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Karma For Beginners (2009)

by Jessica Blank(Favorite Author)

3.2 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

1423117514 (ISBN13: 9781423117513)

languge

English

genre

Young Adult Fiction

publisher

Disney-Hyperion

review 1: This book was amazing. I feel like in a way I connected with her because she was faced with numerous desicions she had to make and it was intesting seeing it. I tend to like books about peoples lives and this book showed a very intresting life. This book was really good in the beggining and you see the first half comming and slowly as you get to the end there is a crazy twist. I feel the theme of the book was most definetly speaking up and self discovery. This book was well written with a really strong story line. EVERYONE READ IT
review 2: Tessa is tired of always packing up and moving at the whim of her mother, but since she’s only 14, she doesn’t have much choice. This time around, her single, free-spirited hippie mom takes her to an ashram, where she do... moreesn’t have to go to school, but does have to do seva (chores), and doesn’t know anyone. While her mom goes on a spiritual journey, Tessa falls for an older guy (he’s 20) and starts to sneak off with him when they’re done fixing buses. She’s tried to reach out to her dad, who’s in the hilariously named band Green Tea Experience, but he wants nothing to do with her. As her time with Colin gets more and more intense, she finds herself, paradoxically, more and more alone as she, and soon, her mom, are largely shunned at the ashram…save for the mysterious and, in Blank’s prose, decidedly creepy, guru.Blank’s first YA novel, Almost Home, featured outstanding characterization and a gripping story. There are less characters here, but they are equally intriguing. Though we don’t get to know Tessa’s mom quite as well as we get to know her, her motives, her parenting, her idea that her life was cut short by getting pregnant so young, all inform the book. Blank excels at skewering the supposedly pure life on the ashram, from a questionable encounter Tessa has with the guru, to her being told that her outfits are too provocative and are “distracting” the adult men of the ashram. While Tessa is discovering the joy of first love, and exploration, with Colin, she also learns that she can get in over her head. Woven in are some lessons from the ashram that show that Tessa, and Blank, don’t entirely discount their spiritual teachings; when Tessa muses that, yes, you can choose to change your feelings, it’s a revelation to her, and a revelation, or perhaps, a reminder, to the reader. Blank has once again woven a powerful, gripping story that will appeal to most any teenage girl in a power struggle with her mother, or anyone who’s ever been in that position. less

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