Author: Laurie
Elizabeth Flynn
Pages: 320
Publisher: St.
Martin’s Griffin
Source: Netgalley
Goodreads rating: 
About: Seventeen-year-old
Mercedes Ayres has an open-door policy when it comes to her bedroom, but only
if the guy fulfills a specific criteria: he has to be a virgin. Mercedes lets
the boys get their awkward, fumbling first times over with, and all she asks in
return is that they give their girlfriends the perfect first time- the kind
Mercedes never had herself.
Keeping what goes on in her bedroom a secret has
been easy- so far. Her absentee mother isn’t home nearly enough to know about
Mercedes’ extracurricular activities, and her uber-religious best friend,
Angela, won’t even say the word “sex” until she gets married. But Mercedes
doesn’t bank on Angela’s boyfriend finding out about her services and wanting a
turn- or on Zach, who likes her for who she is instead of what she can do in
bed.
When Mercedes’ perfect system falls apart, she
has to find a way to salvage her reputation and figure out where her heart
really belongs in the process. Funny, smart, and true-to-life, FIRSTS is a
one-of-a-kind young adult novel about growing up.
I’m going to say it right up front, Firsts made me feel like
an old. Which I am, so, I mean, that’s fine. It’s just that not much really makes me feel
that way. I consider myself a connoisseur
of teen media (all mediums- from movies and TV shows to books and music) and
when something makes me sit up and count my actual years I take notice. I really liked it, as you can tell from my
Goodreads rating, but it sort of made me uncomfortable? Like, at the start, Mercedes is very
confident in what she’s doing and very sure that she’s in the right. She definitely acts older than she is,
projecting a maturity and behaving in a way that is a little unsettling to me,
a self-confessed old.
Firsts is a different ‘first time’ story than we usually see
in the YA world. Mercedes had a bad
experience for her first time, which isn’t explored in detail right away, and
then starts devirginizing boys in service to their girlfriends. She teaches these boys some moves and really
just some basic ‘how-to treat a girl so she feels like she matters to you and
you’re not just an a-hole trying to bang her’ things. I like that we come into this story when
Mercedes is done with this whole set up.
She’s helped 10 virgins, that was her cap, and she wants to move
on. Except that she doesn’t stop and
everything starts spiraling out of her control.
I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop the whole
time. This arrangement is not a good
one. She was taking a whole lot on faith
that these boys wouldn’t say anything to anyone just because they wouldn’t want
their girlfriends to find out. I’ll say
it again – teenage boys not talking about sleeping with a hot girl for no
reason except not wanting their girlfriend’s to find out. I don’t have that much faith in
teenagers. If they don’t give a crap
about actually having sex with someone who isn’t their girlfriend, I can’t
imagine they would care about talking about it.
I think the stand out part of this book lies in its
characters very complicated relationships with each other. Mercedes and her mom don’t get along: her mom
tries to be hip and young, while she craves a “normal mom.” Angela and Mercedes are best friends, but
Angela is totally in the dark about her best friend’s sexcapades and thinks she
is a good little prayer groupie, just like her.
Mercedes feels drawn to Faye, the new girl in school, and can’t tell if
she wants to be her or be with her.
Zack, her ‘Wednesday friend,’ the only boy she sleeps with for herself,
wants an actual relationship, but Mercedes keeps him relegated to Wednesday
fuck buddy. I was really rooting for
Zack the whole time. He was such a good
guy, but also really well developed. He
wasn’t just a doormat who was in love with Mercedes. He kept putting himself out there, but he got
hurt, he got angry, does some dumb things, and knows that he deserves better
than being kept at arms length.
This book did a really good job of keeping Mercedes’s past
hidden until exactly the right moment. She has trauma in her past (that I’m not going
to spoil here, it really keeps you invested), but it all brings her to where
she is at the beginning of the book and what she’s doing. You could feel something hanging over her,
but Flynn does a really good job of playing the cards close, so the reveal is
very satisfying.
I enjoyed this fresh take on the YA first time, even though
it made me feel all of my years on this planet.
The characters were interesting and well written, and although I found
parts of the plot hard to believe, it didn’t lessen my enjoyment of the story at
all. I love when YA pushes the perceived
boundaries a bit (Shut Out by Kody Keplinger comes to mind) and I’m looking
forward to seeing what Laurie Elizabeth Flynn comes out with next!
