles the line, how you can feel out of place even among the misfits (Oh how well I know....) and how easy it is to manipulate the way you seem. Ava feels guilty not just for partying with the Pastels, but also for hanging out with a nerdy level of misfit her erudite girlfriend might not approve of. Poor girl isn't even sure if she likes girls, or boys, or both. And that's okay. Wilkinson's point is that it's all okay.
I need to hear that at twenty-two, let alone at seventeen. Other perks include Doctor Who references, theatre kids-- we even had a ginger stagehand in my theatre days whose name started with an "S"-- a character who's not afraid to be intelligent. All things I love in a book, and which reassure me that one day my quirky books might make it, too.
A few nitpicks. I wasn't okay with the complete parental absence for a while, but it did get redeemed. And Ava's girlfriend... well, I'm not sure we saw enough of her "not a bitch" side, though we did see a great rendering of the way Ava morphed herself to fit into Chloe's world. And the description of her was perfect.
Fabulous, fabulous, fabulous book says this pink loving misfit!
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