Category Archives: Contemporary

Review: Sadie by Courtney Summers

Book Review and Content, Contemporary, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , ,
Sadie by Courtney Summers

Sadie
Courtney Summers
Wednesday Books
Published on September 4, 2018

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About Sadie

Sadie hasn’t had an easy life. Growing up on her own, she’s been raising her sister Mattie in an isolated small town, trying her best to provide a normal life and keep their heads above water.

But when Mattie is found dead, Sadie’s entire world crumbles. After a somewhat botched police investigation, Sadie is determined to bring her sister’s killer to justice and hits the road following a few meagre clues to find him.

When West McCray—a radio personality working on a segment about small, forgotten towns in America—overhears Sadie’s story at a local gas station, he becomes obsessed with finding the missing girl. He starts his own podcast as he tracks Sadie’s journey, trying to figure out what happened, hoping to find her before it’s too late.

My Review

I was a little nervous about reading this book as I read reviews that mentioned how much it dealt with sexual abuse as I have a really low threshold for being able to read things like that. Details about those experiences really undo me.

Anyway, after my Q&A with Courtney Summers in which she talked about her reasons for writing this book, I wanted to try to read it anyway, and I’m honestly glad I did.

I feel like I’ve said this before, but I have so much respect for Summers and her commitment to be a voice for young women who are often forgotten. Lots of times stories like this, about missing girls, sensationalize the details of the disappearance. I’ve read books where I felt like the author almost revels in constructing the details of torture and graphic abuse.

You won’t find those gory details in Sadie. And you might think that would steal some of the horror or power of the story, but honestly, it doesn’t. Instead, it keeps the story focused on what matters: the humanity of the characters, the fact that they are so much more than abuse victims.

And that humanity coupled with the raw, high-intensity emotional responses of the characters punched straight into me as I read the darkest parts of the story. I felt horror at what happened to Sadie and the other victims of abuse. But I didn’t have to endure the details of what happened to them in order to feel that horror. Sharing in Sadie’s brokenness and horror were powerful enough, especially in the hands of a writer like Courtney Summers. Y’all, she is a force.

Conclusion

Sadie is probably not for everyone. It’s got some rough language, and it’s definitely a dark story. But it does remind us that these things happen to girls way too often. And that way too often we forget them once the glow of the news headlines dims. I’ll remember this one for a long time.

If you liked VANISHING GIRLS by Lauren Oliver, you definitely want to check out SADIE.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 12 up.

Representation
Major characters are white or not physically described. Sadie has a stutter and deals with a lot of judgment about it.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used regularly throughout the book.

Romance/Sexual Content
Brief kissing between two girls. References to sex. References to sexual abuse, including sex with children. None of those things are described in detail, though in one scene, a man stands in the bathroom watching a girl crouched naked in a tub. At another point, a character finds pictures depicting child sex abuse. The photos aren’t described, but they’re clearly horrifying to the characters who see them.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
References to sexual abuse and prostitution. A girl’s body is found in an orchard. We know she died from blunt force trauma to the head. Sadie leaves on a journey to find and kill a man she believes killed her sister. In another scene, a man attacks a girl, slamming her head into the steering wheel of her car and smashing her face on a concrete driveway. During one scene, a girl accidentally cuts her arm on window glass. At another point, a girl realizes she’s been hit in the back of the head and collapses. Several people find themselves threatened at knifepoint. One man is stabbed.

Drug Content
Sadie’s mom is an alcoholic and drug addict. She meets other addicts through the story. At one point, she and some teens order drinks at a bar. At least one of the teens drives home drunk.

Note: I received a free copy of SADIE in exchange for my honest review. This post contains affiliate links which do not cost you anything to use but which help support this blog.

Review: Meet the Sky by McCall Hoyle

Book Review and Content, Christian World-View, Clean Fiction, Contemporary, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , ,

Meet the Sky
McCall Hoyle
Blink
Published on September 4, 2018

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

About Meet the Sky
It all started with the accident. The one that caused Sophie’s dad to walk out of her life. The one that left Sophie’s older sister, Meredith, barely able to walk at all.

With nothing but pain in her past, all Sophie wants is to plan for the future—keep the family business running, get accepted to veterinary school, and protect her mom and sister from another disaster. But when a hurricane forms off the coast of North Carolina’s Outer Banks and heads right toward their island, Sophie realizes nature is one thing she can’t control.

After she gets separated from her family during the evacuation, Sophie finds herself trapped on the island with the last person she’d have chosen—the reckless and wild Finn Sanders, who broke her heart freshman year. As they struggle to find safety, Sophie learns that Finn has suffered his own heartbreak; but instead of playing it safe, Finn’s become the kind of guy who goes surfing in the eye of the hurricane. He may be the perfect person to remind Sophie how to embrace life again, but only if their newfound friendship can survive the storm.

My Review

One of my favorite things about Hoyle’s debut novel, The Thing with Feathers (my review here)was the way she used Emily Dickinson’s poetry throughout the book. Which means one of my favorite parts of Meet the Sky was the way she used the Tennyson quotes at the beginning of each chapter and also at pivotal moments in the story itself. Honestly, I didn’t realize some of those quotes were written by Tennyson before reading this book. For example, “Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” I’m not sure who I thought wrote that, but I didn’t realize it was Tennyson. So yay. Learned something new.

In addition, I liked Sophie’s character a lot. I kind of wanted to see more of her interaction with her sister and her mom. We know her sister is different since the accident, but I felt like I didn’t get to experience that firsthand, other than a very brief scene in the beginning of the book.

The story isn’t really about Sophie and Mere’s relationship, though. It’s much more about the hurricane mishaps that force Sophie to reconnect with her childhood crush/friend Finn. I liked Finn and the contrast between his character (risk-taking and adventurous) and Sophie’s (so many control issues).

I read another book recently (Even if the Sky Falls) in which characters are trapped together by a hurricane. I feel kind of funny about it because I live in Florida and have been through probably half a dozen hurricanes, so as I read both books, I kept comparing my experiences to what’s described in the book, and feeling really sensitive to whether something seemed realistic. Which might not be really fair, since one book took place in New Orleans and the other in North Carolina, which are really different areas than where I live.

At any rate, in this book, Sophie and Finn do a bunch of stuff during the hurricane that’s really dangerous, like going outside during the storm. For the story, it made things super dramatic, and I kept wanting to yell at them, like noooo, go back inside! This is bad! I had a hard time with that part – not because I thought it was unrealistic. People do impulsive, dangerous things during hurricanes all the time.

On the whole Meet the Sky is a sweet romance about learning to let go of fear in order to experience love and a full life. I think fans of Jennifer E. Smith and Jenn Bennett will like this one.

Recommended for Ages 12 up.

Cultural Elements
Major characters are white or not physically described. Sophie’s sister Mere has lost some mobility and has memory issues resulting from a traumatic brain injury. She’s a very minor character in the story.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
A couple references to swearing—things like, thinking words that would make her mother angry.

Romance/Sexual Content
Finn makes a couple of vaguely suggestive comments. Sophie undresses a boy down to his underwear after he collapses in wet clothes and goes into shock. Sophie wakes up in a different shirt and realizes she was undressed and dressed again by someone else. She’s embarrassed, but neither of these instances are really sexual. She doesn’t linger on any details.
Brief kissing between boy and girl.

Spiritual Content
Finn talks with Sophie about living deep and sucking all the marrow out of life. She has a lot of fears and dependence on control, whereas he seems to take a lot of risks and yet has a lot more peace than she has. She craves his contentment.

Violent Content
Descriptions of a car accident with injuries. Some injuries resulting from being outside during a hurricane.
Also a couple of times, characters break windows or steal things (medicine, food, etc) while they’re stranded during the hurricane.

Drug Content
Sophie’s dad became an alcoholic after the accident that injured her sister. At one point, Finn offers Sophie Jack Daniels (meaning for her to use the alcohol to sterilize a wound) and she recoils, thinking about her dad and how she doesn’t want to be anything like him.

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Sadie Blog Tour Q&A with Courtney Summers

Author Interview, Contemporary, Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, News and Fun, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , ,

Courtney Summers writes gripping stories that tend to stick with you long after the last page is closed. When I listened to her speak at YALLfest in 2016, her commitment to give girls a strong voice really stuck out to me. When I had the opportunity to participate in this blog tour with Wednesday Books, I jumped at the chance to talk more with Courtney Summers about her latest book, Sadie. I’ll introduce the book and then move straight into what I learned from the author.

About Sadie by Courtney Summers

Amazon | Goodreads | Barnes & Noble

Sadie hasn’t had an easy life. Growing up on her own, she’s been raising her sister Mattie in an isolated small town, trying her best to provide a normal life and keep their heads above water.

But when Mattie is found dead, Sadie’s entire world crumbles. After a somewhat botched police investigation, Sadie is determined to bring her sister’s killer to justice and hits the road following a few meagre clues to find him.

When West McCray—a radio personality working on a segment about small, forgotten towns in America—overhears Sadie’s story at a local gas station, he becomes obsessed with finding the missing girl. He starts his own podcast as he tracks Sadie’s journey, trying to figure out what happened, hoping to find her before it’s too late.

Q&A with Courtney Summers

Do you have a favorite scene, quote, or moment from Sadie?

My favorite scene is a spoiler, but my favorite quote is this: “I wish this was a love story.”

What gave you the idea for Sadie?

One of the things that inspired Sadie was the way we consume violence against women and girls as a form of entertainment. When we do that, we reduce its victims to objects, which suggests a level of disposability–that a girl’s pain is only valuable to us if we’re being entertained by it. What is our responsibility to us? I really wanted to explore that and the way we dismiss missing girls and what the cost of that ultimately is.

Can you talk a little bit about how you created the setting for Sadie?

 Sadie is set in various fictional towns and cities across the state of Colorado and Sadie, as a character herself, was integral in creating those places. I had to make sure to put her in environments she could not only respond to, but would reveal her headspace and past to the reader.

What was the most surprising thing you learned in creating your characters?

When I first started Sadie, I was extremely skeptical of West– he had to prove himself to readers over the course of his narrative and given the nature of his job, I was curious to see where writing him would take me. I really loved the way his arc unfolded. I wasn’t necessarily surprised by it, but more gratified by it than I realized I would be.

What was the hardest part of the story to write?

There wasn’t a particular part that was harder to write than any others—writing a book like Sadie requires occupying a dark emotional headspace all the way through, so it was all a bit tough to write in that sense.

Sadie is told through two points of view: Sadie, as she looks for her sister, and West’s podcasts as he follows her story. Did you experience more difficulty writing one or the other, or did you like writing in one form more? How much of the novel did you write in chronological order, and how much did you jump around?

I enjoyed both of them. Writing Sadie’s perspective was very familiar to me because all of my books feature an intensely close first person, female point-of-view. Writing West’s perspective, the podcast format, proved a little more challenging. Not so much because of the way it was written (scripts) but because each episode had to propel Sadie’s narrative forward and give us a different way of looking at the things she went through.

So far, I’ve only ever been able to write in chronological order!

Was this how you always envisioned the book or did it change as you wrote it?

Regina Spektor said something really interesting about writing songs that I’ve always loved and related to as an author. She said, “[A]s soon as you try and take a song from your mind into piano and voice and into the real world, something gets lost and it’s like a moment where, in that moment, you forget how it was and it’s this new way. And then when you make a record, even those ideas that you had, then those get all turned around and changed. So in the end, I think, it just becomes its own thing and really I think a song could be recorded a million different ways and so what my records are, it just happened like that, but it’s not like, this is how I planned it from the very beginning because I have no idea, I can’t remember.”

I feel something similar when writing– the heart of my idea remains intact, but the way it takes its ultimate form is always a little different (or even a lot different) than I might have been expecting, which makes it difficult to recall the starting point. But that’s okay as long as the heart is still there and you’re satisfied with and believe in what you’ve created.

About Courtney Summers

website | facebook | twitter | instagram

Courtney Summers was born in Belleville, Ontario, 1986. At age 14, she dropped out of high school. At age 18, she wrote her first novel. Cracked Up to Be was published in 2008, when she was 22 and went on to win the 2009 CYBIL award in YA fiction. Since then, she’s published four more critically acclaimed books: Some Girls Are, Fall for Anything, This is Not a Test and All the Rage, as well as an e-novella, Please Remain Calm which is a sequel to This is Not a Test. Her new novel, Sadie, is available now wherever books are sold. #findsadie
In 2016, Courtney was named one of Flare Magazine’s 60 under 30.

Review and Blog Tour: The Third Mushroom by Jennifer L. Holm

Blogger's Favorites, Book Review and Content, Clean Fiction, Contemporary, Middle Grade 8-12, , , , , , , , , ,


I’m super excited to be part of my first ever Rockstar Blog Tour. Yay! When I saw the invitation to review The Third Mushroom by Jennifer L. Holm, I really couldn’t resist. I had so much fun reading the first book about Ellie and her grandfather-trapped-in-a-teenager’s-body that I absolutely had to find out what happens to them next in this book, The Third Mushroom. Read on for my review, some information about the author, other stops on the tour and a chance to win your very own copy of the book!

The Third Mushroom
Jennifer L. Holm
Random House
Published on September 4, 2018

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads  | Audible | iBooks | TBD

About The Third Mushroom
Ellie’s grandpa Melvin is a world-renowned scientist . . . in the body of a fourteen-year-old boy. His feet stink, and he eats everything in the refrigerator–and Ellie is so happy to have him around. Grandpa may not exactly fit in at middle school, but he certainly keeps things interesting. When he and Ellie team up for the county science fair, no one realizes just how groundbreaking their experiment will be. The formula for eternal youth may be within their reach! And when Ellie’s cat, Jonas Salk, gets sick, the stakes become even higher. But is the key to eternal life really the key to happiness? Sometimes even the most careful experiments yield unexpected–and wonderful–results.

My Review
I loved The Fourteenth Goldfish with its zany characters and love for science, so when I saw this sequel, The Third Mushroom, I pretty much HAD to read it. Ellie’s grandpa still cracked me up with his goofy blend of grandpa-slash-teenage-boy-ness. I loved the way he referred to hormonal issues as “The Puberty” and his cute relationship with the librarian.
There’s one part (I don’t want to give away what happens) that’s super sad. I wasn’t prepared for it, and it brought back the memories of my own similar experience. Those scenes were tough to read because they were so moving, but overall, there’s a positive message through it. (I’ll add a spoiler section to the end since it might be something you’d want to know about before reading if you’ve got a sensitive kid who’s just been through what Ellie’s experience.)
I also liked the way the story addressed the shifting relationships Ellie experiences. I so remember that stuff happening in middle school and how disconcerting it could be.
Science again plays a fun and interesting role in the story, as Ellie and her grandfather enter a science fair together and learn about various scientists who’ve made important contributions in the past. The end of the book includes a short list of resources to learn more about the scientists and discoveries mentioned in the book, which I thought was a nice touch as well.
Overall, if you enjoy spunky, fun stories, The Third Mushroom is a great pick. You can find my review of The Fourteenth Goldfish here.

Recommended for Ages 8 to 12.

Cultural Elements
Ellie and her family are white. Her best friend is a boy named Raj, who dresses as a goth.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
Ellie goes on a date with a boy and holds his hand. She feels a little disappointed that she’s not more excited about the whole thing, and the possible romance kind of fizzles out.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
None.

Drug Content
Ellie learns a bit about the invention of penicillin. She and her grandfather discover a compound that seems to have some regenerative capabilities. See spoiler section at the end of the post for more details.


Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. Amazon links are affiliate links, meaning if you click the link and purchase items from Amazon.com, I will get a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you. This helps cover the costs of running my blog.

About Jennifer L. Holm

Website | Twitter | Facebook |  Goodreads

Jennifer L. Holm is a NEW YORK TIMES bestselling children’s author and the recipient of three Newbery Honors for her novels OUR ONLY MAY AMELIA, PENNY FROM HEAVEN, and TURTLE IN PARADISE. Jennifer collaborates with her brother, Matthew Holm, on two graphic novel series — the Eisner Award-winning Babymouse series and the bestselling Squish series. Her new novel is THE FOURTEENTH GOLDFISH. She lives in California with her husband and two children.

Visit the Other Stop on The Third Mushroom Blog Tour

Week One:

9/3/2018- Beagles & Books– Review

9/4/2018- BookHounds YA– Excerpt

9/5/2018- The Story Sanctuary– Review

9/6/2018- Rhythmicbooktrovert – Review

9/7/2018- Here’s to Happy Endings– Review

Week Two:

9/10/2018- For the Love of KidLit– Interview

9/11/2018- YA Books Central– Interview

9/12/2018- The OWL– Review

9/13/2018- Book-Keeping– Review

9/14/2018- Two Points of Interest– Review

Enter to Win a Copy of The Third Mushroom

Three winners will each receive one copy of The Third Mushroom by Jennifer L. Holm.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Spoiler Alert – super sad scenes

I mentioned above that something happens in the book that’s sad and was hard for me to read because I didn’t expect it and it brought back my own memories of a similar event. What happens is that Ellie’s cat gets seriously injured. The family isn’t sure what happened, but they suspect he was hit by a car. Desperate to help him, Ellie asks her grandfather to inject the formula they’ve discovered into the cat near his damaged spine. It’s too late for the poor furry little guy, and shortly after that, Ellie and her family make the difficult decision to put him to sleep. She grieves for the loss, feeling alternately lost, hurt, angry, etc. Ultimately, she ends up rescuing another cat who’s about to become homeless and realizes she still has love to share and another cat needs her.

It so reminded me of my own experience losing a cat – I particularly identified with feeling like the heart was missing from my home. I hated being home in an empty house without a cat. Which is how I started visiting an animal shelter just to see kitty faces. And how my next cat won me over. You can see a picture of both my rescue cats on my Instagram.

Anyway – normally I don’t post spoilers, but if you’ve been through the experience of losing a pet recently, this part of the book will either be healing or too much. It happens near the end of the book, and is only the focus of a few scenes, but like I said, it’s pretty moving.

Review: Even if the Sky Falls by Mia Garcia

Book Review and Content, Contemporary, Romance, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , ,

Even if the Sky Falls
Mia Garcia
Katherine Tegen Books
Published on May 10, 2016

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

About Even if the Sky Falls
All she needs is one night to be anyone she wants.

Julie is desperate for a change. So she heads to New Orleans with her youth group to rebuild houses and pretend her life isn’t a total mess. But between her super-clingy team leader and her way-too-chipper companions, Julie feels more trapped than ever.

In a moment of daring, she ditches her work clothes for DIY fairy wings and heads straight into the heart of Mid-Summer Mardi Gras, where she locks eyes with Miles, an utterly irresistible guy with a complicated story of his own. And for once, Julie isn’t looking back. She jumps at the chance to see the real New Orleans, and in one surreal night, they dance under the stars, share their most shameful secrets, and fall in love.

But their adventure takes an unexpected turn when an oncoming hurricane changes course. As the storm gains power and Julie is pulled back into chaos she finds pretending everything is fine is no longer an option.

My Review
I’m a little torn in how I feel about this book. On the one hand, Julie’s story drew me in immediately. Obviously she’s recovering from something intense, but we don’t learn right away what’s happened to wreck her so deeply.

Then she gets this opportunity to escape her past completely for a little while. I loved the characters in the band she meets and especially Miles. It only took like half a second for me to start hoping Miles and Julie would get together.

The hurricane descriptions were pretty wild. As a Floridian, I’ve weathered several storms. I’m not sure I buy that so much happened from a Category 2 storm, but I’m sure it depends on a lot of factors, like which side of the storm hit them and that sort of thing. Certainly no matter what category it is, being outside in a hurricane is really dangerous!

What I really struggled with, though, is the ending. The romance gets resolved, and that was great. But all the way along Julie flashes back to what happened at home before the mission trip, and I think I wanted those two worlds to collide more completely. I was hoping her family or her brother would make an appearance at the end and we’d know she’d turned a corner even in her ability to deal with things at home. Not that everything had to be fixed, just some kind of scene tying things together.

Other than that, I’m glad I read it. I hate that Julie had such a bad experience on her mission trip, because I have such fun memories of my own trips. But considering what was going on in her life, it made perfect sense that she would feel alienated and unable to connect with the enthusiasm of the rest of the group.

The descriptions of New Orleans were fun and vivid – I felt like I was there, and I’ve been craving beignets since reading about them. Yum!

Even if the Sky Falls is a great pick for fans of The Geography of You and Me by Jennifer E. Smith or Starry Eyes by Jenn Bennett.Recommended for Ages 16 up.

Cultural Elements
Julie is Latina and talks about visiting relatives in Puerto Rico.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Infrequent use of extreme profanity.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between a boy and girl. At one point a boy and girl go swimming in their underwear. References to sex. One scene shows some nudity and lets us know the characters have had sex without any graphic details.

Julie’s mission leader clearly wants a relationship with her. He’s clingy and clearly makes her uncomfortable, since he seems willfully blind to her “no” signals. He doesn’t assault her or anything like that, but he does make her feel gross.

Spiritual Content
Julie’s family is Catholic and she’s on a mission trip with a church group, but it’s clear she has a lot of doubts in terms of her own faith. She’s bitter and depressed and feels like the church people don’t understand her and are too happy-happy.

Violent Content
Someone tries to choke Julie. She escapes.

The storm beats Julie and her friend up pretty badly. There’s one scene where they battle the elements, and things look pretty grim. Some details about injuries. It’s definitely a perilous situation.

Drug Content
Julie and her companion drink beer at a party and later share a bottle of wine.

Review: Your Destination is on the Left by Lauren Spieller

Book Review and Content, Contemporary, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , , , ,

Your Destination is on the Left
Lauren Spieller
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Published on June 26, 2018

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

About Your Destination is on the Left
Dessa Rhodes is a modern day nomad. Her family travels in an RV, their lives defined by state lines, exit signs, and the small communal caravan they call home. Among them is Cyrus, her best friend and long-time crush, whom she knows she can never be with. When your families are perpetually linked, it’s too dangerous to take a risk on romance.

Instead, Dessa looks to the future. She wants to be a real artist and going to art school is her ticket to success and a new life. There’s just one problem: she hasn’t been accepted…anywhere. Suddenly her future is wide open, and it looks like she’s going to be stuck traveling forever.

Then an unexpected opportunity presents itself: an internship working with a local artist in Santa Fe. Dessa struggles to prove to her boss—and herself—that she belongs there, but just as she finally hits her stride, her family suffers an unexpected blow. Faced with losing everything that she has worked for, Dessa has a difficult decision to make. Will she say goodbye to her nomadic lifestyle and the boy she loves? Or will she choose to never stop moving?

My Review
I liked that Dessa’s major goal wasn’t to find true love or be in a relationship. While romance is an important element of the story, Dessa’s real goal is to go to college and craft a future for herself. This creates some problems between her and her family as her parents want her to stay with them and continue traveling. It also strains her relationship with her best friend Cyrus, because he reads her desire for another life as a rejection of the life he’s chosen. So Dessa faces a difficult journey as she tries to find a way to do what she feels is best for her without hurting the people she loves most.

At one point, Dessa’s dad asks her to keep a secret from her mom. Dessa keeps the secret, but feels guilty about the lie and frustrated that her dad continues to lie to the family, too. I loved her relationship with her grandmother, who acts as a pillar of strength and a sort of home base for Dessa and her family. She doesn’t direct the story, but she sometimes serves as a mirror, reflecting Dessa’s true desires back to her sometimes without any words.

Dessa’s artwork also plays a major role in the story. I loved that. The descriptions of her artwork and the art of the woman who mentors her had me wishing for a studio and paintbrushes or a day at the museum.

On the whole, I liked the balance between Dessa’s dreams for the future, which she won’t compromise for a relationship that might only be for right now, and her relationships. I loved the way art was represented in and played a role in the story, too. Readers who liked Stacie Ramey’s The Sister Pact and How to Be Brave by E. Katherine Kottaras will want to check this one out.

Recommended for Ages 16 and up.

Cultural Elements
Dessa’s family is Greek. Cyrus’s family is black.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used regularly throughout the book.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between boy and girl and tops removed. Dessa says they don’t have sex but come close.

Spiritual Content
Dessa’s grandmother is Greek Orthodox. There are a couple mentions of her going to church or passing mentions of her faith. At one point, she and Dessa plan to spend time alone together, and her grandmother says, it’s going to be her, Dessa, and the Lord.

Violent Content
Dessa throws a cup of beer in the face of a cruel boy.

Drug Content
Dessa drinks beer with a friend after they both sneak into a bar together, and later drinks champagne (provided by her grandmother) with Cyrus.

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.