Review Detail

I love contemporary fiction; it’s one of my favorite genres. There’s a lot of great stuff out there, but one thing I’ve found to be sadly lacking, across the board, is a lack of focus on family dynamics. And that’s one thing that Going Vintage had, and it’s the one thing that pushed this book into the “I like you a lot” friend zone. If you’re looking for a book about a real family, check this out.

The jacket blurb promised a quirky sort of story. Girl swears off technology and tries to emulate her awesome grandmother as a social experiment. Unfortunately, that’s not exactly what I found to be the case. Mallory’s boyfriend cheats on her via the internet, and then she gets it into her head that the reason for all of her relationship issues is the direct result of the 21st century, that were it the ‘60s, none of what happened to her would have happened. Like everything in her grandmother’s time was idyllic and perfect.

Mallory and I are not good friends. She’s a complete drama queen, and her logic is full of holes. I honestly found her to be very annoying, and it wasn’t until the second half of the book—when all the family drama really came to a head—that Going Vintage started to win me over.

I don’t know. I think what Mallory tried to do was admirable, but the thought processes that went into the whole recreating the 1960’s high school experience idea were ridiculous and childish. At the same time, that could also be Lindsey Leavitt’s excellent portrayal of a flawed main character. But as I said, anyway you slice it, Mallory and I are not on good terms. However, she was extremely, extremely realistic. So realistic that I could imagine having a conversation with her—and not getting along. I wasn’t expecting breathtaking realism from Going Vintage, but I got it in spades.

Going back to the family stuff: ouch. Mallory’s family is so realistic that it hurts. It is not a perfect family, and her parents are not token figures that appear but don’t interact. Mallory’s grandmother and sister have issues, too. It’s one big mess, and even though they love each other at the end of the day, there are a lot of issues that exist. The conclusion to the novel didn’t see much of a happily ever after in regard to those issues, either, which I thought added another layer of bittersweet realism to Going Vintage. Most of the time, there isn’t an easy fix to family drama, and I tend to get annoyed when an author pretends there is.

Like Mallory, I went away from this book knowing that everything was going to be okay, but still holding a grudge against some of her family members for acting so…badly. That was very real for me.

Bottom line? Going Vintage is a really good book, but not for the actual vintage part—that was a little lackluster. I like books about families, and Lindsey Leavitt gave me that here. I enjoyed that aspect. The rest was okay.