Tuija Lehtinen: Roskisprinssi review

Finnish Tuija Lehtinen was one of my favourite writers during my early teenage years. She has written several novels for young adults about growing up and finding their path in life - and love of course. But the most important, these stories had always some humour in them.

Roskisprinssi (1991) (translates as "Dumpsterprince") tells a story of a 17-year-old Jed who decides to leave everything in his life behind, travel some distant location and start everything from scratch. He ends up in a smaal town, befriends with a stray dog he calls Jesse James, some bums in the woods and makes his living with several small jobs like delivering morning paper.
Of course there are several girls in the story but only one can be his princess...

Lehtinen's youth novels are definitely for teenagers. They can easily identify with the characters and the dialogue is genius and superfunny - it still made me laugh.

I think every Finnish teen should try some books by Tuija Lehtinen. My partner realized that reading wasn't that bad with this book.
It's also translated in Swedish as Sopåkarprinsen in 2002.
/ [Caterin S.]

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