The Other Girl - Sarah Miller

I read an article by Sarah Miller somewheres on the interlings and was like, LULZ and also Yes, quite. It was enough that I library-holded one of her novels, anyway.  And now I can't rememberfind the article, which is too bad because after reading The Other Girl I am like, what.

Ok so apparently the book before this is called Inside the Mind of Gideon Rayburn?  And then in this one, the protagonist Molly is LITERALLY INSIDE THE MIND OF GIDEON RAYBURN, so I don't see how they are different books.  But so Molly is inside Gideon's head and also they are dating and that's how she won him, by knowing what things he dug on account of being inside his head.  Also, they are both at prep school.

And then at some point Molly ends up in this girl Pilar's head, OH NO WAIT I forgot a thing.  Ok so Molly is all Gideon and I are SOUL MATES and we will love each other ALWAYS and me being inside his head is in no way weird or an invasion of privacy and now we will have SEX and then have sex AGAIN, but to rile himself up for Round II Gideon conjures up Pilar in a bikini because Pilar is some otherworldly kind of hot. Molly is outraged and dumps him on the spot.  It is...abrupt.

And then Molly ends up in Pilar's head?  You get half an explanation-ass later about Molly having thought the same things Gideon and Pilar thought, respectively, and thereby jumping into their consciousness.  IRRELEVANT.  Because now Gideon and Pilar start semi-dating and Molly is stuck in Pilar's head and how awkward.

(Tiny quibble, because what do I know about the ins and outs of shared consciousness, but at one point Gideon and Pilar are reminiscing about a particular snuggly conversation and Pilar thinks, I remember that you had a boner the whole time, and Molly [who is in Pilar's head] is all, I was in Gideon's head that night, but I didn't know that.  And I am like, Are you in his head but also under a rock in that head?  Because that seems like a thing you would know, whether you wanted to or not.)

And Pilar is a spoilt, shallow-but-secretly-kind-of-smart-and-also-she-has-a-demanding-and-critical-mother-OBVIOUSLY-which-explains-why-she-is-like-she-is paper doll who says 'totally' and 'so' (as in, I so hate when authors do this) way more than anyone actually does in real life, but for that matter Molly does too.  Molly is supposed to be sassy?  People laugh at her jokes a lot, but I am not those people.

And maybe if I'd read Inside the Mind I'd have a stronger bite on Gideon and Molly's relationship and would give a shit when they WHAM! break up, but being able to predict what a guy will think is sexy so that you can immediately do that thing does not a love match make.  Their whole relationship can be summed up in Molly's late-novel thoughts: 'Some people you can try to hate, and they might even deserve it.  But if you think someone's hot, you're probably just not going to keep hating him for very long.'  Hot people: hard to hate, even when being A-holes.

And, I don't know, I tend to read only YA recommended by Smart and Critical Internet Peoples and rarely wander off into the angsty woods on my own, so I guess I thought we were past using 'he looked like a gay hedgehog' as a derogator and referring to an interest in fitness and ageing as 'amusingly female.'  I mean, I get that teens still say that shit, I just, we don't have to endorse it, you know?  Without problematizing it a little bit?  I live in a marshmallow world, obviously.

And then because people need something to do while roaming around in each other's minds, there's this sub-plot about an academic competition and Molly needs to win for the scholarship because she is Poor but a nasty headmaster is out to bust some chops and who gives?  Not I.

Underwhelmed, yo.  Five caterpillars.