Jessica Roe, $0.99
Contemporary Romance, 2015

I never expected New York City to be a sparkling fairytale land of glitz and glamour. I mean, I wanted it to be, but I’d watched enough episodes of How I Met Your Mother to know the place is kind of a grungefest. But they never prepare you for how big it’s going to be. Like, super duper, duper big. Sure, I visited plenty of times growing up – it’s not like I had a choice, tiny little Fortune isn’t exactly fashion central – but living here is an entirely different story, an entirely different feeling. An entirely different world.

It was daunting at first, but now I’m in my second year of college; I’ve had time to acclimatize and I’m totally city chic. The only problem is, NYC has so many amazing stores and I just get so distracted. . . Like, right now I’m innocently walking down a busy street on my way to college, and there are cute outfits in store windows everywhere. It’s like they want me to be late to class. Clearly not my fault.

I’m not going to like the heroine Jemma Peters, am I? She sounds like a complete airhead.

I pull out my pink pocket watch and flip it open – I’m determined to make pocket watches a thing – to check the time. Oh boy, thirty minutes to get to class. If I hurry my cute little butt up I might just make it in-

Ooh! But check out those shoes. They’d go perfectly with my leather jacket – though I can already tell even without taking a closer look that they’re going to be way out of my budget. Daddy has this new thing where he doesn’t buy me everything I want, which totally sucks. He thinks it will be a learning experience for me to earn my own money, like my half sister, Blair, does. I pitched a fit at first, even though he was still paying our college and housing expenses, because I’d never had to earn my own spending money in all my life.

Yes, I’m already tasting the loathing in my mouth.

Because I already have my future mapped out. Everyone thinks I’m all ditzy and dumb, but I know what I want.

First step – majoring in veterinary medicine. Then I’ll work as a vet for a few years, gain some experience and one day open up my own surgery. Along the way I’ll marry a super smart, super gorgeous guy, maybe a lawyer or a doctor or something equally as awesome. He’ll have perfect manners and perfect style and our two children, a girl and a boy, will be just as cute and go getting as him. We’ll have a big house in the suburbs, close by my parents but not too close, and we’ll have two dogs and a cat, all of which we brought home from the rescue center and lovingly coaxed into our family.

She’s wrong. She is ditsy and dumb.

While wandering and daydreaming, hemorrhaging the word salad above, she stumbles upon a guy that can’t accept “We’re over!” and to avoid him, she somehow stumbles into a tattoo parlor and meets the usual new adult cliché package. You know, muscles, tattoos, just enough facial hair to be cool but not too much or else the little girls this story is aimed at will cry in terror. His name is Reid Padin. Yes, Reid Padin. There’s probably an after-school PSA behind how the author came up with that name, but hey, as long as everyone is happy, nobody is judging.

I managed to get to class, though I was embarrassingly late. To make matters worse I had one of those awful, generally life hating professors who think their class is literally the most important thing in existence and get stupidly offended when you’re even the tiniest little bit late. The fugly lame ass spent at least ten minutes making wise cracks at my expense about how I’d held everyone up, which I guess he missed the irony of. And those girls – the dorky ones who can’t dress themselves to save their lives and hate me because they think I’m an airhead – all thought it was Oh. So. Funny. Like they’re so much better than me just because I choose to dress nice and I’m not ironic, I don’t wear ironic loafers or ironic chunky rimmed glasses which they totally don’t need. Wanting to be pretty doesn’t make me an airhead, it doesn’t make me less smart than they are, and it doesn’t mean I don’t belong in class with them.

So screw them. I won’t be the first to prove that pretty girls can be smart and awesome too, and I won’t be the last.

And I will die before I wear loafers, ironic or otherwise. Die.

Oh, I just realized I’m out of eggs. And milk. And Ferrero Rocher is on sale at half price at the local mart. I’m going to have to dash, and if this creature la-la-la’ed her way into the path of my car and I accidentally, fatally mowed her down… aw, won’t that be a shame.