Ordinary Girls

Written by Blair Thornburgh

Narrated by Jorjeana Marie

*A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2019*

*A Booklist Editors' Choice for Books for Youth 2019*

Perfect for fans of Sarah Mlynowski and Jenny Han, this heartfelt and humorous contemporary take on Sense and Sensibility follows two sisters—complete opposites—who discover the secrets they’ve been keeping make them more alike than they’d realized.  

For siblings as different as Plum and Ginny, getting on each other’s nerves is par for the course. But when the family’s finances hit a snag, sending chaos through the house in a way only characters from a Jane Austen novel could understand, a distance grows between them like never before.

Plum, a self-described social outcast, finally has something in her life that doesn’t revolve around her dramatic older sister. But what if coming into her own means Plum isn’t there for Ginny when she, struggling with a hard secret of her own, needs her most?

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Jun 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9780062914019

Blair Thornburgh

Blair Thornburgh is the author of several books for kids and teens. Her first novel, Who’s That Girl, was named a Bank Street Best Book of the Year. Ordinary Girls was named a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2019 for teens as well as an ALA Booklist Editors’ Choice: Books for Youth. A graduate of the University of Chicago and of Hamline University’s MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults, she lives outside of Philadelphia (in real life) and at www.blairthornburgh.com (online).

Reviews for Ordinary Girls

[sjgirl-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I could see some readers finding this mom and her two daughters overly quirky, but I was in exactly the right mood for the whimsy of their old-timey dilapidated home and their pop culture references almost exclusively devoted to literature and I don’t know why the sisters were obsessed with styling their hair in a braid but that was just one of the many little details that made this enjoyable and memorable. I also loved that this family is by no means perfect, financially they’re barely keeping their heads above water, the mom is frazzled much of the time, and when they aren’t irritating each other to no end, sisters Plum and Ginny ultimately have each other’s backs. Ordinary Girls may not always be the most realistic fiction yet the humor, the awkwardness, and the serious bits were plenty relatable.. It’s been awhile since I fell for a romance as completely as I did for Plum’s. I loved the slow burn of it all, the dancing around their attraction for so much of the story and the thinly veiled excuses to spend time together. Also their relationship gave Plum the opportunity to discuss writing and reading comprehension which if you love books you’ll likely appreciate. This wasn’t the Sense and Sensibility retelling I expected going into this, there weren’t many parallels between the two stories so if you came to this looking for a modernized version of that classic this isn’t really that, but that’s more than okay, Ordinary Girls very much does it’s own original thing and it proved to be just the refuge I needed from an otherwise not so great week.

[edgoldberg · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Fifteen year old Patience, aka Plum, is growing up in the shadow of her 17 year old beautiful, smart sister, Ginny. Ginny is a member of what Plum called the High Strung Smart Girls. That is until Tate, one of the Loudmouthed Smart Boys (LSB) takes an interest in her. Someone Plum used to avoid at all costs, has exhibited some good character traits. While Plum is enjoying her new found popularity, she is missing the fact that Ginny is going through some of her own issues.Ordinary girls is an enjoyable, humorous travelogue of her and Ginny's journey through one year or high school.

[ecataldi-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An adorable, quirky young adult book perfect for every angsty teen (or adult) that read Jane Austen, Little Women, and Jane Eyre on the reg. Two sisters could not be more different; Ginny, the older, smarter, more frazzled sister is forever getting on Patience's (aka Plum) nerves. Patience has forever lived in the shadow of her older sister's intelligence and there are times when she can't wait for her sister to go off to college in a year (if the family can afford it). They live in a gorgeous, old, crumbling down Victorian home, that Patience wishes she could never leave (stupid school). It's her, Ginny, her exuberant and artistic mother, a feisty cat, two rowdy dogs, and their "almost doctor of music" renter who lives above the carriage house. Little does Patience realize how much her fifteenth year is about to change; from boys, to finance woes, to English reading assignments; this will be a year that Plum will never forget. Funny and unusual in the most awesome of ways.

[foggidawn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It’s a tumultuous year for sisters Ginny and Plum, as Ginny agonizes over college applications, their family struggles financially, and Plum forms a secret friendship (or maybe more?) with one of the most unlikely boys she can imagine.I had heard that this was inspired by Sense and Sensibility, and while there is a practical sister and a high-strung one, a dead father and problems with money, don’t go into this expecting a retelling. That’s not to say it isn’t charming! I thought the relationship between the sisters was particularly well done, and the story revels in classic literature references (Austen, the Brontes, Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, Rilke, Rossetti, Dickenson...) and a handful of film and classical music grace notes. (They also watch a lot of HGTV, which cracked me up a little every time.) If this sort of family drama is your thing, you’ll love this book.