Ditched Review

Hey Blogger Buds,
Long time, no speaky! I feel terrible, having not posted a review in over a month, and having so many books I really want to review! Today, I've got Ditched: A Love Story by Robin Mellom. I won my copy from Laura Pauling, and, of course, all opinions expressed here are my own.
*This is a review of an ARC. The book is already out, so make sure to pick up a finished copy!*
Linkies are all down below, but, in case you forget, make sure to add Ditched on Goodreads!

Blurby (Goodreads):
High school senior Justina Griffith was never the girl who dreamed of going to prom. Designer dresses and strappy heels? Not her thing. So she never expected her best friend, Ian Clark, to ask her.
Ian, who always passed her the baseball bat handle first.
Ian, who knew exactly when she needed red licorice.
Ian, who promised her the most amazing night at prom.
And then ditched her.
Now, as the sun rises over her small town, and with only the help of some opinionated ladies at the 7-Eleven, Justina must piece together — stain by stain on her thrift-store dress — exactly how she ended up dateless. A three-legged Chihuahua was involved. Along with a demolition derby-ready Cadillac. And there was that incident at the tattoo parlor. Plus the flying leap from Brian Sontag's moving car...
But to get the whole story, Justina will have to face the boy who ditched her. And discover if losing out at prom can ultimately lead to true love.

Review:
Most of you probably know that I'm not a big contemporary lover. Occasionally, I'll pick up a hysterical one, or an "issues" book. But I'm not so big on your everyday, fluffy, "Oh Em Gee my life is over!" type of book. I've got more important things to worry about than if the jock is in like with you or not.
So it's a good thing that Ditched isn't one of those books.
Sure, it's about being in love. And it's about your personal 12/21/12 coming a few months early, but it's also about finding unexpected friends, and trusting people, and just stopping to care about consequences-for once!-and just doing it.
Ditched isn't a particularly deep book. It's brilliantly funny, and if you like fluffy, rainbows-and-kittens brain-candy, this is fantastic. If you care for the deeper stuff, you won't come away satisfied. If you, like me, rarely give contemps a second glance, it may not even be worth it to bother.

But I'm being too general. You may be asking "but what about the characters, Riv‽" (and yes, I just used an interrobang.)
In a word (or not): They're nearly real.
Sure, Justina is kind of.. melodramatic, and falls in love in a little too quickly, but she's made mistakes, and she tries to fix them...and, fortunately for us, her antics are incredibly entertaining, if sometimes futile.
Ian was kind of awesome, though we didn't see much of him, but a bit annoying in the perfect-boy way. (Why are all main boy characters so perfect? Argh.)

This book is written really differently than what I'm used to. It opens up with Justina waking up on the side of the road. And then, every other chapter, it returns to the night before as she recounts her disastrous evening. But the book wasn't full of telling, in each flashback, we're actually transported to the event. And the book has the added bonus of pictures in the beginning of each "flashback" chapter as Justina recounts her night by the gross stains all over her dress, from the chicken marsala to the curry to the mysterious one at the hem of her dress...and there's also the dyed shoes she put it on, actually [read: accidentally] listening to her mother's advice.


Overall:
Ditched is fantastic for those moments when you want to kill a few hours, and just laugh at a good book. (If you've got things to do, don't even start. I killed an entire afternoon, sitting and reading this straight.)

Rating: 4* Good book, pretty good writing, well worth it.

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