Earth Girl

Title: Earth Girl

Author: Janet Edwards

Number of pages: 358

Started: 3 August 2012

Finished: 15 August 2012

Opening words:

[To follow – I can’t find the book at the moment!]

Plot summary:

Jarra is stuck on Earth while the rest of humanity portals around the universe. But can she prove to the norms that she's more than just an Earth Girl? 2788. Only the handicapped live on Earth. While everyone else portals between worlds, 18-year-old Jarra is among the one in a thousand people born with an immune system that cannot survive on other planets. Sent to Earth at birth to save her life, she has been abandoned by her parents. She can't travel to other worlds, but she can watch their vids, and she knows all the jokes they make. She's an 'ape', a 'throwback', but this is one ape girl who won't give in. Jarra invents a fake background for herself - as a normal child of Military parents - and joins a class of norms that is on Earth to excavate the ruins of the old cities. When an ancient skyscraper collapses, burying another research team, Jarra's role in their rescue puts her in the spotlight. No hiding at back of class now. To make life more complicated, she finds herself falling in love with one of her classmates - a norm from another planet. Somehow, she has to keep the deception going.

What I thought:

This book is aimed at young adults – a genre that holds some appeal for me, but I often find that the books don’t live up to expectations.  Sci-fi is also not something tht I walys enjoy, but I thought I’d give this book a go.

As it turned out, I rather enjoyed the book.  I struggled slightly with getting used to the style to begin – for some unknown reason I felt as though the characters were speaking with American accents at the beginning.  But I soon got over such quibbles – and found their English accents.

I thought the plot was pretty good and can see why it would appeal to teenagers – there were various themes such as acceptance and challenging people’s views and acting confident even if we don’t feel it.  I thought these were well handled and that it worked well as a book.

I did think the author could have been more adventurous in how technology worked and people interacted, but maybe that doesn’t really matter.  A decent read.