Lucy Unstrung by Carole Lazar

Synopsis from Goodreads:
 Teens who get pregnant and raise their babies are often in the news. But what about those children who are growing up with parents scarcely half a generation older than themselves?

In this wise and funny first novel by Carole Lazar, Lucy is a sensible, perhaps even rigid, thirteen year old who is convinced that Grandma, God, and the Catholic Church are on her side. She tries hard to make her twenty-eight-year-old mother see the error of her ways. It's not that her mother is wild - in their household even a fancy coffee causes a scene - but she has had to put off her own teenage years and she's chaffing at the restraints on her life. Lucy is faced with the loss of her family, her home, her school, and even her best friend. As she struggles to preserve what she can from her past life, she finds that while Grandma, God, and her church are still there for her, there are problems she has to solve for herself.

My thoughts:  I contemplated categorizing this book as a Kids Corner review because it is a young adult novel but I decided against it.  I guess I need to come up with a catchy category so we all know when I'm venturing into the land of YA books.  YA is something that I've only read a few times since I was the target audience but so many of my fellow bloggers love it, I can't help but check it out.  

I cannot imagine having a child when I was 28, let alone a 14 year old daughter!   It is an interesting topic that I haven't seen anything written about.  I saw an advertisement for this book and I couldn't stop thinking about it.  I HAD to read it.  I was intrigued to know how one approaches parenting when they are so close in age to their child and how that affects the child.  Of course, this book wasn't entirely the correct avenue to explore that but it was a start. 


The book is told from Lucy's perspective and is full of the things that girls in their early teens have to deal with.  The high school bully, having a girlfriend to talk to, and boys.  Lucy's mom is having a bit of a quarter life crisis feeling that she missed out on true young adulthood and begins to think of herself more than she ever has before.  Lucy is pretty mature for her age and begins to worry about the precarious state of her parents marriage and what it means for her.  


All in all, I would recommend it to young adults and adults alike.  It was a great little book and I have to give Carole Lazar kudos for writing about something new.  I would love to read something with a similar story line told from the young parents perspective.  Does anyone have any suggestions for books written from either a young mother or a young fathers perspective after the "OMG we're having a baby!" phase?  


Disclosure:  I received my copy of Lucy Unstrung from the publisher.  My opinion was not influenced by receipt of the book.