Book Review: "Tell Me Three Things" by Julie Buxbaum

If only we could say the things we most need and want to, to those who most need to hear it.

"...I will continue to power through it—all the stagnant, soul-crushing grief—but it will never be okay that my mom is not here. That she will not be at my high school graduation; that she will never give me the lecture, and I won't be able to play along and pretend to be embarrassed and say, Come on, Mom; that she will not be there when I open my college acceptance letters (or rejections); that she will never see who I grow up to be—that great mystery of who I am and who I am meant to be—finally asked and answered. I will march forth into the great unknown alone."

In Tell Me Three Things, Jessie’s life has been totally uprooted. Her mom died, her dad has gotten remarried to a woman he met online, and has moved them from Chicago into her fancy Los Angeles home with her sullen, disapproving son. And perhaps worse than that, she has to start her junior year at a private high school where everyone is rich and confident and looks like a model.

On her first day of school already in the midst of embarrassing disaster after embarrassing disaster, insult after insult, she gets an email from someone calling themselves “Somebody Nobody,” or “SN.” They claim to be a fellow student and offer to help Jessie navigate the wilds of the high school, anonymously of course.

Little by little, Jessie starts to depend on SN, like him even, but she’s desperate to know who he is. She's finding it difficult to build her own life in California without him. And as she deals with bullying and self-confidence crises and unwanted attention from a friend and issues with her dad and the new life he’s dropped her in, she wants SN in real life more than ever, even as she’s fighting her IRL attraction to a classmate.

This is a sweet book with a lot of poignancy, and as with many YA novels, the characters are funny and far more erudite than typical teens. Julie Buxbaum knows how to tug at your emotions without getting maudlin. (Her latest book, Hope and Other Punchlines, really blew me away.)

I pretty much predicted how this would resolve itself early on, and while I wasn’t disappointed with that resolution, I thought it took a little too long for the payoff. But the book was still fun and a quick read.

Book Review: "The Field Guide to the North American Teenager" by Ben Philippe

This was such a fun, endearing, and thought-provoking book.

Subject: Norris Kaplan, a Black French-Canadian high school student who is forced to move from Canada to Austin, Texas when his mother takes a university job there. Leaving his home, his best friend, hockey fans, etc., is bad enough, but for a teenager with overactive sweat glands, moving to Texas is like hell on earth. (Maybe hotter?)

"Of all the things Norris disliked about leaving his life behind, his mother's paranoid insistence that they become apolitical while living in Texas had provided Norris with the most enjoyment. It's not that you can't have an opinion, she had told him. You just need to have less of them. People won't always know when you're joking."

He’s prepared to hate everything and everyone, and he’s always been the type to keep people at a distance with heavy doses of sarcasm. (I totally feel seen here.) But armed with his knowledge of American movies and television he’s ready to mesh with all of the typical stereotypes.

Sure, he encounters the bitchy cheerleaders, the Neanderthals that are the jocks, the people who like to say "eh" to mock his Canadian accent. But he also finds friends in unlikely places, and is mesmerized by Aarti, the “manic pixie dream girl” whose mercurial nature confuses Norris.

While Norris is busy eviscerating everyone with quips and insults he doesn’t realize he’s just as guilty as his fellow students of making snap judgments about him. And his fervent desires to go back home to Canada leaves him too blind to see the good things and the good people right in front of him.

"We all mess things up. It's what you do with the mess that matters."

I really enjoyed this book. Norris, while he has some flaws, is a great character, and I'd love it if Ben Philippe would bring him and his entourage back for another book sometime in the future. I loved the way Philippe showed the depth of other characters as well.

Even if you've never had trouble fitting in, if you've never been homesick, or if you've never kept people at arm's length with sarcasm and wit, I think you'll enjoy The Field Guide to the North American Teenager. This really was such a fun read.