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I offer an email subscription of my posts using FeedBlitz. This law has to do with handling personal data with respect and privacy. It is called the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR. iPoe Reading Challenge (At least it's perpetual!).Best of 2008-Amazon Editors Picks for the Best.Travel the World: Belgium: There Are No Such Thing.The Screwed-Up Life of Charlie the Second.Voss: How I Come To America And Am Hero Mostly.Sunday Salon: Recommending HIstorical Fiction Edition.Travel the World: Canada: Getting The Girl.Cleavage: Breakaway Fiction for Real Girls.Sunday Salon: Playlist for Shooting the Moon.The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks.Nonfiction Monday: The Trouble Begins at 8.Travel the World: Australia: Jellicoe Road.Faith 'n Fiction Saturdays: Nonfiction Gift Edition.*I'm thinking of The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl. There are a few that are multi-dimensional. Take away the problems, and what you're left with are very flat characters.

But the characters and the plot seemed to only have dimensions because of the problems. Yes, people often have more than one problem to deal with at a time. (Especially towards the end.) Yes, life is complicated. I think the book tried to do too much in a way. How traumatized was Roddy from all those years before? Is Rick gay? Is Rick in denial? Does Rick have an anger problem? Now that it's written out, it doesn't seem like those additional story lines would cloud up the text.but it just felt like this was too much of a 'problem' novel. And there are the assumptions and burdens of memory. Her best friend, Tay, who is becoming more and more distant as she experiments with drugs. Her cousin, Sean, and his biracial jock boyfriend, Dexter, who is still in the closet. There are many different complicating layers to the basic plot. Just lab partners? Just friends? Just friends outside of school? Boyfriend and girlfriend?Īs I said, this is a busy book. Now that he's back, Maxie is trying to decide what their relationship-if any-should be. His nerdiness was becoming more apparent-or perhaps, she just began caring that he was a bit different from the other kids. You see in the last year (or two) when she'd known him she had begun to distance herself from him. Maxie is shocked to see him in her chemistry class. After a violent (bullying) incident in middle school (seventh grade, I think), Roddy moves away.only to resurface several years later in high school. Once upon a time (back in elementary school) there was a girl, Maxie, who was quite good friends with a boy, Roddy Nash. At the heart of this novel, is the story of an almost-friendship. And it feels like a cousin once or twice removed from a Barry Lyga novel*.

In a way it reminds me of Sweethearts by Sara Zarr.

Mousetraps by Pat Schmatz