Tag Archives: novel in verse

Review: Everywhere Blue by Joanne Rossmassler Fritz

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Everywhere Blue by Joanne Rossmassler-Fritz

Everywhere Blue
Joanne Rossmassler Fritz
Holiday House
Published June 1, 2021

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About Everywhere Blue

After twelve-year-old Maddie’s older brother vanishes from his college campus, her carefully ordered world falls apart. Nothing will fill the void of her beloved oldest sibling. When her parents fly out to Strum’s college to search for answers, Maddie is left in the care of her sixteen-year-old sister, who seeks solace in rebellion and ignores Maddie. Drowning in grief and confusion, the family’s musical household falls silent.

Though Maddie is the youngest, she knows Strum better than anyone. He used to confide in her, sharing his fears about the climate crisis and their planet’s future. So, Maddie starts looking for clues: Was Strum unhappy? Were the arguments with their dad getting worse? Or could his disappearance have something to do with those endangered butterflies he loved . . .

Scared and on her own, Maddie picks up the pieces of her family’s fractured lives. Maybe her parents aren’t who she thought they were. Maybe her nervous thoughts and compulsive counting mean she needs help. And maybe finding Strum won’t solve everything–but she knows he’s out there, and she has to try.

A brother’s disappearance turns one family upside down, revealing painful secrets that threaten the life they’ve always known.

My Review

When I started reading this book, I was super excited to learn that Maddie plays the oboe! You might remember from my review of AS FAR AS YOU’LL TAKE ME (another book featuring an oboist) that I’m pretty much surrounded by oboe players. I feel like it’s an unusual instrument to play, so I’m really excited that I’ve found two books that include the oboe.

EVERYWHERE BLUE is a novel in verse from Maddie’s point of view. She’s a hard working, super anxious girl who doubts her musical ability but also sees her life in musical terms. I loved her from the first page. Her family relationships are complicated. The person she’s closest to, Strum, her brother, has gone off to college. Her sister is angry and isolates herself from the family. Her father is angry and uses rules to control the household. Maddie often looks to her mother to comfort her and bring the family together.

I think I imagined from the cover summary that the story would be focused on Maddie finding the trail of breadcrumbs to learn what happened to her brother. And she does look for clues and wonder. But the bulk of the story focuses on Maddie and her processing what has happened to her family and her attempts to keep them together. I still enjoyed that a lot– this is a really rich emotional story. Maddie also processes a lot through her music, so I loved all the scenes that showed her practicing or listening to a piece of music that moved her. It made me want to find recordings of the music from the story to listen to.

I think readers who enjoy novels in verse, like ALONE by Megan E. Freeman, or stories about an emotional journey within a fractured family, like GLITTER GETS EVERYWHERE by Yvette Clark will want to add this one to their shelves.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 10 up.

Representation
Maddie has a counting ritual that she uses to cope with anxiety. She’s not labeled/diagnosed in the story. Maddie’s best friend is Asian-American.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
In one scene, Maddie sees a girl sitting on a boy’s lap.

Spiritual Content
At one point Maddie says something like, if there’s a god, she hopes he’ll keep her brother safe.

Violent Content
None.

Drug Content
Maddie’s older sister comes home smelling like pot. (Maddie doesn’t specifically identify the smell.) Later, Maddie sees her sister and her sister’s friends drinking beer.

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

Review: Reckless, Glorious, Girl by Ellen Hagan

Book Review and Content, Contemporary, Middle Grade 8-12, Poetry, , , , , , , , , ,

Reckless, Glorious, Girl
Ellen Hagan
Bloomsbury Publishing
Published February 23, 2021

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About Reckless, Glorious, Girl

Beatrice Miller may have a granny’s name (her granny’s, to be more specific), but she adores her Mamaw and her mom, who give her every bit of wisdom and love they have. But the summer before seventh grade, Bea wants more than she has, aches for what she can’t have, and wonders what the future will bring.

This novel in verse follows Beatrice through the ups and downs of friendships, puberty, and identity as she asks: Who am I? Who will I become? And will my outside ever match the way I feel on the inside?

A gorgeous, inter-generational story of Southern women and a girl’s path blossoming into her sense of self, Reckless, Glorious, Girl explores the important questions we all ask as we race toward growing up.

The co-author of Watch Us Rise pens a novel in verse about all the good and bad that comes with middle school, growing up girl, and the strength of family that gets you through it.

My Review

One of the great things about this novel-in-verse is how unpretentious it is. Sometimes reading poetry makes it harder for me to connect to a story, because I get lost in the rhythm of the words or have to stop to decode things, but RECKLESS, GLORIOUS, GIRL is really easy to read. It’s still got a lot of emotion and heart, it’s just also really straightforward, which I liked.

Sometimes Beatrice’s character felt a little shallow to me. Everything she felt made sense and seemed realistic. She focused a lot on her skin and how she looked and wanting to be cool– which are totally reasonable things for someone to think about. I guess it just felt like a lot to me, and I wanted her to hurry toward realizing that those things weren’t what was the most important.

Beatrice grows a lot through the story. I love how the story centers around women: her mom and grandmother, her two best friends, even other girls in Beatrice’s class. Her relationships with her mom and Memaw were my favorite. I love how they challenged each other and sometimes experienced friction, but always they loved each other.

I think readers who enjoyed THE BENEFITS OF BEING AN OCTOPUS will enjoy the heart and family relationships of this story.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 10 to 14.

Representation
Beatrice is white. Her best friends are Latina and Black.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Mild profanity used maybe half a dozen times.

Romance/Sexual Content
Beatrice attends a party where they play spin the bottle. She and a boy are matched up but don’t kiss. There is one kiss between a boy and girl.

Spiritual Content
Beatrice’s grandmother is a very free spirited person and makes a vague reference to thanking the goddesses.

Violent Content
None.

Drug Content
None.

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

Review: Alone by Megan E. Freeman

Book Review and Content, Dystopian or Post-Apocalyptic, Poetry, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , ,

Alone
Megan E. Freeman
Simon & Schuster/Aladdin
Published January 12, 2021

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About Alone

When twelve-year-old Maddie hatches a scheme for a secret sleepover with her two best friends, she ends up waking up to a nightmare. She’s alone—left behind in a town that has been mysteriously evacuated and abandoned.

With no one to rely on, no power, and no working phone lines or internet access, Maddie slowly learns to survive on her own. Her only companions are a Rottweiler named George and all the books she can read. After a rough start, Maddie learns to trust her own ingenuity and invents clever ways to survive in a place that has been deserted and forgotten.

As months pass, she escapes natural disasters, looters, and wild animals. But Maddie’s most formidable enemy is the crushing loneliness she faces every day. Can Maddie’s stubborn will to survive carry her through the most frightening experience of her life?

My Review

I tend to really enjoy novels in verse, but also feel a little bit inadequate reading them? Does this happen to anyone else? Just me?

Even with that, I really liked ALONE. It’s a bit too dark to say I enjoyed it– lots of moments left me uncomfortable, and I will admit that I even peeked ahead to the end because I just needed to know that I could handle what would happen. (It had been an unusually tough week.)

I liked the connection that Maddie had to her family and the ways she tried to preserve those connections even while she was alone. It was so sweet that she had the dog with her, too. I really liked him and that they took care of each other.

There were a lot of suspenseful moments and some interesting political and social commentary often lurking between the lines. Those are all things I love in a book, so they only pulled me in more deeply into the story.

I often find stories with a solitary narrator to kind of drag on without other characters and dialog to break up the narrative, so I felt like telling this particular story in verse kept it feeling fast-paced and suspenseful.

If you enjoy more contemporary-feeling dystopian stories or novels in verse, definitely add ALONE to your reading list.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 10 to 14.

Representation
Major characters are white.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Mild profanity used a few times.

Romance/Sexual Content
Maddie sees a group of men and wonders whether they would rescue her or attack her.

Spiritual Content
Maddie tries to pray and at one point writes an angry letter to God.

Violent Content
Maddie sees a man kill a kitten. Maddie learns to shoot a handgun for protection. A tornado rips through Maddie’s town. Lightning sparks a fire that destroys a neighborhood.

Drug Content
None.

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

Review: We Come Apart by Sarah Crossan and Brian Conaghan

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

We Come Apart
Sarah Crossan and Brian Conaghan
Bloomsbury USA Children’s
Published June 13, 2017

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

About We Come Apart
Nicu has emigrated from Romania and is struggling to find his place in his new home. Meanwhile, Jess’s home life is overshadowed by violence. When Nicu and Jess meet, what starts out as friendship grows into romance as the two bond over their painful pasts and hopeful futures. But will they be able to save each other, let alone themselves?

For fans of Una LaMarche’s Like No Other, this illuminating story told in dual points of view through vibrant verse will stay with readers long after they’ve turned the last page.

My Review
I wanted to read this book after having read One by Sarah Crossan, a novel in verse about conjoined sisters, which I liked. You can check out my review here.

This book was a little darker than One. The descriptions of prejudice against immigrants in England are sharp and raw and made me want to slap some people. I felt for Nicu and the difficult situation he found himself in, caught between his family’s expectations and wanting desperately to fit into his new home. It took a little longer for me to warm up to Jess. I wanted her to be smarter about her friends (who abandoned her and let her take the fall for a shoplifting venture) and I hated that she went along with her stepdad’s cruelty, though I get that she was in a really tough position there, too. She definitely grows as a character through the story. As she begins to recognize the value and goodness in Nicu, I think I felt like there was more to her than my original expectations.

And then there’s the ending. Okay. Wow. Talk about a knife to the heart. I really wanted there to be some shining rainbow of a happy ending, and it just doesn’t go at all the way I hoped. The story definitely makes a point, and Nicu’s heroism remains true to the bitter end, which was, in its own way, so sweet. And so SAD.

Though We Come Apart isn’t as dark or graphic as some of the novels in verse by Ellen Hopkins, I can see it appealing to fans of her books as it contains some similar elements: star-crossed love, social justice issues, and mistaken judgments about others.

Recommended for Ages 13 up.

Cultural Elements
Fifteen-year-old Nicu and his family are immigrants from Romania and face some severe prejudice. Nicu wants to fit in but finds it difficult to understand English language and culture. (The story is set in England.)

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used infrequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Nicu brings Jess to his house and jokes that his parents will only be upset if they discover the two “making sex.” (They don’t.) Nicu’s parents have come to England to save for a bride for fifteen-year-old Nicu, who does not want to get married. At school, a girl accuses Nicu of touching her rear. At one point, Jess’s stepdad get a bit creepy, inviting her to go swimming with him. It definitely makes her feel like he wants something inappropriate from her, but she finds it hard to express why she feels that way when telling her mom later. One brief kiss between a boy and girl.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
Jess and Nicu meet at a community service project after each are separately busted for shoplifting.

Boys bully Nicu in the locker room after gym class. One boy attacks Nicu and he retaliates.

Jess’s stepdad physically and verbally abuses her mom. He makes Jess record videos of her mom doing chores he assigns her and of the times he beats her up. Jess hates it but feels powerless to stop it when her mom won’t defend herself or go to authorities.

Drug Content
None.

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