Avon, $6.99, ISBN 0-06-052185-6
Contemporary Fiction, 2003 (Reissue)
In the previous book Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging, fourteen-year old Georgia Nicolson experienced and experimented with all the sexual hijink and adolescence angst a teenager could think about. The culmination of her tale is her finally going full-frontal snog with her crush, eighteen-year old Robbie. Robbie’s a Sex God and he’s also her friend Jas’s boyfriend’s brother. Alas, after that moment of glory, her mother announces that they are all packing to New Zealand to stay with her father!
In On the Bright Side, I’m Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God (published as It’s OK, I’m Wearing Really Big Knickers! in the UK), Georgia continues writing her diary. She is really pissed that she is going to New Zealand just as she is about to embark on her first steady relationship, and she even turns Buddhist to stop the disaster (don’t ask), but all to no avail.
Disaster is averted when her father decides to come back home instead. Alas, then Robbie dumps her. Apparently he’s not really sure about going out with a fourteen-year old girl. His ex, Wet Lindsay, wants him back.
Georgia, inspired by that Man Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus book, misinterprets the book’s advice to mean that she must treat Robbie like a rubber band. She decides to date Dave the Laugh to make Robbie jealous. Alas, Dave the Laugh has a few good things up his sleeve too, to Georgia’s dismay.
Also inside are Georgia’s problems with her increasingly buxom chest, her irritating baby sibling Libby, her embarrassing ABBA-nut relatives, her mother’s crush with a George Clooney-lookalike surgeon in the hospital, Angus the cat’s hot-trotting with the Siamese feline of the quarrelsome neighbors across the street, and too many other ridiculous shenanigans.
All written in the droll wit only a supremely ignorant and self-absorbed teenage girl could dish out, of course. I have a blast reading this book. On the Bright Side, I’m Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God is a young adult novel, but it goes on about erect and twitching nipples, smoking, heavy petting, and other jolly stuff that I sure wish the “young adult” (hah!) books of my days contained. This one is not only funny, it also hits home all the issues as well as insults and insecurities teenagers face.
Not that it’s an easy read. I must be older than I’d like to admit, because half the time I just want to smack Georgia. The first dozen of pages are pure agony as Miss Thing here whines and whines and whines until my ears start to bleed. She also does plenty insufferably selfish nonsense. It’s just that she tells of her selfishness with so much wit and style.
Georgia Rennison is no Daria or Malcolm in the Middle in that I never root for the supremely deluded Georgia the way I would root for those poster kids of adolescence angst. For pure entertainment, however, hell yeah, this is fun. I guess we all deserve to be girlfriends of sex gods at least once in our lives.
