Girls Like Me

August 15, 2016
Using verse and a series of text messages, StVil, author of the self-published Guardians and Noru series, tells the saga of a tormented teen who unexpectedly finds romance. High school junior Shay uses food to fill the hole left by her father’s death (“Finally alone, I call on my friends:/ Breakfast burrito. Banana cream pie. Butter”). She also uses it to absorb the painful taunts she receives at school for being fat and the constant nagging from her stepmother to eat more healthfully. Luckily, Shay has two terrific friends and fellow outcasts who make school almost bearable. Then Shay finds another source of comfort: chat-room conversations with an anonymous boy, who gets her sense of humor and thinks she’s pretty special. When Shay finds out her confidante is popular Blake Harrison from school, who is dating her nemesis, she panics. This funny, heart-wrenching novel celebrates those who don’t fit into society’s mold and the people who love them as they are. Even if the popular crowd at Shay’s school doesn’t appreciate her wit, compassion, and courage, readers will. Ages 12–up. Agent: Adrienne Rosado, Nancy Yost Literary.

With her father dead, her friends being yanked away, and fatphobia battering her, a teen finds affection and strength with a boy she meets online.Fifteen-year-old Shay lost Dad a year ago, and she's not close to her stepmother, who seems only to wish that Shay were thinner. At school, nemesis Kelly leaves oinking stuffed pigs on her chair and changes Shay's cell ringtone to pig sounds. Best friends Dash and Boots are being stolen: Boots by brain cancer, which is killing her, and Dash by his father, who sends him to military school for being gay. Shay connects with a boy online (screen name "Godotwait4me")--until their growing closeness infuriates Kelly so much she launches a website she calls Get the Pig Back in Its Pen, dedicated to breaking them up. StVil's verse prose is inventive and alive, sometimes cryptic, sometimes lurching, sometimes stunning; it rhymes only rarely yet with the effect of a gut punch ("Car. Speed. Head. / Docs. Tried. Dad. Dead"). Food-based figures of speech are gorgeous; unfortunately, they underscore the stereotype of Shay as a fat comfort-eater, but refreshingly, the plot has no weight-loss arc. Shay and Godot's text threads hum with mutual attraction, high wit, and each one's self-defeating fragilities. Shay's race is undesignated, although she looks white on the cover. A dynamic story of grief, loyalty, and, finally, some cheerworthy victories. (Verse fiction. 13-16) COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.