I’m so happy! I just found out about this fabulous review from Booklist!
The novel opens with a comics-style “Autobiogra-strip.” Recurring at intervals throughout the book, this visual dairy dramatizes sixth-grader Addy’s view of her life. Addy subscribes to the notion that she is shadowed by an ancestral curse. Still aching from her father’s death years before, she is upset when her mother’s boyfriend moves into their guest room “temporarily.” Worse, she accidentally humiliates her best friend in a very public manner and suffers for it. Addy’s way back from this humbling experience is even tougher than seeing her worst enemy walk into the lingerie shop as her mother buys her a training bra.
Davis re-creates all the pain, poignancy, and occasional satisfaction of sixth-grade life in this vivid first-person narrative. Readers who cut their chapter-book teeth a year or two ago on Marissa Moss’ Amelia series will love the mix of text and cartoon strips, heartache and humor, as well as the more fully developed narrative here. And they’ll long for just as many sequels.