Thank you Netgalley for my review copy for an impartial review.
I wasn't particularly excited about reading this but really got into it. It flowed very well and the characters were really down to earth and believable. I loved the way the second half of the book was written at a fast pace with that adventure choice options that reminded me of my childhood books. I hope there is a sequel because id love to know what happens next.

This was a good fun read, a perceptive and insightful exploration of the lives of four women who are all affected by the rather topical ramifications of what happens when a young intern, Aviva, is seduced by her older married boss. Sound familiar? Well of course, there are revelations every day about this sort of affair and so there’s nothing particularly original about the plot. But it’s all told with verve and style, and a great deal of acute observation about mothers and daughters, love and loss, women and societal expectations. Entertaining, and a book I very much enjoyed.

A surprisingly punchy and powerful take on the phenomenon that is slut shaming, with parallels to the Lewinsky/Clinton scandal. The titular Jane Young is a single mother, living in Maine with her beloved daughter Ruby, working as a wedding planner. Or is she? In fact, she's Aviva Grossman of South Florida, who moved there and changed her name after becoming infamous for having an affair with a married US congressman.
Told from multiple female points of view, this is a hugely entertaining novel. Aviva's mother provides a sarcastic, dry take on events, Ruby gives a more hysterical 13-year old one, via letters to her penpal. The congressman's wife Embeth, provides a more thoughtful, almost elegiac tone, and Aviva/Jane provides the heart and soul of the narrative, as she tries to protect her daughter from the web of lies she has spun around her to enable them to live this new life, free from reproach and judgment.
This would make a great fictional companion to Jon Ronson's excellent "So You've Been Publicly Shamed", as it peeks behind the curtain of the infamous and asks what happens next. Zevin's prose is engaging, pacy and fun, and has you falling in love with these vivid lovable characters. A highly entertaining read that will have you rooting for its heroine until the very last page.

Young Jane Young takes on a very hard task indeed: attempting to shine a light on the reality of the modern scarlet letters. Being alive in the Internet era ensures that complete privacy is definitely a dream, and anything happened in the past is destined to be eternally present. Aviva, a young, ambitious yet naive Congressional intern, has her life figured out: she'll study subjects that give her an edge on the competition, undertake a serious, high-profile internship to get all the experience she needs to become a successful politician herself. What she didn't count on was making a mistake. A stupid, life-changing mistake that tarnishes her name and quickly changes her from promise to punchline. Dubbed the "Monica Lewinsky of Florida", Aviva quickly becomes job-less, friend-less and hope-less. Everyone has heard of her, and even those who haven't will Google her and find out all there is to know about her: she had an affair with her boss.

"I'm not a murderer", she says. "I'm a slut, and you can't be acquitted of that."

Told in alternating points view, Young Jane Young tells Aviva's story through the eyes of all the women actors. Thoughtful and funny, sad and hopeful, these wonderful characters shows us the complexities of being a modern woman, in a society where our freedoms are many and apparent, but our chains just as many and hidden away. While none of their lives turn out quite like they expected, all these wonderful, complicated, resilient women manage to take what they have and turn in into something great.

Bittersweet and masterfully narrated, this book is not to be missed. A must-read in today's ever connected, fast moving world, where women's place in society has never been more safe and yet so precarious.

This is the story of Aviva Grossman, who falls in love with a congressman, who she is acting as an intern for. The story is told is several different characters, and is somewhat confusing. What makes it even more difficult is the After a scandal, Aviva finds herself pregnant, and reviled by the world at large. She moves away, and starts her own business, arranging events.idea of using the "choose your own adventure" style, whilst making the choice for you.
The main difficulty with this novel is that it does not have a proper ending, which I found disappointing. I wanted to know if she was elected as the local Mayor, and if her family relationships resolved themselves.
Many thaks to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this.

You MUST read «Young Jane Young» because:

1 – DIFFERENT POINTS OF VIEW was a great accent of this story. In the beginning we follow Aviva’s mother many years after the events took place and see how they influenced her life. Later on we read from Ruby’s perspective (one of my favourite PoVs!), Aviva’s daughter as she writes these long and detailed e-mails to her PenPal. And finally by the end of the book we actually get to experience Aviva’s story and each chapter has a variety of options to follow.

2 – VERSATILE CHARACTERS. Gabrielle Zevin created amazing and well-developed personalities. I felt like each character, even the ones with the least appearances, contributed to the overall stories. Nothing felt wasted or over-written. Every dialog, every scene, every personality trait were thought through and perfectly executed.

3 – CHARACTER-DRIVEN STORY. This is a result of the previous point, but when the main events of the plot are known to us from the very beginning and even from the blurb, it is of utmost importance to have great characters that will captivate the reader to continue turning the pages.

4 – THE IMPORTANCE OF MEDIA SLUT-SHAMING AND HOW TO LIVE AFTER IT. The scandal is important, it draws attention – unwanted attention. But what are you supposed to do afterwards? There are still prejudiced and judgmental people, but life goes on. Are you supposed to close yourself up and refuse to live your life?

A 22-year-old congressional intern, Aviva Grossman, has an affair with her much older, married, congressman and when the scandal breaks she is slut shamed and made a state-wide joke, ruining all her career prospects, as she is blamed for the whole affair. When she realises she has no future in Florida she leaves her family and moves to Maine to start a new life, a new career as a wedding planner under a new name, Jane Young. As Jane she builds a business, raises a daughter and eventually decides to run for local politics but such a huge secret could not be kept forever and Jane has to face up to a past she has tried so desperately to escape and to discover whether the hostility she faced over a decade ago is still present.
The political landscape of the story highlights the double standards applied to men and women – when Aviva falls she is the hussy who seduced the congressman, while his wife is considered to have driven him to adultery with her coldness. The much-loved congressman faces no blame for being a married man cheating on his wife with a girl half his age, over whom he possesses a considerable amount of power. The power imbalance is disregarded by everyone judging the situation. This is an interesting look at gender politics but also at a woman’s ability to rise above the worst period of her life, to create something good.
The story is told from multiple viewpoints – all the women involved. Aviva/Jane, of course, but also her mother Rachel, the congressman’s wife, and her daughter Ruby. The women of the story finally get a voice but due to the different ages of the women you see the events from different generational perspectives.
This is an entertaining read, with strong female characters who speak their minds. I would certainly recommend this.

Read in a day. Reminded me of Where'd You Go Bernadette (one of my favourite books in a very long time) in its quirky style and strong female characters. Absolutely loved it. So many brilliant lines. I loved the fact the doctor was frightened of personal pronouns and as for Franny's braids...

What a refreshingly modern novel! It's one of those rare finds that I've come to appreciate: light, without insulting my intelligence, witty, and most importantly with very charming characters.

I now want to read more by Zevin, as this was delightful!

RECOMMENDED

I've loved Zevin's other books but this one really didn't do anything for me - I liked the premise of the book but the voices it was told in annoyed me. It read like simple YA but the characters were too old or too young for this genre. Mixed bag but ultimately a miss

Young Jane Young is a rather wonderful book. I raced through it in a couple of sittings and adored Zevin’s fast-paced, witty and observant narrative.

The main event of the novel – Aviva’s affair with an older Congressman – is seen from three different perspectives: Aviva’s mother, Rachel, Aviva and Ruby, Aviva’s daughter. This tri-generational structure gives the book real depth as each section explores the viewpoint of its narrator while also illustrating the subtle social shifts in the judgement and treatment of women deemed to have done wrong.

All three women are tremendously likeable – Rachel the acerbic, witty Jewish mother, Aviva/Jane the strong single mother and Ruby the precocious girl who is wise beyond her years. The narrative structure reflects their ages and mindsets, and Zevin beautiful captures their inherent commonalities and unique differences.

Young Jane Young has been described as a political scandal told from a woman’s point of view. It certainly does that. The consequences of the affair for Aviva are far more significant and lengthy than those of the Congressman, the older, wiser and married one who should have known better. Comparisons to the Scarlet Letter and Monic Lewinsky are made throughout and there are obvious parallels with both; the Puritan view of female sexuality is given succour in a digital age where scandals can be repeated hourly on newsfeeds hungry for scandal.

In fact, the internet and digital communications play a huge role in this book. They help Aviva’s career in the first instance – she is the only intern capable of creating a blog and carrying out a Google search – and then ruin it by ensuring her online diary and dalliances in the press are digitally preserved forever more. In one poignant line, Aviva claims “the discovery of your shame is one click away” and that is heartbreakingly true for women who are caught up in anything that might tarnish their reputations. I would have said “people” in that line but online shame is certainly something that is assigned to women in the 21st century – whether it be to archive scandals, to share revenge porn or slut shame, men seem to escape the gaze of Google while women continue to be judged by it.

Young Jane Young is ultimately a book about choice, about defining life on your own terms. The poor and naive choices of Aviva’s youth follow her throughout her adulthood until she faces them head on. The final section is Jane’s voice and uses the structure of a ‘Choose Your Own Adventure Book’. Choices are laid out in front of Jane and clearly show where she make dubious decisions or willfully ignores the moral path. In eventually refusing to be ashamed of her past, Jane embraces her choices and acknowledges that even the bad ones made her who she is.

The fact that Young Jane Young ends with the line “you choose” sums up the message of this life-affirming and hilarious book.

Young Jane Young is a very warm and witty novel but don’t let its apparently light-hearted offerings fool you. The book is deep and provides a cutting indictment of the inequalities of the sexes when it comes to sex, scandal and reputation.

I didn't initially love this book, mostly because I found Rachel's narrative voice rather irritating, but I'm so glad I stuck with it, as the other narrators were more enjoyable, and having read Rachel's perspective first made it all the more interesting.

I had heard Young Jane Young as a fictional Monica Lewinski, but it's much more than that. Zevin deals with family, identity, shame, politics and relationships, and weaves all these themes together through the perspectives of 4 contrasting women. Her writing is great - well paced, authentic and she conveys the different perspectives really effectively so that our sympathies shift throughout the novel. I think it'd be a great book group read, and I look forward to discussing it with friends.

Aviva Grossman is “Florida’s answer to Monica Lewinsky”. A young Jewish intern in a congressman's office, she soon finds herself caught up in an affair with the older and married man. When the affair makes it into the regional media, Congressman Levin experiences some negative press, a few tut tuts, and then goes on to enjoy a lifetime in office. His marriage survives the scandal.

Aviva, on the other hand, has her life completely ruined. Though a skilled and qualified poli-sci graduate, no one will hire her. No one wants to date her. How dare she go after a married man, they say. Who wants to hire someone so morally challenged? Her only option is to start over somewhere completely new.

The story is obviously heavily-inspired by the famous Lewinsky scandal. Zevin exposes the misogyny and double standards that exist in politics, sex scandals, and in many areas of life. It's a fictional story, but it is hard not to notice the very real parallels - how Bill Clinton's marriage and career survived, how Lewinsky was torn apart by the media, and how even in the last election, almost twenty years after the scandal, jokes about Hillary not "blowing it" and how the last Clinton presidency "left a bad taste in [Lewinsky's] mouth" were extremely popular.

Aviva is, in many ways, Monica Lewinsky reimagined, not as a sexy seductress, but as a foolish young woman dazzled by a powerful older man. She is reimagined as someone's daughter, an ambitious student with a love of politics and, later, as a mother of a young girl herself.

It's a powerful feminist story. What I liked perhaps most of all was that all the women in this story are deeply flawed and make mistakes. The book is split between the perspectives of Aviva, her mother - Rachel, her daughter - Ruby, and Embeth - the congressman's wife. I really loved that the author chose to do this. The true heart of feminism is acknowledging the different experiences of different women, and the book's message was so much stronger with the inclusion of all these different perspectives.

There are so many great girl power quotes too, but I think it's best for the reader to discover them while reading. In short, it's just such a smart, warm and wonderful read, and an absolutely fantastic takedown of slut-shaming. I would recommend this for women of all ages.

Young Jane Young follows three generation of women, plus the wife of a congressman.
Firstly, Aviva Grossman, an ambitious political intern, has affair with her boss, who is a popular congressman. She also keeps a blog about it.
The World knows about it and she becomes a late-night talk show punchline. To escape from all this mess, She changes her identity has Young Jane and moves to Maine.
Secondly, Rachel, who is a sixty-year old mother of Avia. She is a protective mother and always looks for the happiness of her daughter. She was divorced recently. She is looking for a companion so that she does not want to spend her rest of the life alone.
Thirdly, Ruby Jane, daughter of Aviva/Jane Young. She is thirteen years old who shares her life stories with a pen pal from Indonesia. She finds out about the past of her mother and must decide whether she can respect her.
The story touches each of their lives, struggles and shows how they handle the situations. The novel strikes the important moral/ethics of the society. It shows how hypocrite our society is, how it is easy to character assassinate women and slut-shame them without even thinking that they are also the human being and they also have feelings.
This novel is a must read. It is a mirror to people's hypocrisy. There is no ethics or moral code for men but there is always one for women.
It brilliantly depicts the ability of the woman(Aviva Grossman) to face the situations confidently, without bothering about all the blames thrown at her.
This book reminds me of a quote of the Dale Carnegie:
"Even God does not propose to judge a man till his last days, why should you and I? "

I think this one of the "UH-MAY-ZING" books I have read this year.

I was positutely ecstatic when I found out that Gabrielle Zevin was releasing a brand new fiction novel after The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry, which had quickly become a favorite of mine earlier this year. And similar to the aforementioned, Young Jane Young had me enamored from the first page, which I've come to realize is the author's specialty. Even though the setting is so different from her previous work, the characterizations feel so familiar. Zevin has a special knack for breathing life into her characters, making them flawed yet still likeable as hell.

“Once upon a time, I was easily touched and easily flapped.”
“What happened?” she said.
“I grew up,” I said.

Now I know that I can always count on the author for getting me swept up into her works from page one. It took absolutely zero effort for me to get familiarized within the pages of this book. It felt truly effortless, in particular, because of the combination of the many Jewish aspects and Yiddish phrases (farkakte, oy vey iz mir, alte cocker) that won over my heart in a beat.

Full review can be found on my Blog: https://bookspoils.wordpress.com/2017/07/13/review-young-jane-young-by-gabrielle-zevin/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2057667841