Book Review: Trinkets by Kirsten Smith

Trinkets by Kirsten Smith

Rating: ★★☆☆☆
Links: Amazon • TBD • Goodreads
Publication Date: March 12, 2013
Source: Borrowed

Sixteen-year-old Moe’s Shoplifters Anonymous meetings are usually punctuated by the snores of an old man and the whining of the world’s unhappiest housewife. Until the day that Tabitha Foster and Elodie Shaw walk in. Tabitha has just about everything she wants: money, friends, popularity, a hot boyfriend who worships her…and clearly a yen for stealing. So does Elodie, who, despite her goodie-two-shoes attitude pretty much has “klepto” written across her forehead in indelible marker. But both of them are nothing compared to Moe, a bad girl with an even worse reputation.

Tabitha, Elodie, and Moe: a beauty queen, a wallflower, and a burnout-a more unlikely trio high school has rarely seen. And yet, when Tabitha challenges them to a steal-off, so begins a strange alliance linked by the thrill of stealing and the reasons that spawn it.

Hollywood screenwriter Kirsten Smith tells this story from multiple perspectives with humor and warmth as three very different girls who are supposed to be learning the steps to recovery end up learning the rules of friendship.

Before I get into this review, I want to say one thing: Trinkets is not my kind of book. It’s not the kind of thing I’d willingly buy if I saw it in a bookstore and it’s not the kind of thing I’d really ever think I’d check out from the library, either. But because of the Netflix show, my best friend asked me if I’d read it, and of course my answer was no. Shortly after, I saw the audiobook on Overdrive, and since it’s only four hours long, I figured… why not.

Why not is because it’s not my kind of book.

And this isn’t like a one-star, worst thing I’ve ever read kind of review. At least I finished it, which is more than I can say for many other books I’ve started this week. It’s just that all of the girls have the exact same voice and they’re all terrible.

(breaking a sentence up
into a bunch of lines
so that it’s technically
written in verse
doesn’t mean that character’s voice
is distinct from everyone else’s)

Because, yes, I really would like to spend my work day listening to the story of three bored teenage girls who just want to gossip about shoplifting and sex. That’s what this book is about. Shoplifting and sex. There are, of course, a few other themes thrown in and then almost immediately discarded without any adequate resolution, like an abusive relationship, but overall, it’s about sex and shoplifting.

In fact, it’s so much about sex that there are frequent penis jokes throughout! One high school boy has a penis as big as a horse! Amazing! An actor gets an erection on stage and just keeps acting, my goodness, like it’s his job or something!!! There are also period jokes, because it’s so funny to laugh at women for their natural bodily functions! SHE NEEDED A TAMPON AT A DANCE, GUYS, HILARIOUS. LET’S ALL LAUGH AT HER.

I mean, somehow the book managed to be both very boring and have me irrationally hate every character at the same time. But, the thing is, it’s an easy book. It requires exactly zero thought or effort to read. If you just want to zone out and stare at a page or listen to an audiobook without making any mental effort whatsoever, this is your book. If you’re looking for the most unsatisfying ending possible, go for it. If you’re looking for something more than that, I have reviewed approximately four hundred or so books that are better than this.

I hope a lot of things changed with the Netflix adaptation, but I will not be watching it.

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