Shrinking Violet ~ Danielle Joseph review

Miami Book Fair International review

Shrinking Violet

MTV Books

May 5, 2009

320 Pages

Amazon

Teresa 'Tere' Adams is shy. Not the kind that's cute and makes you blush when a hot guy looks at you or gives you butterfiles in your stomach when you have to stand up and give a speech in front of class. Tere is the kind of shy that turns your throat into a peanut butter and marshmallow fluff glob everytime someone asks you a question, the kind where you freeze up anytime you even think someone might be going to maybe, at some point, someday put you on the spot. Pretty bad, right?

So then, it wouldn't really make sense that she dreams of being a DJ, a real, live radio DJ. But she does, it's Tere's absolute dream in life. She's never really told anyone besides her one friend. But every night with her ipod on and headphones in, seh practices in the safety of her room.

So, when the opportunity arises, Tere surprises everyone, but herself most of all, by snagging the job of intern at her stepfather's radio station. At last, Sweet T is born.

Only, Sweet T becomes someone everyone knows but no ones knows is Tere and soon there's a problem involving a contest with a prize to meet Ter--errr, Sweet T. Can Tere do it?

With Danielle Joseph's amazing character or Tere who was so different from the typical character who has four guys tripping over her and so terribly ordinary that she was fantastically extraordinary that I loved her to bits, Shrinking Violet is really not one to miss. There were crazy/eccentric characters (including Tere's mom) that only added to the story and helped explain why Tere was how she was. And all the radio personalities were perfect and so like the people that actually are on the radio that you just had to love them, even the ones that you wouldn't love if they were on your radio!

I definitely hope Danielle Joseph is able to write more books for us all to read because this really is a great debut full of humor and fantastically developed characters that grow throughout the story. Sure you might see the ending coming but only in the way of those early 2000's teen movies where you likely knew how it would end but that didn't stop the getting to the end from being anymore fun, did it? Not for me, that's for sure.

Shrinking Violet is definitely one to read and you should also buy it so that MTV Books will reprint it! (see?) It's only $7.92 right now.

9/10

and a huge thank you to Lisa who's doing all the MBFI stuff and the publisher for getting the book to me!