Nobody Likes Trina by Phyllis A. Whitney
First published on 1972 by Signet
Genre: Young Adult
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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“I don’t see how we can pretend she’s invisible,” Debra whispered. “
“That’s hard to do.” “Of course we can!” insisted Melissa.
Hanging back unhappily behind the group of girls who are teasing sullen Trina, Sandy is faced with a choice: Shall she–or shall she not–follow the popular blond leader, Melissa, so she can have a place in the crowd? Melissa’s game is mean–but Sandy just has to make friends!
When Sandy’s family moved from New York City to a house in the country near Halcyon, New Jersey, Sandy found herself in two strange new worlds: the quiet world of the woods, mazed with mysterious paths and rustling with strange noises, and the cruel world of class rivalries in a small-town school.
Trina, the curt, unattractive orphan down the road, who is disliked even by the grandmother she lives with, tells Sandy to stay out of the woods she considers her own. Melissa, whom Debra and most others in the class follow, says Sandy had better help torment Trina or she might become invisible too. It is hard to know what to do.
When Sandy finds the little cabin deep in the woods where Trina hides her treasures… when she begins to learn from reluctant Trina how each living thing in the woods depends on every other living thing, Sandy begins to plot a way to follow the instinct that tells her what to do. And that plot leads her into a great adventure and new beginnings.
Review
Packing things and moving into a smaller town and giving up the big bustling city where you were born and grew up sure weren’t easy. It wasn’t easy leaving your life in that place, especially your friends. This book has a great story on how to deal with it.
In this book, Sandy wasn’t happy about moving to Halcyon and as she started meeting her classmates, it looked as though she’d had reason to worry. For Melissa, the daughter of her dad’s new partner, made it plain that they could only be friends if she went along with whatever Melissa and other girls wanted to do. And what they did most was to pick on Sandy’s neighbor Trina – a strangely shy, perhaps retarded girl, so hostile she almost seemed to invite torment. Sandy didn’t want to get involved in the feud, but was soon forced to choose sides in a situation she didn’t understand. And what Sandy decided would determine whether she became “one of the gang” or another disliked loner like Trina Carpozi.
It is a pretty good story that talks about a real life situation especially to teenagers. The struggles of moving out and being in a new environment with new sets of people whom you could or couldn’t be friends with.
For me, it’s a very realistic story. Most of its scenes I would say are not that impossible to portray. It is also very inviting to read for most of us who experienced the feeling of being snatched from the place we lived all our lives and leaving some of our close friends behind.
It’s never easy to start another life into some unknown place and this book gives us all the idea that moving out isn’t that difficult, that it could be fun and even more interesting than before. It’s a great story that also provides a very deep and alarming lesson about bullying which is a very common case especially at school.
This is definitely a perfect book to everyone especially for teens.
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