Confessions of a Hater: Highschool Drama Meets Nerds at it’s Finest (Oops, I Mean WORST)

Title: Confessions of a Hater

Author: Caprice Crane

Publisher: Feiwel and Friends

Publication Date: August 27th, 2013

Format: Hardback

Genre: YA; Romance; Contemporary, Nerd Lit

Hailey Harper has always felt invisible. Now her dad has a new job and the family is moving to Hollywood. Just what Hailey needs: starting a new high school.

As she’s packing, Hailey finds a journal that belonged to her older sister, Noel, who is away at college. Called “How to Be a Hater,” it’s full of info Hailey can really use. Has Hailey found the Bible of Coolness? Will it help her reinvent herself at her new school? Will her crush notice her? Will she and the other Invisibles dethrone the popular mean girls? After all, they deserve it. Don’t they?

This book certainly played nicely off of every cliché “Nerds/Outcasts” fight back against the popular girls but then end up becoming, (pardon my language) the same kind of bitches themselves.

I’ve read lots of books with those story lines, and while this one was unique and had it’s own flare, it’s still a cliché, and was still very predictable.  I’m tired of reading over and over again about these mean, rich, white girls who just abbsotlutey take it out on everyone who is not them.  I am a person, and I live in society, and in all my life, (granted, it is not over yet) I have yet to come across a person who is anywhere near the kind of cruel soulless person this author made her character be.  Hollywood and yes, book culture, has somehow created this façade that bullying is widespread and cliques overrun middle schools and high schools.  I’m not saying that bullying doesn’t happen, because I know it does and it is awful.  And I know that there are lots of cliques in lots of different towns with lots of different levels of meanness.  What I’m trying to point out, is that this “rich, white girl” clique is overused, is not overly common, and doesn’t apply to all of teenager hood.

Pardon my rant, I just wish that authors could find something else to write about instead of repeating this soggy leftover trash over and over again

Anyway, we start off the book meeting our protagonist, Hailey Harper, who considers herself to be invisible, and has a slew of problems with the cliquey and bully girls at her school.  Hailey’s world is turned upside down when her family moves across the country to Hollywood, (I can’t remember where she moved from, either it was explicitly stated or the author didn’t bring it up enough for me to catch it).    In the meantime, Hailey discovers her older, (cooler, prettier, skinny, blah blah blah) sister’s journal and decides to make her “Bible” or sorts to become a hater.

Hailey waltzes into California and immediately is picked up by the popular crew, and even meets her super cute neighbor Andy (I don’t think that this book could get any more cliché) but of course, she stays true to her roots and ditches them for “real friends”.

The book plays on after that in a predictable manner.  All of Hailey’s character development is expected and doesn’t stray from what I assumed would happen.  No other characters experienced any change in their demeanor.  The high school drama and family troubles were as boring and ABC Family soap-oprea isn as they come.  The few stray plot lines that thickened this book were hastily (and poorly) wrapped up towards the end of the novel.  All possible things were tied up in a neat and orderly bow and it was gross.

This book was a flop.

I really like the cover of this book.  I think it is balanced nicely and played on Hailey’s comic strip and artistic skills that are so mentioned throughout the novel.  Pity that such a fabulous cover incases such a horrendously written book.