Review: A Week of Mondays by Jessica Brody

Summary/Cover Image from Publisher's Website: 

When I made the wish, I just wanted a do-over. Another chance to make things right. I never, in a million years, thought it might actually come true...

Sixteen-year-old Ellison Sparks is having a serious case of the Mondays. She gets a ticket for ru
nning a red light, she manages to take the world’s worst school picture, she bombs softball try-outs and her class election speech (note to self: never trust a cheerleader when she swears there are no nuts in her bake-sale banana bread), and to top it all off, Tristan, her gorgeous rocker boyfriend suddenly dumps her. For no good reason!

As far as Mondays go, it doesn’t get much worse than this. And Ellie is positive that if she could just do it all over again, she would get it right. So when she wakes up the next morning to find she’s reliving the exact same day, she knows what she has to do: stop her boyfriend from breaking up with her. But it seems no matter how many do-overs she gets or how hard Ellie tries to repair her relationship, Tristan always seems bent set on ending it. Will Ellie ever figure out how to fix this broken day? Or will she be stuck in this nightmare of a Monday forever?

From the author of 52 Reasons to Hate My Father and The Unremembered trilogy comes a hilarious and heartwarming story about second (and third and fourth and fifth) chances. Because sometimes it takes a whole week of Mondays to figure out what you really want.

Review:

Jessica Brody is one of my go-to authors. I haven't read of one of her books that I don't love, and thankfully, that trend continued with A Week of Mondays. Reminiscent of a classic teen movie (think 10 Things I Hate About You, Clueless), A Week of Mondays is charming and utterly addictive.

Ellie Sparks knows she shouldn't have thrown a garden gnome at her boyfriend's head on Sunday night during a heated argument, but it was an accidental, spur of the moment thing. She was angry and hurt, but now that it's Monday, a fresh, new day, she vows to make everything right. The universe, however, has a different plan for her. In the course of one day, she gets a ticket, disappoints her best friend, takes the worst school picture in history, has an allergic reaction during her vice president speech, fails miserably at softball tryouts, and her boyfriend breaks up with her. What was supposed to be a great day, her chance to make everything okay, has become the worst day of her life. She secretly wishes she could have a do-over, and the next day something magical happens: it's Monday all over again. Ellie knows this is her shot at redemption, and more importantly, a chance to win her boyfriend back, but as she soon finds out, sometimes the best laid plans aren't always the right ones.

Ellie was incredibly easy to relate to. She's not perfect, she makes mistakes, and she sometimes puts great value on things she shouldn't. However, she's also has good intentions, loves her family and friends, and is brave. From the start, I couldn't help but to root for her to find her place in life and to let her true colors shine. I wanted her to see that Tristan wasn't necessarily the right guy for her, that she should spend more time with her sister and best friend Owen, and that she didn't need to fake who she was to make others happy. Over the course of the book and a week of Mondays, coincidentally, she starts to realize this. Besides Ellie, I also loved reading about Owen. Owen is the ultimate nerdy, guy-next-door. He was hilarious (I loved his and Ellie's lawyer talk) as well as quirky. His friendship with Ellie added such a great layer to this book - they were best friend goals. Ellie's family also became one of my favorite parts by the end.  It was interesting how they started with such a little part in the book, and eventually became a bigger focus. Tristan was the one character I couldn't stand from the start. He was so pompous and full of himself.

When I first read the summary of this, I was a little hesitant about the fact that it would about repeating the events of one Monday seven times. I was worried that by the end it would become overdone and repetitive, because how many times can you really make one Monday different? As it turns out, I shouldn't have been worried one bit. Jessica made every Monday fresh and exciting even if some of the same events carried through. Additionally, I liked how she used it as a plot device to bring character growth to Ellie and the other assortment of characters. It was great to see the change that occurred between Ellie that first Monday to the seventh.

In all, A Week of Mondays is another great contemporary read from Jessica Brody. I can't wait to see what she releases next!

Grade: A

A Week of Mondays (Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes and Noble) is now out!

Source: ARC provided by publisher - thanks Macmillan!