We Are All Made of Molecules - Susan Nielsen (Andersen Press)
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Warning there are spoilers in this review
I don't know where to start with this one, it made me so cross on so many levels. My first gripe is why does this 2nd YA fiction book have to be North American? Surely we have a plethora of great YA writers who are British?
The other gripes are to do with style and content. This book is very much in the vein of Wonder but comes no where near the brilliance of that book. There are so many issues in this book and off the top of my head here are just a few of them: death of a parent (from long illness), divorce of parents because father is gay, blended families, intelligent child but with no social awareness, child obsessed with fashion and friendship but not academic, bullying, peer presssure - oh and yes the biggie attempted date rape.
Phew, once all those are covered there wasn't much room for the writing, which may have been just as well because the style was all over the place. With themes as outlined above you'd think that this was a read for older teen, but in style and language this was pretty much a middle grade/upper primary - way too junior for the content.
Oh and as for the content - by the end they basically all live happily ever after. I could handle that with the blended family coming together but the way the sexual assault was dealt with is shameful - as an adult reading this I could see that something was building but I never dreamt it would go as far as it did nor that there were no repercussions for either the victim (and indeed it could be read that she was victim shamed) nor for her attacker.
I feel that I read this book so you don't have to and so far I think it is the worst book I've read for this project.
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