So Yesterday

Set in New York, So Yesterday is definitely located in the here and now. Seventeen-year-old Hunter is a cool taster for a multinational sports clothing firm, an ‘athletic shoe company named after a certain Greek god’. In an acerbic first person voice, seventeen-year-old Hunter narrates the puzzling and sometimes threatening events. This is a clever, witty book that taps into teen obsessions with being cool, or choosing not to be. It is also a gripping mystery story as Hunter and Logo Exile ‘friend’ (read desirable, hope-to-be-girlfriend) Jen, track down the strange events that follow a missed appointment with Mandy, their employer, who has disappeared in strange, perhaps sinister circumstances. When Jen and Hunter go looking for Mandy little is as it appears as they are drawn into pursuing the anti-client, the Jammers. Their sleuthing tactics, inspired by television cop shows, provide funny moments.
There is no pejorative talking down to adolescents in this novel. Nor are there any adult approved, preachy lessons about being an individual, resisting the group, but rather, acknowledgment that belonging, fitting in, is important, but so is understanding the created, manipulated measures of being cool. To be cool or not: the book asks whether it is a conscious choice, or the result of accepting manipulation and artificiality. This novel treats adolescents as the savvy people they are, and is ideal for discussion. Let the young adults lead the conversations. You maybe too ‘so yesterday’! Above all this is a book to be read and talked about for its wit, fun and very appealing central characters.