To Be Mona by Kelly Easton

Summary:

To Be Mona opens up with Sage loosing her class election for president to Mona, the most beautiful and popular girl in Sage's school. As anyone would be, Sage is devastated. So, she decides she is going to try to reinvent herself as a person by loosing weight, dying her hair blond, and getting the perfect boyfriend, Roger Williams to be exact.

When Sage's best friend, Vern, realizes what she is doing. He is shocked, because he loved Sage the way she was before. He liked that she was a bit chubby and her boring light brown hair. Though, Sage isn't listening to him, because in the aftermath of doing all this, she gets Roger Williams as her boyfriend. So, her life is going to go perfect from now to the end of senior year, right? Nope.

Review:

Before starting To Be Mona, I didn't have that many high hopes for it. Since, I hadn't heard the greatest things about it. Though, I loved the cover and the summary made it sound interesting, so I decided, why not get it from the library?

To Be Mona was a semi decent book that was a quick read. Was I impressed by it in any way? Not really.

Most of the characters were bland and didn't have many emotions or three dimensional characteristics. Also, the chapters are all told in alternating perspectives featuring the three main characters: Vern, Sage, and Wal-Mart leaving little time to get to know them and making the book seem rushed most of the time. With saying that, I did like Sage's funny and self conscience character a bit and she made up for the lack of other good characters.

The plot was interesting and made the book go by fast. Though, with some of the problems in the book, I would have loved to seen Kelly go more into detail. One thing, I didn't get about this book was how Roger was supposed to be this big abusive boyfriend type. First of all, Sage and him don't even date until the end of the book. Also, he was mostly controlling, but didn't seem all that abusive as he was made out to be. For me, it just seemed like he was a jerk with a temper problem. The other main problem I had with this book was the ending. It seemed rushed and let a lot of questions swirling around in my head.

Overall, To Be Mona is an okay book that I suggest that you get from your local library instead of wasting your money on it. Will I read anything else by Easton? Probably not. Unfortunately, this book was a big let down for me.

Grade: C-

To Be Mona is now out in hardback and you can find out more about it here.