Book Review: Life by Committee by Corey Ann Haydy

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Life by Committee
Author: Corey Ann Haydy
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Contemporary
Released: May 13th 2014
Review Source: Katherine Tegen Books

Some secrets are too good to keep.

Tabitha might be the only girl in the history of the world who actually gets less popular when she gets hot. But her so-called friends say she’s changed, and they’ve dropped her flat.

Now Tab has no one to tell about the best and worst thing that has ever happened to her: Joe, who spills his most intimate secrets to her in their nightly online chats. Joe, whose touch is so electric, it makes Tab wonder if she could survive an actual kiss. Joe, who has Tabitha brimming with the restless energy of falling in love. Joe, who is someone else’s boyfriend.

Just when Tab is afraid she’ll burst from keeping the secret of Joe inside, she finds Life by Committee. The rules of LBC are simple: tell a secret, receive an assignment. Complete the assignment to keep your secret safe.

Tab likes it that the assignments push her to her limits, empowering her to live boldly and go further than she’d ever go on her own.

But in the name of truth and bravery, how far is too far to go?

Secret secrets are no fun, secret secrets hurt someone. Life by Committee is all about telling secrets and doing bold actions according to the said secret. Tabitha grew up over summer, matured, added a little eyeliner and wore a little less clothes, and starting seeing boys in a different way. Her best friends hated the new Tabby and claimed she had changed and dumped her like Saturday’s trash. With no one to truly confide in she stumbles across a site, Life by Committee, where you share a dark secret and then receive an assignment according to the secret, but if the assignment isn’t completed your secret will not be safe.

The first thing that grabbed while reading this book was within the very first pages and Tabby was talking about active reading and making notes in her books and loved finding other books that had the same treatment done to it. I know of people who write in books but I never really thought much of it and now I am totally intrigued by the idea, though it would take a lot for me to write in a book. Then we get to Tabby getting into Life by Committee and these strangers that are there for each other to push one another to do things they would never do and sometimes it was the for the best and things really turned out better for them and then sometimes it didn’t. When we first meet Tabby she just recently lost all her friends because she got hot and liked the attention from guys. Her love interest, Joe, was everything for her, his words and touches were electric and she thought she would never be able to handle a kiss from him, especially because Joe had a girlfriend. When Tabby joins Life by Committee she is completely sucked into the world, she feels as if she is finally having someone to confide in. I was totally excited over the assignments Tabby would get and by the second one I was just as anxious as she was. Though I will have to admit I definitely got mad at the girl throughout the book, thinking she was crazy for doing some of the things they told her to do, but it was definitely a rush for her and I get that. I really loved Tabby’s parents as well, Cate and Paul, which she called them by their first names. She had more of a friend relationship with them most of the time since they were young when they had her. I really enjoyed the dynamic of Tabby’s family, the relationship her parents had with each other and then the relationships they had with Tabby separately, and I loved every time they appeared in the book, even if what was going on wasn’t so great.

I loved this book and definitely thought it was fun and entertaining. I would certainly recommend this to any girl in high school.