Never Thought I’d End Up Here by Ann Liang

 

Never Thought I’d End Up Here is an uplifting rom-com for teen / young adult readers. 

 

Leah makes a faux-pas at her cousin’s wedding because her mastery of her second language is not as it should be: she wishes the couple a disastrous marriage. Mother and aunt decide something must be done and she is sent on a trip that will not only deepen her knowledge of Chinese culture but will also improve her language skills.

 

And who should be on that trip but her nemesis, Cyrus.  

 

The story is told in first person and Leah teases us a little. We know that she has been expelled from one school but we only find out why about half way through the book. We know that she suddenly quits modelling but are only told why much later. It’s clear that she really dislikes Cyrus but again it is a long time before she actually tells us why. Also a mystery is why exactly she changed so much after she was expelled. All of this keeps us reading.

 

Ann Liang draws her characters well. We grow to love Leah even though we might be a little irritated that she insists on wearing high heels when trainers would have been a much better option. Leah is the main character but we may also become fond of Daisy, Leah’s timid roommate,  Cyrus who is quite complex, the handsome and flirtatious Oliver, Cyrus’s roommate, the strict and slightly stressed teacher, and Leah’s mother and aunt, both of whom are feisty but caring women.

 

There is plenty of plot and a plethora of sub-plots that hurtle towards a very satisfying end as relationships and attitudes change. 

 

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The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares

2002, first published 2001  

The traveling pants of the title are a pair of jeans bought from a charity. The four friends, Bridget Carmen, Lena and Tibby pass them on to each other during a long summer in which each of the girls grows up a little.  So, we approach the bildungsroman of the young adult.

Bridget embarks on a forbidden relationship with an older boy a coach at her summer camp. Carmen behaves badly when she is confronted with her father’s new family. The beautiful but rather shy Lena causes a misunderstanding between her and Kostos, the grandson of friends of her grandparents.  Tibby works at Wallman’s and befriends Bailey, a younger girl who is dying of leukaemia.

The pants develop a spiritual quality and bring luck and meaningfulness to each girl as she wears them        

Each chapter contains glimpse of each of the girls and is headed by a quote usually from literature though there is also a quote from a bumper sticker.

The book is 304 pages long.  The chapters are quite short. The text is blocked and in an adult serif font. Other fonts are used for had-written notes, giving each girl a different sort of handwriting. 

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I, Ada, by Julia Gray

                                                           

 

 

2020

Ada is the daughter of Lord Byron who remains for much of this account a distant and mysterious figure. Why is he not present in her life? Did he flee the country because of debts? Was he involved in some sort of scandal? Did her mother not love him? Why won’t Mamma let her have any connection with her aunt, Lord Byron’s sister?      

Both Ada and her mother have an interest in mathematics and machinery. However, Lady Byron worries about Ada’s butterfly mind. She takes Ada on a tour of factories to show her the dark and messy side of machines.   

This is a first person account from Ada from 1821 to 1836 – from when she is five until she is 20. The language is a little old-fashioned it has to reflect the way a young woman would express herself in the 19^th century. However, we still get the impression throughout that Ada is confessing to a trusted friend.

This is a fictionalised biography of Ada Lovelace, who was one of the first people to realise that a computer could be built. However, this account does not deal with that and is only mentioned in an afterword. We do however see some of her early connections with Babbage who built a Difference Engine, a forerunner of the computer. It was Lovelace’s notes on her translation of an article in French about Babbage’s machine that led to her fame.        

In this book we see a young girl grow into woman. Julia Gray stays firmly in Ada’s point of view. We may suspect that Ada is anorexic and bi-polar.  

There is some romance.

The ending is upbeat but there is some pain and suffering this text: Ada’s health is frequently not good and there is tension between her and her mother.    

There is a slight feminist agenda here.

The book is 336 pages long in blocked text which uses an adult font.

There is some useful extra information about Ada Lovelace in the end material.