Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier Blog Tour

 As I've got older my reading tastes have changed, evolved, perhaps even matured a little.

I've branched out, tried different genres, various authors (rather than sticking to the ones I know and love) and this has definitely been a good thing.

One book that has stuck out for me this year is Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier and I was lucky enough to be given the chance to join the blog tour for this quirky and unexpected novel. Keep reading for just a few of my thoughts on this story.

Eighteen years old, pregnant, and working as a pizza delivery girl in suburban Los Angeles, our charmingly dysfunctional heroine is deeply lost and in complete denial about it all. She's grieving the death of her father (who she has more in common with than she'd like to admit), avoiding her supportive mom and loving boyfriend, and flagrantly ignoring her future.

Her world is further upended when she becomes obsessed with Jenny, a stay-at-home mother new to the neighborhood, who comes to depend on weekly deliveries of pickled covered pizzas for her son's happiness. As one woman looks toward motherhood and the other towards middle age, the relationship between the two begins to blur in strange, complicated, and ultimately heartbreaking ways.

The premise

Pizza Girl on the surface is a tale about an eighteen year old pregnant girl, who is still dealing with the loss of her father, and she's trying her best to simply get through each day.

Right from the beginning you can tell that she is struggling, but she's also a tough cookie.

Not willing to let people see her softer, my vulnerable side.

Pickles on pizza

Fairly early on Pizza Girl meets Jenny, a stay-at-home mother, who is desperate to please her young son, orders pizza with pickles. Our young protagonist quickly develops a somewhat unhealthy obsession with Jenny, worrying when she fails to order the pizza - as she's been ordering the same day and time every week.

As her infatuation grows you learn that this isn't her only struggle.

Living with her mum and her boyfriend, she spends nights down in her father's shed, she drinks alcohol to cope, seemingly not bothered by the unborn child in her stomach.

Uncomfortable emotions

Told from a first person point of view, this book is. filled with frustrations, fears and failures.

For a short novel, it is packed with emotions and it was refreshing to not have a focus on happy endings. It is a coming of age novel with a bit more grit. For a first novel I felt it was really bold and daring.

In the tradition of audacious and wryly funny novels like The Idiot and Convenience Store Woman comes the wildly original coming-of-age story of a pregnant pizza delivery girl who becomes obsessed with one of her customers.

This book is cleverly written because I'll be honest, not a lot actually happens but I still felt compelled to read it.

I felt a connection to the main character despite not knowing her name throughout the entire book.

A strangely satisfying story.

Join the rest of the blog tour below for more reviews and insights into this debut novel: