Psych Major Syndrome

I've known Alicia for a long time - almost eight years now. Yet, amazingly, I had never read anything of hers (even though she's been published twice in Girl's Life - I never got around to reading those, which was plain-ass inconsiderate, now that I think about it. Sorry, Alicia).

This week, promo copies of her first book, Psych Major Syndrome, arrived in a neat cardboard box. She gave one to me, and I decided to dive into it with ferocity. It was worth it - it's a totally charming book, written with good flow. Also, it's hard to write honestly and not seem pretentious about it, and yet she does it with ease. This book is Alicia - and perhaps that's what is so refreshing about it.
For instance - I read the entire Twilight series recently. I give Stephanie Meyer credit for thinking up a good story, with the ensuing plot twists, and interesting characters. (I won't credit her for her writing style, but I won't go into that now.) But the characters are just that - interesting. With the exception of Jacob, I didn't find any of the characters particularly amazing, or relatable. For the most part, the vampire characters don't even belong to this age, and the one other major character who does, Bella, doesn't quite ring true to me.

But it's different in Psych Major Syndrome, and not nessacarily because I'm immediately familiar with most of the people that the characters were based on. To me, if a book like this is going to work, and be relatable, then its characters have to have faults, simply because no-one is perfect. Quite a few of Twilight's characters are above having faults, and that also annoys me endlessly. So, when Leigh Nolan announces that she brought her boyfriend Andrew a San Francisco snow globe as a "sex present" and breaks it at the exact wrong moment, or totally throws up a BLT while on a roadtrip with the guy she's secretly in love with, it makes me smile. That would never happen to Bella Swann, and if it did, it would be twisted into something dark and poignant. In this book, it's just embarrassing. And that's the way life is. I love it.

Alicia Thompson, ladies and gentlemen.