Going Geek

Going Geek by Charlotte Huang   304 pages

High School is hell; all who survives it realizes that at some point in their life. I was attracted to this book because I was curious as to how much technology and, I’d like to think, advanced emotional and psychological growth, had changed being a teenager.

In this story, Skylar is looking forward to her senior year at a preppy, East Coast boarding school. It’s going to be the best. Year. Ever. She is going with one of the stars of the soccer team; her friends are ultra-cool, and she’s in the best dorm.

As fate would have it, when she arrives, Skylar has been transferred to another dorm…one off the beaten path of all the socially cool events, and gasp, filled with geeks.  Honest to god weirdos.

Her best friend drops her, and the other girls follow suit. She lies to her boyfriend, which causes severe trust issues. And it seems the geeks in her new dorm might, sort of, kind of like her.

It turn out that high school hasn’t changed at all since I graduated almost 50 years ago.  This is a quick read, with fast-paced writing and not an abundance of description.

Going Geek  gets 4 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

Backlash

Backlash by Sarah Darer Littman    326 pages

When Lara and Bree were in middle school, they were best friends and neighbors. They still live across the street from each other, but now that they are in high school, they barley acknowledge each other.  What happened?

 In middle school, Lara suffered from depression and was thirty pounds overweight. A target for all the snide comments and vicious nicknames. Bree, tired of listening to Lara whine, found new friends when they graduated to high school. But Lara got help. Now she’s thinner and prettier, but is still extremely sensitive. Bree is now jealous of her former friend.

 Although their parents monitor their Facebook activity, it isn’t hard for the girls to circumvent prying eyes. When Christian friends Lara, she can’t believe someone that good-looking would be interested in her, and despite all her parents’ warnings, she accepts his friend request.

They flirt, they laugh; Lara falls hard for Christian. He’s even hinting around that he may ask her to his school’s dance. Lara starts looking at dresses. Then the proverbial rug is pulled from under her feet. Christian starts to call her names, laughs at her, and even goes as far as telling her the world would be a better place without her in it. Devastated, Lara takes his last words too seriously. Bree’s reaction to Lara’s attempted suicide is horrifying.

 Backlash is told from four perspectives: Lara, Bree, Lara’s younger sister Sydney, and Bree’s younger brother Liam. What happens to Lara and Bree affects not only them, but their siblings as well. Short chapters make the action increase. It’s heart-pounding, non-stop action that pulls readers in from the first page and never lets go. This ripped-from-the-headlines should be mandatory reading for all seventh graders.

Thirteen Reasons Why

Thirteen Reasons Why, by Jay Asher, 304 pages

This was a popular book at a previous place I worked for awhile, and when I read the description, I was intrigued.  The idea is that a high school girl kills herself, but sends a recording out to the main character of the book (and others) explaining how they helped lead her to her suicide.  I found this book to be flawed and somewhat troubling.  First of all, the main character turns out to not have been one of the 13 reasons why the girl killed herself- he's the one who was so good to her that she just wants to tell him she's sorry they didn't work out.  Insert massive eye roll here.  I think the book is coming from a good place- every news story about young people being raped while passed out or bullied into suicide breaks my heart.  It should be the stuff of a melodramatic teen book, but it's not- it's real life.  And I guess that's one of the things I found sort of troubling here- it feels like the girl's message (which the author does not contradict) was "I'm hurting and I want to die, so I'm going to make you hurt, too, because you should know that you helped do this to me," which is such a sad, selfish message to leave the survivors of a person's suicide. Some of the kids in this book do awful things, but by and large, most of them are just dumb kids.  They don't know any better.  This just really rubbed me the wrong way- but maybe I'm expecting too much.