I really liked this book to begin with.
I've been on a search for a good student/teacher romance novel, and I thought this might be good.
I made it 3/4 of the way through this novel before putting it down.
The teenage drama was just too much for me to handle. Bulimia, lies, alcoholism, a masquerade party where the teacher cant tell the difference between a 15, and 25 year old, and the stupidity of teenagers just grinds my gears. Immature. Yes, that's the way kids are, I know that. I was a teen once as well.
I am absolutely intolerant of women falling prey to men despite the obvious fact that she is being used. Wake up! (Talking about the character Jordan here, or whatever his name was) and CJ actually considers losing her virginity to this dickhead?
Ugh
It Started with a Dare Posted at: http://oh-my-books.blogspot.com/2010/...
CG is going to a new school, where people doesn't know her. It's her opportunity to be different, to be popular. So she decides to reinvent herself, and if that means lying, well, she'll do it.
CG is very smart. I couldn't have said all those lies and remembered them. But she manages to get everyone's attention, even from the popular girls. It seemed like it was easy for her to fool everyone, and that made it more difficult to stop. She's also very funny, and even if I wouldn't have made some of her choices, I still like her because she thinks all this weird stuff and I couldn't help but laugh.
Also, I liked that the author manages to give each character a personality. They are very human, make mistakes and feel insecure. With such a strong protagonist, it must have been difficult to give the other characters their space in this story.
I enjoyed the book, but for some reason it took me a few days to read it. I was busy, and at the same time, I knew where CG was going and didn't like it. For being so smart, she took some really bad choices...but I couldn't blame her, because she's young and just want to be accepted. In the end, CG evolves and learn for her mistakes. It was obvious that sooner of later she was going to fall, but I wanted to know how it would be and if she was going to make it.
Overall, it's a light book that will make you laugh, and in the process, it will remind you that to make real friends, you have to be just who you are. It Started with a Dare Almost sixteen-year-old CG Silverman has an opportunity to remake herself from podunk nobody to high school somebody, and she doesn't take the mission lightly. She throws away all of who she used to be, or really is, in favor of what she thinks her new popular friends want her to be.
Pretty soon, CG is lying about everything and it gets more and more difficult to remember truth from fiction. With so many balls in the air, eventually they all come tumbling down and CG falls from her popularity pedestal right along with them.
IT ALL STARTED WITH A DARE has a remarkable, fresh voice and you feel like you're siting right there with CG as she tells her story. It can sometimes be difficult to keep such a unique voice going for the duration of a novel, but Lindsay Faith Rech does a great job of sustaining it.
I thought CG was believable and funny, wholly herself--even when she wasn't sure who she really was. The characters were believable, and I especially appreciated that the queen bee Alona wasn't painted to be a raging bitch like most high school popular girls are--instead she was just a pretty girl with a lot of social advantages but also a lot of her own problems.
I thought CG's predicament, especially with the gorgeous college-going older brother (and player) of Alona was really well done and totally believable. It allowed Rech the freedom to address the issues of teenage sex and love without feeling preachy or overdone. Similarly the book deals with bulimia, lying, sex, the dangers of internet relationships and to a lesser degree, teenage drinking.
I liked the resolution of the story and felt it turned out just right.
This story was laugh-out-loud funny and hard to put down. I'd recommend this book to teenage girls, with the caution that it is PG13 for profanity (lots) and subject matter (eating disorders, sex, drinking, drug use).
A great, easy fast-paced read and I'll look for more from Lindsay Faith Rech in the future! It Started with a Dare From my blog: (\__/)nymfaux
So last night I stayed up all night reading Lindsay Faith Rech’s upcoming release It Started with a Dare!
While I had intended to just read a couple chapters, go to sleep, and pick it up later, once I started reading, I just couldn’t stop myself—I kept telling myself, “just a little more,” that I was half-way through, that there were “only 60 more pages…” And the only way I could justify continuing to read, is that I’d never have been able to sleep not knowing what happened—And not only was it good, but I could not stop laughing. Out. Loud. Literally.
Now there are plenty of times when I say lol, and plenty of times where something funny or humorous happens in whatever book I happen to be reading at the time—But RARELY do I ever actually LAUGH. OUT. LOUD.
It Started with a Dare is completely hilarious!!!! It’s daring and amazing and absolutely jaw-dropping funny!!!
When C.G. Silverman moves to town, she’s just hoping that she won’t have to sit alone at lunch—But when Alona, Grace, and Sammi, the Triple Threat of Beaubridge High decide to sit with her, C.G. sees this as her chance to finally be popular. This is C.G.’s chance to totally reinvent herself. But will C.G. still recognize herself when she’s done?
It’s an absolute rollercoaster of ups and downs and no-she-didn’ts. Ms. Rech puts us right in C.G.’s head and we get to see C.G. as a real person, vulnerable and rough-around the edges, and not always politically correct; but always smart and wry and funny—I couldn’t believe everything C.G. did, and I couldn’t wait to see what she’d do next. It Started with a Dare is a voyage of self-discovery for C.G…and thanks to C.G., it leads to a lot of self-discovery for everyone around her.
Best line ever: Not even God likes a poser.
Seriously. Funny. And has definite potential for rereadability. Make sure this one’s on your wish list; I know it’s on mine!
It Started with a Dare Rather Be Reading YA
Oh, boy. This book is about a girl who moves to a new town and immediately starts making bad choices. One bad choice leads to another, which leads to another, and before she knows it, she's in deep. The first, and most innocent, is to go by the initials CG rather than the slightly old-fashioned Cindy as she was known in her old town.
CG wants to fit in with the wealthier and popular students in her new town so she pretends to be more experienced - in every way - than she really is. Cindy wears a friendship bracelet given to her by her best (male) friend Alex; CG claims to have been sleeping with Alex. And so on. By the middle of the book, CG has everyone believing that she's a recovering alcoholic at fifteen. I half-expected that Alona, the queen bee, knew what was going on and was just going along to see how far CG would go.
CG's antics lead her to getting involved with not one but two older men, both unavailable in different ways. She's really not a very sympathetic or even likable character. Look, I know she just wants to be accepted in her new school, but everything that goes wrong in her life stems from one thing: her constant string of lies. It was all her fault. I didn't feel sorry for CG at all. I felt sorry for the people she hurt. I really only kept reading to see what new situations CG would find herself in and to enjoy it when everything came crashing down around her.
Cute cover though. It Started with a Dare
To be honest this book was only so-so. I found the majority of the book to be lacking. It was so stereotypical and clique-ish. I'm in high school and I can honestly say kids aren't like that. I mean yeah there are cliques and stuff and but it isn't social suicide if you have friends in more than one and there's definitely not one girl that rules the school (although some of the girls THINK they're that one girl). I'm just kind of sick of novels being so stereotypical that way. It's the whole typical pretty rich kids have issues and the geeky kids are wholesome and good. Which again, totally not true!
I also found that the beginning and middle of the novel to kind of boring and annoying. The main character had no common sense what so ever and had no idea of consequences. She was just a liar, and I have no patience for liars. I didn't even feel a connection to her or any of the other characters because they were all so shallow. I even felt like the one character who was supposed to be the deep one the whole time was just as shallow. Also, the main character, CG, says how shallow her friends are and stuff but, hello earth to CG you're the same way! CG also keeps talking about the girl she used to be, hanging out with her friend Alex, being a tom-boy, all that jazz, and I thought she sounded really cool then and I would have liked to read about the old her. Also, she kept talking about Alex and I really wanted to meet him but we didn't for like ever! It really frustrated me. The characters were well developed though, all with their own personalities and issues that they had to work through. You saw some of them change and develop in the book which was cool and I always like that. (We learned the term for that in English but I can't remember at the moment, the opposite of a static character. Mr. Gregory would be very disappointed in me at the moment.) Also, this was totally just me being stupid but I kept mixing up CG's friends Grace and Alona.
I did really enjoy the ending though. I felt that there was a message there that you have to watch what you say and do because there is consequences for your actions (although if I ever even thought of doing what she did I would my consequences would be much worse!)
Also, I found the novel was very witty. I liked the narrator's voice. She was funny and I found a few quotes I really liked and actually am planning to use in a project I've decided to work on! (Secret Project! MUAHAHAHA!) I've never heard expressions used like this on did. It was just some of the most random things ever!
Overall, the book was kinda boring but interesting enough throughout most of the novel. There was a really good ending though. The characters were shallow but all had their own background. There was a good message to the book which was nice. Finally, the book was witty and that's something that I look for in books. It Started with a Dare Summary: Like probably every other teenager, CG Silverman is figuring out who she is and who she wants to be. She sees moving to a new town and going to a new school as her opportunity to reinvent herself and cuts all the ties to her old life, even telling the boy who was her best friend and almost boyfriend she's not interested anymore. The leader of a group of 3 popular girls takes to CG and at first things sail smoothly, sure CG has to lie and pretend she's something she's not, but all's fair in love and the war for popularity right?
Even messing around with the older brother of one of your new 'friends' and chatting up your English teacher on an online dating site. Everything is soon spiralling out of control, what will CG do when her lies start to catch up to her? How will she explain it all to the one true friend she's made since moving, who's not in the in-crowd, and let's not forget her parents?
At first Rech paints a realistic world of a high school were the social clique exists of the queen bee and her two minions, soon joined by CG. They're all 15-year old girls who each have their own set of issues. The Queen Bee, Alona, seems kinda clueless and is actually not that evil and nasty, she just likes things going her way. On the other hand, there's Grace, who is definitely the mean girl in this group. She not only gives her 'friends' crap, but is generally not a very nice person, she's actually the most intriguing character of this book, because she's got some real issues that aren't all that clear right from the start.
CG herself is a mess, she's all over the place trying to get Alona and her friends to like her and keeping it that way. She pretends to be some kind of rebel and after a slightly altered game of truth or dare, she's in. She develops a huge crush on Jordan, Alona's brother, who's in college and already has a girlfriend. She juggles him and the online flirting she has going on with her English teacher (pretending to be 25 instead of 15).
I must say I didn't really like CG, she said things just to be cool and I know that there are probably whole boatloads full of people who do that, but it's not very pretty. She was however believable in her teenage heartbreak over Jordan, but she seemed very fickle in her affection for her English teacher and even the boy she left behind in her old town. The only reason she seems to clean up her act is that of course she's found out in the end. I thought it was strange that she picked the most unpopular girl in school to form a real friendship with, as she was trying very hard to be popular herself and this doesn't seem to fit in. The only time I really believed she wasn't being selfish was when she seemed to snap out of it long enough to worry about a friend's health.
I remember being 15 and thinking everything that happened was a huge drama, when looking back, of course it wasn't such a big deal. However, I don't remember betraying my friends and messing with people's lives and generally being nasty. I like to believe that at 15, people have a moral compass. Sure they make mistakes, but especially the part with the English teacher went too far in my book and seemed like something that would never happen like that.
This wasn't really my kind of book, I couldn't relate to the main character and didn't really understand the way she acted.
My rating: 2.5 stars. It Started with a Dare DNF
Reminds me too much of the movie Mean Girls. I'm getting annoyed with CG and her antics. Moving on. It Started with a Dare When CG Silverman moves to a decidedly more affluent town, she decides to reinvent herself. Before she knows what is happening, she has befriended Alona, Grace, and Sammie, the resident popular girls. A simple game of Truth or Dare at a sleepover sets in motion a chain of events that CG could never have anticipated.
When I began reading It Started with a Dare, I anticipated a funny, sometimes poignant coming-of-age story. In the barest of senses, this book delivered on that front. What I didn't realize: That CG's personal journey would be powered by pathological lying, smugness, and an often callous disregard for others. CG finds herself, all right--after lying to everyone around her for months, the chickens finally come home to roost and she becomes a total outcast at school. The alone time forces her to confront her bad behavior, but at no point does her remorse feel particularly genuine. Even when pondering how she has hurt people, she finds ways to make digs at them, to keep them firmly rooted in villain roles (e.g., referring disparagingly to Alona as Her Majesty, insinuating that Grace is stupid after pulling a truly vicious MySpace prank on her, etc.).
I had a strong reaction to this book. I am, as I have indicated in other reviews, a character-driven reader. If the protagonist doesn't grab me, I have a difficult time getting through a story. Unfortunately, that was the case here. I went out of my way, grasping at straws, to find something to like about CG. I never did.
The chief problem for me in this book was characterization. The characters herein are, for the most part, caricatures--typecast people with a typecast set of traits/problems. The rich people are snobby and bad. The poor people are genuine and misunderstood. So not only does this story break no new ground while exploring the high school social hierarchy, but it falls into some pretty egregious stereotyping. Throughout, I found that CG behaved just as badly as, if not worse than, her rich friends, but let herself off the hook because she was poor and shopped at Salvation Army. In other words, because she was poor, her bad behavior was somehow less bad.
At one point, after the unpopular Glory takes a now-equally-unpopular CG back as a friend, CG eviscerates her former frenemy behind her back: Grace is nowhere near as smart as she seems. I thought she had a brain in there somewhere, but she let me down. As far as I can see, she's always gonna be somebody's puppet, whether the one pulling the strings happens to be Jordan or Alona or some other unlucky schmuck she's only using to fill the hole inside her soul. And she'll never stop exploiting that emptiness as her excuse to be a first-class bitch. (300) This is tough to swallow. CG perpetually exploits her socioeconomic status as an excuse to be, at times, an even bigger bitch than Grace. Because she wears Janis Joplin T-shirts, however, she is somehow justified in her lying and vicious pranking.
Perhaps most alarming is Glory's and CG's kvetching about Sammie, who is undergoing treatment for bulimia. Glory dismisses her erstwhile best friend as chronically image-obsessed (301), even after schooling CG earlier about how Sammie's eating disorder is a disease she can't control.
This encapsulates my other problem with this book: at various junctures, there is real potential for depth, and the book takes a more surface-skimming route. Instead of pursuing the eating disorder angle in any depth, the heroines resort to trashing the afflicted behind her back. Instead of showing us why CG feels like nobody (the emotion that incites her incredible journey), the narrative simply tells us repeatedly that she feels like nobody. Instead of pushing the boundaries of the high school hierarchy, the book falls comfortably into well-traveled character types. Instead of condemning some of the uglier behaviors of high school girls, the book inadvertently validates them [e.g., CG continuing to trash the girls she has betrayed behind their backs, and dismissing the English teacher whose life she almost destroyed with an ongoing prank as a total dorkmonger who bores me to tears (182):].
The responsibility of a coming-of-age comedy like this one is to establish a character whose happy ending we crave. It is what keeps us turning the pages. However, when CG's life finally began to work out in her favor, I was plagued with the lingering conviction that she deserved none of it. The problem: the story takes too long to showcase her remorse (which isn't particularly genuine, anyway--even when her parents confront her about her lies, she finds ways to manipulate their emotions), too long to give any indication of why CG behaves as she does, too long to probe the characters in any depth.
An aside: My linguistic diet consists of enough salt to give a healthy person a heart attack, but even I found the cussing in this book to be excessive, perhaps even gratuitous.
Lindsay Faith Rech is a strong writer with enormous potential. The dialogue in this book was snappy, the underlying concept compelling and worthy of exploration. The problem, for me, lay in the character development. I never connected with CG. In fact, when Alex finally kissed her, I found myself thinking, He'd be better off with someone like Glory.
(Disclaimer: I received the galley proofs of this title from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for review.) It Started with a Dare I'm going to essentially paste what I wrote in my review at One Librarian's Book Reviews, since I said everything I really wanted to there:
The book showed a complicated look at popularity and the kinds of things people will do to be popular. It was also quite interesting in its depictions of the carelessness we feel toward other peoples' feelings. CG was not a person I liked or related to at all, especially in the way she treated others, but I did see that I can become just as cavalier with the feelings of other people. It played kind of a cautionary story for me. BUT:
I actually really didn't like the characters or story much. CG is a sarcastic, crass, potty-mouthed jerk, to pretty much everyone throughout. She toys with people over and over and doesn't even seem to care, until she loses friends. I really got tired of her. The story was fairly interesting, but held nothing original or terribly entertaining to me. When CG does figure it out, the message is pounded into our heads so obviously that it lacks any kind of subtlety. In short, I just wasn't impressed. It Started with a Dare
Self-proclaimed nobody CG Silverman sees her move to an upscale new school as her chance to be somebody different. Her devil-may-care attitude attracts the in-clique, and before CG realizes it, a routine game of truth or dare launches her to iconic status.
While this rebel image helps secure CG’s newfound popularity, it also propels her through a maze of unprecedented chaos, with each new lie and every dare opening doors that, in most cases, were better off left shut.
CG is on a collision course with disaster. Will she be able to keep up the façade? Or will the whole world find out she’s a fraud? It Started with a Dare