We end this week dedicated to the Johny Be Good series with the review of The Accidental Life of Jessie Jefferson, the fourth book of the series. It is, however, quite different from the previous ones. This is the lastest book of Paige Toon and it is her first young adult novel, after her great success in the chick lit genre. The first thing that catches your atention is, as you can see, that the cover has nothing to do with her pink/violet previous ones. In this case, there is a selfie of a pretty young girl. This is the first hint that this book is something different from the other ones.
In Johny's Girl we learned that Johnny had a long lost daughter who, after her mother's death, wanted to meet him. Now, in The Accidental Life of Jessie Jefferson, we meet Jessie Pickerill, a fifteen-year-old girl who has just lost her mother and is currently living with her stepfather, a maths teacher at her school. She is struggling to get over her loss and tries to ignore her old friends to avoid sympathetic looks and prefers to hang out with cooler kids who didn't know her before.
Her mother never told her who her father was and now Jessie feels alone in this world. Her stepfather has a lot of problems to control her (she likes drinking, smoking and going to parties too much) and decides that is time for her to know the truth: her father is the world famous rock star Johnny Jeffersson. Jessie is shocked to learn that her mother was a groupie who would follow Johnny around and never told him when she got pregnant.
After some phone calls and meetings with his lawyers, and a lot of nerves and excitement, Johnny and Jessie agree to meet in LA for a week. Jessie can't believe that she is finally going to meet her dad, who happens to be a millionaire rock star. So when she arrives at his house, she kind of wants to impress him and wears a shiny silver minidress with high heels boots. That and the fact that she forgets to take off her sunglasses gives Meg, Johnny's wife, the impression that she is a wannabe rock star, so basically, that she is trouble.
At the beginning she feels like she is stepping in
this perfect family and that she has no place with them. But little by little
she starts to get to know better her dad, who is even more nervous than her to
meet her, and her half-brothers and the week goes by way too fast. So when
Johnny offers her to stay longer, she doesn’t hesitate. But is she ready to
learn more about her family and more importantly, is she ready for the world to
know about her? Is her life going to change forever? And can she go back to her
old life after living with the luxuries of LA?
My opinion
I was a bit worried before reading this book because I was so used to read about Johnny and Meg from Meg's point of view that I didn't know if I was going to like Jessie, specially after reading the ending of Johny's Girl, where she seemed a bit problematic. But the truth is that little by little I got to love Jessie too. She is not the wannabe who we thought, she is just a girl struggling with her new reality who just wants to fit. Although I missed knowing how Meg was feeling, Jessie was a complex character and it was fun, exciting and addictive reading about her.
Paige Toon's writing, as usual, is fast-paced and descriptive and she creates, once more, a total page-turner! I am sure that all the younger girls (and all the not that young girls) are going to love Jessie, specially all her love dilemas and her adventures in LA. When I got to the end I was like, no! Don't end! Obviously, I want to keep reading about her and I can't wait for the second book about Jessie in 2015. Luckly for us, Paige Toon is publishing her new book quite soon.
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