My Crunchy
Life
by Mia
Kerick
Genre: YA Contemporary - LGBTQ
Release Date: June 26th 2018
Harmony Ink Press
Summary:
John Lennon fought for world peace, but sixteen-year-old
hippie hopeful Kale Oswald’s only made it as far as tie-dying his T-shirts with
organic grape juice. Now he’s ready to cement his new hippie identity by
joining a local human rights organization, but he doesn’t fit in as well as
he’d hoped.
After landing himself in the hospital by washing down a Ziploc bag of pills
with a bottle of Gatorade, Julian Mendez came clean to his mother: he is a girl
stuck in a boy’s body. Puberty blockers have stopped the maturing of the body
he feels has betrayed him. They’re also supposed to give him time to be sure he
wants to make a more permanent decision, but he’s already Julia in his heart.
What he’s not sure he’s ready to face is the post-transition name-calling and
bathroom wars awaiting him at school.
When Kale and Julian come face-to-face at the human rights organization,
attraction, teenage awkwardness, and reluctant empathy collide. They are forced
to examine who they are and who they want to become. But until Kale can come to
terms with his confusion about his own sexuality and Julian can be honest with
Kale, they cannot move forward in friendship, or anything more.
Excerpt:
REVIEW:
After reading It Could Happen and The Weekend Bucket List, I was really looking forward to reading author Mia Kerick's My Crunchy Life as I loved the author's previous works, and was looking forward to seeing what she had in store for readers this time. When I read the summary of My Crunchy Life, I knew it would be an interesting and pleasant read, and that's exactly how it turned out to be.
Julian and Kale go to the same high school but never really meet until they bump into each other at a human rights organisation that helps create social awareness and lets people be. Julian is a biological male transitioning into female, while Kale is trying to figure out his chosen hippie lifestyle. When the two meet, some sparks fly all right, but there's so much they figure out about themselves and that was incredible to see.
The most relatable and prizewinning part of young adult novels is the stress on family which played an important role in My Crunchy Life. Julian's mother works day and night to make sure her child's journey into the world is as easy and safe as it could be, while Kale's dad welcomes his nephew Hughie into his house and home with open arms. Neither of family is perfect, and that's what makes it super real and understandable.
This is not a typical young adult high school drama novel, at least not completely. There is so much more to it than just friendship and romance. It's about the difficulties of life and how even the smallest incidents make someone lose all the confidence and faith that they have, but at the same time, it's about how even smallest positive and helpful voices help make it better. For a YA novel, it's very deep and raw yet fun and relaxing as its a short read sprinkled with humour.
As always, author Mia Kerick's writing is meticulous. Her focus on her characters and what they are going through is what I love most about her books. Sometimes, I really don't care what a school or room or coffee shop looks like, I just want to know what's going on in the minds of the characters I eventually fall in love with as I read about them. Mia Kerick does just that, and she does it so well.
I would definitely recommend this book to fans of YA LGBT reads. It is totally worth it.
*Note: A copy of this book was provided by YA Bound and Mia Kerick in exchange for an honest review. We thank them.
About the Author:
Mia Kerick is the mother of four exceptional children—all named
after saints—and five nonpedigreed cats—all named after the next best thing to
saints, Boston Red Sox players. Her husband of twenty years has been told by
many that he has the patience of Job, but don’t ask Mia about that, as it is a
sensitive subject.
Mia focuses her stories on the emotional growth of troubled men and their
relationships, and she believes that sex has a place in a love story, but not
until it is firmly established as a love story. As a teen, Mia filled
spiral-bound notebooks with romantic tales of tortured heroes (most of whom
happened to strongly resemble lead vocalists of 1980s big-hair bands) and
stuffed them under her mattress for safekeeping. She is thankful to
Dreamspinner Press for providing her with an alternate place to stash her
stories.
Mia is proud of her involvement with the Human Rights Campaign and cheers for
each and every victory made in the name of marital equality. Her only major
regret: never having taken typing or computer class in school, destining her to
a life consumed with two-fingered pecking and constant prayer to the Gods of
Technology.
Contact Mia at miakerick@gmail.com.
Author
Links:
Blog Tour Organized by:
Katie McGarry Bio:
Katie McGarry was a teenager during the age of grunge and boy bands and remembers those years as the best and worst of her life. She is a lover of music, happy endings, reality television, and is a secret University of Kentucky basketball fan.
Katie is the author of full length YA novels, PUSHING THE LIMITS, DARE YOU TO, CRASH INTO YOU, TAKE ME ON, BREAKING THE RULES, and NOWHERE BUT HERE and the e-novellas, CROSSING THE LINE and RED AT NIGHT. Her debut YA novel, PUSHING THE LIMITS was a 2012 Goodreads Choice Finalist for YA Fiction, a RT Magazine's 2012 Reviewer's Choice Awards Nominee for Young Adult Contemporary Novel, a double Rita Finalist, and a 2013 YALSA Top Ten Teen Pick. DARE YOU TO was also a Goodreads Choice Finalist for YA Fiction and won RT Magazine’s Reviewer’s Choice Best Book Award for Young Adult Contemporary fiction in 2013.
