I'm glad that I purchased a copy of this book for my collection. It has been checked out most of the summer and well loved. I, on the other hand, felt like although a good story, it was too long and could have reached the point at two or three hundred pages.

Rebels Like Us by Liz Reinhardt was good. I enjoyed it, the writing style has a simple clearness to it, different personalities, and filled with many, many messages. Even with its cliches, it’s still a fun read, with a message.

I seem to joy stories where characters go from city to small town or the other way around. Maybe it’s because I moved around a lot when growing up, or maybe that’s just fun to read. Anyways, the lead character, Nes, goes from city life to Southern small town life, now I personally have only lived in the south once and it was for a very short time. But city life it very different from small town life, and I’m not just talking about less traffic or not much to do. But the everyday life, the way people think and stuff it very different. For my, the writer got this part right. The HUGE differences between areas, and how people think depending on where they have grown up shows in this book. I’ve lived in places where people judge you depending on where you live in that town, who you know in that town, and even on what you believe, and who you live your life. When I moved there, I couldn’t believe the lack of open minds. So, for me, the author got that part right.

But the lead character, Nes, wasn’t someone clicked with on a few leaves. The just moved missing old life and friends, I got. But I wish I could've seen more of her embracing her divorced family roots. I’ve been learning my family history for about a year now, and because of that, it’s opened my mind even more, for one, and two I’ve looked into these new places I didn’t know I’ve come from, learning about their culture and stuff. See, Nes who’s Dominican and Irish comes from bright colors roots, but she doesn’t seem to know that. I wish I could of see traits from both Dominican and Irish, other than her hair from Dominican and that she sunburns easily because of her Irish blood. With that said, I do wish I could have gotten to know the character a bit more, I seem that we just get the first leave of who they are.

There are many messages in this book. I enjoy when a writer can put many messages that got together into one book without loose the plot. But more of the messages have to do with racism. Now, I am all for books that cover this topic, for me, this book did a good job of covering racism in a small town. I do want to say racism in the South because I’ve lived in small town in the north and they have the same problems. Now, I haven’t lived anywhere where they have straight out ban people of color from things/places. But this author writes a good story that shows that even nowadays in some places look down at mixed race dating. I do wish there could have been more talk about racism so more, and how it affected the character more.

I like the role that family plays in this book with both of the leads. More and more family is starting to play a part in YA contemporary novels. And that’s a plus for me. The relationship that changes the most in the book is between Nes and her mother. This book shows that there are many different sides to stories, even if it’s not for the best or right reason, every single story has it’s own point of view and why something happened. This book kinda shows that.

Even though I did have a few problems with this book, the joy of reading outweighed them. It’s a fun summer read, with meaning between its pages. If your looking for a summer book, that shines a little light on to mixed race dating, and topics similar to that, then this book could be for you.

(I was given an e-copy of this through NetGalley, for a 100% honest review of my own thoughts.)

I have been hunting for YA books that have diverse protagonists, something that I can recommend to my students of color so that they can identify with the main character better than they can with the books assigned in our curriculum. I was feeling pretty hopeful about this one, and I thought the idea of a segregated prom would be interesting. Unfortunately, I couldn't get past 10% of this book (thanks Kindle). I didn't get the type of voice I was looking for, and so much of it turned me off that I gave up. I really struggle with the idea of what makes an authentic voice, but I felt like this was not at all how a mix-raced teenager from NY should sound. She sounded far too similar to all of the white protagonists already out there. I need (and more importantly, my students need) someone that sounds different.

Rebels Like Us was a fun read, that addressed some relevant social issues. Many authors have trouble balancing ethical questions while providing a versatile audience of young adults with an entertaining read. However, Reindhardt does just that in her story of Nes, Doyle, and their simple desire to go to prom together. I recommend for anyone who enjoys contemporary love stories.

3.5/5 stars

Rebels Like Us is a standalone YA contemporary novel. It is my first book by this author.

I originally read about this book in Buzz Books 2017: Young Adult Spring/Summer. It sounded interesting.

The narrator is 17 year old Agnes Murphy-Pujols. She is known as Nes. Her father is Dominican and her mother is Irish. She has just moved from Brooklyn NY to a small town in Georgia to complete her senior year of high school.

Her father and brother live in France. And she and her mom have just moved to Georgia.

There is romance in this book. But to me the main focus was racism in the South. Agnes is not black and she is not white. Her high school has very strict traditions. It was shocking to think that any of this could occur in 2017.

At 500 pages I feel like that is way too long for a YA contemporary novel.

I enjoyed Doyle, a Southern boy in her class that works part-time as a gardener. And I loved Agnes' best girlfriend from back home, Ollie.

I will say that the last part of the book was by far the strongest. This book will make you think because there is some stuff about segregated proms that is based on true events. Overall, the topic for this book was very interesting. It just would have worked better for me if the book was 100 pages shorter.

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<font face="Georgia"> <h3>Welcome to another session of Turning Pages!</h3><p>I'm not usually a huge fan of the traditional "South," -- as a thematic novel concept, it's got baggage so big it doesn't fit into the carry-on compartments. Reading a novel set in Georgia isn't problematic of itself - I <i>did</i> read GONE WITH THE WIND, after all - but it's what <i>isn't</i> in the novel that's sometimes at issue. This novel is matter-of-fact with its underage drinking and sex, but I picked it up because it is the rare YA narrative featuring a biracial character... turns out, there's more than that going on - a lot more. "Some things are bigger than all of us," is the tagline of the novel. Readers may find themselves coming to different conclusions as to what that "thing" might be...</p>

<p><i><b>Synopsis</b></i>: For Agnes Murphy-Pujols - "Nes" to her friends - the obvious thing, when her boyfriend Lincoln's cheating crashes against her mother's work-related disaster - the obvious thing is to just leave Brooklyn. Her mother is taking a job in Georgia to escape the fallout of a poor decision, so resentful and rebellious and deeply homesick, Nes decides against bunking with friends or fleeing to her father and brother in Paris, and goes along with Mom for the last semester of her senior year. Unfortunately, small-town Georgia isn't quite ready for a half-Dominican smart mouth from Brooklyn - Nes doesn't know this language of "ma'am" and syrupy verbal respect for elders, and she doesn't know what to make of being estranged from both her mother - her father - and away from her bestie. Georgia - with "mudding" in a truck on the weekend and swimming in swimming holes with "gators" is nothing, nothing, <i>nothing</i> like Brooklyn - and while Nes is pretty slow to make friends of the female kind, she's very quickly found an admirer in Doyle Rahn - a big, gorgeous hunk of dude with a green thumb and a drawl like warmed syrup. The attraction is mutual - and headlong fast - but it runs into a wall: this is small-town Georgia, a town which has two proms, one for the white kids, and... one for the kids who look like Nes. Biracial? Dominican? Those words mean nothing in Dixieland. Nes has made it clear that she's leaving - nothing about Georgia attracts her or makes her think it's a long-term option for her life - but before she goes, she and Doyle and a few of their friends shake up their small town in a feel-good rebel triumph over racism.</p>

<p><i><b>Observations</b></i>: This is a problematic novel for me, but readers who wish to read it solely as a romance novel may enjoy doing so if they're able to suspend their disbelief about a variety of other issues that don't matter to them. The first 135 pages or so is all about the move, Nes and her mother's relational breakdown, Nes's homesickness, etc., and her incipient romance with a hunky boy. The conflict blooms much more slowly than the feelings of attraction and romance. Readers who dislike "insta-love" will find that it's a pretty quick attraction, but the push-pull of the work needed to have a relationship happens throughout the book.</p>

<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-o9KUT-2phew/WKNDQVa_wFI/AAAAAAAAGxY/2Cz9n4c9-j0CSTiHIirlFKDqNpxqJpP9gCLcB/s1600/25377806.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img hspace=10 align=right border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-o9KUT-2phew/WKNDQVa_wFI/AAAAAAAAGxY/2Cz9n4c9-j0CSTiHIirlFKDqNpxqJpP9gCLcB/s400/25377806.jpg" width="264" height="400" /></a><p>I had issues with the rest of the novel, however. Nes arrives from Brooklyn to small town Georgia with no thought at all that it will be different from New York and possibly problematic, because she has dark skin. We're constantly reminded that Nes is half-Dominican, half-Irish, and I've read the narrative which downplays that fact described as "genius," yet for me, it appeared that she was not terribly knowledgeable about her culture in addition to being unbelievably ignorant of the historical traditions and attitude of the South. Perhaps Nes's mother, as a white lady, may have had the privilege to not think about race, ethnicity, and the concerns of having dark skin, as a mother of a mixed-race teen in this environment of teens of color being hassled by police it would seem impossible to be blind to the dangers to her own child. Nes cannot ever <i>shed</i> her skin - in an American in which institutionalized racism is a fact of life, Nes would have experienced some level of bias against her in New York, and also would have been well aware of the issue of being someone who looked black in a small town in the South. That the narrative allows Nes <i>only</i> to experience racism in Georgia is brow-raising. It's a shortcoming for many of non-minority Americans to imagine that slavery and all of its ills - like recalcitrant, Jim Crow racism - are something that is only ever and always the dominion of the South. It is not. Unless the writer set the novel entirely in some parallel universe, time out of mind -- <b>which she does not, because she mentions Lorelei and Rory Gilmore as familiar pop-culture touchstones</b> -- there are some day to day facts about race in America and the experience of being a dark-skinned, half-Dominican female which she either does not know, or chooses to ignore.</p>

<p>Ms. Lovett, who "has the same, huggable, curvy figure and soft, dark brown skin" as Nes's grandmother - is the stern English teacher who requires Nes to call her 'ma'am,' but is easily turned to Nes's team because she apparently loves her sass. Lovett veers perilously close to the Mammy trope, seemingly on hand in the novel solely for the purpose of giving Nes Life Lessons and changing her, allowing her to confide that she's "not actually African American," so she in turn can assure Nes that race is "complicated" and that she, too, is a woman of complex parts, and "half-Cherokee." Ms. Lovett teaches Nes "respect," hands Nes books by Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, essentially wipes her tears, swats her bottom, and sends her on her way to "shake the dust off this old town," just like everyone's favorite Aunt Jemima. As Nes is a high school senior of color <i>from Brooklyn</i> attending a top-tier high school, I find it brow-raising that Nes would have been coming to this canon of black American authors blind, having never heard of them, and <i>only</i> being introduced to them by the redemptive power of a Southern teacher. While the Magical Negro trope in its typical form doesn't quite work here, I found myself wishing Lovett had been a white character, or Nes's mother, or another student -- or anything...</p>

<p><i><b>Conclusion</b></i>: The novel attempts to delve into a big topic but for me is missing levels of nuance and an understanding of what it is to be a black woman of any ethnicity in the United States in contemporary times. The novel veered at times into slur - including against the Irish as red-headed drunks - and stereotype, which detracted from the narrative, confirming that I was not the intended audience. Regardless, for many, this novel will engage with the quick, hot flare-up of its romance, its feel-good, fairytale ending, and its myriad good intentions.</p>
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<hr width=55%><p>I received my copy of this book courtesy of the publisher, and all quotes or references are from an uncorrected Advanced Reader Copy. After February 28, 2017, you can find <a href="http://www.indiebound.org/aff/readersrant7?product=9780373212200" target=_blank><i>REBELS LIKE US</i></a> by Liz Reinhardt at an online e-tailer, or at a real life, independent bookstore near you!</p>
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Romance fans will love the slow burn between Nes and Doyle, two teens from very different cultures who are wonderfully in sync with each other. While there is an interesting subplot about the high school's prom, which is appropriated by the community and segregated into two events, one for whites and one for blacks, the romance is the biggest draw.

I made it about 100 pages in and gave up because the book felt overwritten and maybe a little overwrought.

I enjoyed <i>Rebels Like Us</i> a lot. It engages in some cliches -- instalove, opposites improbably attracting, fairytale ending, etc -- but does so in a knowing, nuanced way, and populates them with engaging, individual characters who made the story come very effectively to life. In particular, Nes kicks ass. She's strong and confident from the start, and never even considers backing down in a totally foreign, unfamiliar environment -- she's never less than herself, it's a wonderful thing to see. I also appreciated that it took almost half of the book for Nes to recognize the racism swirling around her. In some ways such a thing might seem improbable but, given the background and previous life Reinhardt provides for her main character, I found the delay totally convincing, as was the shame and surprise Nes had to work through as her eyes were slowly opened.

ANYWAY. Yes. Totally in the tank for Nes and this book. Many thanks to NetGalley and Harlequin Teen for the ARC!