“She’s got a dream school, a nightmare budget, and she’s headed for a doozy of a rude awakening...
Olivia’s goal is within reach. She’s been accepted to her dream school, Vanderbilt University, alma mater of famed comic illustrator Paige O’Donnell. Despite gaining multiple scholarships and grants, Olivia’s just shy of tuition. Desperate, she applies for a $15,000 scholarship offered by the Wonderbrink Foundation, to be awarded to a high-achieving and athletic senior with diabetes. One little problem… Olivia doesn’t have diabetes.
In her quest to pull off a whopper of a lie, Olivia attends a diabetes support group meeting, where she meets and befriends Paul Roberts, a smug yet handsome member of the Sugar Shatterers. Her best friends Xavier and Amber aren’t thrilled about Olivia’s new mysterious, one-sided friendship with superstitious, entitled Paul. Xavier may secretly be a *little* jealous, and the scholarship application deadline rapidly approaches.”
Series: As of now, no. A stand-alone novel.
Spiritual Content- A handful of Scriptures are quoted & read; A few Prayers & Thanking God; Church going & parts of sermons; A few talks about God; Some ’H’s are capital when referring to God and Jesus; A teacher reads a quote from ‘Counter Culture’ by Pastor Platt in class (which the teacher says he isn’t grading his students on agreeing with him or not and that he can’t think of a better reason to get fired when a student asks him about that); Mentions of God, Jesus, & grace; Mentions of prayers & praying; Mentions of church, church going, youth group, pastors, service, & sermons; A few mentions of those & events in the Bible; A few mentions of Christian-based entertainment (such as Veggie Tales and Berenstain Bears, but also a fictional one); A couple mentions of a missionary & mission trips; A mention of a Fellowship of Christian Athletes meeting; A mention of being Blessed; A mention of thinking a person is an angel (because of her kind actions);
*Note: A Scripture is mentioned in a flippant way (a pastor comments on keeping a DVD in pristine condition “for such as time as this [when meeting the actors to sign it]”; A side character is very superstitious and shares many of his superstitions (which Olivia is at first taken back about, but later finds it sad; Olivia doesn’t believe in luck as it undermines her hard work; In class, superstitious people are discussed and the teacher says it’s about control or the person having certainty in their lives; *Spoiler* At the end, she reads a Scripture to the person about overcoming the fear that is fueling his superstitions which seems to speak to him and make him try to be less superstitious *End of Spoiler*); Olivia calls her friend group her “rock”; Olivia feels her cheeks heat from the “sin of omission”; Olivia’s brothers tease her that she treats a hoodie as if it is sacred (she says she does not); Many mentions of superstitions & luck; A mention of a child being a holy terror.
Negative Content- Three implications or cut-off moments implying curses such as an ‘an as—‘ and two ‘shi—’s; Minor cussing including: a ‘crud’, a ‘doggone’, a ‘dumb’, a ‘gah’, a ‘flipping’, a ‘Holy Moly’, a ‘oh em gee’, a ‘sheesh’, a ‘shut up’, a ‘what the heck’, two ‘crap’s, two forms of ‘dang it’, two ‘duh’s, two ‘gosh’s, two ‘sucker’s, two ‘wuss’s, three ‘dang’s, three ‘good grief’s, three forms of ‘idiot’, four ‘geez’s, six ‘heck’s, eight ‘stupid’s, and ten ‘oh my gosh’s; Eye rolling & Sarcasm; Olivia finds out about a scholarship for athletes with Type 1 diabetes (which she is not one) and while she feels unsettled about it and has guilt for her actions, she is concerned with the price of college and looks into it (*Spoiler* She starts going to a diabetes support group and asks questions to a guy she meets there; She is horrified by some of her own actions about possibly filling out the paperwork for the scholarship; Towards the middle, she applies for the application and doesn’t sleep for days because of the guilt; She later tells Xavier and he is very hurt that she didn’t tell him about it; Her parents find out in the next chapter and she is incredibly relieved when the application was returned incomplete; Olivia tells everyone about it and is grounded by her parents *End of Spoilers*); While Olivia doesn’t lie, she does keep things to herself and omit certain details when telling her family or friends about anything related to the diabetes scholarship (knowing her deception); Mentions of lies, lying, & deceit; Mentions of parents divorce, their kid struggling with it, and the teen making a couple negative comments towards his stepmother; A few mentions of a car accident; A few mentions of injuries & pain; A few mentions of a father not being physically abusive, but having intense expectations for his son; A couple mentions of (good natured) betting (between siblings); A couple mentions of eavesdropping; A couple mentions of rumors & gossip; A couple mentions of jealousy; A couple mentions of vomit/throwing up; A mention of hiding a body; A slang mention of going to the bathroom (“take a whiz”); A mention of farts.
*Note: Going to Comic-Con (twice); Olivia and one of her best friends have a conversation about being very superstitious often means having a lot of “serious anxiety issues” and some people with anxiety dealing with their anxiety in healthier ways; A side character has a diabetic emergency (hypoglycemic, up to semi-detailed); A line from a song by Stevie Wonder is shared at the beginning of a chapter; Many mentions of movies, fictional characters, & quotes (mainly from Shrek, but also Mamma Mia, Hunger Games, Harry Potter, Mean Girls, Cutting Edge, Legally Blonde, Teen Wolf, 10 Things I Hate About You, Princess Bride, The Goonies, The Parent Trap, Top Gun: Maverick, Inside Out, Schindler’s List, Princess Diaries, Wonder Woman, Hobbits, Weasley twins, Goot, Avengers, Paw Patrol figures, X-Men characters, Mario and Luigi, Klingon, & the minions); Mentions of stores, brand names, & brand name items (Blockbuster, Goodwill, Hobby Lobby, Chick-fil-A, Target, Prisma colored pencils, MacBook, Chrombook, Omnicom, Jolly Rancher candy, Sour Patch Kids, Hershey, Nutella, Almond Joys, Swedish Fish, Tic-Tacs, Gatorade, Red Bull, Ale8s, PlayStation, Lululemon, Hanes, Vaseline, NyQuil, & Mod Podge); Mentions of celebrities (Nick Jones, Eddie Murphy, Beckham, Serena Williams, Michael Jordan, & Mary Kate & Ashley); Mentions of social media platforms & websites (TikTok, Instagram, Google Classroom, & Merriam-Webster); Mentions of car brands; Mentions of colleges; A few mentions of artists (Michelangelo, Sam Cox, & Rembrandt); A few mentions of books and authors (‘Animal Farm’ by George Orwell & a poem by Edgar Allen Poe); A few mentions of FaceTime; A mention of Olivia’s friend dressing up as Ruth Bader Ginsburg when she has to dress up as a superhero; A mention of TED Talk; A mention of the Discovery Channel; A mention of Bigfoot.
Sexual Content- A forehead kiss, a not-detailed kiss, and a semi-detailed kiss; Touches, Embraces, Hand holding, Flutters/Goosebumps, Warmth, Nearness, & Smelling (up to semi-detailed); Seeing a couple snuggle, hold hands, & kiss (barely-above-not-detailed); Noticing hot and attractive guys (including muscles, barely-above-not-detailed); Flirting; Winks & Blushes; Four ‘babe’s and four forms of ‘hot’, A guy also comments on his “smokin’, rock-hard body”; Olivia wishes that Xavier would give some indication that he feels the same way she does about him (more than platonic best friends); A friend teases Olivia and Xavier about “getting a room” when she hugs him; A boyfriend teases his girlfriend about having a foot fetish after she takes a picture of his foot with the nails she painted when he was asleep (which she tells him to stop making things weird); Olivia teases that she ate so much she has a “food baby” which makes Xavier blush; Mentions of touches & nearness; Mentions of a couple being a “giant mushfest”, snuggling, & holding hands; Mentions of dates, dating, boyfriends/girlfriends, break-ups, & exes; Mentions of crushes; Mentions of winks & blushes; Mentions of jealousy; A few mentions of a guy getting distracted by a group of girls showing their mid-drifts/bellybuttons; A couple mentions of one of Olivia’s brothers being a ladies’ man and her teasing him choosing his college based on the female-to-male ratio; A couple mentions of a guy’s charms and all the girls at school noticing them; A couple mentions of heartthrobs; A mention of appreciating a guy’s looks; A mention of a mating ritual on the Discovery Channel; Some love, being in love, & the emotions;
*Note: Mentions of butts/bums/tushes (mostly in humor); A couple mentions of pregnancy hormones; A mention of panties getting in a wad; A mention of estrogen.
-Olivia James
1st person P.O.V. of Olivia
177 pages
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Pre Teens-
New Teens-
Early High School Teens-
Older High School Teens-
My personal Rating-
{Ratings are for Public or Private School girls; Remove a star for those not in those settings or preferring to avoid implications of curses}
Last year, my mom was diagnosed as Type 1.5 diabetic—not Type 2, but Type 1.5 which is closer to Type 1 and is proved by even more blood tests—and though I knew the general idea of diabetes, it was a crash course in learning all about it, giving insulin, managing prescriptions, meal prepping, and carb counting as I managed all of it for her (because of other side effects she was facing that came from having high blood sugar for so long without us knowing, my mom has been unable to handle it herself). Like Olivia experiences at the beginning of this book, I’ve also had the Frequency Illusion Principle (when you hear something new to you and all of the sudden you hear about it again and again) since that beginning diagnosis with the topic of diabetes seeming like it’s everywhere.
You could say it was exactly that when after reading “Salvaged” by this author a couple months ago, I learned about this new release about, you guessed it, diabetes. Or rather, a teen girl finding out about a scholarship for those with diabetes. The problem? She doesn’t actually have diabetes.
I was concerned about this book mainly because of the idea of the main character lying that she has diabetes to get the scholarship. She actually doesn’t technically lie, though, it’s assumptions others make and her not correcting them. Still not right by any means and she questions herself many times, but I appreciated the author was able to do this book without a heavy amount of lying. Olivia needed to do a ridiculous amount of research on diabetes, but didn’t, so that lead to some awkward moments for her. There’s a lot of guilt on her part where a reader can tell that Olivia knows what she is doing isn’t right.
As far as the romance element, I found Paul to be a superstitious weirdo and I didn’t see why Olivia was interested in him. Thankfully—for my sanity and Xavier’s—she’s not really interested in Paul that way, but gets put into his life to be a good influence. Olivia frustrated me a bit about her friendship with Xavier and he frustrated me at times too because of their lack of guts about confessing their feelings for each other. I was definitely Amber in their friend group, waiting for them to admit their feelings while holding popcorn.
I do have to note that I didn’t care for the two implications to one of Olivia’s classmates cursing. Later, Xavier also gets cut-off when fixing to call someone a rude (but appropriate for the character’s actions) name. They are all cut-off and missing a letter to complete the word, but it still got the words stuck in my head. Those in public school settings probably hear all of these and worse during the day, but it’s something I try to actively avoid to keep those words from falling out of my mouth. Hence the lower rating than “Salvaged” and a heads-up on that detail.
All of that said, I enjoyed different parts of this book and will be looking out for what this author writes next as a major Christian Contemporary YA fan.
See y’all on Friday with a new review!
*BFCG may (Read the review to see) recommend this book by this author. It does not mean I recommend all the books by this author.
No comments:
Post a Comment