Nora Olsen

{My Thoughts} – Clarissa is your average teenage girl. She has a wonderful family, great friends, lives in a big house and owns her own horse. She lives with both her parents and her older sister Desi that has downs syndrome. In the beginning of the book she goes through some things where she decides she no longer wants to take place in equestrian club and she expresses this to her mother. Her mother doesn’t seem real upset about it and says that she thinks its a good idea. However, Clarissa had no idea that she was going to end up losing everything near and dear to her after that point.

Lexie is an openly gay teenage girl that attends the same high school as Clarissa and they are mutual enemies. They have different beliefs and travel in different social circles. However, Lexie is nice to Desi and is also mutual friends with a boy named Robert. Lexi is different from Clarissa on many levels but they do share a common trait. They both seemingly like girls and they both seemingly are attracted to one another.

Clarissa ends up recruiting Lexie to help her sister Desi with the Home Coming Queen Campaign. Her sister really want to be queen and Clarissa wants to try and help that happen for her so she is trying to get as much help with it as she possibly can and since Lexi knows people she figured she’d be a good recruit.

This book has so much packed within it’s pages it is impossible for me to write it all out. I will say there is betrayal, there is social issues, drug and alcohol abuse, there is learning to like one another despite their differences, and there is learning to accept change: let it be in yourself or with the things happening throughout your life. I enjoyed reading this book. It was spot on on so many of the issues that teenagers can face while going through High School. I believe that any teenager could benefit from reading this book. Sometimes even the most unlikely individuals within your life can become your closest friends.… (altro)

{My Thoughts} – Clarissa is your average teenage girl. She has a wonderful family, great friends, lives in a big house and owns her own horse. She lives with both her parents and her older sister Desi that has downs syndrome. In the beginning of the book she goes through some things where she decides she no longer wants to take place in equestrian club and she expresses this to her mother. Her mother doesn’t seem real upset about it and says that she thinks its a good idea. However, Clarissa had no idea that she was going to end up losing everything near and dear to her after that point.

Lexie is an openly gay teenage girl that attends the same high school as Clarissa and they are mutual enemies. They have different beliefs and travel in different social circles. However, Lexie is nice to Desi and is also mutual friends with a boy named Robert. Lexi is different from Clarissa on many levels but they do share a common trait. They both seemingly like girls and they both seemingly are attracted to one another.

Clarissa ends up recruiting Lexie to help her sister Desi with the Home Coming Queen Campaign. Her sister really want to be queen and Clarissa wants to try and help that happen for her so she is trying to get as much help with it as she possibly can and since Lexi knows people she figured she’d be a good recruit.

This book has so much packed within it’s pages it is impossible for me to write it all out. I will say there is betrayal, there is social issues, drug and alcohol abuse, there is learning to like one another despite their differences, and there is learning to accept change: let it be in yourself or with the things happening throughout your life. I enjoyed reading this book. It was spot on on so many of the issues that teenagers can face while going through High School. I believe that any teenager could benefit from reading this book. Sometimes even the most unlikely individuals within your life can become your closest friends.… (altro)

Maxine Wore Black by Nora Olsen is a story that takes place around a transgender girl named Jayla. Jayla is a shy person and feels inadequate about herself due to a lot of different reasons. She is a high school dropout and due to that has to take menial jobs just to get by. One night Jayla and her best friend Francesca go to gay prom and during this event Jayla meets Maxine and completely falls for her. Maxine has a girlfriend already but this does not stop her from pursuing Jayla. Jayla feels bad that Maxine wants to cheat on her girlfriend Becky with her so she tells Maxine that while she is still in a relationship nothing can happen. Now at this point the book was dragging and I was hoping it would pick up and get better. Wrong. It did not get better it just got strange. Maxine kills Becky then calls Jayla to help her cover it up. Which Jayla does because she is so in love with Maxine yet she barely knows her. Who in the world would do that? Jayla thinks Maxine "belonged to royalty of another time period". The police decide that becky committed suicide. Which does not add up. Maxine is actually takes control of Jayla's life and she basically lets her. And at no point did I ever see this as the abused partner scenario like the author tried to make it look like. Jayla knew that Maxine committed murder but loved her so much it did not matter.

The book gets weird and there are parts of it that had been properly put in the book and pursued it would have given the story some bit of a realistic and enjoyable plot. Jayla's best friend Francesca who now never sees or talks to her is not concerned about her. Why? Or like the autistic child Jayla would babysit for who saw the whole murder take place. Jayla tells Becky's mother in a letter what really happened to her daughter and that Maxine killed her. What Becky's mother did made no sense. Even Becky's best friend Danny who she has known her whole life knows Maxine is guilty. I tried not to give too much information away about the story.

Watch out could Maxine still be out there?

I got this book from NetGalley for a honest review...… (altro)

My review of this book is probably going to be as disjointed as the book itself is.

Ugh, where do I even begin? I wanted to like this book; I truly did. And even though I ended up thinking that the book was meh, there were a few good things to be found within its pages:

1) Desi - Yes, finally, a character with Down's Syndrome who is a real person and not a stereotype. Desi's relationship with her sister Clarissa was such a typical sisterly relationship, alternating between loving one another and wanting to strangle one another. And even though people with Down's Syndrome are typically portrayed as 100% sweet and hugs, Desi isn't that. Sure, she can be sweet. She also has a temper. My niece has Down's Syndrome, and even though she loves hugs and tends to be very sweet much of the time, she can and will also whallop the crap out of her younger brother and throw fits to get what she wants like any other child. Because, guess what? She IS a child. And I loved how the author made Desi just like that as well.

2) Clarissa is bisexual and confronts the bisexual myths head-on ("why don't you pick a side," "does this mean you want to date more than one person," etc). She doesn't become a lesbian, even though she has a girlfriend. She still identifies as bi at the end of the book.

3) The housing crisis is portrayed pretty well here. Clarissa's parents are facing a lot of money problems, and the predatory lending schemes that came to light in 2007/2008 are really put on display here. I liked that. I would love to read more leftist politics in my lesbian fiction.

And that's about all that I liked.

So what didn't I like? Well, it was the same tired case of instalove. The characters go from despising one another to loving one another really quickly. And then there was the ridiculous (and yet seemingly obligatory) "misunderstanding" that tears the lovebirds apart for fifty or so pages until they realize, hey, we should have just talked to one another and smoothed things out, lol. I'm kind of sick of that trope, to be honest.

And speaking of tropes - ugh. Lexie was super tropey. As was Clarissa, to be honest. And I had VEGAN RAGE when Lexie made a big deal about being environmentally conscious and being a vegan for 90% of the book, only to eat cheese pizza because Desi made a mistake when she ordered for her. Like it would be so fucking hard to go back to the counter and say, hey, I want a slice of cheeseless. But, nope, Lexie just eats it - and likes it. Ick. Look, I haven't had cheese in a while, but I used to be a cheese fiend. And I slipped a couple of times in my own vegan path and ate cheese. And each time I was guilty feeling as fuck because I knew that I was going against my principles. The last time I ate cheese, after not eating cheese for months, the cheese was literally so disgusting that I almost vomited. It was just so thick and oozy and gross. So my palate doesn't even want cheese anymore. And if Lexie had been vegan for a while, she'd probably have the same reaction (I know several vegans who "slipped" only to discover that they no longer even liked cheese or milk). And I just hate that nearly every vegan character in a young adult book (which are damned few and far between) either "cheat" without any remorse or give up being vegan because it's no longer hip. Sigh. Can I just have one fucking vegan character who stays vegan throughout a book? Please?

Ahem.

Anyway, this book felt like it didn't know what it wanted to be. There were just too many poorly-developed plot lines. Is this book about Clarissa founding a Gay-Straight Alliance Club at her school? No, because it's only mentioned a couple of times. Is it about Clarissa coming out? Ha, no, because she literally just decides one day that she must be bisexual. Is it about Lexie realizing her own privilege? Nope. Is it about getting Desi elected as homecoming queen? Not really, because that's sporadic at best. It's just a pile of loose threads.… (altro)