  | Full Text Reviews: Bulletin for the Center... - 04/01/2013 Everyone in their small town was shocked when Angie’s sister joined the Air Force rather than taking a basketball scholarship to college. When she was captured in Iraq and a YouTube video of her torture went viral, Angie was devastated. Angie’s very public attempt at suicide has garnered her no sympathy from any quarter; in fact, it makes her bully bait at school and at home, where her mother is emotionally frozen and both her mother and her brother have become toxically mean. Possible salvation comes from KC Romance, a brash, seemingly fearless new girl who is attracted to Angie, but who is confused and a little put off by Angie’s fumbling responses. While Angie tries to figure out if she is “gay-girl gay,” she is also trying to live up to her sister’s legacy by trying out for the basketball team. Her unlikely success in that endeavor somewhat threatens the realism here, but it also injects a measure of hope in an otherwise bleak story, particularly when Angie discovers that KC has deep problems of her own that Angie can’t begin to help solve. The only character who isn’t achingly broken is Jake, a neighbor whose life of normalcy and social success has left him ill-equipped to help Angie, though he tries. Ultimately, though, Angie’s gradual grieving process, which takes her through crushing embarrassment as well as bittersweet triumph, will move readers as it takes up multiple contemporary issues and processes them with both credibility and considerable rhetorical finesse. KC - Copyright 2013 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. School Library Journal - 04/20/2013 Gr 9 Up—A father who abandoned the family. A couldn't-be-bothered mother. An adopted brother who is a criminal in the making. A high school full of peers who relentlessly tease her following a failed suicide attempt at a basketball game. And the only person who really understands her-her older sister-is being held hostage in Iraq and is believed to be dead by everyone except Angie. This is Angie's life. Then a gorgeous, punk-rock chick with a mysterious past, KC Romance, begins taking an interest in her. While the teen toys with the idea that she may be "gay-girl gay," she also begins to channel her pain and uncertainty by making her sister, a former state champion, proud by trying out for the varsity basketball team. Not only does Angie make the team, but she also leads it to a pivotal win. She returns home from the game to discover that her sister's body has been found. An explosive confrontation with her mother following the burial leads her to begin to see her otherwise-cold mother through a new lens. The author ends the story with no resolution in Angie's relationships with her mother and KC, leading readers to forge their own conclusions. The voice of a dry and direct third-person narrator works in a story laden with heavy topics, including war, death, suicide, cutting, bullying, and homosexuality.—Nicole Knott, Watertown High School, CT - Copyright 2013 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission. Loading...
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