I knew I was being pandered to the entire time I was reading this and I loved it anyway.
This is yet another in the new trend of “girls fight back against sexism/rape culture/patriarchy” young adult books that I’m always happy to see popping up on my library “new in YA” feed. Books I have previously loved along this genre can be found in my reviews and include “Girls on the Verge”, “Sadie”, “I Stop Somewhere”, “The Nowhere Girls”, and “Sawkill Girls”. And no I am not just trying to make filler to make this review long enough! Anyway, I really enjoyed this one as well.
The basic plot: our main character, Vivian, is fed up with the sexism and harassment at her high school. Also, her mom used to be a riot grrl who wrote and collected ‘zines. Also, a new girl comes to town who is used to a much more liberal environment and helps Vivian see how truly messed up her school is. So Vivian starts a ‘zine. And that starts other girls working against sexism, too. She of course gets plenty of pushback, but this is a YA novel, so our heroes mostly prevail in the end. Issues of relationships with parents, grandparents, and race are also addressed, though only briefly.
There’s nothing groundbreaking about the prose or storytelling here, but when you live in our current Patriarchy Hellhole, sometimes you just need a story about girls waking up, kicking ass, and taking names. If you’re in the market for something like this, read all the books I listed previously and include this one, too.