middlegrade fiction, set in Michigan.

Marianne does NOT want to repeat the 8th grade, but no amount of tutoring has ever helped her, though she doesn't have any sort of learning disability-- she just stopped trying after too many failures, too many times being teased for being stupid. It's way easier to fail on purpose, and poke fun at herself first. When her math teacher refuses to let her slide by, she's forced to join the uncool kids on the Quiz Quest team for extra credit.

The plot sounds a little meh at first, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I connected with these characters -- their struggles and hurts, and all the times thay just neede someone else to stick up for them. Consider myself punched in the feels, multiple times! I liked, too, the incidental diversity of Mar's teammates, and family, and friends' families, and that the struggles, that fear of failure/rejection is something that almost everyone can relate to. ( )