This was a fairly good book, but I think it could have benefited from being a little shorter, for starters. The previous book by the author that I read, "Something Maybe," was nice because it didn't overextend its cute and original premise. This one sort of fell into a bit of a "plot loop" with the same worries, conflicts, and events being rehashed far too much.

Kate's life isn't going too well at the moment. She's had a falling out with her best friend, and doesn't really understand why. Her father has spontaneously quit his job to sell vitamins at the mall. Her overbearing grandmother is moving in with them. And Will, whom she simultaneously hates and is attracted to, won't leave her alone. Each of these problems walks its own slow path to resolution, some with decent development, others less so.

The changing family relationships were well done, I thought; fairly realistic and not too angsty. I also came to like the grandmother character after a while.

Unfortunately, the personal problems of Kate herself were not quite as well handled. Her problems with her friend Anna began in a promising manner, but dragged on in circles for too long. However, I could still understand her reasons for feeling the way she did about their collapsing friendship. Kate's problems with her father and his new job also started out amusing and original, but in the end she seemed to be repeating the same tired litany too often. After a while, the "I hate my life" tone started cropping up a bit too much for comfort, pushing the narration into the whiny even though Kate realizes her mistakes in the end.

The romance with Will was cute but with some bumps in development. I never really understood Kate's mindset about the whole thing; she seemed a bit dense and overreactive when it came to a lot of things, and I found myself feeling sorry for the guy a lot.

In the end, all was resolved well, but the journey to get there could probably have been shortened. It would have helped with the feeling of "Okay, I'm done" I started to get towards the end. ( )

Not one of the better Elizabeth Scott books that I have read. The main character Kate was whiny and annoying, her parents were just as annoying. I did enjoy the book, though I skipped the paragraph whenever Kate started with her "nobody cares about how HARD my life is" stuff.
Kate's world seems to center around the fact that her old best friend will no longer speak to her and seems to look right through her, and to top it all off, Kate has to work at the mall helping her father "try to" sell Perfect You vitamins. Things slowly go downhill for Kate, and her parents end up splitting up, and her mom, grandmother and she all move into an apartment after they have to sell the house. The only good thing that came out of it all was that Kate finally started standing up for herself and let people know what she was thinking instead of just keeping it all inside.
There of course was a love interest and that came in the form of Will, Kate's classmate, and crush. Will seems to annoy Kate a lot and while I saw it as him flirting, Kate didn't see it till the end of the book when he explained it to her. ( )

March 2019: I don't know why I bothered. My feelings haven't changed about this book, and I found Kate's father even more frustrating and childish than I did in 2010.

April 2010: This was okay, but I found most of the main characters rather irritating, especially Kate and her father. The book was too clique and depressing for me to really enjoy it, but I think it will be popular with its intended audience. ( )

This book had many turns so you were always gessing, I couldn't put the book down. It's something that could happen to kids around my age and I would recommend this to my friends. Q4P3 AHS/Hannah G.

If I'm honest, I have no idea why I read this book. I'm not a fan of the cover at all, since it seems kind of boring and pointless and too brown to me, but I've read some other of Elizabeth Scott's books, and I think she's starting to become one of my favorite authors.

A lot of Perfect You takes place in the mall where Kate works to help out her dad after he quit his job. For some reason that I still don't understand, Kate's dad thought selling "Perfect You" vitamins was his dream. And while I think this was creative, I didn't understand his motives. Kate's dad does a lot of smiling and faking in this book, and I never really understood why.

I also didn't understand Kate's grandmother. While Kate's family sinks farther and farther into debt because her father won't step up and get a real job, Kate's grandma comes for a visit. All she seems to care about is appearances and money, but that wasn't my problem with her. My problem was that one moment she was talking about her shopping trip, and the next she was scolding Kate for the self-pitying she was doing and giving some odd piece of advice. The transition between Vain Woman and Real Grandma didn't seem natural to me.

Anna, Kate's ex-best friend, was probably the worst part of this book. Kate lets Anna walk all over her and then pretend she doesn't exist whenever her other friends are around, just because she wants to be popular. Sure, in the end, Kate realizes this, but through almost all of the book, Kate is pretty pathetic whenever it comes to Anna.

However, those are the only bad things I can seem to find about the book. Kate's relationship with Will involves a lot of making out, sure, and at times it didn't seem like it could be a real relationship, but Will wasn't some perfect guy, and he provided for some comic relief. :D Also, I actually knew what the characters looked like. Really knew. Because unlike most of the YA contemp. fiction I've been reading lately, Scott actually described what the characters looked like.

Overall: This is one of my new favorite books. ( )