2020 book 99

Adrienne Kisner's Six Angry Girls
Ok, so, this book had a lot of things I loved (or should have loved): a band of girls forming a Mock Trial team bc various boys are horrible and they want revenge; knitting and knitting activism; a cool and helpful librarian; a cute queer girl romance. But parts of this were just . . . clunky. All the knitting activism stuff needed to be way more fleshed out. The author is clearly from Western PA, but all of her fake local names were TERRIBLE (Penn State Steelton? Pitt Fogton? Whyyy?!? Why not just use the real branch campus names? When you are correctly shouting out the Creamery and Eat ‘n’ Park?). And the dialogue sometimes uses contractions and sometimes doesn’t, which just makes things sound weird and stilted. And sometimes names were changed or swapped (hopefully this will get one more editing pass). I did think the trial stuff was interesting, was generally on board with the girl power messaging, and liked the ending (ok, Raina's was waaaaaay too unbelievable). But unfortunately I was distracted by all the above stuff. It just came off as lazy. Still, if you are not from Pittsburgh, that stuff might not bother you, and you can just enjoy this mildly goofy YA book. B.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released in the summer.