Friday, February 3, 2012

Zig Zag

Author: Ellen Wittlinger

Pages: 264

Rating: PG-13, but just barely. There's a little language, but not much, and at the beginning it's clear that Robin does have sex with her boyfriend, but there are no graphic sex scenes. They just have a conversation about what their parents would think if they knew. But since the book is not really about Robin's relationship with Chris, I don't really think you should let that fact keep you from reading the book.

Summary:Robin can't believe it when her boyfriend, Chris, tells her that his parents have enrolled him in a summer program in Rome. It's their last summer together before he goes away to college, and now they won't even have that time together. It feels like the worst thing that's ever happened to her.

Since Chris is leaving, Robin agrees to join her aunt and cousins on a cross-country road trip, in spite of her reservations -- she and her younger cousins have never really gotten along, and since their father's death they've become even more problematic than before.

Soon the four of them are zigzagging through the West on an eye-opening journey. They explore parts of the country Robin never dreamed existed -- and she discovers inner resources she never imagined she had.

My Thoughts: This book was one of my high school favorites, and I still liked it. It brought back a lot of nostalgia at the beginning when Robin feels like it's the end of the world that her boyfriend is leaving and that she is nothing without him. I totally remember feeling that way when my high school boyfriend went off to college and left me behind.

Robin is really funny, and her cousins, Iris and Marshall, have lots of problems. They're such real characters though. They are trying to deal with a huge tragedy, and they each choose different ways to deal with it. Marshall draws violent pictures, and Iris is just snotty all the time and she's hovering on the verge of bulimia. Robin is thrown in the mix to somehow get them all through the summer, and she ends up acting like the family's therapist. Robin ends up handling the whole mess extremely well. She's such a strong character, even though she has very little faith in herself. She learns a lot along the way, and she grows up a lot too.

It's not your average dopey teenage love story or anything. These kids have real issues, and the trip helps them to heal and come closer together. That's part of why I like this book. It has a lot of lessons written into an easy to read story about a family on a road trip across the USA.

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