The Oracle of Dating by Allison van Diepen
- Reading level: Young Adult
- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Harlequin; Original edition (May 1, 2010)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0373210094
- ISBN-13: 978-0373210091
* How to flirt
* If that cute guy you're crushing on likes you, too
* Whether your new romance will last through lunch period
* And much more
What she won't tell you? Who she is.
No one at Kayla's school knows she's the famous Oracle of Dating— the anonymous queen of dating advice. She doesn't even have a boyfriend. Two relationship disasters were enough to make Kayla focus on everyone else's love life.
But then her advice backfires on her own best friend. And Kayla starts to seriously obsess about Jared Stewart—the very cute, very mysterious new guy in school. Suddenly, the teen queen of advice needs her own oracle of dating—and she knows just where to find one….
The Oracle of Dating is an adorable young adult novel! It has a set of great characters, an interesting storyline, and some really cool dating advices! It's better than I'd expected!
Kayla is an ordinary girl who has had two disastrous relationships before. She cleverly uses her knowledge about love relationships to create a website specialized to help teens in their love life. She is the oh-so-famous Oracle of Dating, and no one even knows it. She has a serious crush on fellow art class classmate, Jared, but is unsure about how he feels for her.
Her best friend Viv is an Indian girl whose her parents will only let her date an Indian boy. The problem is, she is in love with a guy with white skin, and she doesn't know what to do. And so, she consults The Oracle of Dating. Kayla, being so excited about her friend's feelings, urges her to follow her heart. And so Viv does. When Viv's parents know about this, they decides to ground her for 6 weeks and Kayla starts to blame herself for this.
Kayla, being a sister, is very protective of her older sister Tracey, who has been hurt a lot of times in love relationships. Kayla also gives advices to her sister and I can see that she really cares about Tracey. She can be pejorative sometimes, especially when it comes to love relationships.
"I don't get it. Why are many people drawn to someone who's hurt them? Maybe it's an ego thing- behing hurt sucks, and you think you can erase that hurt by going back to the person who caused it. Then it will be like it never happened in the first place. Only problem is that it did happen."
I love to see how Kayla's character grows as she learns about the things in life. I also enjoyed the presence of Jared because he sounds so amazing and is just the perfect match for Kayla. He is not a pushy or possessive guy, but acts just nice - like a friend, with a liking and closeness that is not overboard. They are such a sweet couple! :)
Through this book, I can see that the author does have a great sense of humour. I laughed when I read this book because the descriptions of the scenes and the character's inner thoughts are quite hilarious sometimes. As most young adult novels, this book has no lacking of popular but mean characters.
Overall, this was a fun, absorbing and out of the ordinary book. I'm now patiently waiting for the sequel, The Oracle Rebounds! I certainly won't miss it!
Rating:
I'd love to thank Lisa from Harlequin Teen CA for sending me a paperback copy of The Oracle of Dating for this review! Thank you so much, Lisa!
Allison van Diepen is a teacher in Ottawa, Canada. She is the author of Street Pharm, Snitch, and Raven, all published by Simon Pulse. You can visit her website to know more about her.
Buy The Oracle of Dating at
Amazon / The Book Depository / Harlequin Teen
