Wednesday, November 2, 2011

"Waiting on" Wednesday: The Queen of Kentucky by Alecia Whitaker


"Waiting on Wednesday" is a weekly meme hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine. It lets us all gush about what soon-to-be released books we are barely able to restrain our enthusiasm for.

My pick this week is The Queen of Kentucky by Alecia Whataker due out January 2, 2012 by Poppy.

Summary from Goodreads:

The Queen of KentuckyFourteen-year-old Kentucky girl Ricki Jo Winstead, who would preferred to be called Ericka, thank you very much, is eager to shed her farmer's daughter roots and become part of the popular crowd at her small town high school. She trades her Bible for Seventeen magazine, buys new "sophisticated" clothes and somehow manages to secure a tenuous spot at the cool kids table. She's on top of the world, even though her best friend and the boy next door Luke says he misses "plain old Ricki Jo."


Caught between being a country girl and wannabe country club girl, Ricki Jo begins to forget who she truly is: someone who doesn't care what people think and who wouldn't let a good-looking guy walk all over her. It takes a serious incident out on Luke's farm for Ricki Jo to realize that being a true friend is more important than being popular.
My thoughts:
Just like my anticipation for Miranda Kenneally's Catching Jordan, I think my desire to read this book stems from my completion and absolute love for Catherine Gilbert Murdock's Dairy Queen series with its milkmaid/football-and-basketball phenom, DJ Schwenk. However, opposite to DJ and her story, I think this book will take the down-home, naive and humble aspects of Ricki Jo's persona, wratchet them up to the point where Ricki Jo becomes possibly unlikable and then bring her back down to earth to where she is ultimately supposed to find her place in the world (I'm thinking not of a book comparison here but of movies like Mean Girls and Clueless--which I loved--and other books and movies of that ilk). Those are the books that always make me feel good after finishing them. The ones that show the main character the (possibly negative) potentiality of what they are striving for all the while teaching them the lesson that maybe what they had wasn't so bad after all. Ah, good old-fashioned teen cliches. Gotta love 'em!

3 comments:

  1. This sounds really fun! Great pick!

    Giselle
    Xpresso Reads

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  2. This cover is really cute! And it sounds like the story might be cute too! Great pick!

    Jess @ Gone with the Words :) (Waiting on Wednesday!)

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  3. Awesome pick! The story sounds really cute!

    http://brunettelibrarian.blogspot.com

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