Posts Tagged: ARC

I received this book for free from HarperCollins Audio in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

A groundbreaking story about a teenage girl who discovers she was born intersex... and what happens when her secret is revealed to the entire school. Incredibly compelling and sensitively told, None of the Above is a thought-provoking novel that explores what it means to be a boy, a girl, or something in between.

What if everything you knew about yourself changed in an instant?

When Kristin Lattimer is voted homecoming queen, it seems like another piece of her ideal life has fallen into place. She's a champion hurdler with a full scholarship to college and she's madly in love with her boyfriend. In fact, she's decided that she's ready to take things to the next level with him.

But Kristin's first time isn't the perfect moment she's planned—something is very wrong. A visit to the doctor reveals the truth: Kristin is intersex, which means that though she outwardly looks like a girl, she has male chromosomes, not to mention boy "parts."

Dealing with her body is difficult enough, but when her diagnosis is leaked to the whole school, Kristin's entire identity is thrown into question. As her world unravels, can she come to terms with her new self?

This is the second book that I have read that covers the topic of intersex, and it was very good. I love learning new things, and though I already had a small bit of knowledge, I did learn many new things. What I really enjoyed about this was that you are discovering things along with the MC. It was interesting to see her discovering this about herself at her age, not knowing that there was anything different her whole life up until that point. There were some great side characters, then some not so great ones too. I wish it had been a bit more deep and packed more emotion into it, but in general I was very pleased with it.

Kristin is a pretty popular girl, and a track star. She has great friends, and a fantastic boyfriend. That is, until they try to sleep together and it’s not as she expected at all. When she goes to the doctor, they discover her condition as intersex. Meaning she is outwardly female, but also has some male attributes. Hers happen to be testicles, but they are inside. Upon discovering this, she keeps it quiet. She doesn’t even know what to think. When it does get out, she is treated horribly by people at school. Man, did it make me angry at times at the things people did or said to her. She falls apart for a while, but I was happy to see her pick herself up try to continue on with her life. She knows all along that she is still the same person, but all the ridicule and bullying from others really pushes her down, until her friends both new and old help her back up.

This book did get my emotions going, but not as much as I would have liked. I love being emotionally invested with the characters and story, but this one only got me halfway there. I think that listening to the audiobook of this helped though. The narrator was fabulous. I have listened to other books narrated by her, so I was pretty confident that I would enjoy it. She does a good job at putting the emotion into the characters while she is reading and making you almost feel like they are the ones really telling you the story. I think that the way the book is written is what takes away from the emotional impact. Not that it’s not a good book, but I felt like the one thing it was lacking was really making me feel. I really liked this in audiobook format though.

I think that it’s awesome that we are getting more and more YA books that cover topics that aren’t generally talked about or written about. It makes me happy to know that there are starting to be more books that cover so many topics that you would only learn things about through research, not an enjoyable fiction book. I have recommended this to many people already. I can’t say enough about the importance of these types of books. I hope that we continue to see growth in the number of books covering a wide variety of topics like this and many others.

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