Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

Our first week of summer went pretty well, all things considered–and as long as you don’t ask my son. (He says summer is so BORING. As he said this the night I took him and his siblings to the pool for two and a half hours, where they met friends and had a blast, I was unsympathetic.) We managed four appointments–five if you count my temple appointment–went to the library, to a shaved ice stand, to the park, to Walmart, to the aforementioned pool, and to lunch with my mother-in-law (with whom we also played games!). Oh, and I went to Costco twice. We also accomplished more than one task that need accomplishing, so there’s that, too.

I ALSO finished Lisa Greenwald’s TBH, This Is So Awkward–finished it this morning–and unfortunately, it was one of the lowlights of the week. The concept of a novel in text–an epistolary novel for the 21st century, right?–was promising, especially for my tween, but the execution…well.

1. Too little characterization. If there had been more texts with other people, or more emails, notes, and diary entries, the main three girls might have felt less like caricatures. As it is, read Jennifer L. Holm’s Middle School Is Worse Than Meatloaf: A Year Told Through Stuff for what characterization CAN be in this sort of format.

2. Adult overreactions OR misplaced reactions with no acknowledgement of same. There was no actual bullying in this book, despite what topics it’s listed under on Amazon. There were two instances of (very brief) anonymous texting that crossed into mean, one thoughtless mistake that was unintentionally cruel, and a whole bunch of social weirdness that didn’t qualify as anything else. It’s not mean not to automatically invite the new girl in school into your tightknit group. It IS weird for the new girl in school to contact someone she hardly knows and ask to be invited to his birthday party, and it’s doubly weird for the new girl’s mom to contact the birthday boy’s mom (whom she hasn’t met) to guilt her into having her son invite said new girl to his birthday party.

I won’t go on, except to say that the best middle grade novels are a pleasure for me to read as an adult; this was just annoying. I don’t doubt that a decent portion of the intended audience will be entertained, but there isn’t enough substance here for me to pass this book on to my tween; it falls under the category of ‘if she finds it herself, fine, but I have better books to recommend to her.’ If I were you, I’d skip this one.