Vegan Virgin Valentine

The story is about Mara Valentine, a 17-year-old girl who is a straight-A student. She's active in various things and is basically a perfect girl both in school and at home. She's been accepted into Yale, and is going to be the valedictorian for the high school graduation.

Her niece, Viviviene Vail Valentine, comes to stay with her. V, as she is known, is the polar opposite of Mara. V dresses rather wildly, and, before long, various graffiti about her is on the walls of the school bathrooms.

Even worse, V smokes pot and comes on to Mara's former boyfriend. Mara, though, has her own problems. She works at a coffee house and finds herself attracted to the young owner. Her improv dance teacher seems to dislike her, and V starts getting into trouble at school.

Not everything is as it seems, of course, and it turns out that V is not as bad a girl as she seems at all. She basically tries to get Mara to loosen up a little, and she ends up doing just that, dropping some college courses she was going to take during the summer, falling fully in love with the coffee shop owner, etc.

Which becomes a problem in trying to figure out what the book is trying to say. It seems there are two possible scenarios:

1. The book is about not taking things too seriously, not putting all your emphasis on school studies and plans for the future, and trying to enjoy life a little, especially when you are younger.

2. The book is basically an anti-intellectual statement, a not-so-veiled attack on those students (particularly girls) who concentrate on their studies far more than most other students do. Trying to be a “perfect daughter” isn't worth the effort it takes.

I can't really tell which approach the book supports. I am hoping it is supporting the first approach, but it could be taking the second, in which I would have some objections.

So I can't really say whether I find the book good or not. Overall it's fun to read, and the Mara and V relationship is done very well; it's just the objective of the book that I'm not sure of.

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