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You know, one of the hardest parts of having a book blog, for me, is feeling locked into my opinions once I write them down. (I know, my life is so full of challenges.) But that’s not really how I relate to my books — certainly not ones that I like enough to keep thinking about them.

I bring this up because after I read FOREVER… on Friday, what I felt compelled to post was largely a complaint about the kinds of stories I don’t see often enough in young adult publishing. That’s mostly just because it’s stuff I’ve been thinking about, and maybe also because I was in such a bad mood when I actually read the book.

But since Friday, I’ve also found myself thinking a ton about all I things I love about FOREVER… Like how the boyfriend character, Michael, is a really convincing mix of unbelievably sweet and kind of manipulative. And how economical Blume is in developing most of the side characters into real people (though, what’s up with Sibyl, who goes through pregnancy for “the experience”? Uh…). And how it remains, to this day, one of the only YA books I’ve seen in which teenage girls’ sex lives are portrayed very positively (even though Emily and I have been kind of making fun of this in the comments to Saturday’s post).

It’s not that I don’t believe everything I said on Saturday; it’s just that I also believe a lot of other things about FOREVER… Like that it, seriously, is an amazing book that fully deserves the enormously strong positive feelings it elicits in many, many women (and at least a few men) across America.

This is one reason why I don’t usually do straight-up reviews on this blog. It’s a commitment to an opinion that I’m not always up for.