This Girl is Different by JJ Johnson

Title: This Girl is Different
Author: JJ Johnson
Publication: Peachtree Publishers (4/1/2011)
ISBN 9781561455782
Format: Hardcover ($16.95) 288 pages
Acquired: I got the digital copy of this book from netGalley.

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This girl is different... That s what Evie has always told herself and it s true. Home-schooled by her counter culture mom, she s decided to see what high school is like for the first time for her senior year. And what a year it is.

As it turns out, it s not just Evie who s Different. Lots of people are. Many of her assumptions about others are turned on their heads as she makes friends with kids her own age for the first time, discovers what s good and what s bad about high school, and learns lessons about power and its abuse both by the administration and by Evie herself.
 

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The main theme of this book was: This girl is different. It was a no brainer to say that. I felt that Evie repeated that saying too much. When I first read this book I immediately thought of Star Girl but in the point of view of Stargirl. Evie was nothing like her. At all. The book starts with Evie drawing a snake that she caught. The only problem is that while she saw hunting for the snake she had twisted her ankle which is where her only friends in the novel come in. Rajas and Jacinda find her by the creek and they just happen to be going to the same high school as she will. It turns out that she is an ex-home schooled teenager whose mother only allowed her to go because she said that she was going to shake things up. In her head the real reason that she wanted to go to high school for her senior year was because she wanted to be able to experience something new.

 

The farther I read in the book the more I thought that she did not want to experience high school so much as she wanted to right the wrongs that she saw in all of the 80s movies that she watched that happened to be set in a high school setting. She already had her opinions about high school made and only wanted validation for her beliefs. She was annoying and while she could recite amendments from the bill of rights she obviously did not know that there have been many court cases for search and seizures in school and it has been deemed legal. It is for teachers and student protection. Personally while I would not like to be searched I know that some people do need that to be available. Why do I believe this? Because in my senior year of high school a crazy kid brought knife to school and pulled it out during lunch. Of course if the staff wanted better reaction time they should have probably told the students this. She also complains about the bathrooms a lot and how they have smoke filled, dirt traps. Well no one can say that it is not the students fault. Maybe if no one smoked in the bathroom they would not looked smoked in. I have been to three different high schools and the way high school is portrayed seemed outdated and wrong. I think that it is obvious that Evie was my least favorite character. Sadly I did not have a favorite character in this book. Although it was almost Jacinda until she did something that I felt was just plain gross.

 

I am sorry but this book was not something that I enjoyed.