"You think you have it figured out... You don't know anything."

THAT is a quote from The Alison Rules by Catherine Clark, and it pretty much sums up the book. When you're reading it, you think you know right where the book is going and then WHAM, everything is water under the bridge. Literally. Read the book and see what I mean.
How I got this book (put up with the short backstory for a second): I was in the library and since they STILL didn't have Sweep #12 (I was TICKED) I was kind of just roaming, looking for a book to read that looked good, when THIS book popped out, for obvious reasons. And I had to get it, for obvious reasons. Only today, when I started the book, did I realize that the author, Catherine Clark, has also written another really good book I read a couple years back called Truth or Dairy (and the sequel, Wurst-Case Scenario). Anyway, backstory over.
This book was kind of sad right from chapter one: we meet Alison, a sophomore, who is avoiding her ultrajock exboyfriend Ryan who is still into her, and spending all her time with her longtime best friend Laurie, when Patrick Kirk moves into town. He's a freespirit, a screwup, someone who makes everything a little more interesting. And Laurie likes him. But so does Alison.
So Alison just kind of keeps avoiding the problem, like she's been doing with everything else from flunking geometry to mourning her dead mother. Yep, that's right, one of the main downers in this book, DEAD MOTHER.
I mean, the whole book is kind of like one quirky, gradual downer... even the short little paragraphs like this seal the deal:
"I went over to the bulletin board and saw that the picture of me and Ryan from the yearbook, the one that Patrick had found, was still up there. I stared at it, for a second remembering how it felt when he'd whisked me up in his arms like that and twirled me around. Ryan could be sweet, a little too sweet sometimes.
I looked at myself in the small oval mirror over my dresser. How had I looked like that photo? That girl didn't look like me at all.
I reached over and pulled out the pink pushpin. I removed the photo and stuck the pushpin back into the middle of the bulletin board. Then I reached onto the top shelf in my closet and pulled out a shoebox--size seven, from last year.
I lifted the lid and dropped the photo on top of the stack inside, then I put the lid back on and pushed the box to the back of the closet shelf."
(pg. 64)
But like all chick-flicky books, her plan blows up in her face and she's forced to confront all her problems. That's where the chick-flicky book thing ends, because after this A HUGE TRAGEDY occurs that I don't want to specifically mention because I would ruin the book for anyone who might actually read this and since this is one of the rare few I would actually beg you to read, I don't want to ruin it for anyone.
But let's just say that is was a classic Bridge-to-Terabithia moment, one that poor Alison will never recover from.
This book was really good, though, despite all its sadness. (How come any book with my name in the main title is instantly a tragedy? How foreboding...)