Pretty in Punxsutawney Book Review
Pretty in Punxsutawney by Laurie Boyle Crompton
From Goodreads: A Groundhog Day meets Pretty in Pink mashup from author Laurie Boyle Crompton, Pretty in Punxsutawney tells the tale of a girl willing to look beneath the surface to see people for who they really are.
Andie is the type of girl who always comes up with the perfect thing to say…after it’s too late to say it. She’s addicted to romance movies—okay, all movies—but has yet to experience her first kiss. After a move to Punxsutawney, PA, for her senior year, she gets caught in an endless loop of her first day at her new school, reliving those 24 hours again and again.
Convinced the curse will be broken when she meets her true love, Andie embarks on a mission: infiltrating the various cliques to find the one boy who can break the spell. What she discovers along the way is that people who seem completely different can often share the very same hopes, dreams, and hang-ups. And that even a day that has been lived over and over can be filled with unexpected connections and plenty of happy endings.
Thanks to Netgalley for giving me an E-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Hmm, I’m not entirely sure if I enjoyed this one or not. I loved the concept a lot, and seeing nods to my favourite John Hughes films along the way was really cute, but I felt like it was a bit… OTT fake? Like, I guessed pretty much straight away that the initial love interest was going to turn out to be a bit of a jerk, and that obviously, from the first interaction she was going to discover the slightly eccentric Tom was actually a decent guy instead. It definitely felt like a predictable rom-com. And then there was lots of cliche stuff about cliques in high school and how everyone should get over all these differences and just be friends. I did enjoy the whole thing, I thought it was cute and silly and lighthearted, but I equally spent so much time rolling my eyes. It’s very much one of those slightly young feeling YA contemporaries that makes me giggle but also makes me feel a bit too old.
That being said, I did love the inclusion of the OAP home and the volunteering there, and naturally everything about the cinema thrilled me. I did enjoy all the interactions between Andie and her suitors [hahahaha] but I definitely felt like I was a bit too old and mature for this novel at the same time. It was a quick read, but maybe not for me,
Overall, I’m giving Pretty in Punxsutawney a 6.5/10. I did enjoy the movie references and the cute love story, but it was a bit predictable and cliche from the first page.
Has anyone else read this book or plans to? What did you all think of it? Please feel free to share any comments in the section below ❤
