I really loved the small town and Fifield paints a very vivid picture of it, but I had such a hard time connecting to any of the characters, even Tiffany. Still, I thought there was something....cinematic about it. I could see this being an indie movie.

I enjoyed this book. I think it's a bit mature for the middle schools. The author painted a vivid picture about this little town and its characters. I was definitely interested in the character arc and development.

Thank you to NetGalley and Razorbill for providing me a copy of this title in return for my honest review.

This book has sat on my TBR shelf started for about 2 months now. I unfortunately was unable to get into this title. It takes a lot for me to abandon a book and not finish I ended up giving up on this one after several attempts to read. I wanted to love out Tiffany, but the story felt confusing. I didn't understand her family life. I didn't connect to any characters. The town didn't feel realistic. I tried, and tried, and tried, to read this one and just couldn't do it. Maybe someday I'll try again, but for now this was a one star read for me.

I'm not sure if I missed something and maybe pushed a little harder to read, I would enjoy it, but for now if you're looking for something easy to pick up, maybe choose something else.

Tiffany Templeton (aka "Tough Tiff") is a fighter. Really, she's tough and she fights - no one messes with her in her small, poverty stricken town. After the death of Tiffany's father, she embarks on a crime spree by spying on her neighbors, breaking into their homes and and stealing evidence of their darkest secrets and wrongdoings. The spree ends with the stealing of $1 plus change in thank-you cards and a pen knife she stabs her brother with. (He's a jerk, so its was justified). Her stint in crime lands her in a juvenile detention center for 82 days. The book only tells brief highlights of her stay at the detention center, but instead of focuses on her return and her attempts to make apologies and amends and to somehow find her way forward in a town that offers no hope for a successful future.

My favorite quote from this book was from the end, during one of her apologies. The lady to whom she was speaking told her that spying on people only gives a brief picture and no context of anyone's life or situation or reason for doing what they did. This was a great story of a bad girl doing bad things....that were understandable. I would recommend this book to readers who enjoyed E. Lockhart's "The Disreputable History of Frankie Landeau-Banks."

This book made me laugh and cry and still makes my heart ache. Richard Fifield has created characters so colorful and fun, yet nasty and mean, and above all very real, making Small Crimes of Tiffany Templeton an absolute pleasure to read. Tiffany is a seventeen-year-old reformed juvenile delinquent. The story opens on her early release from the Dogwood juvenile detention facility she's been in for the last 3 months. She's absorbed back into her old life in Gabardine, Montana - back into the same lonely, isolated routine. Tiffany tries to use the tools she learned in JD to control her temper and loneliness and convinces her acerbic friend David to produce a play she wrote while incarcerated. It is through letters Tiffany writes to her probation officer that we learn what happened after her beloved father's death to precipitate her "crimes." Gabardine is peopled with quirky characters including Tiffany's mother who commands the only gas station and keeps the town apprised of her quest for weight loss by posting daily updates along with gas prices. Tiffany's brother is a Forest Service officer who smells like meatloaf and has joined a cult.. David is flamboyantly gay and commands the cheerleaders, And there is the indomitable Betty Gabrian, a geriatric woman who encourages Tiffany's writing and inspires her to get David to produce her play about the eight soiled doves (prostitutes) who survived fires in Gabardine. David agrees and from there delightful chaos ensues.
This is a book about redemption, honesty, and friendship found in unlikely places. I recommend this book to readers of all ages and can't wait to order it for my library. I hope you all love it as much as I do and I appreciate the chance to read the ARC!

Small town intricacies, larger than life inhabitants!

Tiffany Templeton (Tough Tiff) doesn't fit and yet she's in exactly the right space for being her.
Having been sent to detention school for shoplifting we relive her past story via letters written to her Probation Officer. Her current situation is puzzling and it takes time for the past and present to combine. When it does she's on her way to becoming whole.
Tiffany has secrets. Many. In some ways she's the secret keeper for the whole town, even if they don't know it.
Tiffany's fractured, by her mother's attitude towards her, by her father's betrayal and death, by the love she had for him, by her brother Ronnie's weirdness (definitely a head case), and the larger community.
Mind you she's also her own worst enemy. And she's faithful to the only real friendship she has with the flamboyant David who really has usurped Tiffany's relationship with her mother.
This is one dysfunctional family. But then the whole town of Garbadine is dysfunctional. Tiffany's mother is diabolical in a weird sort of way. How she holds the town to ransom is unbelievable. As is how she treats people who defraud her. But then by the end we all know where Tiffany gets her stubbornness from.
When David decides to stage Tiffany's play exciting and strange things happen. The actors are a hoot. But then this is Garbadine. The standout characters who help on Tiffany's road to redemption are Kelly Plotz, Betty Gabrian, the sheriff and Waterbed Fred.
There are some truly mind stopping moments here dealing with angst, forgiveness, love and hope. I loved the last line in the book, the sudden change of view signalling hope.
Not an easy read because despite the craziness it just sounds all too real. Tiffany's journey is harsh, and yet wonderful.

A Penguin Razorbill ARC via NetGalley

This book wasn’t quite what I was expecting. I’m not sure what exactly I was expecting, but this wasn’t it. I would call this a very realistic fiction. This story is rather character driven, even though there are lots of things going on in the book. And while there are some plot threads in the book I thought could have used some better fleshing out, this book is already 320 pages long and I felt it to be 320 pages long.

So, what is it about? Well, Tiffany Templeton is sent home from ‘reform school’ and now has to serve her probation. Coming from a small town, she has branded herself in everyone’s eyes as a delinquent. Tough Tiff, with her oversized leather jackets that her mother hates so much, is a delinquent…and I wanted to go to her town and smack certain people, including her mom for seeing her as only that.

Part of her probation is going to see probation officer in another town once a month. Her mother keeps a close watch on her and I daresay has a bit a resentment and hostility built up against her. Tiffany always gets the smallest room in the trailer. The newer trailer they got after their neighbor’s place went up in smoke is a double wide with a reinforced floor, because of her parents’ weight issues. While Tiffany’s brother no longer lives with them, Tiff is still given the smallest bedroom and the other room is left as the ‘guest bedroom’ though no one ever visits them.

Her father died semi-recently and his lovely African violets that he tended and nurtured still sit on the windowsill, dead. So while Tiff loved him very much and the writing leads me to believe he was the parent Tiffany was closest to, he’s not there to support her as she attempts to turn part of her life around. Instead she has a useless brother and a mother with a scathing tongue in her mouth as her family support.

Tiffany’s life is filled with a sharped-tongued best friend who can sometimes be quite rude to her, a drama production with a ‘dramatic’ cast, her first real boyfriend, and a trailer park filled with odd neighbors. Tiffany swears she’s going to try and turn her life around, filling her time with these things, but she still falls back on some old habits, like sneaking out of the house via her bedroom window and spying on people.

A reader could really go into the how and why or things in regard to the people and their behavior in this book. I found myself wondering if Tiff’s mom is just taking the pain of the loss of her spouse out a bit on Tiff, or if she was always such a bear to live with. The violets still on the windowsill obviously symbolize her inability to let go of them, even though they are dead, because she’s struggling to let go of her husband… Or I could be reading into things way too much. Anyhow, I really enjoyed the character personality analyses I got out of Tiffany’s letter to her probation officer.

So if you like stories that are fairly character driven and extremely realistic, you might enjoy this new book from Richard Fifield. Just be prepared to be annoyed at some fictional people contained within the pages!

First thanks to the publisher and netgalley for the chance to review this book.

I enjoyed this book, A book about a 15/16 year old juvenile delinquent who is really not much of a delinquent. I enjoyed the rural setting of a small town of 900 people and most of them crazy. All in all a light quick YA read.

When "Tough Tiff" returns to her small town after being in a reform school, she feels like a new person in spite of everyone treating her like she's still the same juvenile delinquent. From ribald to poignant, this YA novel explores friendships, family dynamics, community, and self identity. Tiffany's parents were both morbidly obese, and her father's death has left her bereft and unprotected from her mother's anger and and vitriol. Having written a script about local prostitutes who died in a fire, she and her best friend decide to produce a play using elderly women from a local nursing home. the humor is laugh-out-loud funny at times, but the underlying story of community and Tiffany's self-awakening is a memorable one.

I received an ARC of this novel from NetGalley. I was drawn to it partly because of the cover; those neon letters are fantastic! Also, I was drawn to the reference to The Serpent King in the teaser—I loved that story!

The plot is threaded together with current action and reflective letters from Tiffany to fill in backstory, and I think the formatting layout of a final copy will clarify some of the confusion I had here and there about whether this was happening now or in the past. The character development is what really sells this book. Even the static characters are intriguing, and Tiffany’s trajectory of change is fascinating. The author provides enough info to flesh out her character but also leaves enough holes to give me room to analyze and predict for myself. The author’s attention to minor details for consistency is evident, and I certainly appreciate this. Overall, solid YA with enough angst to keep readers on edge, enough growth to satisfy adult readers, and enough unanswered questions to make everyone want more.

What an odd and interesting cast of characters! And very refreshing not to have a book set on the east coast or California. Tiffany has had a tough row to hoe and some of the difficulty is her own doing. I always appreciate a flawed main character.

This book was received as an ARC from PENGUIN GROUP Penguin Young Readers Group - Razorbill in exchange for an honest review. Opinions and thoughts expressed in this review are completely my own.

This book for me was not what I was expecting at all. Usually when you hear the words small crimes, you feel like it would be a story of overcoming obstacles and regaining your life back but for Tiffany Templeton, whenever she made an opportunity for growth, someone stopped her or got in her way. All through the book, it focused on punishing Tiffany for her reputation rather than giving her an opportunity to come back and start fresh. The trend is now for the YA category is focus more on a realistic fiction approach rather than fantasy/dreamlike approach. Our teen book club will have discussions for a while on this book.

We will consider adding this title to our YA collection at our library. That is why we give this book 5 stars.

I had hoped for a little more with this book, however, I was pleased. Tiffany spies on people and so having spied she is a keeper of secrets. At the start of the story, Tiffany is being sent home from detention school. Not because she is done, but the detention center was shut down. Her mother has a caustic tongue. Her brother is a waste of space and her father is deceased. I really enjoyed the growth of Tiffany. I loved Kelli, the probation officer. I thought several characters were just wacky enough to be lovely.