Not Exactly a Love Story by Audrey Couloumbis

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Publication date: 2012
Publisher: Ember
Pages: 276
My rating: 3 stars
Ages:16+

Vinnie Gold's horoscopes on his 15 birthday predicted a pretty bad year, and boy did the year deliver. His parents divorced, his girl moved away, and his face broke out in the worst kind of zits. Moving to Long Island, Vinnie meets someone who could change it all--if he could ever get up the nerve to talk to her. And then one day, he finds a piece of paper with her phone number on it . . .

When I started this book, it was kind of "meh." Then I continued it and I was trying to decide what the themes were, what the point was. It wasn't until the last 20 pages or so, I started thinking of some.

I think mostly this is book about discovering what kind of person you are. Who was Vinnie? And could he take all the facets of what he thought he should be and become the person he was?

The book is a little like a 1970s teen version of You've Got Mail, but with phone calls. The ending is even similar. The lack of conflict between Vinnie and his love interest, and Vinnie and his stepfather, was kind of a relief. A lot of stories use a giant conflict between characters in the middle to move it forward, but this didn't need it, because the conflict was really between Vinnie and himself.

There was two instances of the f-bomb at the beginning of the book.

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