Review: The Fragile Ordinary by Samantha Young

The Fragile Ordinary by Samantha Young
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss+ and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.  This releases on June 26th, 2018.

I enjoyed this but I didn’t love it like I usually love Sam’s books. I think this is because I had a hard time warming up to Comet, she was very unlikable in the beginning. As I write this review, I think my main problem with Comet is she was probably too realistic. She grated on my nerves at times, I wanted to comfort her when her parents wouldn’t, and I wanted to parent her like I do my own kids when she made a mistake. It is rare that you get a realistic character like Comet, and I think you expect someone a little more fictional. She grew as a character and she grew on me. Still a good read. If you like coming of age contemporaries, with a lot of teenage angst, this is the book for you.

Comet has absentee parents. They exist, they provide shelter, food, and the basic necessities for her but there is no love or companionship from them. They haven’t provided a safe, loving home for her which has stunted her social skills. They treat her like she is invisible so that is how she prefers to interact with society. She would rather read and exist in the world her books create for her than in the real world. I very much can relate to wanting to escape reality for the world that books create; it is very much why I love to read. She has 2 close friends, but bails on them constantly if there is a social situation involved. She prefers invisibility and anonymity to attention of any sort. The relationships with her friends are rocky at best as there is push and pull throughout the book. I do like that both the friends and Comet weren’t blameless in the troubles in their friendship and that those issues were addressed. Comet owned up to her part in the demise of their friendship and they actually worked on their issues. I like that by the end of the book, she was able to own up to the mistakes she made, but also call out those around her that had done things wrong. Comet was able to stand on her own two feet and speak up for herself. She finds her confidence and herself.

Tobias is the handsome new boy at school. He’s American, and he hangs around the troublemakers at school. He is in all of Comet’s upper level classes, but he doesn’t take school seriously and he’s very disrespectful to his teachers. Comet immediately thinks he’s a bad guy, but when they are paired on a project she gets to know him a bit better. Comet learns why Tobias is disgruntled and he is nothing like what she thought. She also learns that Tobias’ cousin Stevie, who she thinks is nothing but a thug, isn’t actually a bad guy he just doesn’t always make great decisions or hang with the best crowd. Through Tobias, Comet learns that the world is not the same a novel and that hiding isn’t doing her any favors. With his help Comet opens her eyes to the world and sees things in a different light. Tobias after spending some time with Comet, realizes that he actually likes school and misses the person he was before moving to Scotland and begins to find a balance between his old life and his new one.

Comet has all of these great ambitions but no plan to get there. I feel like that is completely acceptable for a teenager, and with parents like hers she has no one to guide her. It takes quite a while for her teacher to point out that if she wants to be a writer and go to university for that someone will actually want to read her writing and it will take more than just good grades to get in. I found her constant lying to her friends and judgment of everyone very irritating in the first half of the book. This is where the coming of age and character growth comes in. This is addressed well and she does learn from her actions. She is extremely anti-social, yet she judges everyone on what she thinks she knows and what she sees. She would rather read than go out with friends (which I can totally relate to), yet she holds everyone to fairy tale prince standards. She dresses with a very unique fashion sense (contradictory to her desire to be invisible), yet judges everyone on their own choice of clothing. She never once takes a chance to really get to know people until about halfway through the book when Tobias finally calls her out on it. This is where her character really starts to grow. She begins to realize that she can’t lie to her friends all the time or she will lose them, she can’t judge the proverbial book by its cover, and if she really wants to do something with her writing she can’t hide and just go to school and read in her room all the time.


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