Seventeen-year-old Charlie Davis, a white girl living on the margins, thinks she has little reason to live: her father drowned himself her bereft and abusive mother kicked her out her best friend, Ellis, is nearly brain dead after cutting too deeply and she's gone through unspeakable experiences living on the street. There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head.Īfter surviving a suicide attempt, a fragile teen isn't sure she can endure without cutting herself. Even secondary characters are well-rounded, with their own histories and motivations.
Autumn’s coming-of-age is sensitively chronicled, with a wide range of experiences and events shaping her character.
But on August 8, everything changes, and Autumn has to rely on all her strength to move on. In the summer after graduation, Autumn and Finny reconnect and are finally ready to be more than friends. Growing up, Autumn and Finny were like peas in a pod despite their differences: Autumn is “quirky and odd,” while Finny is “sweet and shy and everyone like him.” But in eighth grade, Autumn and Finny stop being friends due to an unexpected kiss. They drift apart and find new friends, but their friendship keeps asserting itself at parties, shared holiday gatherings and random encounters. The finely drawn characters capture readers’ attention in this debut.Īutumn and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, were born a week apart their mothers are still best friends. Though it doesn’t do anything new, it does what it does well, with the nerdy and geeky references adding originality: good fun. When Trixie’s best friend, Harper, is accused of masterminding their school’s technology-based hacks (a great update to the Shakespearean plot), Trixie is determined to prove her innocence, but it’s Trixie’s and Ben’s adorably sweet evolving feelings for each other that’s the core of this story. The characters attend a “school for geniuses,” which makes the fact that the trash talk Trixie and Ben throw at each other is so impressively academic and geeky believable-not to mention immensely satisfying for those who get the references.
While all of the main characters (save one) are adorably geeky (as well as mostly white), though she's generally likable, protagonist Trixie can be downright cruel, a characteristic that may make her hard for some readers to connect to. They set the pair up to believe each has been in love with the other for years, à la Shakespeare’s original. Though the pair seems content to hate each other for life, their friends don’t want to spend senior year enduring their verbal sparring. Trixie Watson and Ben West have been feuding for 10 years-ever since Ben pushed Trixie off the monkey bars. Teens Beatrice and Benedict find surprise love in this Much Ado About Nothing retelling.
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