King, A.S. (2010). Please ignore vera dietz. NY: Ember. Vera Dietz is the protagonist in Please Ignore Vera Dietz. In the novel, Vera has kept her love for her best friend, Charlie, from him but never gets the chance to reveal her secret because he dies in a store fire he supposedly started. With Vera keeping other secrets as well, she knows what really happened on the night Charlie died, and contemplates whether or not to clear his name. The novel ends with Vera finding Charlie’s notes that reveals Jenny killed him after he refused to have sex on video as a way to make money easy. I believe the intended audience for Please Ignore Vera Dietz might be for ages 15 and up. Books that might make good recommendations for follow up reading include Stolen by Lucy Christopher, The Sky is Everywhere by handy Nelson, Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler, and Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares by David Levithan. I think a lesson that might come from reading Please Ignore Vera Dietz would be if the reader were in Vera’s shoes and they had a friend treat them the way Charlie treated Vera, or if the reader ever contemplated to withhold information or not, then the reader can easily relate to her struggles. I think Please Ignore Vera Dietz meets the mental, emotional, and social developmental criteria because throughout the novel, Vera struggles to reveal what she knows about Charlie’s death while reminiscing her past with him and how she felt as his best friend and as his temporary ex-friend.
