NOVA

Troubled girls search for healthier perspectives in Jacobson’s magical-realist debut YA novel.

Two 17-year-olds from an unnamed city,Aurora and Stella, are camping out under the stars in a local park. The friends have specifically bonded over the fact that neither has a mother;Aurora lives in a foster home, while Stella lives with her grandfather. When Stella goes to visit a concession stand in the park, she finds a list with the word “Quest” written at the top of it: “Needs…not wants…,” it reads. “Faith, Confidence, Positive self-talk, Positive body image, To express gratitude, A passion, To be kind….” Aurora initially doesn’t think much of it, but Stella sees the “questlisting” as a set of instructions for what the girls must master to create better versions of themselves. Each day, the two try to figure out ways to achieve the list’s ideals, even as they run up against insecurities and past traumas. They get some help from new friends, including campground worker Pinky, activist Magdalena, and, in a whimsical turn, a tree that can speak and magically alter text. The novel is formatted as dialogue, with changing typefaces to reflect the characters’ personalities: an understated sans-serif for grounded Aurora, scriptlike italics for chatty Stella. The girls’ speech is always sharp and engaging, even if they rarely sound like girls their ages. Sometimes the voices seem much younger, and at others a bit older, as when Aurora bemoans social media culture in an IHOP restaurant: “the people seeing the selfie would think you IHOPpy-happy all the time. You’re not….Why are we compelled to do it?” The plot mainly serves as a means for Jacobson, a social entrepreneur and child advocate, to discuss motivational ideas, not all of which are original; for example, the girls tell each other the plots of Are You My Mother?(1960) by P.D. Eastman and The Giving Tree(1964) by Shel Silverstein. The book eventually reveals itself to have a decidedly Christian orientation, but the work feels too contrived to inspire much emotion or inspiration.

An offbeat but clumsily didactic novel with an inspirational bent.