I'm Talking about 'One of those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies' by Sonya Sones

Don't even begin to ask me where this book came from.  I've been trying to figure it out myself.  Perhaps it's a novel; perhaps it's a book of poems.  Perhaps it's journal kept by a teenager at the time of some extraordinary changes with a few interspersed epistolary sections.  I don't know.  

It works.  And it reads really fast; as in infuriatingly fast.  And there's way too much italics.  (And it's slightly redundant as teenagers really don't have much to say.)

'American Airlines Flight 161

I'm not that depressed, 
Considering that this 
Gigantic silver bullet with wings
Is blasting me away from my whole entire life, 
Away from Lizzie Brody, 
My best friend in the world, 
Away from Ray Johnston, 
My first real boyfriend.

Not that depress, considering I'e been kidnapped 
by this monstrous steel pterodactyl
And it's flying me all the way to L.A.
To live with my father
who I've never even met
Because he's such a scumbag
that he divorced my mother
before I was even born.

I'd say I'm doing reasonably well, 
Considering I'm being dragged
three thousand miles away from all my friends
And my school and my aunt Duffy
And the house I've lived in ever since I was born, 
Three thousand miles away from my mother, 
And my mother's grave, 
Where she lies in a cold wooden box
Under six feet of dirt, 
Just beginning to rot.  

I'm not that depressed
considering that I'm trapped
on this jumbo poison dart
Shooting me away from everything I love, 
And there's this real weird guy
Sitting in the seat right behind mine,
Who keeps picking his nose 
And eating it.

Depressed?
Who?  Me?'

Pages 1-2

That is how the whole two-hundred and seventy page book is written with the exception of a few emails.  It was initially a bit jarring, but--right after immediately--it read like a novel with awkward poetry presentation.  Perhaps that's how all poetry is supposed to read… 

Ruby is the most stereotypical teenager I've come across in fiction in terms of her personality.  Her mother dies (we only kinda learn of what and how) and she goes to live with her father she's never met but knows very well.  Her dad, Whip, is a mega-movie star; think on the scale of Tom Cruise sans the psychosis.  

She hates everything about her new life only because everything is different from what she previously knew.  What I liked--what felt real--was how she had to constantly remind herself that she was miserable.  The weather, the house she is living in, the friends she makes girls and boys, and especially Whip, Ruby has to wake up and tell herself every morning that its all horrible if only on some obscure principle only known to fifteen year olds.  

Despite the title, this is a 'happily ever after' book.  I don't say that as a bad thing as the realism was never sacrificed to achieve that end.  

Its fast (really fast; I had to make myself stop reading twice because I hate that breathless feeling while reading; it's supposed to be a relaxing endeavor for me) it takes about an hour to read; and I'm about as slow as they come.  

It's fun and shallow.  

I'll have another please.