Title: Gingerbread
Written by: Rachel Cohn
Series: Cyd Charisse
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Publish Date: June 1, 2003
Genre: YA Contemporary
Pages: 172
Source: Bought at Indie Bookstore
Buy the Book: Gingerbread
Synopsis: “I will be as wild as I wanna be.” After getting tossed from her posh boarding school, wild, willful, and coffee addicted Cyd Charisse returns to San Francisco to live with her parents. But there’s no way Cyd can survive in her parents’ pristine house. Lucky for Cyd she’s got Gingerbread, her childhood rag doll and confidante, and her new surfer boyfriend.
When Cyd’s rebelliousness gets out of hand, her parents ship her off to New York City to spend the summer with “Frank real-dad,” her biological father. Trading in her parents for New York City grunge and getting to know her bio-dad and step-sibs is what Cyd has been waiting for her whole life. But summer in the city is not what Cyd expects — and she’s far from the daughter or sister that anyone could have imagined.
Shaunta’s Review: I’ll be honest: I read this book because I was desperate to read something that wasn’t assigned by one of my professors, and it’s a small book that I knew wasn’t going to derail my more scholarly reading. I’ve had Gingerbread on my shelf for a long time. Rachel Cohn and David Levithan’s Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist is one of my favorites. After reading Gingerbread (and having read Every Day by Levithan), it was completely obvious to me that it was Cohn that made me love Nick and Norah so much. This book is just as quick-witted and sharp-tongued as that one.
It wasn’t perfect. Things came too easily for Cyd Charisse–even when she was being forced to do things she didn’t want to do. (What kind of punishment is moving to a gorgeous apartment in New York City, meeting an awesome brother for the first time, and getting a job you love in his bakery? Really?) Cyd is capital-P Privileged and I would have liked her to recognize that a little more by the end of the story. Maybe she does in the sequels? I’m not sure, but I’ll report back.
Gingerbread the rag doll was my favorite part of this story. I loved her. I loved how she kept Cyd from being over-the-top spoiled-little-rich-girl. Gingerbread is basically Juno in book form with a different story. The language is so similar that I wonder if Diablo Cody didn’t read this book for inspiration. Over all it was super fun, a great distraction from Faulkner and Edith Wharton, and well worth reading.
