Instructions for a Broken Heart

April 1, 2011

Overachieving Jessa looks forward to her drama class' trip to Italy until she finds her boyfriend wrapped around a new squeeze in the costume barn. Alas, all of them will be on the trip. Jessa decides to go anyway, armed with 20 envelopes from her best friend. The envelopes contain instructions for activities intended to repair Jessa's confidence and, perhaps, wreak revenge on the offending ex-boyfriend. However, as time passes and the instructions do nothing but cause more difficulty, Jessa begins to take her own road to recovery, finally focusing more on her own faults than on her boyfriend's. Culbertson balances the story between teen angst and a nice Italian travelogue, as Jessa begins to find her own way out of her despair. Her characters stand out as individuals, although she saves time by fitting some peripheral characters neatly into stereotypes. The tour director with her frog-on-a-stick signpost adds some local color. The author has a flair for evocative descriptions, with phrases like "the world's lovely sherbet colors, its gauzy, shifting clouds like wraiths" helping readers to see Italy. As Jessa reads A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, readers may be enticed to try it too. The major strength here is in the literary quality of the writing, although teens may be more interested in the characters' relationships. (Fiction. YA)

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

July 1, 2011

Gr 8 Up-Things are going great for Broadway-obsessed Jessa Gardner. She's on the right track to getting into a good college, what with her AP classes, SAT prep, sports, part-time job, and roles in all the school plays and musicals. Then she catches her boyfriend making out with another girl. To make matters worse, Jessa and Sean are slated to tour Italy with the drama club, along with the girl he was caught kissing. Luckily, her good friend Tyler is there for her. Her best friend, Carissa, has given her a package entitled the "Top Twenty Reasons He's a Slimy Jerk Bastard," complete with instructions for getting over Sean, most of which force her to step outside her comfort zone. At times, they are funny and liberating, as when she throws an orange soda in Sean's face. At other times, Jessa just embarrasses herself, and readers are left wondering why Carissa would ask her to do such things and why she would blindly comply. In the end, though, Jessa realizes that Sean wasn't the perfect boyfriend she had made him out to be. In the process, she does a lot of soul-searching, realizing that she doesn't really know who she is or what she wants to do with her life. This is a scary realization for the goal-driven teen, but a necessary one to help her grow. Although the book meanders and teeters on melodrama, ultimately it's a good choice for girls who have had their hearts broken and thought they would never be able to pick up the pieces.-Lauren Newman, Northern Burlington County Regional Middle School, Columbus, NJ

Copyright 2011 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2011
Grades 9-12 One of the worst ways for Jessa to nurse her broken heart is to tour through Italy, a country saturated in amore, on a school-sponsored vacation. Everyone knows about her breakup, mainly because her cheating ex, Sean, and his new girlfriend are one of the many couples openly canoodling against the backdrop of beautiful scenery. To help her survive the trip, Jessa's best friend provides her with 20 envelopes, one for each day she is overseas. The notes are filled with reasons to get over Sean and activities that might help her cope, from writing poetry to throwing orange soda in Sean's face. Jessa just hopes that, as she carries out her breakup-coping strategies, she doesn't get sent home early. Culbertson gives Jessa the room to be angry, mischievous, confused, and wounded without heading into overwrought angst, and she creates a well-developed character with the self-reflection and strength needed to pull herself out of a funk, with a little help from friends, of course.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)