Thanks again to Candlewick Press for sending me an ARC of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Love this book and the love Louise. She is strong and she is proud of who she is!

Really enjoyed this book and the messages that it talks about. Native voices are often left behind in the talk of diversity, so really thankful that I got the chance to review this.

DNF @ 29%

I liked the beginning of this, but I felt that first chapter had a sense of setting and momentum the rest I read lacked. I like the overall plot, and I think the short chapters can engage readers, but I felt it jumped from scene to scene, topic to topic, without enough connective tissue and didn't flesh each scene beyond the central point. That made it lack momentum for me and I really just need to put it down and move on.

putting this down at 28%

I just can't get into the flow of this book. the chapters are all 5 pages long and more often than not, just removed scenes. there seems to be very little over-arching story. and we also keep getting introduced to characters for one chapter and then don't hear of them again. it's dragging and making me feel slumpy so I'm going to quit while I'm ahead.

thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC.

Note: I received a copy of Hearts Unbroken by Cynthia Leitich Smith via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I wanted so badly to enjoy Hearts Unbroken by Cynthia Leitich Smith; I loved the fact that this book had Native American representation — something I rarely see in Young Adult fiction. I loved the fact that this book touched on very important topics such as racism, bullying, and slut-shaming. I just couldn’t get behind the execution. Cynthia Leitich Smith’s idea was good, but in my opinion, the book absolutely failed.

I don’t say this very often, but I absolutely hated reading Hearts Unbroken. I actually exerted a sigh of relief once it was over. Once or twice, I considered throwing this book in the virtual DNF pile, but somehow managed to push through.

The scenes & chapters in Hearts Unbroken are extremely choppy. Multiple times I wondered how we got to a particular scene, because at one point Louise is in one place with someone, and a line down she’s somewhere totally different with no transition whatsoever. I know there’s time to edit between ARC & finished copy, but this ARC read just like a first draft.

Another thing that really irked me were the amount of characters, and how there’s zero amount of room for development. I cared very little for any of the characters, including Louise. There’s literally no time or reason to connect and grow attached to any of the characters, and for me that’s a very important aspect of a book. I! want! to! love! or! hate! the! characters! By the time I finished this book, I didn’t care what happened to any one.

Relating to the previous statement of zero development & too many characters; the book kind of touches on the relationship between Louise and her best friend, Shelby. & when I say kind of, I honestly had forgotten who Shelby was until she showed back up. The character was extremely pointless to the story. But, I guess so were a majority of everyone else in Hearts Unbroken.

I hate that I can probably keep going with my rant, but then we’d jump into spoiler-ground. I would never recommend this book to anyone. It was just kind of a mess & I’m hoping the finalized copy somehow managed to be 10x better.

I love a good journalism novel, especially one with a scrappy teenage reporter. Hearts Unbroken did a lot of great things, and it was great to read this ownvoices Mvskoke novel.

[su_quote style="modern-orange" cite="Goodreads" url=”GOODREADS LINK TO YOUR BOOK"]

When Louise Wolfe’s first real boyfriend mocks and disrespects Native people in front of her, she breaks things off and dumps him over e-mail. It’s her senior year, anyway, and she’d rather spend her time with her family and friends and working on the school newspaper. The editors pair her up with Joey Kairouz, the ambitious new photojournalist, and in no time the paper’s staff find themselves with a major story to cover: the school musical director’s inclusive approach to casting The Wizard of Oz has been provoking backlash in their mostly white, middle-class Kansas town.

From the newly formed Parents Against Revisionist Theater to anonymous threats, long-held prejudices are being laid bare and hostilities are spreading against teachers, parents, and students — especially the cast members at the center of the controversy, including Lou’s little brother, who’s playing the Tin Man. As tensions mount at school, so does a romance between Lou and Joey — but as she’s learned, “dating while Native” can be difficult. In trying to protect her own heart, will Lou break Joey’s? [/su_quote]

I received an eARC of Hearts Unbroken from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
Hearts Unbroken needs trigger warnings for casual racism, casual anti-indigenous racism, focused racism, focused anti-indigenous racism, use of ableist terms, historical racism, and slut shaming. There's so much racism in this book, y'all. Please take care of yourselves while you read it.

Lou is very definitely a teenager, and it's great that the book allows her to be. She's selfish, she's rude, and she's real. She wanted a boyfriend and wasn't afraid to say so Her actions, and work to repair the hurt she caused, set a great example for young readers without being preachy.

Speaking of preachy, I hated how realistic the local church's hatred of some of its community members was. It's a huge reality in a small town, one I'm very familiar with.

However, I loved how important Lou's family was to her and their way of life. It's refreshing to see a family that involved in their kids lives. I loved reading her protectiveness over Hughie. Their parents' protectiveness over both of them while allowing them to make their own mistakes was wonderful.

I also loved having to take a hard look at one of my favorite films -The Wizard of Oz- and the reality that its creator being an absolute racist asshole. It's something I didn't know about Frank Baum, and I'm glad that I do now. Leitich did a fantastic job handling everyone learning about his racist ways, and discussing how that affected their choices to perform or not.

If Hearts Unbroken sounds like a yellow brick road you want to follow, you can pick up a copy on Amazon or Indiebound through our affiliate links!

[su_box title="ABOUT HEARTS UNBROKEN" style="default" box_color="#ff4400" title_color="#f2f2f2" radius="3" class=""]

Title: Hearts Unbroken

Author: Cynthia Leitich Smith

Publisher: Candlewick Press

Length: 304 Pages

Release Date: October 9, 2018

Rating: ★★★★ / Four stars

Genre: Young Adult Contemporary Fiction

Representation: Native American Main Character (Mvskoke), Native American side characters, Arab American Love Interest, sapphic side characters, disabled side character, Native American Author,

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Summary
In her senior year of high school, Lou decides to join the school paper, not expecting anything beyond learning this new craft and getting something impressive to put on college applications. But then the school's theater director casts a black student and Lou's own younger brother in the production of Wizard of Oz, and this kicks off quite a bit of backlash in their small Oklahoma town, with cries of 'PC culture gone amok' and parent activist groups. Lou struggles to report on the goings on fairly, but also support her brother and navigate the racism that comes her way, as well. Add to that, she meets a cute boy on the paper and starts to develop feelings for him, but she's shy about jumping into a relationship after her last one rather dramatically imploded.
Writing for impression, not scenes
So, it took me a long time to get into this book because of the writing style, and I suspect that'll be the same for a lot of other readers. However, once I understood what the book was trying to do and adjusted my own reading habits, we clicked a lot more. I have a habit of reading in between tasks and letting the book tell me where to stop, with chapter breaks or somesuch, and that just didn't work in this book because the scenes are so short. Reading a handful at a time didn't work because they don't build on each other. My ADHD brain couldn't handle it!

But I noticed that I also couldn't stop thinking about the book after I put it down. When I decided to carve out some weekend time and just sit and read, when I let the whole of the book flow continuously, I was really happy with it.

I felt like the writing in this book is built for making an impression more than following a 'traditional' storytelling style. The rapid-fire nature of scenes, the repetition of certain points, the way things get cut off, is individually frustrating but altogether evoke some pretty powerful feelings and impressions. I got a sense of the ever-present underlying racism much better from having short instances brought up repeatedly than I ever could from one "well"-developed scene. I felt Lou's exhaustion from leaving these things unchallenged much more from the way scenes ended than I ever could from any narration she might have delivered. It was storytelling via structure, and I find it fascinating.

The Characters

There's a wealth of characters in this novel, most of them with small roles but all of whom are distinct and interact with Lou in unique ways, which contributes to a feeling of the world being well-rounded. I particularly really loved her parents, and family in general is a big factor in this book. Not just nuclear family - they visit extended family and mention said family members often. Lou's friends and fellow-paper-students are great, too, and her best friend delivers a great little speech to Lou at the end.

In fact, that little speech is one of my faves, because throughout the book Lou can feel a little bland. But she's not. The narrative just did such a thoroughly good job of putting me in Lou's mindset that it felt completely naturally and kind of invisible. And then when her flaws get called out near the end, I had a real sense of 'oh shit, I totally got sucked into that' which was very interesting.
The one time realism maaaaaybe isn't the best

The plot on this one is...a smidge underwhelming? There's just not a lot going on, to the point that writing a summary for it was hard because, well, to come up with something longer than a sentence you basically have to list everything that happens. Ish. Because of the repetition and the vignette nature of the structure, it takes very little plot to get an actual lot of pages. Every beat is repeated over and over, but with different throw-away characters. Add to that there's a lot of threads that seem like they're building up to something and then just...kind of stop just short of a climax and then fizzle out.

Which, to be fair, is thoroughly realistic, not every act of racism ends in something huge and dramatic. Everything in this book feels very real. It just...doesn't quite feel very story. That'll annoy different people to different degrees, but it did leave me feeling a bit 'wait, that's it?' after the end.

In Hearts Unbroken, Cynthia Leitich Smith remedies several concerns among those who care about depictions of Native people in today’s fiction, particularly those writing for young adults. Criticisms have been leveled about non-Native writers who use stereotypes or blanket depictions as though there were no distinctives from nation to nation, about the lack of portrayal of modern Native young people, and about the relatively few Native writers with firsthand knowledge who are able to publish authentic writings about the specific nation from which they come.

Louise Wolfe, the Muskogee (Creek) protagonist in this novel, moves between her life as a high school senior in a school that is minimally diverse and the rich culture of her ancestry. In her place as a journalist on the school newspaper, she and the staff have a major story to cover in the conflict of a first-time inclusive approach of the school music director in casting The Wizard of Oz and the backlash from a group called Parents Against Revisionist Theater. Student writers are given autonomy by the journalism teacher whose motto is, “(1) Don’t bother me unless you’re on fire. (2) Don’t catch on fire.” Uncovering Frank Baum’s editorials describing whites as the masters of the American Continent and calling for the annihilation of the “few remaining Indians” puts a difficult decision on her younger brother Hughie who has been cast as the Tin Man.

The author’s comments give understanding to the reason the protagonist in this book seems so authentic. The novel begins when Louise ends her romance by email with the arrogant athlete she’s dating after he disrespects Native people. Her new relationship becomes endangered when she makes an insensitive remark herself. She based the novel on a remembered foot-in-the-mouth comment she made to a boy she dated in high school. Pointing out that she is not Louise and her former boyfriend is not Joey, she nevertheless uses that triggering event for a realistic novel. She includes words, traditions, and celebrations from her own Muscogee heritage as well as the angst common to teenagers in a way that feels natural for both.

Any young adult would enjoy reading this book with the added value of a clear window into the life of a modern Native teen. And if it sounds tempting to you, go ahead and enjoy it, I’m not going to tell anybody you’re past that age.

I want to thank Netgalley for my Arc of this amazing book.
This was a truly fantastic book!
I loved the strong and smart female lead in this gripping contemporary book.
I love the diversity of our main character who is Muskogee and it makes the story even more interesting to me because I love learning about other cultures.
It tells the story of how the school musical is getting a major negative reaction for going against tradition and casting non white lead roles.
Our main character is so invested in this situation because her younger brother is cast as the lead in the musical.
Overall this book was seriously enjoyable and I would definitely recommend it to all my friends who loved a fast paced and very interesting read.

High school senior dumps her jock boyfriend when he makes disparaging comments about Natives in front of her. You see, she's Native: Creek nation - Muscogee - to be precise. She shakes off his badmouthing and focuses on the school year: she's on the school newspaper staff and she's paired with Joey Kairouz, the new photojournalist. Her brother, Hughie, is a new freshman at the same school, too, and lands a coveted spot in the school play: he's going to be the Tin Man in the school production of The Wizard of Oz. Not every parent is thrilled with the diverse casting, though: a group calling themselves Parents Against Revisionist Theater starts lodging complaints and pressuring local businesses against supporting the play. Hughie and other actors of color start receiving anonymous hate mail. Battle lines are drawn throughout the student body and faculty. Joey and Louise try navigating a relationship while they work on the paper together, but Louise's worries about "dating while Native" may cause more hurt to Joey than she expects.

Hearts Unbroken is just consuming. I didn't want to put it down until I finished it. There are such rich, realistic characters, and Louise is just brilliant. She's no simpering heroine - the book starts with her breaking up with her boyfriend for disparaging Natives, and she never looks back. Cynthia Leitich Smith creates such textured, layered characters and educates readers on Native life and language, giving me an even deeper respect for #ownvoices work than I already had. She gives Louise and her family challenges both common and unique: Louise has a bad breakup; she is self-absorbed and isn't a mindful friend when her friend Shelby needs her; she works through her feelings about sex and when she will be ready. Louise and her family also deal with racism and whitewashing among their own neighbors and classmates. Hughie agonizes over discovering that L. Frank Baum, who created the wonderful world of Oz, so rich in its own diversity, was a virulent racist who published pro-genocide editorials surrounding the death of Sitting Bull and the massacre at Wounded Knee. It's heartbreaking and infuriating to read, but it's real, and she transfers this ache and this anger to her characters, giving them big decisions to make on their own while educating readers, too.

Cynthia Leitich Smith, who, like Louise is a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, provides a Mvskoke/English Glossary to help readers with some of the phrases that appear in the book, and an author's note that talks about parallels between Louise and herself, and the writing of Hearts Unbroken. Dr. Debbie Reese has a fantastic write-up of Hearts Unbroken on her page, American Indians in Children's Literature.
An absolute must-add to your YA collections. Read a sample chapter and the author's note on the Candlewick page.

When the new drama teacher embraces color-blind casting for the school's production of The Wizard of Oz, sparks fly in Louise's small town, and she makes a point of getting to the bottom of it, and using her voice to challenge those opposed to the casting choices that were made and threatening her family.

• Pro: Louise was a great protagonist. I loved how fully she embraced her personal identity and was comfortable with it, even when it could cause conflict for her. She was proud of her heritage, fiercely loved her family, and would challenge those who attacked either of those two things.

• Pro: I grew up and still live in a diverse neighborhood, but I personally knew only one Native person. A book like this is important, because not only does it represent an extremely underrepresented group of people, but it reminds those who are not part of that group how damaging things which seem innocuous can be to other people.

• Pro: The Wolfe family was wonderful. They had such a strong bond to one another, and it was such a pleasure to spend time with Louise's immediate and extended family. The warmth, love, and unfailing support they gave each other was the sort of thing I love seeing in YA families.

• Pro: The controversy surrounding the color-blind casting was very relevant, and I thought it was an interesting way to incorporate the exploration of racism into the story. The incorporation and handling of social issues was where I thought the book excelled. Smith did a great job shedding light on many things, and left me with many things to think on.

• Pro: Hughie was such a sweetheart. His enthusiasm, fear, and disappointment radiated from the page. He was probably one of the most vibrant characters in the book. My heart broke for him, but he showed just how mature he was via the many choices he made.

• Pro: The growth Louise experiences over the course of the book was also well illustrated in her acknowledgement of her mistakes and flaws, and the way she attempted to atone for past missteps.

Overall: Another reminder, that although we have evolved a lot as nation, we still have a long way to go.

HEARTS UNBROKEN is a wonderful contemporary realistic story from an #ownvoices Muscogee (Creek) Nation author.

I am beyond thrilled to see more Native-authored novels being published, and this one was packed with so many things to love.

I enjoyed:
- The main character is an ordinary teen girl: she has a loving and supportive family, she goes to prom, she works for her school newspaper, she lives in the suburbs...AND she’s Native. It shouldn’t be so revolutionary to be able to pick up a book with a Native character who gets to do all the things that white characters have been doing for decades, but it is.
- The novel touched on Native history and current issues, included some of the Mvskoke language, tackled microaggressions and misconceptions, and so much more. There were even references to other Native authors (such as Tim Tingle!), which was delightful to see. Some of these elements were handled with subtlety, while others were handled head-on. I thought there was a nice balance, and I can’t overstate how fantastic the Muscogee representation was.
- I learned some things. I’m highly familiar with current and historical Native issues, yet even I hadn’t known that L. Frank Baum (author of THE WIZARD OF OZ) was a racist who advocated for genocide. To be clear, it isn’t a Native author’s responsibility to educate readers in their fiction; I’m just noting that I happened to find some aspects informative.

Didn’t enjoy:
- Sadly, the writing style was not for me. It read like a laundry list, much of it inconsequential. Also, scenes and chapters often abruptly jumped forward in time, with no flow or connection between them. It made the narrative feel disjointed.
- There were a lot of characters. Many of them were flat and/or didn’t really affect the story.

While the writing was not my cup of tea, I’m sure others will love it. There is so much to appreciate between these pages. I absolutely recommend HEARTS UNBROKEN, and I can’t wait to see what the author will create next.

ARC provided from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you, Candlewick!

We don’t have nearly enough #ownvoices Native YA lit on the shelves thanks to gatekeepers and the like in publishing. That’s a shame since there are so many different stories to be told and so many people know little of what it’s like to be Native in the current United States, but we’ve got one more right here–and it’s a knockout!

When Louise’s boyfriend Cam first disparages Native people in front of her–specifically his brother’s Kickapoo spouse–he isn’t aware Louise is a Muscogee (Creek) Nation citizen herself. Then he keeps doing it and has the gall to get mad at her for “being too sensitive.” The instant Louise breaks up with Cam via email, you’ll be feeling relief like you just finished a hard workout. And that’s all before she starts her senior year of high school and the drama department’s Wizard of Oz causes undue controversy!

Like Louise, I was on my high school’s tiny student newspaper. Senior editor, whoop whoop! If it wouldn’t dox me by my former name, I’d link to a couple of the many pieces I wrote during my two years on staff. Leitich Smith really captures what it was like to practice high school journalism in a school where it’s underappreciated. Heck, Louise’s adventures in reporting on happenings around school almost made me miss being on the paper!

Almost. I don’t miss the constant anxiety about ads and getting literal nonsense articles from one classmate/reporter who probably let predictive text write her first drafts rather than writing them herself.

ANYWAY. Hearts Unbroken is a novel that makes the effort to represent what our schools and teens look like in 2018–and knows exactly where we are in 2018, for better or for worse. You decide to do colorblind casting for one student production of a play and suddenly half the town is allied with Parents Against Revisionist Theater because a black girl will play Dorothy. Louise’s little brother Hughie also has a role in the play as the Tin Man, so she’s got an especially personal stake in what happens!

Throughout the book, Leitich Smith confronts Native stereotypes and makes clear what life is like when you’re a Native person living in the current United States. Whether it’s Louise feeling bad that she dumped that racist ex over email (which no, that was appropriate and he has no right to be upset, the racist almost-man) or Hughie struggling with anti-Native racism that Wizard of Oz creater L. Frank Baum spouted during his life, readers come to better understand an underrepresented population.

The local uproar over kids of color being cast in roles typically played by white people has great parallels to Hamilton and discussions of how much of our negative, racist history can be reclaimed through such productions. Words like “queer” have started to be reclaimed by the people whom the word was long used against, but not everyone wants to reclaim it. It’s simply done too much harm to them.

For instance, say someone adapted an Orson Scott Card novel into a play, made a ton of characters queer as a statement, and encouraged queer actors to audition. Considering Card’s rampant homophobia over the years, I can understand queer actors who’d love to take part in order to make Card mad. I can also understand those who wouldn’t be able to put Card’s beliefs aside and act in it in the name of reclamation.

And that’s not even remotely on the same scale as race. It’s complicated and Hearts Unbroken makes no bones about it.

Louise’s romance with new guy/newspaper rival Joey rubbed me the wrong way in a manner that’s 100% personal, nothing to do with the novel or the character. See, I knew a guy named Joey in high school. He was emotionally abusive to his girlfriend, sexually harassed me “jokingly” whenever I wore a skirt (we were partners in science class), and told me I was something like 47% demon for a ridiculous reason. The name Joey is just ruined for me because I just kept seeing the awful guy I knew instead of this book’s own Joey!

Also, I got giggly during a very intense part of the novel when it probably wasn’t intended. Joey and Louise are out covering a marathon when a tornado hits. Like everyone else, they take shelter underground–specifically in the underground level of a parking garage. While waiting for the storm to pass, they start rounding the sexual bases to pass the time.

Is this what people do in the Midwest when they’ve got to wait out their regular tornado? Really??? (Of course not, I know better. It just makes me laugh.) Mind you, this is a probably-not-real regional behavior getting laughed at my a resident of Florida. We’re the state of tossing reptiles into fast food drive-thru windows and yet these two screwing around in a Jeep as a tornado passes over the area is what makes me laugh!

Okay, okay, I think I’m done. Solidly written with plenty of heart, Hearts Unbroken both stands on its own merits as an entertaining, educational novel and would make a great substitute for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (which was written by a dude who sexually harassed a ton of women, btw).

I love the idea behind this story, and the ideas it brings up. But honestly, the writing was subpar, and it felt like everything was just "and then...and then..." with no real connection to the characters.

I thought Hearts Unbroken was a very realistic YA story that would be great for older students. Some of the language was a bit much for younger readers. The story is an important one as students from various backgrounds face struggles and challenges daily that mirror some of the situations in this story. This book could prompt discussions to open up a larger conversation about diversity and cultural awareness. I think many teen readers will be able to identify with the main character. In this era of young voices making a path in this world to make a difference, this story will resonate with many.

I was given a copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Such a wonderful, heartfelt novel about navigating love and identity and high school politics and prejudice. This is a book that deals with very serious topics in a very thoughtful manner, but I never felt like it was a heavy book. Louise's voice is just wonderful, and the way she calls out racism and injustice and double standards is really important, and I think her story will be crucial to teen readers looking to find their own voices.

The premise of “Hearts Unbroken“ sounded amazing. We have Louise Wolf, our female main character, who is a Native teen trying to deal with high school and the problems that come with first love. She’s a confident girl who doesn’t take shit from her boyfriend when he insults Native people in front of her and just dumps him via email, also because she’d much rather spend time with friends and family or on the school newspaper anyway.

When I first read the synopsis of this book, I knew immediately that I wanted to read it and hoped it would be as good as I thought it would be. But unfortunately, books sometimes just don’t live up to their synopsis.

I want to start with what I liked about “Hearts Unbroken” before I get into what bothered me about it and lead to my low rating. First of all, this book deals with such an important and interesting topic that we just don’t see a lot in literature. I loved how the main character, her family and other characters were Native Americans. As a European, I have to admit that I don’t know a lot about this group of people that unfortunately is just so underrepresented in literature and I really enjoyed learning more about their culture. Second of all, this was also such a quick read. I pretty much flew through it and if I’d had the time to just sit down and read it in one go, I think I could’ve easily finished it in under three hours.

But that’s already everything that I had on my list of positive things about “Hearts Unbroken” and everything else about this book was pretty disappointing. My biggest problem with this novel was definitely the writing. This may sound harsh, but if this hadn’t been an ARC, I don’t think I would’ve ever read the novel because at the end of its first page, I already knew that the writing just absolutely wasn’t for me. “Hearts Unbroken” was very poorly written which I think was also the main reason why I just never really got into the story.

Furthermore, I also really disliked how short most of the chapters were. Usually, I’m someone who definitely prefers shorter chapters over long ones, but Smith just often tended to end chapters at very important points and just threw the reader into a completely different scene which really interrupted the reading flow. Also, the chapters that were longer were usually just longer when Louise did interviews for the school newspaper and while I found some of her articles quite interesting, I often felt like I was just reading someone’s summary of their journalistic work instead of a proper novel about Louise’s life.

One last thing I then really had a problem with concerns the characters in this book. Firstly, there are way too many characters in this novel. In almost every chapter new characters - that ultimately aren’t even important to the story - are introduced and at the end of the book, I still hadn’t fully understood who was who. Secondly, there was also zero character development for many of the main characters in this book which was quite sad because I feel like if Smith hadn’t added quite as many characters to the book, she would’ve easily had time to focus more on those that were important for the actual story the novel tells.

So altogether, this was a book that deals with a very important topic but that is just very poorly written. If this had just once again been about some random topic you find in so many other YA contemporaries, I would’ve without a doubt only rated this one star. But due to the premise of this novel and because I definitely learned some interesting things while reading it, I decided to give it two out of five stars.

dnf but not for lack of trying, my review copy was just really wonky and unaligned. would like to pick up a copy from the library and try again. loved what i read so far, but hard to rate something you couldn't finish.

“1. Don’t bother me unless you’re on fire. 2. Don’t catch on Fire.” – Hearts Unbroken.
Hearts Unbroken is about Louise, a Native American girl in high school, and the novel’s voice feels just like that; as if Louise is a real girl and she’s right there telling you about her world. There is no purple prose, no drawn out paragraphs, just real talk and that’s what makes Louise’s voice great to read even when she’s the one in the wrong. It’s also Louise voice that holds the book together.
The story itself starts too early, but the opening scene solidified my love for Louise. Her boyfriend says some derogatory comments about Native Americans, and she breaks up with him in the coldest way possible; an email! From there the summer passes like a laundry list of events that focus on unintentional or blatant discrimination. Only one of those events has any effect on the story’s overall plot, and it would have been difficult to get through if Louise voice wasn’t interesting to read. These events could have been better inserted in the main plot’s sequence of events.
When school starts, we get to the real point of the plot: the diverse casting of the Wizard of Oz.
“L. Frank Baum is remembered as someone who created a magical world with very different characters coming together as friends. But he was like the Wizard. His public image doesn’t match the reality of who he was. Baum was a terrible man who hated American Indians and wanted us all killed.” – Unbroken Hearts
Jealousy over the diverse casting fans racists thoughts and learned prejudice. Anger spreads out of the school and all the way to the local church. Petitions are signed to return the cast to the “traditional” aka white, casting. Threatening letters and vandalisms test Louise and her family’s strength, becoming an almost daily part of life. I was rooting for the play’s success and for the fall of these hateful people, and couldn’t put the book down.
I’d rate this book 4/5 stars. It was hard to put down, especially after things heat up between Louise and Joey. It’s an easy read, with a real world voice, and one a scale of 1- leave it on the shelf to 10- buy the hard copy, kindle, and the audio, I’d rate this an 8. Read it for the voice. Read it for yourself, because everyone needs to hear the #poc, #ownvoice story and see the world outside of their own upbringings.

Posted at www.bickeringbookreviews.com on October 3

Summary: Louise Wolf thought she was in love with her football star boyfriend, Cam, but when he mocks Native Americans she knows she has to break up with him.  Louise tries to piece her life back together by joining the school's newspaper and life starts looking up when Louise begins to connect with new student, Joey.  But Louise is pulled into a school scandal when her younger brother, Hughie's, casting in the school's production of The Wizard of Oz angers parents who don't like the fact that a Native America was cast in a lead role.  Louise and Joey team up to report on this issue that is so much more than just a high school production.

Review: I had such a mixed reaction to this book.  The basic story of a Native American girl trying to find her place in a suburban public school is a story that needs to be told especially by an author that is Native America.  Louise and the prejudices that she faces feel very realistic and the kind of stories that need to be told.  However, there was something about this book that didn't quite work and managed to hit all of my pet peeves triggers.  The tone of the book didn't really feel like it fit the story.  The message is so important however the narrative voice felt very much like what you would encounter in a fluffy teen novel.  The tone and subject matter just felt a little disjointed and lessened  the impact of the book's message.  Also, the romance between Louise and Joey was at time sweet but at other times had me questioning why Louise would try so hard to keep a boy that, at times,  felt unkind.  Yet, even with these issues the books underlying examination of what it's like to be Native American in today's society makes the book worth reading.