Book review
What word do you value more: loyalty or respect? Loyalty, meaning to be faithful to someone. Respect, meaning to have a deep admiration, in this case, for someone. With these definitions, which is more valuable, loyalty or respect? Well to sixteen year old Penelope Oliveira, more commonly known as Pen, loyalty and respect have lost their meaning. In this novel, Girl Mans Up, Pen has to constantly argue with her old fashioned parents, specifically her mom, and her “friend” Colby. With old fashioned parents at home, Pen is forced to at least respect them. Because her family is of Portuguese descent, her home is constantly filled with “respeito”. Pen and Johnny, her older brother, NEVER respect their parents, according to their parents. The sad truth, both sides misunderstand each other. Pen’s parents always wanted Pen to be the perfect princesa but Pen doesn’t want to be a princess. She just wants to be herself. But to her childhood “friend” Colby, Pen was always ‘one of the guys’. So Pen is stuck in this constant cycle of either respecting her parents wishing of being a highly feminine female or being loyal to her guy friends in being ‘one of the dudes’. This cycle changed when they came, Olivia and Blake. Olivia, one of Colby’s ex-girlfriend, started talking to Pen after being abandoned by Colby. Blake was Colby’s next target but Blake had already fallen for Pen. As Blake and Pen started dating with Olivia opening up to Pen of what Colby did to her, Colby was getting upset. Colby insulted Pen, saying that she wasn’t very loyal to her friends in the first place. With this, Pen decided to MAN UP and confront Colby with what he was saying about her. This confrontation then results in a fist fight between Pen and Colby. That is when Pen lost the meaning of ‘loyalty’. The main conflict of the book had always been between Pen and Colby since Colby had already been verbally attacking Pen. This time, Pen had finally noticed what Colby was doing.
For the entire book, I really enjoyed it. The plot was amazing and suspenseful. The ending of the chapters always kept you wondering what would happen next. I think what I liked most was how the book was written. The attention to detail and suspense was my favorite. After each chapter ended, I wanted to know what would happen in the next one. This caused me to read majority of the book in one sitting. An example of this would be at the end of chapter 13, Pen and Colby were talking about Olivia and Colby was talking very negative about Olivia. The chapter ended with Pen staying quiet the whole time Colby was talking and it left the question of ‘what is Pen going to do? Is she going to side with Olivia or Colby?’. That cliffhanger is what kept me hooked to the book. Although I loved the whole book, one thing I disliked was lack of support that Pen was getting. I knew her parents weren’t to be 100% supportive nor her old friends but I feel like she could have had more support. Besides her new friend, girlfriend, and brother, Pen was pretty alone. Although this may be a real situation for many people, Pen had the resources of finding support groups or more people. Throughout the ENTIRE book, Pen had her cell phone and she didn’t ONCE think of using it to find a solution or answer to her questions. (Because I really enjoyed the book, I really had to nitpick what I disliked.)
I recommend this book to anyone and everyone. I specifically recommend this book to people who want an inside look of to what someone’s life could be. For age group, I would recommend it to all ages, but most younger people might not get the themes and most older people would probably be like Pen’s parents. I strongly recommend this book to any young adults. Because this book does talk about sexuality, it shows the truth behind figuring out who you are. Pen always identities as a girl but not a super girly girl. Before she knew she identified with that, she knew she liked girls. Although she knew this, it wasn’t going to be easy living with these identities. Pen wasn’t going to let everyone boss her around either, she did something about it, she MANED UP. Although this phrase isn’t very inclusive, it is a simple statement to make the best out of what we’re going through. No one can decide for us because we are in control. Words, labels, and other’s actions don’t define us, we do. So any young adult or anyone going through similar feelings and events could learn from this book.
- Goodreads rating – 3.98
- REVIEW – Andrea Chavez