Hello...wrong Number

by Marilyn Sachs

Book by Sachs, Marilyn

Genres: Young Adult

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1981

Reviews

[Reading with Cats · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, at least it was a quick read. That's good because our "heroine" Angie is a shallow, mean-spirited brat.

[Danielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I remember reading this as a teen and enjoying it. I'm seeking out Marilyn Sachs's teen novels and thought I'd give this a reread. It's still fun. Dated, absolutely. And is the dialogue a little ridiculous? Of course.

It's certainly alarming that a girl feels like she ought to apologize to a guy for getting angry and leaving when he did something she was uncomfortable with while dancing. (The whole premise of the book/phone call.) It's a good thing she changes her mind and decides not to apologize to that Jim and instead keeps talking to this Jim.

They are a couple of sixteen-year-olds who don't know each other, and who fall in love in a matter of days over the phone. It's really quite a nice story, especially for the twelve- or thirteen-year-old romantic.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is completely phone dialogue between two people, one of whom dialed a wrong number. I've liked most of Marilyn Sachs other books but this one is...not her best. No surprises here. Girl calls boy but gets wrong number and coincidentally calls other boy with same name. Girl and Boy get to know each other over the phone (cause before we had the internet we had phones and that was how you did these things) and are not necessarily then completely honest with each other. The inevitable revelations ensue when they meet. There is a moral to the story. A completely obvious moral. Okay, maybe two completely obvious morals.

[Joshua Gross · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had a good message and was cute and all, but I didn't like Angie very much. She seemed like a shallow, stuck-up, promiscuous kind of gal who thought being gay was worse than being a serial killer...

[Kaija · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have a friend who makes everyone read this book when they go to her cottage. Why? Because it's terrible and very short.

How anyone can give this book more than a star boggles my mind. It plays into every stupid girl stereotype, and every pretend high school romance. The dialogue is bad, there's no real plot, and the female character is very unlikable.

Everyone and then I come across a book that makes me think I should produce terrible paperback books as a side hustle. For some unknown reason they get published, and who doesn't want to be a published author?

[Nicole · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5
Pop culture was mentioned a lot, including Grease and John Travolta not being a great singer! Angie likes Linda Ronstadt, so that's cool. With just 97 pages and the book soley taking place over the phone with a stranger , a lot of the conversation was surface...but fun. From 1981.

[Erica Leigh · Rating 2 out of 5]

Girl accidentally catfishes herself. Also it’s the 80s.

[Katie Fitzgerald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hello... Wrong Number is a short and sweet paperback YA novel originally published in 1981. A teenage girl named Angie intends to call the object of her affection, a boy named Jim McCone, but when she dials the wrong number, she gets a different Jim. In a series of phone calls, Angie and the wrong Jim become quite close, sharing confidences and saying things to each other they’d never say to anyone else. But they have never met face to face. Will Angie, who can be quite shallow about boys, still like Jim if he doesn’t look as she imagines?

I chose to read this book because it reminded me of a book I loved as a kid, Phone Calls by R.L. Stine. Like Phone Calls, Hello... Wrong Number is a story told almost exclusively in dialogue between the main characters. Though the story is very lighthearted and easily zipped through in one sitting, the dialogue is well-written, bringing the characters right off the page. Both characters’ voices are very strong, and I could almost hear the way they might speak to one another.

Most kids have cell phones now, and caller ID makes it pretty easy to avoid wrong numbers, so it’s hard to say if today’s teens would relate to the story or not. I certainly don’t think most high schoolers in 2012 would name KC and the Sunshine Band as their favorite band, or compare a boy they like to Elton John, as Angie does. Still, Marilyn Sachs is a great author for fans of Paula Danziger, who also always wrote short, fun, romance novels for younger teens. Hello... Wrong Number would work well in a lesson about writing dialogue, and I think it would be fun to hear kids talk about how phone calls have changed since their parents were kids. It's also just a great escapist read for anyone missing the 80s!

[Chance Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hello... Wrong Number is a chaste pseudo-prequel to Nicholson Baker's Vox. Both books take place with almost 100% dialogue and no dialogue tags. They're about two lonely people, in this case teenagers, trying to bond with each other over the telephone. And in both novels, the two characters are brought together through happenstance. As this book is for teenagers, there aren't any hardcore sex fantasies, but you just know they're there. Angie, the main character, is a little bit slutty for sixteen, wanting to go out with Jim McCone, but only because he tried to feel her up at a party and she really wanted him to because he's was hot. She's hung on looks, fawning over John Travolta at least twice. Anyway, by the end of these scant 97 pages, Angie's overcome her shallow ways and finds a happy ending. Hooray! Just as the blurb says "it turned out to be the best mistake she ever made!"

[Elena · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is sooo cute. It only took me thirty minutes to read, it went bye sooo quick. I wished it was longer not just a short book!