Bionic by Suzanne Weyn

From Goodreads,

"Mira has always almost had it all... until it all crashes and burns. She's hurt in a horrible car accident, and the only way the doctors can help is to try experimental prosthetics and chips that are implanted directly into her brain. It's a huge risk, but after months of testing and therapy, Mira is back, and better than ever.But soon her friends turn against her as their parents call her on unfair advantages and get her cut from lacrosse and the scholarships she was depending on for college. And with her enhanced hearing, she knows how many people in her school and her town are calling her a robot, a cyborg.Is that true? Is Mira human, or is she somehow something other? How can she overcome the ways people see her and just be herself... especially if she's not really sure who that is anymore?Suzanne Weyn is always at the cutting edge when it comes to new tech and the questions it raises about the world we live in."

Goodreads - Bionic

People always say, "Don't judge a book by its cover."  Which is a great saying and all, but doesn't the cover usually have some kind of connection with the story itself?  The cover of this book mesmerized me.  There was something about the way the blue faded into the pink that caught my attention.  Plus there was the appearance of wiring and hardware that appeared on top of the photo.  The cover of this book had me sold.  After reading the book I realized that the cover, the summary, and the actual story didn't entirely line up.

This book follows Mira who was an excellent lacrosse player and was in a band.  Then one night the band is in a car accident which results in her losing limbs and being severely injured.  Mira gets the newest prosthetics and gets a chip implanted in her brain that responds to her new limbs.  She now feels like she is at the top of her game all the time, but at what point does she stop having feelings at all.

This book was definitely strange, but I loved the whole concept of advanced technology helping us.  In the book Mira is fortunate enough to receive prosthetics that can respond to a chip that is implanted in her head.  Scary, I know.  But think of how amazing it would be to have a chip implanted that can now respond to your prosthetic.  If you lost a limb then you would be able to resume a fairly normal life all thanks to a chip.  This could help veterans who lost limbs during war or help victims of bombings and accidents gain their life back.  I'm glad that Weyn really centered her book around the technological advancements, both the good and the bad.  I think that having this kind of positive outlook on technology really helps spark interests to go into STEM careers.  Somewhere out there is a kid who read this book, they connected with it on a personal level, and they are going to want to go into a career to help make advancements like this happen.

I really enjoyed the technology theme in the book, but I did not like how the book was written.  It was really choppy.  The first chapter was written as if Mira was in and out of consciousness, which I guess technically she was.  I thought that once she was out of it the book would resume a normal chapter schedule, but it didn't.  The book had some chapters labeled with months, or there would be a new month in the middle of a chapter.  It was a very confusing structure.  I would have enjoyed the book more if Chapter 1 had been a month, then Chapter 2 the next month.  But unfortunately Weyn took a strange approach, and I think it took away from the book a little.

Another thing that was bothersome was that the cover, the summary, and the actual book didn't exactly line up.  The summary that I read indicated that someone was going to start controlling Mira.  The cover gave the impression that it was about a girl and technology.  The book however was about a girl having a copper chip and prosthetics and learning how to live a normal life again.  I was so disappointed that the three did not line up.  From the summary itself I was totally looking forward to a girl having prosthetics and a copper chip that would later be controlled by the government.  I was definitely excited about the government or some bad guy stepping in and controlling her until she eventually had enough.  Unfortunately that didn't happen and I was let down. 

I think that this book is best fit for teenagers.  I expect that teens who have lost a limb or know someone who has would find the most joy out of this book.  I personally did not connect with any of the characters.  I give this 3 stars out of 5.

Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata

From Goodreads,

"Chronicles the close friendship between two Japanese-American sisters growing up in rural Georgia during the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the despair when one sister becomes terminally ill. kira-kira (kee' ra kee' ra): glittering; shining Glittering. That's how Katie Takeshima's sister, Lynn, makes everything seem. The sky is kira-kira because its color is deep but see-through at the same time. The sea is kira-kira for the same reason. And so are people's eyes. When Katie and her family move from a Japanese community in Iowa to the Deep South of Georgia, it's Lynn who explains to her why people stop them on the street to stare. And it's Lynn who, with her special way of viewing the world, teaches Katie to look beyond tomorrow. But when Lynn becomes desperately ill, and the whole family begins to fall apart, it is up to Katie to find a way to remind them all that there is always something glittering -- kira-kira -- in the future. Luminous in its persistence of love and hope, Kira-Kira is Cynthia Kadohata's stunning debut in middle-grade fiction."

Goodreads - Kira-Kira

Awards and Nominations:

• Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature for Youth Literature (2005)
• Newbery Medal (2005)
• Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children's Book Award Nominee (2006)

My boyfriend and I decided to read all the books that had been awarded the Newbery Medal Award.  We started at the top of the list with the 2017 winner The Girl Who Drank The Moon.  I quickly devoured the book while he slowly trudged through it.  He eventually stopped reading it and never finished it.  I guess you can't force a gamer to become a book nerd.  But I figured it had been a while since I had read and reviewed a Newbery Medal book that it was time to get another one crossed off the list.  

Kira-Kira is told from the perspective of Katie, a young Japanese-American girl who is the middle child of three.  She adores her older sister Lynn, and her younger brother Sam adores her.  Her sister taught her about kira-kira which means glittering in Japanese.  When they were younger they would use the phrase carelessly talking about all the things they thought were kira-kira.  Katie goes through life as her parents work constantly to care for her and her siblings.  Over time her sister started to grow up, but she also started to grow sick.  Katie learns the true meaning of kira-kira as the book comes to a close. 

When I first started this book I was trying to figure out why it was awarded the Newbery Medal Award.  The book seemed to be moving slowly with nothing truly interesting happening.  But there was some pivotal point in the book where I started to realize why it was awarded the Newbery Medal.  As I read I realized some of the hardships that Japanese-Americans faced during the 1950s.  Their work conditions were absolutely horrendous.  In the book they all worked at hatcheries or at chicken plants.  That was the only job opportunities that they were given.  They were seen as outcasts in the towns they lived in.  The book states that they didn't have friends outside of their circle of people because people looked down on them.  Katie in the book continues to talk about how hard her parents are working and how tired they are.  Every time Katie talked about her parents working or how tired they were, I saw them in a different light.  Her parents were treated differently and had fewer opportunities, but they still worked hard and had hope that things would get better.  I don't feel that a child or even a young adult would be able to pull this theme of hope out of the book, but I did.  Hope became even more vital once we found out what was truly wrong with Lynn.  Everyone in the family had hope that Lynn would get better even though they could all see her deteriorating and getting worse.  Hope became a major player in this book, and what is initially kept the book and everyone in it moving forward. 

While this book had a strong thread of hope weaved into it, it was overall very dull.  There were only a couple of exciting things that happened, and they all happened toward the end of the book.  There was nothing in the beginning that made me get excited to turn the page.  The entire time I felt like I was forcing myself to keep reading.  I knew this book was on my Newbery Medal list so I had to read it.  There were a couple of things in the first couple of chapters that I got excited about because I felt like something big was going to happen, but then it didn't.  It was a very plain book with very little excitement, much like the lives of Katie and her family.

This book wasn't what I was expecting it to be.  I give this book 3 out of 5 stars.  If you are planning to read all the Newbery Medal winners then you'll have to read this book.  I don't think that my students would enjoy this book.  Many would say it was boring just after the first long chapter.  

Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan

From Goodreads,

"Will Grayson meets Will Grayson. One cold night, in a most unlikely corner of Chicago, two strangers are about to cross paths. From that moment on, their world will collide and lives intertwine.

It's not that far from Evanston to Naperville, but Chicago suburbanites Will Grayson and Will Grayson might as well live on different planets. When fate delivers them both to the same surprising crossroads, the Will Graysons find their lives overlapping and hurtling in new and unexpected directions. With a push from friends new and old - including the massive, and massively fabulous, Tiny Cooper, offensive lineman and musical theater auteur extraordinaire - Will and Will begin building toward respective romantic turns-of-heart and the epic production of history's most awesome high school musical."

Goodreads - Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Awards:

• Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Award Nominee for Best Young Adult Novel (2010)
• The Inky Awards Nominee for Silver Inky (2010)
• The Inky Awards Shortlist for Silver Inky (2010)
• Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Young Adult Fiction (2010)
• Odyssey Award Nominee (2011)
• Milwaukee County Teen Book Award (2011)
• Stonewall Book Award Nominee for Children's and Young Adult Literature (2011)
• Children's Choice Book Award for Teen Choice Book of the Year (2011)
• Lincoln Award Nominee (2013)

A few years ago I read the wonderful book The Fault in our Stars by John Green.  I kind of fell in love like everyone else did.  Suddenly it was like John Green was on the forefront of young adult books when a sudden flood of his work hit shelves.  I quickly devoured Paper Towns and John Green quickly moved his way up my favorite authors list.  So while scouring Scholastic for books I found this book by John Green and purchased it.  However, once I sat down to read the book I realized that the name David Levithan was familiar too.  That's when I realized that he wrote Boy Meets Boy.  My excitement for this book went down a little because I absolutely hated the writing style in the book Boy Meets Boy.  Nonetheless I started reading the book in hopes I could find a middle ground in this book written by one author I enjoyed and by one I didn't.  

This book is told by two boys, both named Will Grayson.  One Will Grayson lives a life in the shadow of his best friend Tiny, while the other Will Grayson is struggling with depression and trying to keep his sexuality a secret.  Their stories alternate chapters until they cross paths for a brief moment in time.  This brief moment that will intertwine their friends and stories in ways they never imagined.

Favorite Quote from Will Grayson, Will Grayson:

"I think about how much depends upon a best friend.  When you wake up in the morning you swing your legs out of bed and you put your feet on the ground and you stand up.  You don't scoot to the edge of the bed and look down to make sure the floor is there.  The floor is always there.  Until it's not."

One of my favorite things about this book was the whole theme of friendship, and I honestly think that is why I loved the quote above so much.  Both Will Graysons in this book had to endure some kind of hardship with their friends.  For one Will Grayson he was constantly living in the shadow of his gay best friend Tiny.  He actually didn't classify him as his best friend because they just happened to be friends who were stuck together.  But things changed and he lost his best friend Tiny.  He then had the quote I mentioned above about how friend are always there.  And then there was the other Will Grayson who was burned by one of his friends when she pretended to be someone else online.  Over time he realized that he needed to somewhat mend things with her and move on from that part in life.  But the events that happened led him to a new friend and a new relationship.  Either way the message of the importance of friends was huge in this book.  I think that many of us take our friends for granted.  My best friend lives eight hours away from me in Austin.  We have had our fair share of fights over the phone.  And almost immediately I feel horrible for whatever has happened because I know that I took advantage of our friendship.  I do know that no matter the distance or events happening in life, that she will always have my back.  I know this is true because she called me from Europe when my dog passed away.  She talked with me for an extended period of time to make sure I was okay and had calmed down from the hyperventilating crying state she had first found me in.  Friends are everything in life.  You can have lots of them surrounding you, but you have to have one that you call a best friend.  Find him or her and never let them go.

While I loved the ties of friendship in this book, I really didn't like the way the book was written in an alternating format.  The even chapters were told by one Will Grayson and the odd chapters were told in lowercase by the depressed Will Grayson.  This made it easy to distinguish who was telling which part of the story.  John Green wrote from the perspective of the Will Grayson who was friends with Tiny, while David Levithan wrote from the lowercase perspective of Will Grayson.  I really hated having to bounce between two writing styles.  Thus far I have enjoyed works written by John Green, but I haven't enjoyed work by David Levithan.  I find his work dull and boring and it was no different in his chapters in this book.  I just didn't like jumping between the two opposite writing styles.  I felt like I was on a roller coaster that was a constant up and down.  I honestly could have read just John Green's chapters of this book and been completely satisfied.

All in all I enjoyed the friendship theme in this book, but really disliked how it was written.  I have come to accept I am not a fan of David Levithan's work.  I can't love all authors and their work.  I give this book 3 out of 5 stars.  This is definitely a young adult book and will be enjoyed by fans of John Green or David Levithan.  

Suicide Notes by Michael Thomas Ford

From Goodreads,

"I'm not crazy. I don't see what the big deal is about what happened. But apparently someone does think it's a big deal because here I am. I bet it was my mother. She always overreacts.

Fifteen-year-old Jeff wakes up on New Year's Day to find himself in the hospital. Make that the psychiatric ward. With the nutjobs. Clearly, this is all a huge mistake. Forget about the bandages on his wrists and the notes on his chart. Forget about his problems with his best friend, Allie, and her boyfriend, Burke. Jeff's perfectly fine, perfectly normal, not like the other kids in the hospital with him. Now they've got problems. But a funny thing happens as his forty-five-day sentence drags on: the crazies start to seem less crazy.

Compelling, witty, and refreshingly real, Suicide Notes is a darkly humorous novel from award-winning author Michael Thomas Ford that examines that fuzzy line between "normal" and the rest of us."

Goodreads - Suicide Notes

May is mental health awareness month.  I read quite a few books about mental health, because it is such a huge issue in society, but also because we deal with it day in and day out at school.  I think a lot of problems we have today would be eliminated if mental health had been addressed.  Either way I thought it would be fitting to end the month with a review of this book about mental health. 

This book starts with a young boy named Jeff waking up in a hospital.  At first he isn't sure where he is, but he comes to find out that he is in the psych ward because he tried to kill himself.  Jeff attends group therapy meetings with other young people and he meets with his therapist to hopefully find out why he tried to kill himself.  Jeff makes friends with the people there and the new people who transfer in.  Over time Jeff finds them a little less crazy and starts to figure out why he tried to kill himself.

One thing that drives me absolutely crazy is when I am reading a book and I lose track of time progression within the book.  For example, I read a book where kids were trapped in a school due to a snowstorm.  As the book progressed the snow got higher and higher, but there was a total loss of time.  I couldn't tell how much time had passed and it really affected how I felt about the book.  This book on the other hand had an interesting format.  Each chapter of the book was titled with the number of days that Jeff had been in the psych ward.  This made it super easy to keep up with how long Jeff had been in the hospital.  It also made it a kind of countdown toward when he was going to be released.  It also fit with the title of the book Suicide Notes because each chapter was just a brief highlight and snippet of Jeff's day. 

This book was very similar to other mental health books I've read recently.  I think I am getting really burnt out on the mental health theme, and I probably need to take a break from it.  I feel like all mental health books are exploring the exact same topics.  Everything revolves around a teenager trying to kill themselves and them coming to terms with what happened.  However, I feel that authors need to be exploring other mental health issues.  We need to explore anorexia, bulimia, schizophrenia, depression, etc.  There are so many issues out there and we really need to start delving into all of them, not just suicide.  I think that because this book explored the typical suicide path that I felt like I had already read this before. 

I was slightly disappointed in this book because it was a lot like others I have read.  I enjoyed the format of the book, but felt really exhausted on the entire storyline.  I give this 3 out of 5 stars. 

Wishtree by Katherine Applegate

From Goodreads,

"Trees can't tell jokes, but they can certainly tell stories. . . .

Red is an oak tree who is many rings old. Red is the neighborhood "wishtree"—people write their wishes on pieces of cloth and tie them to Red's branches. Along with her crow friend Bongo and other animals who seek refuge in Red's hollows, this "wishtree" watches over the neighborhood.

You might say Red has seen it all. Until a new family moves in. Not everyone is welcoming, and Red's experiences as a wishtree are more important than ever."

Goodreads - Wishtree

Awards:

• Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Middle Grade & Children's (2017)
• NCTE Charlotte Huck Award Nominee (2018)

Every town has traditions that have existed for years.  Sometimes they are parades, sometimes they are festivals, and sometimes they are just a silly event that takes place one day out of a year.  In my hometown we have October Daze which happens typically the first weekend of October.  Local businesses and organizations set up booths where you can buy hand crafted goods or delicious greasy food.  I have worked at October Daze and I have been a visitor.  I have plenty of good memories with friends and family while attending October Daze.  Traditions are important and this book really focuses on that.  

This book is told from the unique perspective of the tree.  Red, the wishtree, is 216 years old and is a part of an important tradition in town.  A wishtree is a tree where people write their wishes on a scrap of paper or fabric and tie it to the tree in hopes of their wish coming true.  This tradition has been a long and well known tradition in this town, until someone threatens that by vandalizing the tree.  One woman, who has a long connection to the tree, must make the decision on if the tradition should continue or if the tree should be cut down for good. 

There are so many amazing things I have to say about this book.  First I would like to focus on the artwork that was incorporated into the book.  The cover of the book was absolutely stunning with vivid and realistic colors.  I was honestly pulled in by the cover of this book more than anything.  But only once I started reading the book did I realize that there were illustrations throughout the book.  Most of the illustrations were leaves or branches, but there were also pictures of the animals that lived in the tree.  However, humans were nowhere to be found in the book.  I think Applegate chose to do this for a couple reasons.  I think she excluded humans so that the reader could visualize themselves in the book, but also because the focus was supposed to be on nature.  I think it is great that the focus was on nature because I feel like everywhere is turning into a concrete jungle.  We are constantly clearing land to make room for more housing complexes or shopping centers.  Most people don't think about the fact that trees put off oxygen for us to survive and they take in our carbon dioxide.  Life on earth would cease to exist if we didn't have trees.  I love that Applegate focused on the nature aspect of things instead of focusing on the humans.

Another thing I loved in this book was the whole idea of May Day and a wishtree.  In this book the wishtree is Red, who is decorated with scraps of fabric and paper one day out of year.  People write their wish on these slips of paper and they hang them on the tree in hopes that they will come true.  I love this tradition and I honestly wonder if there are any locations in the United States that does this.  One of the things that was important about this tradition was where and how it all started.  I think that many of our traditions continue without us ever remembering why they started in the first place.  Every tradition has a story to it, and I think it is important to hear the story every now and then to remind yourself why you do something.  Applegate made sure to include the back story on how and why the May Day wishing event got started.  

The only thing that I didn't like about this book was the slightly far fetched idea that trees can talk.  (When the tree started talking I definitely thought about Grandmother Willow from Pocahontas.)  In the book Red talks to two children and tells them the story of how it became a wishtree.  That's a little far fetched and I think it took away from the book a little bit.  I think that many children who read this would see this as a magical tree, while it was really just a regular tree.  As Red was telling the story it mentioned that we should listen to the tree because it might talk back to us.  I took this more as a message of we should listen to the leaves rustling or the critters playing in the trees, instead of listening for the tree to tell its life story.  

This book was very interesting and well written.  I give it 4 stars and will definitely be including this in my classroom library.  

From You To Me by K.A. Holt

From Goodreads,

"Amelia Peabody lives in a small town where nothing changes. And that's just fine by her. After losing her big sister, Clara, a few years ago, Amelia can't handle any more change. But when she starts eighth grade, she accidentally receives a letter that Clara had written to herself. In it, there's a list of things she'd wanted to do before the end of middle school and never finished, like get on the softball team and throw an awesome birthday party on the lake.
Amelia wonders if it's a sign from Clara. Maybe if she completed the list, her heart would stop hurting so much, and she could go back to being her old self. But as she makes her way through, Amelia finds that there's no going back, only forward. And she realizes she'll have to put her own spin on Clara's list to grow and change in the ways she needs to.
K. A. Holt's beautiful new novel is about grieving and growing up, and the ripples loss creates for a girl, a family, and a community."

Goodreads - From You To Me

I have a bucket list.  A series of things that I want to accomplish before I kick the bucket.  When I was scrolling through Scholastic I read the summary for this book and it just screamed bucket list.  I knew I had to purchase this book because it was the type of book that I live for.  Sure enough, I was not disappointed by this book about a girl receiving a letter.

This book follows Amelia who is going into the eighth grade.  She has been grieving for three years over the death of her sister.  She finds that each day is difficult and driving past the lake makes the pain almost unbearable.  On the first day of eighth grade she is supposed to get the letter that she wrote to herself.  Only the letter she gets isn't hers.  It's her sisters letter.  Amelia reads the letter and immediately feels connected to her sister.  Her sister wrote a list of things that she wanted to accomplish.  Amelia takes it upon herself to complete her sister's list and to hopefully find peace with her sister's death.

Favorite quote from From You To Me, 

"Does it help if I tell you everyone is sad in their own way, and you are definitely not invisible?"

This book was absolutely amazing.  When I started this I really thought that the entire focus of this book was that Amelia was going to run around with her best friend completing everything on her sister's list.  This wasn't the focus, and I'm secretly glad it wasn't.  While the letter and completing the list was an important piece of this book, I ultimately felt like the focus was on Amelia finding happiness.  So many people get caught up in situations in life and they lose sight of their own happiness.  They don't take the time to stop and think about why they are doing something or if it going to bring them any happiness.  Why keep doing something if it isn't going to make you happy?  Why stay at a job if you go to work dreading it?  I think that we as a society aren't happy with life anymore.  I also think that we all feel like everyone else around us is happy.  We all think that our friends and coworkers have a better and happier life than we do, but in all honesty everyone is struggling with something.  Some people bottle it up and keep their problems to themselves, while others need to talk about and flaunt their problems.  Everyone is different, but ultimately everyone is unhappy in their own personal ways.  I'm glad that Amelia worked on completing the list.  She ultimately started it for her sister, but I think that over time she worked on the list for herself.  She worked on it to help find some happiness and closure to her sister's death, and that is exactly what she got.

There wasn't a single thing that I didn't enjoy about this book.  It was perfect in all the ways a book should be.  I give this book 5 stars and recommend this to young adults.  This book has a lot of good messages and I think everyone could take something away from it.

Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan

From Goodreads,

"This is the story of Paul, a sophomore at a high school like no other: The cheerleaders ride Harleys, the homecoming queen used to be a guy named Daryl (she now prefers Infinite Darlene and is also the star quarterback), and the gay-straight alliance was formed to help the straight kids learn how to dance.

When Paul meets Noah, he thinks he’s found the one his heart is made for. Until he blows it. The school bookie says the odds are 12-to-1 against him getting Noah back, but Paul’s not giving up without playing his love really loud. His best friend Joni might be drifting away, his other best friend Tony might be dealing with ultra-religious parents, and his ex-boyfriend Kyle might not be going away anytime soon, but sometimes everything needs to fall apart before it can really fit together right.

This is a happy-meaningful romantic comedy about finding love, losing love, and doing what it takes to get love back in a crazy-wonderful world."

Goodreads - Boy Meets Boy

Awards:

• Lambda Literary Award (2003)
• Lincoln Award Nominee (2008)

Favorite quote from Boy Meets Boy,

"Her husband was with her, they got married two days after she got her diagnosis.  He vowed he would never leave her side, and he didn't.  I don't know how to describe it.  She could be retching or shaking or not really there, and he would kneel right beside her, look her right in the eye, and say, 'I'm here.'  And the way he said it -- 'I'm here.' -- was an 'I love you' and a 'Hang in there' and an 'I'll do anything, absolutely anything' -- all these intense feelings in this one calm phrase.  If he had to leave the room, he made sure she had this teddy bear propped up next to her -- they called him Quincy -- to take his place.  Toward the end, there were these few moments when she got all anxious a few minutes after he left the room, and he would come right back in, as if he knew exactly how she felt.  I came to the room early on Saturday and I saw him curled up in the hospital bed, singing Beatles songs to her and looking her in the eye.  I couldn't go inside.  I just stood in the doorway crying, because it was so sad and it was so beautiful."

This book falls in the LGBTQ genre.  The book follows Paul who is a high school student who is openly gay and has known this since kindergarten.  He has his group of friends and everything is perfect until the new boy Noah waltzes into his life.  Paul then has to juggle his friends and Noah, and ultimately figure out how to fix everything with everyone.

When I first started this book I had some mixed feelings.  I felt like the book was slightly chaotic with a large number of characters being introduced quickly.  I felt like I couldn't keep everyone straight and there was just an information overload.  I continued to read a chapter here and there over the course of two and a half weeks.  Finally I sat down and decided I needed to just power through the rest of the book.  Once I powered through it, the book got better.  I came across the quote above and I really fell in love with it.  I sent a picture of the quote (okay, paragraph) to my boyfriend.  I explained that I could see us and our relationship in that paragraph.  Throughout the book Paul was dealing with feelings for Noah while Kyle had feelings for Paul.  It turned into a hot mess and ultimately led to Kyle saying the quote above.  It honestly moved me.  That is the picture of what love is supposed to be.  I feel like in today's society we get so caught up in the right and the wrong of who you love, and we don't focus on the fact that we should be simply loving one another.  We should be supporting one another in the best way that we possibly can.  But we don't.  We don't love each other through the good and the bad.  I think if we all just loved each other through everything that we would live in a much better world.

I hated some of the unrealistic aspects of this book.  For example, the cheerleaders rode in on motorcycles at a pep rally.  That isn't something that would happen at a high school.  At one point in the book Paul enters the school early before school starts and puts up decorations for Noah.  That isn't something that would be available or allowed to happen at a normal high school.  Or at least that wouldn't be something that would be allowed at my high school.  I just enjoy books that are entirely realistic or they are completely unrealistic.  I don't like a mix of the two worlds and this book really tried to mix the two.

Overall, I give this book 3 out of 5 stars.  The character and information overload at the beginning was a huge downer for me and the unrealistic aspects was a turnoff.  I would recommend this to anyone looking for a LGBTQ book.