debugging tori redding

Last month I was lucky enough to get a copy of Jason Ancona’s CYA: Covert Youth Agency: The Case of Tangled Love to read and review.  I loved it.  So much so that I got online and purchased Jason’s other book Debugging Tori Redding.  I started reading it right away and have lagged on my book reviews so I’m finally getting around to writing about this one!

Tori Redding is different from the rest of the kids in her class and she knows it.  The daughter of a widowed police detective and the younger sister of the basketball team’s star player she knows that everything that’s wrong with the world today can be blamed on one thing: kids growing up too fast.  She and her best friend decide to start a new club at school aimed at encouraging their fellow high school students to slow down and enjoy being a kid.  Their first goal is to get attention.  By getting their fellow classmates arrested at a party with underage drinking.

Tori is not your average heroine.  She’s opinionated, mouthy, bratty and abrasive.  I had a really hard time rooting for her cause or even liking her.  I understood her, no doubt, but it was so hard to sit back and read about her misguided attempts at helping her classmates.  It reminded me of the ultra religious kids at school who are so judgmental and annoying.  But Tori’s prickly nature hides the pain she carries around with her and feels she can’t express to anyone, not even her best friend.  Things start to spiral out of control for her and she starts to realize that maybe she’s not always right.

It takes awhile to root for Tori, but you find yourself coming around in the end.  Jason once again has an uncanny ability to capture all of high school so eloquently.  The characters are full of life and so close to people you’re sure you’ve met before.  Though this book wasn’t full of the sweetness and laughs that C.Y.A. had it definitely had me flipping through it to see what happened next.