A Heartwarming Father-Daughter Tale • 52 Reasons to Hate My Father

52 Reasons to Hate My Father by Jessica Brody 
Publisher: Farrar, Strous & Giroux
Publication Date: July 3, 2012
Source: Borrowed from Lena || ARC

Lexington Larrabee has never to work a day in her life. After all, she’s the heiress to the multi-billion-dollar Larrabee Media empire. And heiresses are not supposed to work. But then again, they’re not supposed to crash brand new Mercedes convertibles into convenience stores on Sunset Blvd either.

Which is why, on Lexi’s eighteen birthday, her ever-absent, tycoon father decides to take a more proactive approach to her wayward life. Every week for the next year, she will have to take on a different low-wage job if she ever wants to receive her beloved trust fund. But if there’s anything worse than working as a maid, a dishwasher, and a fast-food restaurant employee, it’s dealing with Luke, the arrogant, albeit moderately attractive, college intern her father has assigned to keep tabs on her.

Right off the bat, I'm going to tell you right now - I found this book freaking hilarious. There are a lot of antics and even conversations that just got me laughing out loud, which definitely means that this book was a winner! Jessica Brody sure knows how to write a story that's funny, but moving all at the same time.

Lexington is one of those characters that started out as someone I absolutely loathed. Her attitude, her whiplash statements, her sense of entitlement - these were a few things that truly bothered me about her. However, as the story kept unfolding, I found that she grew on me. What really changed my opinion of her was the fact that we see the roots of her attitude and her issues. We watch as they become addressed and, as a result, Lexi changes as the novel progresses.

Like Anna said, this book could definitely be a Disney Channel original movie. It's got the perfect combination of humor, snarkiness and outrageous yet almost believable (if you were in a movie!) situations. Everything that Lexington has to go through - her family issues, her love life problems and all the job experiences that her father assigns her - is both amusing yet meaningful.

I loved that the romance was a part of the novel, but it definitely was not the focus of the novel at all. I just knew that it was going to happen (when, I couldn't figure out though) and I thought it was really sweet. It worked out really well though because all I was thinking as it happened was awwww.

Even better than the romance, I loved that family played a big role in this book. There's definitely a lot going on, but the undercurrent of the entire book is, of course, the relationship between Lexington and her father. There are a ton of family secrets that get revealed, a lot of issues brought to light and a lot of relationships that shift towards the end of the novel - for the better, of course. I love it when contemporary YA writers make family an important part of their books, and Jessica Brody does a good job.

52 Reasons to Hate My Father is a quick contemporary read, but still with a whole lot more heart than I expected it to have. I thoroughly enjoyed this crazy adventure that Jessica Brody took us on and I can't wait to read her other books.