Author: Mary McKinley
Genre: realistic fiction
Similar books: #16thingsithoughtweretrue by Janet Gurtler
Let's Get Lost by Adi Alsaid
Rating:
.JPG) |
| Kind of a disappointment |
Summary: Rusty is used to being alone in high school. She is one of the weird kids - too smart for her own good and overweight. She doesn't expect things to change until college. Then she meets new kid Beau. Beau is the target of all the high school bullies and they become fast friends along with Rusty's cartooning friend Leoni. When the bullying gets violent Beau has had enough. He decides to run away to San Francisco (where his uncle lives). Rusty and Leoni are determined not to let him go alone.
My Opinion: I wanted to like this book far more than I actually did. Road trips usually make for great plots, especially as the physical journey can be representative of the emotional journey. That aspect was certainly present here. The book also asks us to consider some pretty big ideas: equality, abuse, bullying, and self-esteem to name a few. Those are the positives. I have two specific complaints. 1) Much of the plot (and particularly the conclusion) is idealized. It's how we wish things would go for kids who are facing something difficult. 2) It has a tendency to preach. Instead of guiding us organically through these big ideas, various characters go on rants telling the others, and thus the reader, why the way we look at things is wrong. I know very few teens (or adults for that matter) who listen to more than a few lines of a lecture before tuning it all out.
Advanced Reader Copy provided by NetGalley
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