yolo

by Lauren Myracle

Overview

Through texts and messages, the mega-bestselling, beloved Internet Girls series followed the ups and downs of high school for three very different, very close friends. Now it's freshman year of college for the winsome threesome, and the first semester is full of surprises. Bubbly Angela dives headfirst into sorority life, but faced with mean girls and hazing, she wonders whether she's a Greek girl after all. By choosing Santa Cruz, Maddie is finally surrounded by like-minded (i.e., not sorority-type) people, but feels lonelier than ever. And Zoe is keeping up a long-distance relationship with Doug, her high school boyfriend. She thought they'd be together forever, but after a few awful visits . . . not so much. In the face of all this change, what are the best friends to do? Make the most of every crazy moment, that's what. You only go to college once, after all.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781613125045
Publisher:	Abrams, Harry N., Inc.
Publication date:	10/13/2015
Series:	Internet Girls Series , #4
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	307,835
File size:	3 MB
Age Range:	13 - 18 Years

About the Author

Lauren Myracle is the author of the New York Times bestselling Internet Girls series (ttyl, ttfn, and l8r, g8r), The Infinite Moment of Us, Shine, Rhymes with Witches, Bliss, and the Flower Power series, among many other books for teens and young people. She lives with her family in Fort Collins, Colorado. Visit her online at laurenmyracle.com.

Editorial Reviews

08/18/2014
The girls from Myracle's Internet Girls series are starting college and an array of new adventures. Bubbly Angela is pledging a sorority at the University of Georgia, quiet Zoe is trying to keep long-distance love alive at Kenyon College in Ohio, and daring Maddie heads west to UC Santa Cruz, where she makes her longtime best friends promise to "try everything that comes our way, and we won't be afraid, because even tho we're spread out all over the country, we're still here to support each other." Myracle employs the same instant messaging formula of the earlier books, though there are some smart updates, including references to autocorrect and Instagram, and a topical issue as Angela struggles with whether Greek life is for her, especially after stopping a rape at a fraternity Halloween party. Not all the plot points are completely plausible, but these memorable friends remain highly relatable as they share racy details about their lives, call each other out for bad behavior, and are there to help each other "through dark time." Ages 13–up. Agent: Barry Goldblatt, Barry Goldblatt Literary. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

09/01/2014
Gr 9 Up—Maddie, Angela, and Zoe are beginning their biggest adventure yet—college—and they are doing it on their own. They encounter many challenges—failure, drunkenness, heartbreak, and successes— and ultimately discover their true friends. Maddie embraces the California lifestyle and is assigned to a suite with three other girls referred to as the "Esbees" because they are from Santa Barbara. Maddie tries hard to find her niche within this group, but soon becomes aware of how challenging it is to be accepted into an already-established social circle. In the first few months of college, Maddie is almost unable to continue with the yolo (you only live once) mission especially when her parents can't afford to fly her home for Thanksgiving break. Angela enters college drawn to the Greek lifestyle of partying, fraternity socials and the appeal of belonging but sees that she may not agree with all of the initiation rituals and the unwritten rules. Through her association with the Zeta's, she finds herself in some questionable situations and one specifically alters the rest of her college choices. Zoe decides to attend a liberal college and try a long-distance relationship with her boyfriend, Doug but realizes that they have both moved on. After overcoming her depression, she also learns that she loves to run to release stress, and she experiments with her sexuality. Zoe faces failure in a creative writing class when a professor does not recommend her to keep moving through the program, but she is not discouraged. Told in Internet-age style of text messages and tweets first seen in Myracle's ttyl (Abrams, 2004), the girls try to embrace the free-spirited yolo philosopy as they grow into their young adulthood.—Jessica Lorentz Smith, Bend Senior High School, OR

School Library Journal

2014-06-29
Instant-messaging champs Maddie, Angela and Zoe return to hash out their first year away at respective colleges in this fourth installment of Myracle's popular series that began with ttyl (2004). Geographically speaking, the trio has some serious distance separating them. Thoughtful, reserved Zoe is enthralled with her classes at Kenyon in Ohio, even as she misses her boyfriend, Doug. At the University of Georgia, fashion-conscious Angela contends with a freaky roommate who seems to be stealing her stuff while she pledges to a sorority, causing her to become increasingly unsure about the Greek system. And confident Maddie, usually the one who takes charge, finds herself the odd girl out with her suitemates at the University of California at Santa Cruz. As in the first three books, the entirety of this novel is written as texts and instant messages among the young women. While there are a few instances in which this format feels a little forced—usually when a character requires more than two or three lines to sum things up—it remains an incredibly appealing narrative device. The friends' honesty with one another, even about things like embarrassing sexual experiences and depression, is lifelike (and heartwarming, to boot), and their jargon—"fugly," "ex-fucking-scuse me?"—will ring true to many a teen reader.Funny, deceptively smart and just in time for those going off to college. (Fiction. 14-20)

Kirkus Reviews