This read so much like an after school special. The last chapter made me cringe a bit, even, since none of the words felt like the things Noelle would say.

Noelle is a poor girl in a small town going to a rich school. Her mom is terrible, she has no friends (except Sherae, sometimes), and she's bullied at school because of all of these things. The problem is, though, this story is all tell and no show. I never felt anything for Noelle because she never gave me much to feel for. Her situation sucked, but all I knew was her situation sucked. I needed more emotional investment from her.

Bullying is a heavy topic, but it wasn't really explored here to the extent it could have been. There were only a couple of scenes where bullying happens on stage; the rest is told to us. I didn't quite get a sense of the bullies in the story because they weren't fully-realized characters. They were stock bullies.

I have a hard time with stories that deal with class issues. Noelle comes from a single-parent household, and she repeatedly tells us how poor she is. The problem is, I never got to see it. I'm made to believe it by virtue of her not being as rich as the kids who go to her school. There are moments where it is almost there -- for example, when Noelle talks about the toilet being broken and her mother's lateness on rent keeping them from calling the landlord -- but the bulk of the story relied upon the reader simply listening to Noelle tell us about being poor. I really needed to "see" more of the world she was living in, both the world in which she lived physically and the one she lived in socially. (view spoiler)[ Also, if her mother talked one more time about how hard it was to be a single mother, I was going to smack her. I get mother's role is the neglectful parent, but all she offered us was this. She could have been so much more powerful as a neglectful parent, and had she been, the depths of Noelle's pain would have been that much more obvious and emotionally-charged. (hide spoiler)]

And then (view spoiler)[ there was a really weird scene with Noelle and her period too which bothered me to no end. On one hand, I thought the mortification she felt about being unprepared was one of the more authentic moments of emotion for Noelle. I certainly felt for her. The thing was, I never bought the explanation for why her mother didn't buy her tampons. Mom was neglectful, but I just didn't buy this. Likewise, why wouldn't Noelle have some sort of money on her? She mentions later on when she's out at a diner with Sherae that it was "their diner" and they were regulars, which suggested to me that Noelle paid to eat out once in a while. There were a lot of disconnects between what Noelle said throughout the story that made the logic behind a lot of her explanations hard for me to grasp. This is where being told the story rather than being shown the story became problematic. (hide spoiler)]

I didn't buy the turnaround, either. It felt too easy and I was bothered by the way Noelle became righteous out of no where. Her character was uneven. There was also her reliance on a guy in the end of the story that made her transformation weak -- she says as much as she NEEDED Julian to get through things. No. She didn't. She got through things herself. By putting her own power onto him, she only further weakens her own self-esteem and self-reliance and ... she returns to almost the same position she was in from the start of the story.

Also (view spoiler)[ the Ali suicide I saw coming from miles away and there was absolutely no emotional thrust in this moment. I was so disconnected from it and while I saw the purpose of it (it did serve as a call to action for Noelle to change her situation), it felt convenient. (hide spoiler)]

All of that said, Noelle's life sucked, and she didn't DESERVE any of the bullying she got. My problems with the story were not with what was at the heart of the book, but rather, the treatment of it.

This book didn't work for me, but I do think it'll work for younger YA readers looking for a story about how tough it is to fit in and what it feels like to be bullied. It's not a lighthearted story, but it's not going to leave more demanding readers satisfied. There are stronger stories about bullying out there.