A funny, heartwarming YA novel.
In Kerick’s (The Weekend Bucket List, 2018, etc.) YA novel, two teens navigate gender and other identities.
Julian Mendez—or Julia as she hopes one day to be known at school and everywhere else—recently tried to kill herself with a bottle of Extra Strength Tylenol. Everyone at school assumes it was a cry for help (including Julia), so now she’s seeing a therapist who specializes in trans teens. Julia is placed on puberty blockers, and her therapist recommends that she join a club and try to make some friends in order to “expand [her] social base” before the treatment takes its effect on her body. At a meeting of the Rights for Every Human Organization, Julia meets Kale Oswald, another youngster going through a transformation—from nonhippie to hippie. Julia isn’t much impressed by Kale’s recently acquired dreadlocks and tie-dye, but Kale finds that he is feeling an unexpected attraction to Julia, whom he perceives as a male. Could Kale be gay, he wonders? As fate further entangles the pair, they discover that they are more similar than they originally thought…but can the relationship survive the revelation that Julian is really Julia? Kerick’s narration toggles between Julian’s and Kale’s perspectives. Both brim with angst and snark: “Since I left my makeup bag on my bed in the frenzied morning rush,” Julia tells her unwanted therapist, “I had no powder to do touch-ups, so my face is as greasy as Colonel Sanders’s crispiest chicken breast. Don’t you like the way the suckage of my day came full circle, right back to my late start?” Despite its serious topic, Kerick eschews the melodrama common in today’s YA lit, opting instead for a lighter, jocular tone that mostly focuses on perennial teen issues: student rivalries, bullying, families, and crushes. Julian’s and Kale’s situations and feelings of discombobulation are strikingly relatable. The book ends up about where the reader expects it will, but the well-drawn and emotionally engaging characters make this novel a fine place for a teen to pass the time.
A funny, heartwarming YA novel.Pub Date: June 26, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-64080-393-0
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Harmony Ink Press
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Aspiring filmmaker/first-novelist Chbosky adds an upbeat ending to a tale of teenaged angst—the right combination of realism and uplift to allow it on high school reading lists, though some might object to the sexuality, drinking, and dope-smoking. More sophisticated readers might object to the rip-off of Salinger, though Chbosky pays homage by having his protagonist read Catcher in the Rye. Like Holden, Charlie oozes sincerity, rails against celebrity phoniness, and feels an extraliterary bond with his favorite writers (Harper Lee, Fitzgerald, Kerouac, Ayn Rand, etc.). But Charlie’s no rich kid: the third child in a middle-class family, he attends public school in western Pennsylvania, has an older brother who plays football at Penn State, and an older sister who worries about boys a lot. An epistolary novel addressed to an anonymous “friend,” Charlie’s letters cover his first year in high school, a time haunted by the recent suicide of his best friend. Always quick to shed tears, Charlie also feels guilty about the death of his Aunt Helen, a troubled woman who lived with Charlie’s family at the time of her fatal car wreck. Though he begins as a friendless observer, Charlie is soon pals with seniors Patrick and Sam (for Samantha), stepsiblings who include Charlie in their circle, where he smokes pot for the first time, drops acid, and falls madly in love with the inaccessible Sam. His first relationship ends miserably because Charlie remains compulsively honest, though he proves a loyal friend (to Patrick when he’s gay-bashed) and brother (when his sister needs an abortion). Depressed when all his friends prepare for college, Charlie has a catatonic breakdown, which resolves itself neatly and reveals a long-repressed truth about Aunt Helen. A plain-written narrative suggesting that passivity, and thinking too much, lead to confusion and anxiety. Perhaps the folks at (co-publisher) MTV see the synergy here with Daria or any number of videos by the sensitive singer-songwriters they feature.
Pub Date: Feb. 4, 1999
ISBN: 0-671-02734-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: MTV Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes...
In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action.
Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence.
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-028077-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
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