Really lovely story about a girl shedding her skin (literally and figuratively) after a sexual assault encounter. This is certainly a timely book in terms of the situations, but it has an ending that can be interpreted in many ways. Did she die? Did she really become a moth? Is this an ending, or a beginning? Really felt like the novel Speak but more fantastical. There are certainly triggers in this book that should be discussed before reading, but in all, I would recommend.

GRETA is a story about regaining your sense of self after a traumatic event. Overall, I really enjoyed this story. It tackles the concept of sexual assault and consent in a way that I found to be appropriate for a middle grade audience.
I was a little bit frustrated by the ending. I thought Greta’s transformation into her new body was absolutely beautiful and tragic at the same time and I hoped that the ending would have wrapped up a bit more nicely. Instead I left the story feeling bad for Greta, Lottie, and her family.

The narrator for the audiobook was fantastic. It was easy and fun to listen to and I felt like the tone represented a middle schooler very well.

*Big thanks to J.S. Lemon, Macmillan Audio, and NetGalley for proving me with a free audiobook ARC in exchange for honest review.*

The world around Greta is changing quickly and she finds her footing to be quite unstable. The start of middle school, moving to a new house, and her best friend, Lotti,’s new interest in boys, all have Greta feeling like she doesn’t quite have a place she fits.

A spark of hope comes to Great when a boy at school takes interest in her. Unfortunately, this joy is short lived and the SA she suffers leaves her changed forever. Greta has a hard time talking about the assault and the process of dealing with this trauma alone, and later with support, brings her along a magical journey.

This was a quick read. If you like simple and straight forward stories, you may want to skip this. If you enjoy elements of fantasy and poetic prose, dig in!

This book was provided to me as an ARC via NetGalley.

First of all - I absolutely love the book cover and the narrator! I don't think the book was bad, I just wished that Greta would deal with the sexual assault in a different way. Don't get me wrong, how she reacted was exactly how a lot of victims react (close up, not talk to anybody about it...) but if this book is middle grade, I think kids should be just shown the 'right' way - talking to a trusted adult about it for example.
Overall I did enjoy the book and it was a very quick read (or listen hahhah)!

I am obsessed with middle grade books these days. Maybe they have always been great and I was just out of the loop. The more I read, the more impressed I am with the depth and breadth of stories written for older children and younger teens. And so, perhaps, I hold MG books up to an unfair standard. Greta did not quite work for me. The narration was pitch perfect. I like the ideas in the book. But the writing itself was not my cup of tea. Still, I am glad I read it. There were glimmers of magic, moments of intense clarity. I would read something else by the author. Thank you to J.S. Lemon, the publisher, and NetGalley for the audio ARC.

I want to give Greta a big hug, but I will ask her for consent first. Beautiful metaphors as well as straight talk about consent and unwanted touch. Narrator captured Greta's essence.

Fish in a Tree meets Fighting Words in J. S. Lemon’s middle grade debut, a fiercely original story about friendship, healing, and the beauty of transformation.

Thank you Macmillan Audio & Netgalley for sending me this audio ARC! This middle grade book tackles a difficult subject: sexual assault. I didn’t like this book very much but it was a quick read.

When best friends Greta and Lottie get invited to their first middle school party, both girls are ecstatic. They show up excited to see that both of their crushes are also at the party. Unfortunately, the party stops being fun when Greta has a horrible/traumatizing experience. Greta now has to figure out how to move forward in life with this deep feeling that everything has changed.

Greta and Lottie's friendship is deep and beautifully portrayed. Both girls benefit from having moms that may not always understand them but do always love and care about them. The story is moving and also surprisingly funny at times. Greta perfectly captures the excitement and trepidation that middle school can bring.

The ending may be too abstract for some young teenage readers to enjoy or understand.

This book troubles me. I was hoping to find a somewhat magical allegory for finding yourself and your power that would be a safe and positive option to hand to young readers who have experienced trauma, but I don’t believe this book fulfils that promise. All of the correct parts are present, but the combination of those parts doesn’t feel effective.

Most upsetting to me is that the book’s ending veers toward a resolution that feels more like self-annihilation than power. If anything it felt like an allegory for suicide. The triggering event of the book begins a series of changes that the protagonist has no control over, and in the end, they consume her. Regardless of the ‘happiness’ we are told she feels, the fact is she is no longer in her own life. She has left her friends and parents.


I also struggled with the audiobook narrator, but I couldn’t get a feel for if it was the prose or her performance causing the issue I had. It’s difficult for adults to write or read child POVs and leave their own adult, mature knowledge and judgement behind. Much of Greta’s inner monologue felt tongue in cheek, like she was conscious of how childlike her peers were in a way that didn’t fully touch her.

I dislike leaving negative reviews, but I believe this one needed more work before hitting shelves.

Title: Greta
By: J.S. Lemon

Genre:
Middle Grade, Fiction

Red Flags:
Sexual Assault, Mention of LGBTQ

Summary:
Greta and Lottie are going through a year of change. Greta is moving and dragging her feet through the process. She is extremely reluctant as this move will tear her away from her best friend, right when it matters…entering the middle school years. Middle school brings its own level of hesitancy as bodies are changing, and hormones are raging. Greta attends her first middle school party and is put in an impossible situation, one which changes her and Greta feels pulled into impossible directions trying to explain herself to Lottie. Will this situation break their friendship or bring them closer together? What will Greta choose?

Review:
As a middle school professional, I am trained in dealing with students with trauma. I was thrilled with the summary of this book and had such high hopes for it! However, it was slightly disappointing. We teach students the importance of speaking up, finding someone they can trust, and through conversations healing from unfortunate situations. The ending had me so confused, and perplexed. I went back and read it several times. It was missing something, and felt disconnected. The transformation of Greta teaches changing, but more importantly, escape. Although these are traits of students who have suffered from trauma, it is not something we want to teach.

This is a very content heavy book, which I would not include in my middle school library. If the ending would have been better written, I would have recommended it for a guidance office, or counseling center. Either Way, it is not a light or quick read.

Thank you J.S. Lemon, MacMillan Audio, and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader Copy for free. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

#Greta
#Jslemon
#macmillanaudio
#reluctantreaderreads
#advancedreadercopies

A truly magical (and incredibly original) middle-grade book that this reader found thoroughly enchanting. With humor, pathos, and a highly relatable heroine, this book also contains a potential triggering happening and its follow-on effects (portrayed very sensitively) that younger readers may need help in understanding. To that end, there is a discussion in the book, following the epilogue, with a psychiatrist, who helps to walk a reader through the event and an appropriate real-life process for handling and healing.

Greta Goodwin, our third person POV narrator, is thirteen years old, and, as an independent thinker, who has never really found herself fitting in with her larger social circle, is feeling particularly on the outs as she enters her first year in middle-school.

Aided by the support of her level-headed and lovely best friend Lottie, Greta nonetheless finds herself facing the inevitable life-altering physical and social changes in her very own (unique and quirky) way.

No spoilers here, but when Greta is forced to experience an inconceivably awful event, (one that unfortunately, will read as not all that unfamiliar to many female readers), Greta’s deep underlying and intrinsic “refusal to accept things as they are”, sees her undertaking a slow and brilliant “metamorphosis” — revealing her as as “willing to go to great lengths to make changes”. And what lengths they are, as these changes, whether fantastical and real (in the story) or largely metaphorical ( I choose to favor the latter), are both spectacular and controversial (in the eyes of many readers before me).

A truly lovely lesson on coming to view one’s own skin as one’s own, and the burst of transformative freedom that follows, Greta’s journey is more than a little heartbreaking, and a hugely inspiration read.

I reviewed the audio version of this book, loving the easy approachability in the voice of the heroine as portrayed by the narrator, and taking my enjoyment of the story to a whole new level.

A great big thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author for an ARC of this book. All thoughts presented are my own.

It's quite the middle grade. Solidly focused on Greta's start to middle school in seventh grade with her best friend Lottie by her side, Greta is apprehensive about how to approach new friendships, school, and the attention of boys. Each of these segments of her life are authentic and then her mom adds in that they'll be moving to a new home, their dream home, but that means changes in Greta's already chaotic internal life as a middle schooler and moving farther away from Lottie.

She begins to receive attention from a boy that turns out to be anything but positive at a party and because of this experience, shifts begin happening in Greta- it starts with an orange pigmentation of her skin that draws attention at school (it's middle school EVERYONE is looking at her) and then there's a luminescence and it goes from there. While her parents are concerned and seek the advice of doctors, her goofy younger brother is intrigued.

This is to say the magical takes precedent over the realistic as she metamorphoses a la Kafka as she struggles with the violation to her body that this love interest (who now pretends she doesn't exist) attacked her with.

At its core, the book is about friendship and body autonomy and I don't quite know how I feel about the magical transformation as a result of the trauma- for Greta it is freeing but does it help make real the message its trying to send for the intended audience? Either way, unique and memorable with a Barbara Dee /Kimberley Brubaker Bradley feel.

This is such a beautiful and heartbreaking book. Greta is going through serious things alone because of how friends and even family reacted to her trauma. Greta is strong, though, and transforms into the most beautiful part of herself. While she is fiercely strong and loyal, Greta goes through changes based on a sexual encounter she has no control over. Thanks to NetGalley, I got to listen to this audiobook, which was charmingly narrated, I also appreciated the end where a psychologist offered advice for others facing similar issues.

Thank you to NetGalley, J.S. Lemon, and Macmillan Audio for a copy of the audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

I'd be interested in seeing the a classroom discussion around "Greta" by J.S. Lemon.

The topic of SA is handled carefully and realistically.The story includes fantastical elements, reminiscent of Karen Russell's St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, which begin after the assault. The idea of Greta figuring out how to accept her body because of such intense emotional change, along with the intense physical changes she faces, I believe, highlight the overall messaging of the story.

The questions other reviewers have brought up (why didn't she tell her parents, etc.?) would make great topics of conversation, which I find to be purposeful within the book.

This story follows one girl's [literal] transformation after a sexual assault incident with a boy from school. I would describe this book as Judy Blume meets Fighting Words. I had really high hopes for this book, and I loved the idea of it (I truly loved how realistically the transformation was incorporated throughout the story), but the full execution of this novel just didn't land for me.

My main issue with the book is that Greta doesn't tell anyone about the assault, and it's almost like after a few traumatic flashbacks even Greta completely forgets about it. I understand that "good" kids or kids with healthy parent relationships still might be nervous, anxious, or scared to tell an adult, but I wanted to know that Greta understood she was making a decision to not tell her parents about this situation. I thought the ending was just unsatisfying, and I'm so disappointed that I didn't get to love this story the way that I wanted to.

This was a hard book to listen to because of the subject matter but it was well written. It is an important book for all to read. It teaches important concepts and ideas.

Greta
by J. S. Lemon

This young adult reader book shows the nature and change of youth as two best friends slide into middle school. They face roomers, and consent problems and the magic of change. The book has humor mixed with the reality. The love of two friends pass through the problems of childhood at the edge of adulthood.