Novel Review: Love, Stargirl (Stargirl, #2) by Jerry Spinelli

Genre: YA Contemporary

Rating (Out of 5): ~4.5

Publisher: Random House (Alfred A. Knopf)

Spoilers?: Very minor.

Goodreads Synopsis:

Love, Stargirl picks up a year after Stargirl ends and reveals the new life of the beloved character who moved away so suddenly at the end of Stargirl. The novel takes the form of "the world's longest letter," in diary form, going from date to date through a little more than a year's time. In her writing, Stargirl mixes memories of her bittersweet time in Mica, Arizona, with involvements with new people in her life.

In Love, Stargirl, we hear the voice of Stargirl herself as she reflects on time, life, Leo, and—of course—love.

Something Specific:
That I Love:

• "He said, 'Are you looking for me?' and shuffled on without waiting for an answer. I called after him, 'I'm looking for me! Have you seen me?!' but he just kept on moving..." (Paperback, pg. 40) (This is just a particular quote that I really liked, that made sense to me, and made me feel even more things for Stargirl.)
• Stargirl. (Because I love her; she is amazing. I talk more about her in the review. 

Review:

I love Stargirl. I just love her, okay? I want to be her best friend.

I was worried that this one wouldn’t be as good as the first, and that maybe I wouldn’t enjoy Stargirl as much as I did in the first, but I was wrong. I was so very wrong. I liked this one even more than the first, and I really liked the first one.

Love, Stargirl takes place a year after the first book, in Stargirl’s point-of-view. With no Leo. Well, only with the thoughts Stargirl has of Leo. And she thinks of him several times, along with the fact that this book is a letter/journal that Stargirl is writing to Leo.

Stargirl is living in a new place than where we last saw her, and she meets an attention-seeking little girl, Dootsie, who turns into her best friend, and an old lady who won’t leave her house, Betty Lou, and an angry pre-teen, Alvina, and a boy named Perry that catches her interest, and a man named Charlie that visits his wife's grave everyday, and a bunch of other people. But of course there are other people, because Stargirl is the type of person that notices the odd-ones-out, the person that becomes their friend. But throughout all of this, she still thinks of Leo. She’s still upset about Leo, missing him, knowing why they didn’t work and wishing that they had.

This is one of the things that really pulled me over the edge to how much I loved Stargirl: her missing Leo, wondering about him, having only a couple pebbles left in her twenty pebble wagon, was how well it was done. She wasn’t constantly thinking about him, she wasn’t showing her misery to everyone, she didn’t mope and whine. She gave little thoughts every once in a while that showed how much she missed him. She was still trying to live her life, was still doing things, giving only little hints that she wasn’t at her happiest. She was lost, was losing herself, and she knew it and, even while not knowing how to fix it, was trying to get over it, to move on. That just made me love and respect her even more.

And I loved seeing and getting the story of all these other people she meets.

This book was just fantastic and more than I’d even hoped for. There are so many little things that are so big, and that you just have to read to understand. Like the characters; you have to read the book to get the significance of what they mean and who they are and how awesome every one of them is. Which, really, is what you should do: read this book. It is absolutely amazing. Almost, maybe, a 5 star, even.

The ending, though. I don’t know about the ending. I liked what happened with Stargirl and Perry, which I hadn’t expected and wasn’t sure about at first, but then there’s Stargirl and Leo. I really want to know what happens with them later. I guess I’m supposed to assume that they meet again later in their lives, but I have a hard time believing that. It just doesn’t work all that well with reality. But it’s possible, and it is what I would really like to happen.