REVIEW for The Rites & Wrongs of Janice Wills

Once again, I owe a great big thank you to Nikole at Scholastic Canada for so generously sending me a copy of this book. 

TITLE:                     The Rites & Wrongs of Janice Wills

AUTHOR:               Joanna Pearson

GENRE:                 YA

RATING:                3 Stars

I had high hopes for this book and I actually loved the cover – which made me dive into the plotline as soon as I received the book.


I liked Janice, the main character, although, at times, I kept asking myself how she could actually fit into her ‘life’ considering how completely different she was from most of the people around her. The fact that Janice is completely entranced with anthropology was a great addition – giving the character a very definite trait that, of course, I had never seen before.

However, this love of anthropology is what, in my opinion, derails this book, at least for me. I found myself growing increasingly annoyed at the ‘anthropological’ observations that are extremely generously sprinkled throughout the storyline. While it may have been cute at the beginning and a clever way for the readers to quickly grasp just how quirky Janice truly is, it good old – very fast.

Just as I was starting to engage in the narrative, the author would choose that moment to insert some type of ‘observation’ which made me lose the string of the previous paragraph. Unfortunately, in many instances, these observations were kind of superfluous anyway not adding one thing to the storyline.

Yes, the story is touching and you can definitely call this a coming of age story, but getting there was kind of painful