4,5 Stars

Fourteen-year-olds are often angry about the world, and they are right.

This book was not for me — it was for my inner child. This is the book I needed when I was fourteen and realised the world was unfair and felt like there was nothing I could do about it. Bullying was the main plot of this story. As an adult, I stopped caring about it at some point. I think this would have stuck with me if I was still a teenager who hasn't grown numb yet.

I hope other young readers find this story and get inspired to change the world for the better, even if it's just something small. And even if they aren't able to, I at least hope they feel a little less alone.

Thank you NetGalley and Holiday House for giving me access to an e-arc for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

This is the kind of book I really wish I'd had access to in middle school. It's full of love for community spaces, activism and is rooted in the belief that change is possible when people work together for it.

It adresses many types of oppression that kids face, including fatphobia, sexism, racism, toxic masculinity and homophobia and helps them see how all of those connect and why they need to be addressed together. It helps them understand the importance of standing up for each other and protecting each other.

Maeve is a very well built character and I loved seeing how much she learned from her teacher, from her friends, from books and other different resources that were available through libraries and the internet. She also learns to take her anger and use it to find ways to fight back but also comes to realize that anger has its limits.

I enjoyed this book a lot but found that the pacing was often too fast to really let the characters and their beliefs develop with more depth. There was a lot of telling and not showing, which gives explicit pointers to the themes at hand but sometimes doesn't feel engaging enough.

Overall, it's still a good book that has so much to bring to its target audience. The side characters are also so attaching, especially Daniel. It would be a very good book to introduce kids to activism, feminism, to how they can incorporate those to their own lives and to the concept of intersectionality.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the e-ARC!

While I liked the story overall, there were times where it felt like relevant information was being kept from the reader. Maeve Mulvaney moves from Burlington VT (population 44,528) to Gainesville (population 145,812), which she immediately derides as being a small, hick town in the middle of nowhere which seems, as best, a weird conclusion to come to. When her feelings about the town erupt publicly near the end of the novel, she is accused of belittling the South in general, something that the book simply does not depict in the prose (the book seems like it should include illustrations/comics, but they were missing in the ARC so perhaps this makes more contextual sense in the final product?). Maeve is never described physically (the closest comes is a comment about her dress arching over round belly in the last chapter of the book), but is subject to significant abuse for being overweight from both bullies and family members. The focus on her weight felt random and it made me wonder if the author had been forced to remove material that would have made that plot point seem less abrupt. Similarly Maeve's anxiety disorder seems to appear out of nowhere, which is odd given it is central to the conflict she has with her (frankly borderline verbally abusive) mother.

I recieved a free eARC of this book. Thank you for the opportunity to read it.

Maeve didn’t want to move from Burlington to “Nowheresville” FL. But, she’s there now. In a new town, new school. Her first trip to the local comic book store leads to conflict with a local boy who insists that she can’t possibly really know comics…and information about an upcoming convention. Her first day of school leads to connecting with friends…and bullies.

Maeve’s efforts to find a spot, to connect, and to deal with a school where it seems like certain people have a pass and where others are second class citizens, where teachers are a big part of the problem, and in figuring out who to trust will ring true to young readers in this ultimately encouraging novel that gives kids ideas on how they can be activists and use their talents to create change needed in their communities. It’s the kind of books we need now. I’m adding it to my list for my little free library.

This was a funny, sweet, empowering middle grade novel about standing up for yourself and your community and making a difference. Maeve was a fantastic, realistic narrator. I absolutely loved it!