My Future Ex-Girlfriend

February 27, 2017
The gang from Me and Miranda Mullaly returns for more hijinks and heartbreak as eighth grade comes to an end. The story’s dizzying structure rotates narration among the three male leads—insufferably arrogant Duke, jock Chollie, and class clown Sam—intermingled with English class prompts written by the boys and two of their girlfriends, Miranda and Erica. (Only Duke’s girlfriend, Sharon, gets shut out of telling her side, but she’s a seventh grader, and there is a definite hierarchy at Penn Valley Middle School.) Relationships wobble, the canceled class trip is replaced with an ambitious talent show meant to replicate a night in New York City, and graduation looms, bringing anxiety about the prospect of what awaits in high school. The multiple perspectives offer amusing insights into how the boys and girls view the same episode through completely different lenses, but they aren’t enough to offset the thin characterizations. Readers in search of light humor about middle school romance will find what they’re looking for. Ages 10–up. Agent: Daniel Lazar, Writers House.

March 1, 2017
The sequel to Me and Miranda Mullaly (2016) recounts eighth-graders Sam, Duke, and Chollie's largely unsuccessful but often amusing attempts to navigate the minefield that is middle school boy-girl relationships.Chollie, the athlete, has won the coveted Miranda. Jokester Sam and Erica are a couple, while Duke, the pedantic snob, is enamored of Sam's younger sister, Sharon. Much is happening in the final stretch of their last year at middle school: a talent show; finals; a baseball championship; graduation preparation. The boys are motivated in their relationships by the fear of starting high school as girlfriend-less losers. The story evolves in the alternating first-person voices of the three boys, interspersed with email exchanges among the girls and responses to writing prompts assigned by their teacher. These multiple perspectives humorously reveal how differently each member of a couple reacts to the same situation and add a robustness to the novel that is offset by its caricature-driven characterization. There are failed expectations on all fronts, as relationships do not live up to the kids' imaginations. Given the six pairs of hands depicted on the cover, all main characters are white. Covering well-worn material, from Sam's desperate need to fart at an inopportune, potentially romantic moment to the dreaded meeting of the girls' parents, the book is a light, amusing read. (Fiction. 10-14)

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March 1, 2017

Gr 5-8-This sequel to Me and Miranda Mullaly finds Chollie, Duke, and Sam finishing up the school year while navigating relationships with their first girlfriends. There are movies, trips to the mall, and nerve-racking dinners with families. At school, when the eighth grade class is denied a field trip to New York City, the students choose to host an NYC Nites showcase evening instead of a dance, which requires a lot of work. Against this backdrop of activity, we see the relationships grow, change, and sometimes end in entertainingly predictable middle school ways. Written in the boys' first-person accounts as well as replies to language arts class writing prompts, this novel explores the heady and perplexing emotions of first "like." The multiple narratives are sometimes confusing, but all of the voices are distinctive and true to life. It is refreshing to see a book that examines the lives and emotions of middle schoolers during their first attempts at romantic relationships. Though the characters are middle-class and mostly white, readers will be able to relate to them and project a variety of qualities onto them. VERDICT This upbeat series will be popular with those who enjoy humorous realistic titles such as Betsy Byars's 1988 The Burning Questions of Bingo Brown and Varian Johnson's more recent The Great Greene Heist.-Karen Yingling, Blendon Middle School, Westerville, OH

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