Doormat
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4.3 • 4 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
WHAT WOULD YOU DO if your best friend got pregnant?
Fourteen-year-old Jaime is used to her best friend, Melissa, being the center of attention. Melissa wants to be a model—she’s beautiful, popular, and talented. There’s just one small problem—Melissa thinks she’s pregnant, and she wants Jaime’s help. But there’s not much Jaime can do. Melissa refuses to tell her parents; Jaime refuses to be the same old reliable doormat. She’s got a lead in the school play and a new friendship with Zach. Jaime is changing, too. And she’s sick of being stepped on!
Fifteen-year-old Kelly McWilliams’s debut novel is an inspiring story about friendship, choices, and learning how to shine.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
First-time novelist McWilliams penned this amiable, often insightful tale at the age of 15, and introduces likable narrator Jaime, a self-described "pitiful little muddy-foot doormat" who feels "invisible." In contrast, the 14-year-old's best friend Melissa, an aspiring model, "stands out to the world. People notice her, all the time, for her looks, for her attitude, for her general superstar glow." Though Jaime has always been there for Melissa, she doesn't know how to react when her friend announces, "I think I'm pregnant. Can you help me?" Putting her head together with Zach, a kind classmate, and her levelheaded Aunt Sheila, Jaime finds a way to support Melissa. In the process, the heroine succeeds in becoming "undoormattish" as she pulls her own life together. She decides that she wants to be a playwright, begins dating Zach and in what she calls "the most undoormattish thing of my life" telephones her estranged father (and, rather curiously, impulsively tells him that she is pregnant). Not surprisingly given its spontaneous teenage narrator, the story contains some repetition and contradiction. But the author lays the groundwork for Jaime's success as a writer with the teen's perceptions of her situation and surroundings (e.g., referring to her hometown as "nowhere, California," she points out the irony of its name, Oasis: "Where I live, the ground is parched like it's thirsty"). McWilliams keeps her remarkably mature narrative from slipping into melodrama and gives young adults plenty to contemplate, marking her as a writer to watch. Ages 12-up.
