It's Not You, It's Me (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: It's Not You, It's Me Deborah Stevenson Hoffmann, Kerry Cohen . It's Not You, It's Me. Delacorte, 2009176p. Library ed. ISBN 978-0-385-90638-8$17.99 Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-385-73696-1$15.99 R Gr. 7-10 "It's not like you were going to get married," says Zoë's friend Julia, but sixteen-year-old Zoë was so desperately in love with Henry that she did, in fact, think they'd be together forever. Now Henry's dumped her, and she's shattered and disbelieving. And kind of crazy, actually—she stalks the freshman girl she thinks Henry likes now, she leaves notes for Henry, and she sneaks into his bedroom to check his email. When her loving friends realize that talking her down is impossible, they concoct a getting-Henry-back plan. This is sort of Fatal Attraction from Glenn Close's POV: Zoë is clearly going off the rails, and even the most devoted post-dumping hangers-on will cringe for her as she oversteps the bounds of reason and propriety over and over again rather than incorporate the bitter truth into her reality. Hoffman wisely avoids finding tidy reasons for Zoë's freakout beyond the pain of the situation itself, and she capably keeps her protagonist sympathetic even as Zoë's clearly out of control; the book also manages to make clear that she and Henry weren't actually the greatest couple. The format, with each chapter chronicling one more day since the breakup, is effective, and it's also a reminder of the way high emotion seems to last longer than it does (the story ends with Zoë's beginning to get a grip after a month). The book's subject and brevity will commend it to reluctant readers, and teens in general will ruefully recognize that a breakup could easily bring out the Zoë within them. Copyright © 2009 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois