Makes you think of real life events and wonder how much is true. Interesting to see the impact on family.

I had so enjoyed The Storied Life of A. J. Fickery that I was really looking forward to reading Young Jane Young. Generally, I was not disappointed. But I would never recommend this book to be read on as a digital book, which I will explain later.

I started reading and couldn't figure out how the book got the title. The first section of the book focused on Rachel Grossman, her friends, and her relationship with her daughter Aviva, a congressional intern who has an affair with the Congressman she is working for in Florida. I was quickly caught up in the story line and wanted to know what happened to everyone.

Then came the second section of the story. Set in Maine, the protagonist here is Jane Young. Her daughter Ruby has a prominent part in the story.

There are more sections to the book, each focusing on the point of view of a different character. There were a few times I needed to "suspend my disbelief" and just go with the flow of the story.

I did not read the last section of the book because I was reading on a kindle. The kindle format makes it almost impossible to read the last section as it is a "chose your own" story. I would have loved to have read this several times, but, alas, could not because on a kindle I have no idea where to go when it says things like "go to page 37." I can only imagine that this makes the book evern more entertaining! It certainly is a wonderful twist on the normal novel. I have given the book a 4-star rating because I feel like I missed out on a wonderful ending.

At some point in the future, I will look for this book in my local library and spend some time playing in the last section. At that point, I may very well change my rating to 5 stars.......

I received this book free from the publisher through NetGalley. I thank them for their generosity. In exchange, I was simply asked to write an honest review, and post it. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

I really enjoyed this book. It started off in a typical fashion but I was very surprised by all of the characters. I think that especially in our media inundated lives it is important to remember that there are people and families behind the headlines. I would recommend this book to anyone I know that enjoys contemporary fiction

This novel was so well written. I admit, at first I was thinking, I lived through Monica Lewinsky, do I really need to read fiction on the topic now too? Well, I was wrong. This was such a well written, enjoyable story. I thoroughly enjoyed each character's perspective and felt a different personality come through for each of time. It was nice to see Aviva/Jane grow and develop over the years as well.

In this story told from multiple perspectives, a young intern is caught up in an affair with a much older politician. When the affair becomes public, who becomes a pariah? Well, it's not the politician. What do you do when your life is all but over at 20? Change your name and move out of state, of course. All is going well until Jane/Aviva)decides to run for office. Funny, thought-provoking, fabulous.

Just like The Storied Life of AJ Filkry, this novel grabs you from the first page. Zevin does a wonderful job of weaving five characters lives together through a narrative told through each of these character's perspectives on the events that take place. It is sure to be a long term bestseller.

Aviva Grossman made some mistakes as a young intern that became very public and made her infamous. What can she do with her life now? Zevin explores her life choices through the eyes of several women who are integral to the story at various times in her life. Each woman has a distinct voice and gets their own section of the novel.

This novel is certainly deeper than “chick lit,” but it doesn’t require the reader to invest so far emotionally as some other books. It’s a fairly light read that I happily flew through. Fans of some Jennifer Weiner titles might enjoy this for the flawed and complicated women characters who deal with more than just finding the love of their lives.

Review posted 8/23/17

“I’m not a murderer,” she says. “I’m a slut, and you can’t be acquitted of that.”

Sometimes we need a book to just tell it like it is. To not skirt around the issues, but face them head on. Gabrielle Zevin, the author of The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry, is a pro at this in Young Jane Young. If you like women’s fiction and politics, this is the book for you. It’s fun and funny, but Zevin also takes a good, hard look at the huge gap between the expectations of men and women in professional settings.

Aviva Grossman is a congressional intern in Florida, and she goes into the job the way most people do in their 20s: with gusto and unrealistic expectations. Unfortunately, things don’t go exactly as planned. She has an affair with a congressman and blogs about it. Her blog is anonymous, but when the congressman gets into a car accident (with Aviva in the car), the press finds out who the author really is. After the scandal, the congressman goes back to work and regular life. Aviva, however, is shamed by the media and unable to find a job. Anywhere. She decides the only way to move on is to move to Maine and change her name and, hopefully, her luck. But the past always has a way of showing up again, and when it does, Aviva must decide what to do.

This is not only a fun book, it is very smart women’s fiction. Zevin is witty and funny, and there were several laugh out loud moments for me because of her irreverent humor. The format is unique, alternating points of view between characters, as well as different formats for each section. One is all e-mails. Another is a riff on the choose your own adventure stories. Zevin pulls this off expertly, and the unique formatting added to the quirkiness of the story.

This is a great story, and it almost felt like a good friend telling me about a crazy adventure she had, and I love that. It’s fun, and it’s the perfect book to read after a string of emotionally-heavy novels. That being said, the book does address how much more difficult it is for women in professional settings when they make the same mistakes as men. The congressman keeps his job and his marriage, and Aviva has to fabricate a completely different façade for herself just to have a life. Zevin has written about an important topic and added a large dose of humor, and I loved it!

Aviva Grossman is smart. Aviva Grossman is ambitious, Aviva Grossman makes the dire mistake of being a congressional intern who has an affair with her boss. While this story could have just been a riff on the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal it goes so far beyond that. Not that I didn't find things derivative of that but it is so much more. Aviva Grossman has a spine of steel ‘‘When they came at me, I kept coming,’’ she said. I love that she is sassy and smart and I hope to see more characters like her even if they are in bad positions that they put themselves in.

After reading the description of this novel, I couldn't help but think of Monica Lewinsky's extraordinarily powerful TED Talk. If you haven't heard it, I HIGHLY encourage giving it a listen. Yes, this is an issues book on feminism, politics and slut-shaming. But, the tone and structure made for a highly entertaining and informative read.

The majority of the book is told from the perspective of the women in Aviva's life, which I found refreshing and compelling. I think my favorite was the first, which is narrated by her mother. Rachel's voice sucked me in straightaway. Maybe it is because I am at an age where I am well past Aviva's point of view, and a mother myself. She also has a wonderfully witty and wry sense of humor that sets the general tone for the whole novel. The congressman's wife Embeth is similarly humorous and clever with a more somber, yet equally absorbing, tone. Ruby's perspective (Avivia's daughter) was tough to read - partly because it was in the form of a melodramatic one sided conversation of a 13 year old (with her school-assigned international pen pal) and partly because Zevin created such a full and clear picture of a heartbreakingly vulnerable girl.

In the end, we finally get some perspective from Avivia herself. I appreciate how Zevin doesn't paint her as a completely innocent martyr to gain our sympathy, and tells her side of the story with all it's complexities.

"The rub of the Choose Your Own Adventure stories is that if you don't make a few bad choices, the story will be terribly boring. If you do everything right and you're always good, the story will be very short."

As a kid who was obsessed with Choose Your Own Adventure books, I thought it was a perfect narrative device to illustrate Aviva's inner dialogue as she faced the moral dilemmas that would profoundly affect her life (and those around her). It added that wry sense of humor each of these women possessed. My only complaint with the end was that it went way too quickly. I kept looking down at my place in the book and thinking, "There's no way that there's only 3% left in this book!" I wish Avivia had a little more time to tell her story, and given us a little more of her life in the moments that came after the ending.

This is a powerful story, told with humor and heart that I have come to expect from Gabrielle Zevin.

Young Jane Young tells the story of one set of actions which led to such regrets – a young woman, while working as an intern for a popular politician, embarks on an affair with him. This, in itself, is regrettable as the politician is married to a good, if apparently joyless, woman but the real problem arises when the young woman, Aviva Grossman, sets up a blog where she talks about her life, her job and her relationship. This is a few years after the Monica Lewinsky scandal and in the early days of blogging and it seems to us, with the benefit of hindsight, obvious that the anonymity wouldn’t last. Of course it comes as a shock to Aviva and her family and this book is the story, largely, of what happened next. It is told in four parts – the first three are Jane Young, the woman Aviva turns herself into to escape her infamy, her daughter Ruby – a very modern pre-teen feminist – and Aviva’s mother. The different reactions seem to show how attitudes to women’s sexuality (and their ownership of their own bodies) have changed over the generations. Ruby’s attitudes certainly gave me a lot of hope for the future of women and feminism. All three stories overlap slightly and served to remind us that we are all, it seems, destined to make the same mistakes in child rearing we think our own mothers made. The fourth narrator is Embeth – the politician’s wife. In Aviva/Jane and her mother’s tellings she is a very unsympathetic character: when she meets Ruby she seems warmer and, in her own version of events, she turns out to be much more interesting. I’d quite like to have heard more from her but that would be another story entirely

Zevin’s last book, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry (my review), was my favorite book of 2014, so I had high expectations going into Young Jane Young. And, I did love the first half. Young Jane Young is an “issue” book without feeling too much like an “issue” book. The storyline closely mirrors the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal, which I was fascinated with when it happened. But, Young Jane Young explores the reverberating impact of a public scandal like this on the female cheatee…and how different it is from the impact on the male cheater. It illuminates the gross double standard that exists in today’s society and how that can truly wreck lives. Zevin had me glued through this point.

But, a gimmicky second half sent things sailing downhill. First, the writing style and tone of the story completely changed during the section told from Ruby’s (Aviva’s daughter) perspective (which was written in a one-sided email exchange with her pen pal). I didn’t like that we never heard from the pen pal either. But, what really sent me over the edge was the final section told from Aviva’s perspective that was written as a Choose Your Own Adventure story (yes, you read that correctly). What?!! There was a point to it, but it still didn’t work for me…mainly because I thought I was reading an adult novel, not a kids’ comic book. To be fair, this was clearly mentioned in the book’s blurb, but I must have skimmed right over that part. I imagine Young Jane Young will be a somewhat controversial read, so it would make a great book club selection even though it didn’t work for me.

It's a very interesting premise - in today's internet-driven age, would you change your name and reinvent yourself if you became infamous (and not in a good way)?
Jane Young (aka Aviva Grossman) does so after an unfortunate relationship in a college internship program. The book has some great character development and some laugh out loud moments, but also a fair amount that didn't make sense to me.
The story is told from different points of view: Mother, Aviva/Jane, Ruby, Embeth, and some sections are more successful than others (the choose your own adventure section was one that didn't work for me).
The subject is timely and a good reminder that women are still judged differently than men. I loved the first section, told by the mother, but none of the other sections were as successful for me. Nonetheless...the story is compelling, it's an interesting premise, and the book as a quick and mostly fun read.

A WONDERFUL novel that looks at scandal and the young woman involved from multiple perspectives across multiple time frames. Yes you might think you know the Monica Lewinsky story but what would it be like these days, with social media and internet shaming? Well, Jane Young, born Aviva Goldman, is that innocent overly impressed with her older more powerful boss. How the impact lingers over the years, not only for her but also her mother, her daughter, the wife of the Congressman is the basis for this book. I really enjoyed this. It's a quick smart read that has a lot to say about women. We're not always kind to or understanding of each other but Zevin hopefully will make some think about it. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. I'd recommend this one to younger readers with the hope they'll get the important takeaways.

I loved Gabrielle Zevin's previous book, The Storied Life of AJ Fikry, so I was thrilled when I received an ARC of her new book from Netgalley and Algonquin Books.

This book feels so timely to me -- In a world where information about anyone is at our fingertips at a moment's notice, what happens when something we want to forget won't be forgotten by the internet.
After a political sex scandal, the Congressman goes on with his life, while Aviva-his intern, is shamed mercilessly. This story follows her path trying to move on with her life, when, thanks to a quick Google search, her past is always there with her. Pieces of the story are also told through the eyes of other women who end up affected by the scandal -Her mother, The Congressman's wife, and most delightfully, Aviva's daughter.
Zevin's characters are smart and nuanced, and she brings a lot of heart and wit to this story. I recommend it for anyone with an interest in politics (I'm a lover of The West Wing, myself), or anyone who has worried over posting something on the internet.

Take one impressionable, young, and ambitious woman interested in politics, and add one much older, handsome and dynamic (but married) Congressman and you'll have a possibly explosive mixture. Unfortunately, when the blast comes, often the fallout hits the young woman (and her family) far harder than it does the public official. In Gabrielle Zevin's latest novel, she looks at the dilemmas and hurdles that being in the wake of such scandals pose from various different sides of the story, none of which includes the elected official himself. These include Rachel, the mother Aviva Grossman who had the affair with the Congressman; Jane Young the woman in Maine who may or may not have once been Aviva; Ruby, Jane's daughter, and; Embeth, the wife of the cheating Congressman.

The more I think about this book, the more I realize how ingeniously Zevin constructed it. First, each section has a different narrating character, telling one part of the story from their perspective. Like other books that use this mechanic, the sum of all these sections brings us the full story. What is different in this book is that each character tells their story in a very different way. For example, Ruby tells her story through her emails to her pen pal. Later, Jane tells her own story in a retrospective voice, which she frames as if it is one of those R. L. Stine "Goosebumps" create-your-own-adventure books. (They're the ones where at a certain part of the story the reader has to decide between one of two options on how to proceed, and with that choice moves to the particular relevant next page. The idea was that you could read them repeatedly, making different choices each time, and thereby get a different story each time.) The other sections are the usual types of narratives, but these two were exceptional in their distinctive construction. What Zevin achieves with all of this is to give each of her characters a very singular voice.

Much like with Zevin's previous novel (The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry), readers will find this book filled with heavy doses of humor, both light and wryly dry. What surprised me somewhat was how authentically Jewish these characters all were. I understand that her father is Jewish, and I'm sure she drew much from his female family members for these portraits. Even so, that's not always a terribly accurate research source, and yet I couldn't find anything that sounded even a little out of place here, and since inaccuracies regarding anything Jewish is a pet peeve of mine, Brava to Zevin for that. However, it isn't all fun and games particularly because the central event here is a sex scandal, the ramifications of which can be extremely serious. It seems that Zevin was thinking about a type of smaller-scale Monica Lewinsky situation when she wrote this, and tried to imagine how difficult it would be to rebuild a life after having become so notorious. Deeper still, with this book Zevin is essentially exploring the ramifications of the choices we make, both good and bad. This is why the "Goosebumps" section of this book is so effective - because it allows us to look at this on a lighter plane, without diminishing the lesson in the process.

I'll end by saying that I felt that Zevin's conclusion of this book was very nearly masterful, but not quite. In general, I often prefer books that make readers think about them afterwards and with this book, Zevin doesn't give away too much regarding the future of these characters after the last page. However, in this case, though, I'm of two minds regarding the biggest question (of which I can't say more, as that would be a huge spoiler). On the one hand, I really wanted to know the answer, but on the other hand, I'm not sure that Zevin would have given me the outcome I would have preferred. More importantly, I can't really tell if including either result might have ruined the book for me or not, although I'm positive she could have pulled off either conclusion. I admit that this frustrated me just enough to knock off half a star, so despite my overall enjoyment of this novel, I can only give it four and a half stars (which is still a very good rating, just half a star less than I gave Fikry).

After reading "The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry" and devouring it, I was very much looking forward to this book. I received as an ARC through Netgalley and am so glad I had it in ebook form. As with "Life", I devoured this. It hooked me from the very beginning and kept me interested till the end. I find that Zevin's biggest draw is always her characterization. Jane was an intriguing character and likeable, flaws and all. Her daughter was also an interesting point of view to see the story through. You would think with a plot line as such, that you may be bored. However, with the humanity of the characters and the suspense of some of the plot pieces, you aren't. Great read!

I loved Zevin's last book, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, so I was really excited to read this one, and it did not disappoint. Jane Young is a woman who has run away from her past - changed her name, moved across the country, and left her entire life behind her. When she was twenty, she was a congressional intern in Florida, who had an affair with a married congressman. The affair was discovered and Jane, then named Aviva, took the brunt of the public criticism. Unable to get a job, make friends, date, or even go out in public without the scandal impacting her, Aviva changes her name and moves to Portland, Maine. There she becomes a wedding planner and raises a daughter, Ruby. Years later, Ruby finds out the truth about her mother's past, and Jane has to confront everything she left behind.

This story is told from the perspective of Jane/Aviva, Ruby, Ruby's grandmother, and the wife of the Congressman. I like the way the author tells the story in bits and pieces as you read about each character's life. All of the women are smart, funny, and tenacious, and determined to get what they want out of life, even as they get hit with unexpected obstacles. This book asks the question - how far have we really come in our society with regards to expectations of women? It's a fun book that doesn't so much tackle the issue as present it for us to think about. The women in this story are people you would like to know in real life.

Gabrielle Zevin is amazing. Every book of hers is so different, but she still manages to knock me off my feet each time. I loved the characters and how their lives tangled together.