For February’s YA Book Club pick, we talk about This is Not the Jess Show by Anna Carey. We’ve waited on this one for a long time, so let’s just jump right in.

Emily: This is Not the Jess Show by Anna Carey is one I’ve been excited to talk about for some time, but we decided to wait for a bit to cover it because the publication date got pushed back. Thanks, Covid. But it’s finally out, and we’re both ready to tell everyone our thoughts! Woo! Thanks to Quirk Books for the advanced copies of this book. These opinions are our own. Oh, one more disclaimer: this book is hard to discuss without spoilers, so spoilers are coming. 

Mary: The novel follows Jess, a teenage girl living the 90s dream. She’s got it all: posters of Scott Wolf on her wall, lots of YM magazines, two best friends, and a big choice on her hands. Two boys—yes, two!—want to date Jess. One is friend Tyler, who she accidentally bonked in the head with a ball in 4th grade, and the other is Patrick, the popular soccer star at Swickley high. Jess’s friends keep pressuring her to give Patrick a chance, but why? Jess just doesn’t get it.

But then, Jess begins to learn that everything isn’t so perfect in Swickley, and things aren’t what they seem. It all starts when a mysterious black rectangle falls out of her friend’s backpack. Things just get weirder from there, and explaining it would mean major spoilers. Spoilers from this point on, I guess! 

Emily: So let’s just start with one of the things that was the most appealing about this book, and one of the major things the publicity for this book is leaning on: the ‘90s references. This is a book that relies heavily on nostalgia, but not without commentary. And we’ll get to what the commentary is in just a minute, but before all that, I kind of just want to revel in the nostalgia and enjoy it. The Alanis Morissette lyric book actually plays a very pivotal role in this storyline. There’s a Clueless poster on Jess’s wall. Jess watches Saved By the Bell. What were some of your favorite ‘90s references in this book? Anything that rang true to you from your own childhood? For me, it was the magazine collages on her wall. I definitely had a huge collage of Romeo + Juliet pictures on my wall when I was a teen. My friend and I were actually competing to see who could make the biggest Romeo + Juliet wall. 

Mary: The Alanis Morissette book SENT ME. Jagged Little Pill was one of my favorite albums when I was a teen, even though it came out a little before I was in full angsty teen mode. I listened to Morissette so much, and I feel like a lot of her music, and especially her early music, really resonates with the frustration young women feel. That felt absolutely right to me. 

Emily: Yes, I remember I got that Alanis Morissette CD for my birthday and my friends and I went into my room at my birthday party and sang “You Oughta Know” at the top of our lungs.

Mary: That is a beautiful image. I also really associate being a teen, or even a tween, with obsessing over certain stars. Admittedly, my teenage years were filled with weird heavy metal music and me knowing a stupid amount of trivia about KoRn, but we can’t all have the same childhood, I guess. I definitely remember Tiger Beat being a thing and there being a ton of pictures of NSYNC and The Backstreet Boys. Collages are truly a great teen girl art form. I also loved Jess realizing Mario Lopez is just a TV host now. Very sharp, Anna Carey. 

Emily: I guess now we can get into what the nostalgia means, or what Anna Carey is trying to say with the ‘90s nostalgia. One thing that’s worthy to note is the timing of all this. Jess thinks she’s living in the 1990s, but really, in the outside world, it’s 2037. She’s 17. Which means she was born in 2020. Which means her parents are likely around our age if they had a kid in 2020. This feels SO intentional. 

And while this book is labeled as a young adult novel and we can definitely read it that way and I do think young adults would like this book, I think really this book was written for our generation. We talk about intended audiences a lot in this blog series, so I think it’s interesting to note the difference in intended audience with this one compared to other books we’ve read. 

Mary: Yeah, I definitely think this book is working on several different levels. On one hand, some of the issues here are definitely very young adult-centric. Jess is kind of caught in a love triangle, she’s in high school, she has some issues with her family—that’s all normal stuff. But then there are other things happening that read differently for older audiences. It’s not just fluff, it’s big issues. This is Not the Jess Show made me think of what shapes our relationships with our parents, and if relationships with toxic parents should be cut off entirely. It made me think about the role of agency in YA books, but also in young adults’ lives in general. Agency is always a hot topic in children’s and YA lit, and I think that Jess’s situation makes this book a great place to discuss that. I don’t know that I have a solid point to make about it, but I’ve been thinking about how Jess both has the agency that comes with young adulthood (getting to go places unsupervised with friends, falling in love, school drama), but it’s all artificial because in reality she’s always being watched. She’s never alone, and people are voting on things that should happen in the show.

Emily: So with all this in mind, considering this book is just as much for 30-somethings as it is for teens, what is this book doing with nostalgia? I think it’s interesting that for the first, say, 100 pages, we’re allowed to just kind of enjoy the ‘90s environment with subtle hints that something else is going on. But the true joy in these first pages isn’t the thrill of knowing that something weird is happening. It’s the thrill of going back to the ‘90s for a bit. Then that all changes. We get the revelation that this is all a set, and that all of this ‘90s stuff is “vintage.” What do you think we’re supposed to make of this?

Mary: Because the setting of Jess’s show is in the ‘90s, I think us 30-something are definitely the prime audience for this (if we’re not considering young adults the audience). The ‘90s seem like a simpler time, especially to those of us who kind of grew up straddling the line of the internet. When I was a kid, there was no easily-accessible internet, and a lot of the world felt far away. Jess gets to experience that because of how insulated Swickley is, and we get to revisit that time, too, through her. I’m not sure that younger generations of kids would understand a world without the internet, or feel nostalgic for it. Also, big LOL that scrunchies and overalls are vintage. I loved it. 

Nostalgia is going to be what draws in older readers, I think, and you’re absolutely right that the first third or so of the book is just a lot of nice ‘90s teen drama (with a few weird bits thrown in—the dog stuff?! OMG). There’s something really comforting about seeing a kid grow up with the same things I consider cozy now, like The Babysitters Club and making collage art. 

Emily: Right, and we all know I love a good Babysitters Club reference. That Netflix show basically took care of me right at the start of quarantine, and I’m now rereading the books. So I’m deep into nostalgia land. And I’m not even sorry. 

Mary:  I’ve been thinking, especially with all the Gen Z talk of how Millenials aren’t cool, that fashion just comes in cycles. Those flared out jeans that are so popular right now? I had to live through that. I had to struggle for years, through JNCO and bell bottoms and dragging my pants through wet ground, just to get a pair of jeans that fit me comfortably. I now want the highest waisted jeans and the tightest ankles. But I guess that’s not cool anymore.

‘90s fashion is kind of having a comeback now, and I bet it will in another 40 years or so, too. In Jess’s future, “vintage” stuff is hip again, but I’m not sure that a young adult audience would fully appreciate that fashion and trends come in cycles. Older audiences can definitely see that the book is keenly picking up on how we’re all just recycling the same things over and over again.

Emily: I think too older audiences can see and acknowledge that the adults in this show are trying to recreate and relive their youths by doing a show about the ‘90s. I think at one point, someone tells Jess that her parents are just trying to give her the childhood they wished they had. And I think in a way, we can recognize this in ourselves. By we, I mean us uncool old people. By going back and reading The Babysitters Club, am I not trying to recreate a more idealized version of my childhood as a source of comfort? Young people recycle fashion because they don’t remember how much it sucked the first time. We oldies recycle ‘90s nostalgia because we’re trying to find this happy place from the past that is sort of unreal but comforting nonetheless. 

Mary: Speaking of recycling, I noticed a lot of inevitable similarities between This is Not the Jess Show and The Truman Show, a 1998 movie starring Jim Carrey. Both stories feature a person living in a reality show, surrounded by tons of paid actors, for years without knowing it. Have you ever watched The Truman Show? What do you think about the comparison?

I was kind of obsessed with The Truman Show and Jim Carrey in general when I was a kid, so I thought about this comparison right away. While it’s fair to talk about the two texts together, I think they’re both doing different things and are good for separate reasons. 

Emily: Yeah, I was explaining this plot to my husband Ben, and his response was, “Are they allowed to copy The Truman Show like that?” But I agree. I think it’s different enough. It takes it in a different direction and explores some different themes using the same idea (how many times can I say “different?”). And while this is similar to The Truman Show in a lot of ways, I don’t think The Truman Show owns this idea.

Mary: Anna Carey is creating a different sort of problem with Jess, one that revolves around her distrust of her family and her desire to keep her “sister” Sara. I think a big part of Jess’s situation is that once she finds out her life is one big TV show, she realizes that she can spend more time with her sister, who she has a real connection with even though they aren’t biologically related. I’ve never lost a sibling, but I can’t imagine the shock of realizing they’re not going to get better, only to find out they were never sick in the first place. That’s so heartbreaking, but it also offers Jess a lot of hope. She’s going to get to have a life with Sara, even if it’s not the one she initially imagined. 

Emily: That was so messed up. On the other hand, I sort of wish I could find out that my life is a show and my brother is still alive on the outside. That felt like wish fulfillment for me! 

Mary: Definitely—she still gets to have Sara in her life, which is a win for everyone. I also like the juxtaposition of Jess’s insulated world at Swickley with the outside world, which is really just a continuation of a lot of issues we’re seeing in contemporary America. There aren’t enough jobs for people in the real world, and working on a huge production (which by its nature is going to need a lot of folks manning it) is actually good for the community, I guess? Jess really struggles with whether to return to Swickley after running away, and that made the novel more interesting for me. What did you think about that conflict? What does it say about the future of reality TV?

Emily: As I was reading this, I was thinking about how this seemed like a natural progression of reality tv shows, considering the way we’re going with reality tv right now. Reality television is bleeding into real life with social media becoming such a huge part of the entertainment. What happens on the show doesn’t end when the show is over. Just thinking of The Bachelor, we’re able to follow these stories forever. When a Bachelor couple breaks up, it’s still news even years after their season. When Becca broke up with Garrett because he’s a racist “Blue Lives Matter” Trumper, we all knew the details. So it’s not that weird to think the next step is someone’s entire life being a show. It’s an interesting thing to examine. 

Mary: I gave this book 5/5 stars. I couldn’t put it down while I was reading it, and kept thinking about how smart it is. I’m really interested to see what else Anna Carey has written, and what she works on in the future. 

Emily: Well, when I added this book to my Goodreads account, I saw that this book is called This is Not the Jess Show #1. So that suggests there’s going to be another one. So as I was getting to the end of this book, I was trying to think about what a second book would cover. Would it be about the girl who ultimately ends up taking Jess’s place? Would it be about Jess discovering what the world is like in 2037? Would it be about one of the other Like-Life shows? The possibilities are endless, and I’m not sure which one I would be most interested in seeing.

I also gave this book 5/5 stars. I was worried that when the book took a turn and wasn’t about the ‘90s nostalgia that I wasn’t going to have as much fun with it anymore. But I really did still have just as much fun with it! And I also want to shout out one of my favorite parts towards the end of the book, just because it was really adorable. Kipps asks Jess if she’s ever heard someone say “Talk to the hand” or “Talk to the hand, because the face doesn’t want to hear it.” And Jess says she used to hear some kids say this. And Kipps says something like, “Well, I think I’m going to try to start saying that.” And it was just really dorky and adorable. If I was going to rate this book 4.5 stars before this moment, this scene bumped it up to 5 for me.

Mary: Oh man, Kipps was so delightfully weird. Also, it should go without saying that Quirk has knocked it out of the park yet again in terms of design. We love Quirk. 

Emily: We do! 

Mary: Do you want to tell everyone what we’re reading next?

Emily: Yes! We’re reading Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger. This is another book that was sent to me by the publisher, but like This is Not the Jess Show, it’s one I’m very excited about reading anyway. This story looks like it’s going to be a mixture of fantasy and mystery and ghost animals, and I’m excited to get into it. And speaking of well-designed books, this one has some really lovely illustrations! If you’re thinking about picking this one up to read along with us, I would definitely suggest getting a hard copy of the book so you can check out the art!