Please Ignore: Please Ignore Vera Deitz

Today's book I'm going to talk about is Please Ignore Vera Deitz by A.S. King, published by Random House.

First off, I'm going to say that I am...confused about this book. At first it seemed bombarded by cliche's, unoriginal, and didn't seem particularly interesting. It seemed to drag it's unconscious plot behind it, banging it on things as it went.

I'm going to just start with the plot. Vera Deitz has a dead best friend named Charlie. She has a dad she doesn't particularly care for, and an AWOL mother who went off with some guy to Las Vegas. Charlie's father abuses his mother, and as told in flashbacks, no one did anything about it. Charlie ended up getting in with a bad crowd of kids who liked drugs, sex, and drinking the year before he died, and his jealous as hell new girlfriend hated Vera for no defined reason but that she was really, really crazy.

Now, you might think "But that sounds kinda neat...Doesn't it?" It does. The thing is, I can list of tons of books that have a very very similar plot. To me, at first, it seemed cliche. Abusive family next door, divorced parents, friend who suddenly hates you and smokes pot with people who also hate you.

But when you add in the fact that Charlie is haunting Vera so that she can clear his name about the circumstances of his death, the amount of his secret's she's kept of his, good characterization and writing, it suddenly becomes a lot better, right?

My only beef is that those interesting things, while hinted at juuust a little, don't pop up until about page 180. This is a 300 page novel. The rest of the not-plot parts seemed to recount her daily life delivering pizza's and getting angry at her dad, and her and Charlie's past. The past part is pretty good, although a bit slow at parts, but the daily life parts are a little grueling. Its because of her depression, her feelings of wanted to be ignored and left alone...you know, normal teen angst. This is understandable, but I'm just plain tired of reading angst without a lot of funny or anything in between.

Of course, when the plot swings into action like a very late-to-the-scene action hero, it really builds up and starts being pretty darned good. The people her best friend Charlie basically left her for, the so-called Detentionheads, are a group you really really love to hate. If you've ever been bullied or had a friend turn on you at all, you really feel for Vera. The girl who almost single-handedly snatched Charlie away from her, Jenny, is wonderfully bat-shit and bitchy. She's a character archetype or if you'd rather a cliche, yeah, but King really does pull it off well. While I'm not going to give it all away, because this is understandably the best part of the novel, the plot really does a good job once it gets there.

My only problem is, again, Vera herself. She seems to roll over and let them walk over her, not fighting back until the very end where Charlie's ghost makes her. Again, while this is fairly understandable, I really would have preferred a more, well, heroic hero. She had a lot of spunk in her, but she never really used it. I kept waiting and waiting for her to, but it never came, and it was rather a let down. Like the climax really fizzled out a bit.

Still, the writing was really pretty darned good. The perspectives changed a bit but it didn't get too confusing, and they sounded different. I personally liked Charlie's side better than Vera's, though. I wish there was more of that. Also, I applaud them for making Vera's father not like the parents from peanuts like most books do. He was a real character, rounded out, backstory filled and everything, and you really did get to like him after a while.

All in all, I really wanted so like this book. People have said so many good things about it, and I was pretty excited about it, but it just falled short on too many accounts for me personally. Then again, I'm sort of annoyingly picky about this kind of stuff so you may enjoy it more than me. In my opinion, this book was just very "meh". I'd say if you're not really annoyed with angst to go ahead and get it from the library, but don't run out to the store with 15 bucks and go buy it. I honestly feel pretty terrible saying this when other reviews are like "ITS THE BEST THING EVER OMIGAW", but its my opinion.

Final Verdict: First half: Meh, Second Half: Less Meh than the first, but not worth 15 bucks. Library it.

I'm probably just weird,
Hannah.