The Best Possible Answer
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
AP Exams – check
SAT test – check
College Application – check
Date the wrong guy and ruin everything you’ve spent your whole life working for– check
Super-achiever Viviana Rabinovich-Lowe has never had room to be anything less than perfect. But her quest for perfection is derailed when her boyfriend leaks secret pictures of her to the entire school—pictures no one was ever meant to see. Making matters worse, her parents might be getting divorced and now her perfect family is falling apart. For the first time, Vivi feels like a complete and utter failure.
Then she gets a job working at the community pool, where she meets a new circle of friends who know nothing about her past. That includes Evan, a gorgeous and intriguing guy who makes her want to do something she never thought she’d do again—trust. For the first time in her life, Vivi realizes she can finally be whoever she wants. But who is that? While she tries to figure it out, she learns something they never covered in her AP courses: that it’s okay to be less than perfect, because it’s our imperfections that make us who we are.
E. Katherine Kottaras once again captures what it means to be a teenager in The Best Possible Answer.
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Viviana Rabinovich-Lowe is obsessed with getting into college but buckles under the pressure to load up on AP credits, take the SATs, get college applications done, and look perfect on paper. After she has a breakdown, her doctor's orders are to slow down, stop pushing herself so hard, and use the summer for a break. Viviana initially resists, but her best friend Sammie persuades her to work with her at the community pool for a summer of fun and boys. Kottaras (How to Be Brave) uses test-taking tips to frame each chapter, as well as essay-style explorations of Viviana's backstory (on her relationship with an ex who leaked a private photo of her: "Analyze the reasons that these activities emerged... and assess the degree to which Viviana succeeded in ruining both her social and personal life"). Yet as Viviana becomes less single-minded about her college future, these frames feel less relevant, distracting from what's really a complicated family drama about living with betrayal and learning how to open oneself again to love. Ages 12 up.