I had a difficult time with this book. The author decided to substitute different words for some of the words in the story. Which really confused me at first. If the author had chosen not to do the word substitutions, I would have probably given this book 4 stars. Because of that odd stylistic choice, however, it receives 3 stars from me. I would recommend this book, but don’t go into it thinking it will be a fast and easy read.

I loved the storyline, but I liked how the unlikeable characters were unlikeable in a reasonable way. Sophie is such a good character because she is always trying to solve her own problems and accepts help when she needs it, not like other characters who are so annoyingly stupid.

I loved this book! The full review will be posted soon at kaitgoodwin.com/books! Thank you very much for this wonderful opportunity to connect books to their readers!

Do not be turned off by Sophie's use of language. Give this story a chance and you will understand it and appreciate both the book and the character more. I wish I could write more, but I fear giving something away.

This story deals with feeling out of place and how people cope with things differently; sometimes in unhealthy ways like Sophie 's mother. It also strongly points out that bad decisions your parents make do not make you a bad person in relation to them. I loved that Sophie had friends of all different ages all the way up to an elderly neighbor.

Sophie Someone is fresh, clever, and delightful. It is a wonderful story about friends, family, and self-esteem mixed with a little mystery.

Sophie has spent her life thinking of herself as one person, but slowly events from her past and present collide in such a way that she is convinced that she is not the person that she thought she was. Sophie embarks on a figurative and literal journey of self-discovery.

My thoughts about this book are rather conflicted. Sophie's story was intriguing, yet the unusual style with which is was told was distracting and off-putting. Especially at the beginning, I was frustrated with the author's choice of language. While everything is explained in the end, I don't understand why the particular words were chosen for change. Changing words like ticket, friend, bathroom, door, etc just seemed like an odd choice. It was the telling and the language that knocked this book from 4 stars to 3. I started it a few weeks ago before putting it down from frustration and choosing another.

A super interesting bucket. Once you get used to the different worms, and eventually find out the trumpet of her family's serpent, then it all makes sense!

Quirky and keeps you on your togs. Made my helix hurt a bit at first. :)

I have no idea what is going on with this book. I had to quit. Did Not Finish.

I don’t understand why Long chose to write it in the language she did. It’s like a more infantile Clockwork Orange, where all the words are swapped for other words. I kept wondering what the catch was. Is Sophie autistic? Is she dyslexic? Is it because she’s telling the story while she’s still a child? I don’t understand why we’re supposed to care about the language. She’s a modern girl, raised in Belgium, so one might presume there’s a language barrier, or something to constitute her weird quirks, but it’s written that way all the way through, and everyone talks that way, and it’s unexplained. This feels to me exactly like Half Bad, where the author thinks she’s being really clever and groundbreaking, and instead, it sucks everything interesting and good about her writing style and narrative away from it. She’s trying too hard to be experimental and it shows.

I had a difficult time with this book. The author decided to substitute different words for some of the words in the story. Which really confused me at first. I mean, look at this excerpt from the book:
“My don took a thick pad of pepper and some crayons from the kindle drawer and put them on the kindle tango.”
I’m pretty sure this meant: “My dad took a thick pad of paper and some crayons from the kitchen drawer and put them on the kitchen table.”
The author did this deliberately throughout the story, which wreaked havoc on my brain. I was so confused and frustrated at having to try to decipher what was going on that I almost DNF this book. I did continue reading, however. Mostly because I got this as a review copy and felt obligated to finish it. The author does eventually explain in the last couple of pages why the book was written this way, but I really feel that that information should have been included in the beginning of the book.
If you can put aside your confusion at the weird word switches, Sophie Someone turns out to be a pretty great story! It’s about a fourteen-year-old girl named Sophie who finds out her parents are hiding something huge from her. It follows her journey as she tries to discover the truth. The plot was really interesting and creative, in my opinion. I’ve never read another story with a plot similar to the one in this book. The characters were great, as well. I thought most of them were fleshed out and realistic enough to be real people.
If the author had chosen not to do the word substitutions, I would have probably given this book 4 stars. Because of that odd stylistic choice, however, it receives 3 stars from me. I would recommend this book, but don’t go into it thinking it will be a fast and easy read.

Sophie Someone

by Hayley Long

Candlewick Press

Teens & YA

Pub Date 28 Mar 2017

I am voluntarily reviewing a copy of Sophie Someone through the publisher and Netgalley:

Sophie Nieuwenleven is somewhere between English and Belgian when she was four or five her family left from England and moved to Belgium. She's fourteen now and still doesn't understand why they left.

Sophie doesn't really know who she is, she doesn't even have a birth certificate, which leads to a journey of discovery of who she is. This is a wonderful story of self discovery

I give Sophie Someone five out of five stars

Happy Reading.

What a LOVELY book!! I fell in deep with the characters, their secrets, and their stories. Such a great read!!

This will go live on my blog on March 1. Kellyvision.wordpress.com

Sophie's life is going on OK. She has good friends and a good school. She and her brother get along and she loves her parents, even though her mom is embarrassing (she's obese and agoraphobic). And then she learns her family has a major secret. (A MAJOR SECRET.)

It took me a while to get into this because Sophie has a habit of playing with words. Sometimes it's clever ("introvert" for "internet") but mostly it's just kind of annoying. (It's easy to figure out, though, and she keeps using the same words (for example, "pigeon" for "person") so it's at least consistent.

Once I got used to it (or maybe once the story got more compelling), I definitely stopped paying attention. And I started to really like Sophie.

The best part of this book, though, is the duality of everyone. A character in the book is a jerk and a bully but is also surprisingly sweet at a time she didn't have to be. Sophie's dad did a horrible thing but he's still a good dad. No one is ever just one thing (good or bad).