What They Don't Know

Maggi, Nicole. What They Don't Know. Sourcebooks Fire, 2018.

Mellie's family is very conservative, so when she discovers that she is pregnant, she isn't sure what she should do. She has always believed that abortion is wrong in all circumstances, but she is certain that she doesn't want to carry this baby, even to give it up for adoption. Lise used to be friends with Mellie before Mellie's family took her out of Girl Scouts. They are still classmates, but their lives couldn't be more different. When Lise hears Mellie crying in the bathroom, she wonders if she can do something to help her childhood friend.

This story is told from both Mellie's and Lise's perspectives, in the form of journal entries they complete for their English class. Mellie's family rings true for the most part, although I have questions about some things, particularly Mellie's reference to the Apocrypha being like an addition to the Bible. From my fundamentalist Christian upbringing, which seems to mirror Mellie's, the Apocrypha was not considered to be Scripture, nor was it anything we ever read or studied. Lise and Mellie also sounded very similar in their journal entries. I was reading a digital ARC, so I am hoping the publisher will use a different typeface or something for each girl, as it was occasionally difficult to remember who was telling the story. The story itself was also a bit didactic and afterschool special-esque at times, which I found grating when the topic itself is so important. Nonetheless, I could see the teens at my library thoroughly enjoying this story and wanting to read and discuss it. Recommended.

Recommended for: teens
Red Flags: discussion of rape, verbal abuse, threats of violence, description of an abortion
Overall Rating: 4/5 stars

Read-Alikes: Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson; Quiver by Julia Watts; Hush by Eishes Chayil

I received a complimentary copy of this book through Edelweiss for the purpose of review.

Girls Like Us

Giles, Gail. Girls Like Us. Candlewick Press, 2014.

Quincy and Biddy have both graduated from their high school's special education program, and they have been placed together to live in the above-garage apartment at a woman's home. Biddy is supposed to help around the house - cooking, cleaning, etc. - and Quincy has a job at a local supermarket. Circumstances provide Biddy with a safe space to reveal some harrowing secrets about her past while Quincy keeps a current secret safe as well. The girls become friends as they realize they have more in common then just being "speddies."

There are definitely not enough books featuring characters with disabilities, so I was glad to see this book containing two main characters who age out of the high school special education program and who are then placed in jobs where they can maintain some sort of independent life. Their lives are not portrayed as perfect and each girl tells the back story behind her placement in the special education program. Survivors of sexual assault will want to take gentle care as the story does involve a rape. Recommended.

Recommended for: teens
Red Flags: language, violence, one character is raped while another discusses a past rape, one character was violently abused as a child which caused her TBI (traumatic brain injury)
Overall Rating: 4/5 stars

Read-Alikes: Speak, Out of My Mind

Run, Clarissa, Run

Eliason, Rachel. Run, Clarissa, Run. Rachel Eliason, 2012.

Clarissa is a transgender teen who has been raised as a boy named Clark. [For the sake of consistency and simplicity, I am choosing to refer to Clarissa by her chosen name and preferred gender, regardless of her gender presentation.]  Clarissa is constantly teased at school, often violently so, and is misunderstood by her mother, her brother, even her therapist. After some unfortunate incidents involving the father of a family for whom Clarissa babysits, Clarissa decides to run away to Bangkok where she hires a doctor and receives the SRS (sex reassignment surgery) that she has been dreaming of.

This story has a lot of interesting aspects - the computer hacking Clarissa does, for example.  It also seems to me that Clarissa has to deal with a larger portion of problems than a typical teen - even a typical transgender teen - does.  The man for whom she is babysitting seduces her and nearly rapes her (making her the fourth in a line of teens who were assaulted by this man).  Once she runs away, the FBI and the State Department come after her.  There's a subplot where Tony, her almost-rapist, is accused of insider trading.

This was a difficult story to read. I didn't want Clarissa to have to face SRS alone, much less in a country halfway around the world.  I wanted the school bullies to learn not to tease.  I wanted everything to end happily ever after.  Even though it didn't, the story itself was very satisfying to read.

I have only one caveat: The author of this story self-published her work, so the book did not go through the normal round of edits that comes from a major publisher.  English gurus and grammar nazis will be bothered by misuses of set/sat, then/than, apostrophes, commas, etc.  The errors are not so extreme that they caused me to put the book down, but they were a distracting annoyance in what was otherwise a very interesting story.