Pink

by:  Lili Wilkinson
published by:  HarperCollins
publish date:  February 2011

Ava has a secret. She is tired of her ultracool attitude, ultra-radical politics, and ultrablack clothing. She's ready to try something new—she's even ready to be someone new. Someone who fits in, someone with a gorgeous boyfriend, someone who wears pink.

Transferring to Billy Hughes School for Academic Excellence is the perfect chance to try on a new identity. But just in case things don't work out, Ava is hiding her new interests from her parents, and especially from her old girlfriend.

Secrets have a way of being hard to keep, though, and Ava finds that changing herself is more complicated than changing her wardrobe. Even getting involved in the school musical raises issues she never imagined. As she faces surprising choices and unforeseen consequences, Ava wonders if she will ever figure out who she really wants to be.


Ever since it came out I've been in love with the cover of this book.  I don't know what it is, but I adore it! 

I thought the book was...ok.  It started off rather slow for me and I was kinda like "eh" through a good majority of the book, but towards the end I did start enjoying it.  Once I was done, I couldn't decide why I felt kind of down on it in the beginning because overall I thought it was well written and sent a good message to kids. 

I think one of my issues with it was the 90210 kind of thing going on, those kids were supposed to be in high school, but they were like 30 years old LOL  This book was kind of the same, the kids seemed far too mature for high school kids, some of them anyway.  Because of that, I would NOT recommend this book for younger teens.  It's definitely geared more for older teens, in my opinion.

All of that said, I did think the book had an important message about knowing who you are.  I felt bad for Ava because her parents sort of pigeon holed in the ultra radical emo-goth persona without really giving her a chance at anything else she might want to be and questioned every change she made.  Her girlfriend, however constrained she thought she was, really had far more freedom consider the fact that she came from a really conservative family but they seemed to allowed her to be who she wanted to be.

So, pretty good book YA book, but keep it to the older YAs!