Going Vintage

Going Vintage is a refreshing read. It is narrated by Mallory, who finds out that her boyfriend has been cheating on her with an online girlfriend. Assuming modernization to be the cause when she comes across her grandmother’s teenage things, she vows to go vintage till she crosses out the items on her grandmother’s junior high to-do list. This 60s rewind now includes ditching her phone, internet and other modern conveniences which were not available in the 60s.

As far as chick literature goes, this is a predictable read, but the characters are well thought-out and written. The relationship between Mallory and her sister is so great that it makes me wish for a sister like her. Mallory herself is a perfect well-written 16 year old - she is neither popular nor the loser - god knows there have been too many books with the main protagonist as either end of the spectrum.

This book would be a perfect beach read. For me, it was quite uplifting during a book chain of intense reads.

I don’t normally use this word to describe books, but here it is: cute. This book is cute, and it’s the best word I can come up with for this book. It’s not going to go on a “this-is-my-favorite-book-ever-list”, but it will go on my “read in case of bad day list”. It’ that kind of book.

Mallory can be an incredibly dramatic character at times, but she’s the type of character who knows how dramatic she’s being. This makes her behavior, like the obsession with the list, endearing and outlandish in a fun way instead of whiny and ridiculous. It’s hidden behind a lot of fun, but Mallory really does learn a lot through the course of the story. Even as she realizes the golden moral we all know the story will get to eventually, that the list won’t solve all her problems and being a teenager is hard whether in 1962 or 2012, she grows in many more subtle ways as well.

One of the things I liked most about this book is how none of the characters come across as being one dimensional. Even Jeremy, Mallory’s ex-boyfriend, doesn’t come across as a villain. He’s definitely a jerk at times(cheating with a girl online tends to get you stuck with that label), but he realizes his mistakes and all in all, acts like a believable human being. I absolutely loved Gina, Mallory’s younger sister. Mallory has such a great relationship with her sister, even through their arguments, and it’s nice to see a sibling relationship presented so positively. They’re great friends and are there for each other(for the most part). \

I love the idea of lists that runs throughout this book. I”m a list-maker too, so I always appreciate it when they play a feature in a story. Of course, the grand The List of 1962 in the focus of the story, but Mallory makes lists constantly, and it seems like there’s one almost every chapter. I think, more than anything, is what really gave me insight into Mallory’s character. At first, she doesn’t have a lot of self-identity outside of Jeremy, so the lists were a way for me to connect with her as she grew as a character and, as the cliche goes, found herself.


Final Impression: Going Vintage was cute, fun, and a little quirky. Even though Mallory could be dramatic at times, she was charming as were most of the supporting characters. There’s a lot of fun in this book, but there’s a pretty good theme running underneath it all. It’s the perfect book to read as a pick-me-up type of read. 4/5 stars.

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.