Rating: [rate 4.0]

When she is caught in the backseat of a car with her older brother’s best friend – Deanna Lambert’s teenage life is changed forever. Struggling to overcome the lasting repercussions and the stifling role of “school slut,” she longs to escape a life defined by her past. With subtle grace, complicated wisdom and striking emotion, The Story of a Girl reminds us of our human capacity for resilience, epiphany and redemption.

Sara Zarr is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. :) Just like Sweethearts, I thought this book would be all about angst. In a way, there is teenage angst, but it wasn’t all about that.

Deanna Lambert feels trapped about her past. Being in a small town and labeled as a teenage slut is something that she would carry for a long time. She felt as if she belonged to no one except for her older brother, who has a family of his own. The story goes around those facts in Deanna’s life, including her slight jealousy with her two best friends who are in a relationship.

The characters of the story feel real, and as a reader I felt that I am actually inside Picasso’s pizza or Jason’s house or the basement where Darren and Stacy and April lives. I felt bad for Deanna when people keep on labeling her as a slut and when her father wouldn’t even defend her, and instead is ashamed of her. I liked Lee, Deanna’s other best friend and Jason’s girlfriend, even if she shows up only a few times in the story, and Michael, Deanna’s gay boss who was one of the people who seemed to truly care for her.

I think other than this being a “story of a girl”, it’s also a story about forgiveness, of how one’s past definitely does not define your future, or even your present. Sara Zarr shows the reality that forgiveness is not easy. It may come in quick for some people while for others it takes years. Others need to hear an apology while others need not.

I got this book as an ebook, actually and it’s short so it would fit even the smallest memory stick or iPod or whatever readin/storage device you may have. But because I really liked this one, I will definitely buy a printed copy of this book. :)