Jessica Darling's It List: The (Totally Not) Guaranteed Guide to Popularity, Prettiness & Perfection

Product Information

Megan McCafferty’s It List series introduces readers to Jessica Darling, an unabashedly brainy seventh grader who stays true to herself, even if it means being (totally not) cool. I don't expect to be running off to the middle grade section, but I will definitely be throwing in a few MG books now and then. In Jessica Darling's It List 3, Jessica faces the potentially mortifying outcome of the Top Secret Pineville Junior High Crushability Test.

But overall I think it’s a fun read for young girls that aren’t familiar with Jessica Darling, but also an interesting read for people that are big time Sloppy Firsts (and co) fans. It's the only book in the series told in third person from the alternating perspectives of Jessica Darling and her long-time love, Marcus Flutie.And even if Jessica does go to extremes in her ideas of how to solve friendship problems, it’s all done with such heart and innocence that you just want to hug her.

For me, this installment of the series wasn’t as fun as the first novel, but it was still solid and offered encouragement to readers in a similar situation as Jessica. So when Jessica's beautiful, collegiate older sister Bethany (Blair Fowler) unexpectedly arrives to show her the ropes before school starts, Jessica is open, wide-eyed, and willing. She had every opportunity to jump to the top of the social ladder but I don’t think she even wanted that. It was so good to see a humorous Jessica that is not so cynical and jaded by all the years, as you see by the end of book 5. Jessica has to deal with the "mean girls" but she really portrays that real life dynamic of knowing the mean girls are mean but also wanting to be friends with them because you see the good in them too.And I wasn't expecting anything of Sloppy Firsts or Second Helpings calibre, I was happy with what it was. Many young female characters are consumed by looks, popularity, boys, and "perfection"; these characters are shown to be insecure and in desperate need of approval.

Yet as Jessica's sister confides in her a huge secret to do with school, Jess realises she maybe doesn't have it as bad as she thinks.This book just reminded me of my roots in reading, and really had me thinking about the way I've been choosing books. Like many of you, I did not read the Jessica Darling books until high school — well, for me, the were published in high school and I actually totally only read ‘Second Helpings‘ because of course, my school library did not have them.

Jessica is a winning heroine, and as she stumbles and fumbles (and literally falls flat on her face), readers will laugh alongside her and, yes, cheer as she comes into her authentic self. Despite being given very bad advice, Jessica discovers that being true to her own values is the best path to follow. I really like this book, I thinks it kind of relates to my life because my friend just got her braces off, she dead drop gorgeous, and I'm not, so that are some reasons why I fell in love with the characters, plot, and reasoning's. In this story, Jessica is on the brink of junior high school, confronted with finding her values and her place in that emotionally charged, preadolescent community. Hosting an epic slumber party might even help to make Jessica popular…but is that what she really wants?Jessica's much older sister Bethany, in a rare instance of sisterly feeling, has decided to help Jessica avoid the curse of dorkdom by passing down the patented method for achieving popularity. I love storytelling of all kinds, whether it's through books, social media, TV, movies, music, webseries or fashion. While it was sort of neat to see how Jessica got into running and met her frenemies, it was also weird and almost caricature-like that her characters were so incessantly the same from grade 7 to grade 11, when we otherwise would have first met them. I love that while she falls into the trap a bit about trying to become popular she ends up staying true to herself.