Iphigenia Murphy

February 7, 2020

Gr 9 Up-Readers will be swept away by this angsty survival tale of a teen willing to take her future into her own hands. Iphigenia has endured a forced relationship with her stepbrother and is now dealing with the aftermath. In hopes of finding her mother and a better life, she leaves the horrors of her home behind and makes a home in a park in New York for a few months. Her experiences and the relationships she develops teach her how to survive and help her become stronger than she realized. Hosey touches on issues such as unexpected friendship, trust, abortion, rape, courage, hope, incarcerated parents, drugs, physical abuse, and violence, though the book never becomes overly graphic. Each of these issues is intricately woven throughout the novel and leads Iphigenia to answer questions of identity and self. VERDICT Recommend to fans of Patricia McCormick's Sold or Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak.-Lenore Catalano, Hammarskjold Middle School, East Brunswick, NJ

Copyright 2020 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 15, 2020
An exploration of how, and why, girls can vanish in plain sight. High school sophomore Iphigenia Murphy has a plan. Her father ignores her, her stepmother abuses her, and her stepbrother has been raping her with tacit all-but-approval. Iphigenia--Iffy, to some--decides that it's time to find her mother, who left when Iffy was younger, and try to build a new life with her. Loaded up on survival gear, the Italian/Irish teen heads to Forest Park, in Queens, home of childhood memories and the last known location of her mother. Iffy survives scary nights in the park and starts her search during the day, events described in convoluted prose in need of tightening. She's aided by her new friend Corinne, a white girl with matted hair described as dreadlocks who is also a runaway. Corinne's trans history comes up once and is never referenced again save for a single line of questioning from Iffy's new, similarly rootless boyfriend, Anthony (who's tired of being one of the few black people in Monticello, New York, though his racial identity never intersects with the plot again). Despite the high stakes and heart-wrenching conclusion, the story manages to be somewhat laborious since neither Iffy nor her comrades come across as fleshed-out, intriguing characters but rather devices to drive the ideas forward.Readable but more successful as a lesson than a novel. (Fiction. 14-18)

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