Book Review- Freckled and Fourteen

“And now she’d lost her best friend.” Rusty Eastman is a fourteen year old girl who is having some problems. Her best friend, Jeri, has become obsessed with boys and Rusty could not care less about them. Also, there is a big family secret Rusty has found out about. And her brother Alan, star of the sports teams at school has quit athletics all together! Viola Rowe’s Freckled and Fourteen entertained me with the story of a troubled teen.

Rowe wrote this book in our normal, everyday language. It was easy for me to understand and I did not have any trouble with vocabulary. Rusty lives in a normal town where she attends the local high school. Her father is the coach and her brother is the has-been athletic star. After Alan quits all the sports teams, they start to do badly without him. All Alan seems interested in is girls, which Rusty just finds appalling. And to make matters worse, Rusty’s best friend Jeri is now interested in boys! What can Rusty do? Who can she talk to?

Luckily, she has her wonderful Uncle Law. She can go to him with any problem and he will do his best to give her advice. Rusty finds adoption papers in her family’s file cabinet. She immediately assumes she was adopted since she is the only one in the family with bright red hair. She asks Uncle Law and he confirms her suspicions thinking Mr. and Mrs. Eastman had already told Rusty. This leaves Rusty feeling confused, alone, and misplaced. Who were her real parents? Why didn’t they want her? Did the Eastman’s still want her? Read this book to find out how Rusty can deal with all these issues clogging up her life.

I would recommend this book to any teenage girl. It deals with some of the everyday struggles they might encounter. Rusty learns many valuable lessons. This was a great story and I enjoyed reading it.

192 Pages