A Patron Saint for Junior Bridesmaids

A girl from a devoutly Catholic family prays to as many patron saints as she can find, but she can't find the one she needs when she becomes a junior bridesmaid for her shy cousin.Mary's family must move from their small Minnesota town, where everyone "is as white as bleached T-shirts," when a large chain forces their family hardware store out of business. Mary's dad is working an oil job in North Dakota, and she and her mom are staying with Mary's grandmother in St. Paul for the summer. There, Mary meets next-door-neighbor Nick, a Vietnamese boy her age. When her cousin announces she's getting married, Mary wants not only to be a good junior bridesmaid, but also to reconcile some difficulties she's been having with her faith. When Nick, a Unitarian, casts aspersions on some of the tenets of Catholicism, Mary finds that she has some major lessons to learn. Tougas keeps the narrative just light enough for her target audience of middle graders even as Mary struggles with some pretty deep religious questions. She may have been the Minnesota Church Youth Group Member of the Year, but that doesn't mean she is without flaws--a hard thing to admit. Wedding-prep comedy balances serious questions of morality in this sweetly perceptive book. (Fiction. 9-12) COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

August 1, 2016

Gr 4-8-In addition to moving from Minnesota to North Dakota over the summer, middle schooler Mary has the distinctly important responsibility of serving as her cousin Eden's junior bridesmaid/maid of honor. While her parents prepare the new house in North Dakota, Mary and her younger brother are sent to stay with their grandmother in St. Paul to help prepare for the wedding. A model student and well-behaved daughter, Mary knows that she can help her cousin, who suffers from severe social anxiety, by corralling her very spirited, very overbearing grandmother while keeping a big secret of her mother's. Mary also has a big indiscretion hanging over her head-before she left her school in Minnesota, she punched Brent Helzinski in the face and doesn't want to talk about it. Oh, and then there's the cute boy next door who keeps distracting her from her very important wedding duties. It's a lot to handle. While the explanation of why Mary punched Brent in the face, which is hinted at throughout the story, fails to pay off, this would be a serviceable choice for libraries searching for faith-based novels to add to their collections. Catholic traditions and references feature heavily here. VERDICT An additional purchase. Hand this to tween readers who crave sweet and innocent realistic tales.-Carli Worthman, Carmel Middle School, Carmel, IN

Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.