Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta

From Goodreads:

MOST OF MY friends now go to Pius Senior College, but my mother wouldn’t allow it because she says the girls there leave with limited options and she didn’t bring me up to have limitations placed upon me. If you know my mother, you’ll sense there’s an irony there, based on the fact that she is the Queen of the Limitation Placers in my life.

Francesca battles her mother, Mia, constantly over what’s best for her. All Francesca wants is her old friends and her old school, but instead Mia sends her to St. Sebastian’s, an all-boys’ school that has just opened its doors to girls. Now Francesca’s surrounded by hundreds of boys, with only a few other girls for company. All of them weirdos—or worse.

Then one day, Mia is too depressed to get out of bed. One day turns into months, and as her family begins to fall apart, Francesca realizes that without her mother’s high spirits, she hardly knows who she is. But she doesn’t yet realize that she’s more like Mia than she thinks. With a little unlikely help from St. Sebastian’s, she just might be able to save her family, her friends, and—especially—herself.

Apparently Melina Marchetta's first book, Looking for Alibrandi was so good that it actually became part of Australia's school curriculum. I'm just about to spend a couple paragraphs talking about how much I loved Saving Francesca, her second novel. Her third, Jellicoe Road is probably my favorite novel of the year, so much so that I'm about to go pick it up from the library for a second reading and then possibly name my second born after one of the characters. I'm not actually joking on that, either.

I can't WAIT to see what else Marchetta comes out with. She apparently wrote another novel called Finnikin of the Rock after Jellicoe Road but for some reason my library insists on not carrying it, so I have to figure out some way to get my mitts on it. Because I think I am seriously in love with Melina Marchetta.

While Saving Francesca doesn't have the same depth and all around awesomeness of Jellicoe Road, there is still SO MUCH to love. Although, like Jellicoe Road, it's almost difficult to pinpoint WHAT exactly is so awesome about this book.

The main character is relatable and realistic. She has some real trials going on and she responds to them in ways that actually make sense to me. As someone who has a permanent dent from smacking herself in the forehead when a character makes a stupid and non-logical decision in response to a situation, this is a big deal to me.

The supporting characters are awesome and loveable, the situations are real things I saw as a teenager in high school and Francesca's resulting behavior made me think of a bunch of kids I knew who I wrote off as slackers but years later found out had real problems going on outside of school. Plus the friend and boy drama were written in a way that made them totally familiar to me.

I don't know, I just feel like it encapsulated...something...really well. The teenage experience? Growing up and becoming comfortable in your own skin? I don't know, but whatever it is, I related to it.

My one complaint is that the love story and love interest just weren't quite up to par with everything else. I actually spent most of the book waiting for her to fall in love with one of the other male characters (my money was on James) because Will just kept not making the grade. And then the way it came together at the end (despite a humorous fatherly interference at an inopportune time) didn't make much sense to me in the context of the rest of their relationship.

I will leave you with the following passage, which pretty much made my day:

Having boys around at camp is hard. You have to be on the alert. Boys, for example, like exposing themselves. They walk back from the shower blocks with their towels around them, and next minute either someone flashes you, or one of his friends grabs his towel off him and makes a run for it. I have to say it's a bit traumatic at times, not knowing when the next penis will appear.

Bwahahaha