Not Your #Lovestory

July 1, 2020
Macy Evans dreams of becoming a social media star with her feminist '80s and '90s movie reviews--until she finds herself in the wrong spotlight. Life isn't easy for Macy and her single waitress mom, who struggle to get by. Macy works at a video rental shop along with her best friend, Elise, and Paxton, a boy with a soft smile and sad past. Meanwhile, she puts her heart into her YouTube channel, hoping that it will someday generate enough income for her to get out of her dead-end town. When someone posts pictures on Twitter of her and the hunky boy who sat next to her at a Kansas City Royals baseball game with a comment insinuating that something happened between them, Macy suddenly becomes internet-famous and the object of shaming comments and real-life stalkers. Her YouTube views, however, are through the roof. Can she leverage her newfound fame? Is compromising her values for followers worth jeopardizing her friendships and something more profound with Paxton? Hartl adds an interesting perspective to the canon of internet-ruins-everything stories, with gentle and respectful treatment of the very real hardships and humanity behind the all-consuming race for clicks. The resolution is a bit pat, but at least everyone gets a happy ending. Most characters default to white; Elise is Latinx and queer. A touching and very human perspective on internet infamy: Click on this one. (Fiction. 14-18)

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July 20, 2020
Money is tight in 18-year-old Macy Evans’s family, and she, her mother, and her grandmother get by on low-wage jobs and her grandmother’s Social Security. Fiery, feminist Macy works at an old-school video store (“Gen X nostalgia was our biggest draw”) and reviews movies on YouTube. When she spills her food on the handsome guy next to her at a baseball game, he ends up shirtless, she catches a fly ball, and they become an internet
phenomenon, she’s both appalled and tempted. Could being #FlyBallGirl, who’s pretend-dating Eric—#BaseballBabe—get her viewers and a sponsor? Eric’s persuasive, so she risks her privacy and the romance that might be brewing with friend Paxton, who eschews social media. Hartl (Have a Little Faith in Me) effectively sets up Macy’s small town, with its rural poverty (and vacationing outsiders who find it suitably backwards and charming), as well as believable secondary characters. The effort Eric puts into perpetuating #FlyBallGirl isn’t quite believable, and the obstacles keeping Macy and Paxton apart feel contrived, but the love story is pretty swoonworthy. Ages 14–up. Agent: Rebecca Podos, Rees Literary.

September 1, 2020
Grades 9-12 Macy has no intention of repeating her mother's mistakes: getting pregnant at 16 and never escaping her small Midwestern hometown. She plans to spend the year after graduation reviewing eighties and nineties movies on her YouTube channel, R3ntal Wor1d, and saving up to move to Chicago. She works at a quirky video store alongside her best friend, Elise, and Paxton, who has a crush on Macy and raises show rabbits with his grandmother. One Saturday, Macy treats her mom to a Kansas City Royals baseball game, where she clumsily spills ketchup on Eric, the gorgeous boy sitting next to her. The woman seated behind them photographs and posts their interactions as a meet-cute Twitter thread, which goes viral. Eric convinces Macy to milk the #baseballbabe story for views on her YouTube channel, until the situation gets ugly, threatening her mental health and her new relationship with Paxton. Fortunately, Macy finds a way out. The sweet, sex-positive romance and the way people in this town take care of one another, across generations, make this a winner.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)