Speed of Life: Review by Emma Tong

American writer and advice columnist Carol Weston’s latest book was released almost six years ago, and I just got around to reading it. At a glance, Speed of Life seems to be your average, run-of-the-mill teenage book: family problems, school drama, boy issues, and the haunting memory of a dead mother. So I procrastinated reading it for almost six years. In hindsight, that was a bad idea. Why? It was really good. 

Speed of Life follows fourteen-year-old Sofia Wolfe as she tries to recover from the shattering events eight months ago. On April 7th, Sofia walked into her apartment and found her mother dead. Deceased. No longer living. She couldn’t believe it. Her mother, her teacher, her cheerleader, her best friend, was gone. She watched as paramedics took away her corpse. She watched in disbelief, as the adults started pouring in, taking her away from the cold, limp body of her mother.

Eight months after her death, Sofia still can’t find herself to move on. Through Part One of this book, she continually struggles with moving past her mother’s death, and it doesn’t help that every teacher, every student, and every resident in her apartment tower can’t look at her with any emotion other than pity. But when guest speaker and advice columnist Dear Kate comes to give a talk about the ABCs,( anorexia, bulimia, and cutting), the P’s (pimples, periods, and popularity), and the S’s (stress, substance abuse, and sex), her whole life gets upended. Pressured by her best friend and boy-magnet Kiki, Sofia writes to Dear Kate and then writes again, and again. Until it feels like the two of them are best friends. 

But suddenly, her father is dating someone, and in the blink of an eye, Sofia is shipped off to the country to live with them. For Sofia, it's ridiculous. They’re moving way too fast! Part Two of Speed of Life follows Sofia as she navigates being away from everyone she knows, a snappy older sister, and an attractive boy, who (spoiler alert) used to date her sister.  

Though slightly controversial, for reasons I will not get into, Carol Weston’s Speed of Life was a very entertaining read. Although the main character is quite young compared to other books I read, the material covered in the book and the way the characters behave is far from immature. At some points, I felt like the way the 14-year-olds in this book behaved was vastly different from the way my class behaves, and that Weston’s depiction of teenagers at that stage in life was a bit stereotypical. Although we are the same age, I felt that Weston’s characters were quite a bit more immature. Dear Kate’s role in the story pushed forth the stereotype that all teenagers care about are popularity, depression, and dating. All in all, I think that Speed of Life was a pretty good book, and shows just how fast life can move.