Perie Wolford

I received Turning 16 from the author through the Goodreads M/M Romance Group’s Don’t Buy My Love review program for an honest opinion.

This story is YA and is told in first person through the eyes of Sam, a high school student, who has a huge crush on Jake, the quarterback of the school’s football team.


I need to first mention that I’ve never seen the movie, Sixteen Candles, so I won’t be comparing that to this story.

LIKES :

I think the author did a very good job with the characterizations. I immediately got a feel for Sam as someone who was ruled by his hormones. The author did a great job with the wet dreams which I thought were very funny and Sam’s obsession with Jake. Crushing on a fellow student like Sam did was all very realistic. Also that Sam seemed to be very clueless about Mitch. Sam was so enamored with Jake; he couldn’t see Mitch’s attraction to him.

Going with the secondary characters, the author did a great job with Mitch and Sam’s best friend, Melissa. I loved Mitch, he was so sweet.

I also think the author did a good job with the action and events. Other than the situation with the Uncle’s family, and the football mishap, which I’ll mention below, things fit together.

DISLIKES :

Suspending reality is a necessity when reading this story. The author clearly doesn’t have knowledge of certain situations and didn’t do any research in order to find out the facts. For instance, the Uncle’s family had to vacate their home just as they were moving in because the floor collapsed from termites. Whatever happened to home inspections before purchasing a house? The family would have known about the termites before they bought it. That’s one huge mucked up scene for the story. Another one is when Sam gets hit in the head by a football and blacks out. Instead of not moving him and getting the school nurse or a physical trainer who looks after the athletes check over Sam where he fell, his friend Mitch, takes him to the nurse’s office where she pronounces that “it’s probably nothing, just a very mild concussion.” Excuse me? Since when are concussions nothing? Maybe ten years ago concussions were considered less of an issue than they are now. But if this story is current time, concussions are a big thing now, especially in young people. What is Sam doing walking around like everything is OK with a concussion? Just these two incidences cut down on my enjoyment of this story a lot.

Another issue I had with this story was that it needed a lot of editing. There was a lot of odd word usage and phrasing. For instance one was how the author used the phrasing ‘get out of the table,’ when the author meant that Sam moved away from the table. I kept picturing Sam stuck inside a table and it was a very weird image.

Something else that bothered me was the excessive detail about the school. I don’t have the paragraph memorized but the readers are told something like the size of the place, how many classrooms etc., etc., really very boring stuff that didn’t need to be included.

Most of the book I can only rate as 2.5 stars, but because the one thing that redeemed this story was the characters, and especially Sam’s voice, I raise it to 3 Stars. I just can’t give it higher than that because of the major holes from lack of research and the grammar errors.


… (meer)

Written in the same vein as Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda (Love Simon).

It is about a boy that falls in love with another boy and takes the long way round to figure it all out.

Author could have done a better job - The book doesn't flow well. There are times I am trying to figure out how far we have skipped ahead. Also, one of the main characters has a younger brother at the start of the book, but when their family goes on vacation the younger brother isn't mentioned or on the family vacation. Just holes in the story to find distracting.

It was worth the read.… (meer)

Maybe if I were a fan of John Hughes movies I would be a better person.

That’s unlikely, but I may have gotten more out of this sweet little ditty based on in-jokes from Sixteen Candles and other movies by the much-loved director. The plot, obviously deviating from the movie in at least one major way, was about a boy whose birthday has been a catastrophe every year since he can remember, from setting the house on fire to break limbs, he’s never been spared. This year he can’t seem to shake the weirdo punk who sits behind him in detention, because yeah, he got detention for a whole week this year.

It’s not terribly sexy as the characters are underage, but man, oh man, sparks do fly. When the kiss came, I was ready.

161pp. CreateSpace. 20 Feb. 2014.… (meer)