Review: Ditched: A Love Story by Robin Mellom

Dec 4, 2011 by shanyn

Title: Ditched: A Love Story
Hardcover, 288 pages
Author: Robin Mellom
Publisher: Disney Hyperion
Publication Date: January 10, 2012
Source: Publisher
Buy: Amazon
Add To: Goodreads

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Book Summary from Goodreads.com:
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.

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Review:
A story about prom night has good potential to be entertaining, and Ditched: A Love Story fulfills that prophecy pretty well.

My favorite part about Ditched is that it basically takes place in a 7-11 – Justina gets “Ditched” right at the beginning of the book and ends up there, where she tells her story. This means you get a chapter of what happened last night, and then a shorter chapter of the “now,” which is what is going on in the 7-11. Quite clever.

The story of Justina is quite well put together – lots of details, and it’s not so straightforward that you figure out what happened between Justina and Ian right away. Each of the chapters starts with a literal picture of something that happened to Justina during prom night (many of the “somethings” are stains on her dress), and then she explains how she got whatever it is. This was both fun and slightly annoying – several times Justina would exclaim something really ridiculous to the ladies listening to her, and then backtrack and say something like “oh, right, I’m getting ahead of myself.” Those moments pulled me out of the story because of how ridiculous I thought they were. But this only happened a few times so it didn’t affect my overall enjoyment too much.

Ditched: A Love Story is a fun prom read. It would be a great vacation book, and it teeters between being light and fluffy and having some substance. Quite enjoyable!

Buy: Amazon
Add To: Goodreads

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• New Feature: In The Wild: Robin Mellom, Ditched