The Rites and Wrongs of Janice Wills, Joanna Pearson

Name: The rites and wrongs of Janice Wills.
Author: Joanna Pearson
Series: None
Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books
Format: ARC (yes the book has already come out but I won the ARC copy)
Pages:  224 pages.
Website: http://www.joannapearson.com/
About the author:
Joanna grew up in North Carolina. She went to college at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a Morehead Scholar and did graduate work in Ireland as a George J. Mitchell Scholar.   She later earned an MFA in poetry as well as an MD at The Johns Hopkins University.  She's received grants/residency fellowships in poetry from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and the Corporation of Yaddo, along with a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize and Pushcart Prize nominations.  Her poems have appeared in Best New Poets, Bellevue Literary Review, Blackbird, Gulf Coast, The New Criterion, River Styx, and elsewhere.  These days Joanna lives with her husband in Baltimore.
The Rites and Wrongs of Janice Wills is her first novel.
Where can you buy it:
Amazon
Book depository
Barnes and noble
What goodreads says:
For anyone who's ever survived a rite of passage or performed a mating dance at Prom . . .
The Japanese hold a Mogi ceremony for young women coming of age. Latina teenagers get quinceaneras. And Janice Wills of Melva, NC ... has to compete in the Miss Livermush pageant.
Janice loves anthropology--the study of human cultures--and her observations help her identify useful rules in the chaotic world of high school. For instance: Dancing is an effective mating ritual--but only if you're good at it; Hot Theatre Guys will never speak to Unremarkable Smart Girls like Janice and her best friend, Margo; and a Beautiful Rich Girl will always win Melva's annual Miss Livermush pageant.
But when a Hot Theatre Guy named Jimmy Denton takes an interest in Janice, all her scientific certainties explode. For the first time, she has to be part of the culture that she's always observed; and all the charts in the world can't prove how tough--and how sweet--real participation and a real romance can be

My opinion:

I won an ARC copy of this book when I participated in the contest of a fellow blogger Christina check out her site here: http://christinareadsya.blogspot.com/ so thank you Christina because I have loved 2 of the 3 books I received (I haven't read the third one yet^^)
This book was funny, charming and bittersweet at times, although sometimes I felt it was a typical teenager book, much like gossip girl and such.
The main character is Janice a young girl who is your typical awkward to intelligent for her own good- teenager. Janice wants to be an anthropologist and as so sees everything from a distance, until her mom tries to convince her to participate in Miss Livermush pageant (shudder) and in the end Janice agrees so that she can actually have some in site for a project she's making.
Then you have the best friend, who might not be exceptionally bright or beautiful, but tends to get in trouble with the popular girls, in this story she's called Margo.
You've also got the popular athletic guy, who seems all good, until he isn't, and his name is Jimmy.
And the male best friend who we all know has got hots for his best friend.
And the "queen of the school" who is of course tall, beautiful and  rich, and she has a group of girls who follow her around.


But after saying that this book does have some things that make it unique, such as the references to how people come to age in different cultures and the Pony dance (I totally want to learn it)
Overall an enjoyable book and a good light summer read.
I give it 3 of 5 stars.