Name: Micah McKinney and the Boys of Summer
ISBN: 9781684460908

Nina Chapman

Twelve-year-old Micah hopes for a miracle transformation before starting middle school but as she is torn between twins Luke and Megan she sees that the real transformation must be in how she sees herself.

Micah McKinney and the Boys of Summer

Jelke Lenaerts

This book has content warnings for suicide of a parent and a parent with depression.

This was a cute and enjoyable read. Take everything I say about this book with a grain of salt, because, as a 18 year old, I'm not the target demographic but this book did leave me with some issues. Mostly this book is about our main character struggling with growing up. She wants to physically grow up but is still a kid at heart and doesn't understand her previous friends wanting to grow out of that. I really liked the sentiment of "it's okay to stay a kid for a long time" but the way it villianized the girls who didn't have that same mentallity kind of bothered me. I'm an 18 year old reading middle grade. I'm obviously still a kid at heart but most people my age are not and that's okay. If you're twelve and you want to start caring about dating and make-up and dressing nicely rather than comfortable that's okay as well. This book just villainized that. All the characters that were like that either learned by the end that it's better to stay a kid at heart or were seen as an arche-type mean girl and bully. Like mentioned before the main character has a huge focus on growing up in the physical sense and here lies my other problem. I just feel like this book spend an uncomfortable amount of time talking about the physicals developments of the main character and her critizing her own looks. This is one of those topics were you have to take my opinion with a grain of salt, because it's been a little while since I was 12 and maybe this is relatble to 12 year old girls. My last real problem I had with this book is the discussion around the main character's mom dying of suicide. I didn't like how it was handled. It just felt like it was added for some sort of shock facotr and wasn't well resolved at all. It served it's purpose for the plot and than it went away. I get that the author wanted to include it, because it is great topic to discuss with middle graders but just the way it was done sat wrong with me. It also just didn't fit into the story. Before this was revealed the whole story was very light hearted and fun but this element just dragged the mood way down. But only for like a chapter or three because than it served it's purpose and we went back to the light hearted fun. It felt mismatched. In conclusion, even though I had some problems with this book I had a great time reading it. It's definetly a fun summer read.

Micah McKinney and the Boys of Summer

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