I Finished a Book (An Ongoing Series)...

I'm happy to report I've finished my first book since enacting My Plan to Read a Lot More Than I Do. (Picture books and board books don't count.) I decided to begin with a book I purchased at the SCBWI Conference earlier this month, so I just read Justina Chen Headley's Nothing But the Truth (and a Few White Lies).

One might think Nothing But the Truth, about a half-Asian/half-white teen whose mother is difficult and who is about to embark on summer math camp, wouldn't be a book for me. I'm quite pink, can't do math to save my life, and my mom's a peach. But a good author really gets to the heart of her characters and reveals their pain and angst, and pain and angst are universal. Plus, I've been fifteen. I don't want to do it again for real, but I love to relive it through books.

Things I loved about this book:

• Great believable and dimensional characters and a main character I could really like and really root for.
• The end of every chapter made me want to start the next one which made me not want to put this book down (and stay up way too late to keep reading).
• The author really puts Patty, the 15-year-old main character, through some humiliating and difficult situations. She gets through one and then--oh no--how could she do that to her again!
• Patty learns things about herself and her family and she grows, and you're right there with her. And by the end she's rather kick-ass.
• The author uses some wonderful word play (even math puns!).