I started out really liking this book, but it developed two major strikes against it. The first was that the ending really went downhill into complete unbelievability for me, so the last twenty percent or so was an unpleasant read. That wasn't the worst part though. The worst was that the main Character Penelope McGee, never ever seemed to learn!

I don't mind reading about a dumb female character if she turns herself around, or if she has some other qualities that come to light, but "Pipi" never changed. As the story went on, she proved herself to be actually worse than anyone she had a vendetta against, and on top of that she proved weak, unassertive, and just completely lackluster, willing to betray friends, family, anyone, to get what she wanted. She was not a nice person and had little thought for the consequences of the poor choices and decisions she persisted in making.

The basis story is that in her last year of middle school, she unilaterally decides she can wipe her slate clean and start high school with a fresh outlook. She determines, against the better advice of her friends to whom she pays little heed, that the only way to do this is to seek vengeance on everyone who wronged her, and try to wipe out her humiliations. She talks like this will be redemption, but she really doesn't act like any of it is. It felt like a real shame to me because some parts of the story were really good, and there was this one nose-piercing scene which mede me laugh out loud, but such meager leavening in a book that is otherwise sinking does far too little to improve matters.

On top of this, her story is presented against the backdrop of what has to be the worst middle school in the entire country. There is no discipline there, the teachers are all either bullies or idiots, and there is absolutely zero parental involvement whatsoever. It's not surprising then that there was open and unchecked bullying going on in this school, which the teachers never did a thing about.

One of the teachers openly bullied the girls, yet there never were any repercussions, for example with parents making complaints about her. The principal of the school was female and all this was going on under her watch, so what message does this send about female competency? It was a disgrace. It was so unrealistic as to be more of a caricature than anything that felt real.

Pipi herself was also a caricature in practice, because everything presented in this story was either stark black or it was glaring white. there was no subtlety here; no shades of gray. On top of that, Pipi had to be one of the most self-centered and ignorant characters I've ever encountered. It was pretty obvious that one of the main characters was gay and Pipi never figured this out at all. She was so self-focussed and self-obsessed that it never occurred to her that other people might be real people with feelings and secrets and problems and worries.

On a technical level, this book was not helped by submitting it to Amazon's crappy Kindle conversion process. Personally I refuse to have any truck at all with Amazon for a variety of reasons, but one repeated problem I see with review books that come to me in Kindle format is that they have evidently been submitted to Amazon with far too many expectations for the end result, and the ebook comes back looking like a mess. If the publisher or author doesn't vet the resulting ebook for quality, the review ebook gets sent out to reviewers looking like a disaster.

I see this a lot with a variety of books. In this particular instance, there were page headers and page numbers blended into the body of the text. There was random bolding of text here and there, and all of the images at the start of the book were sliced, diced, and julienned. Kindle does this routinely. You cannot submit a book to Kindle for conversion unless it is the plainest of vanilla - nothing fancy, no images, no text boxes, no page headings or numberings, no tables, charts, or anything remotely fancy. Essentially it must be just plain vanilla text, otherwise Amazon will completely mangle it for you.

Here's an example. At one point I read the following:
Ricky glanced around, nodding at me, then sat (this part was bold. The text line ended here)
next to Tasha. (this was on the next line and was regular text)
Tasha even wore makeup today—something she rarely did—her lipstick and eyeliner a bright turquoise blue. When I asked her about it, she (this was the next couple of lines, all bolded)
said Eliza showed her how to do it. (this, the next line, was back to regular text).

On another page (evidently page 107!) I read this:
It’s just how I pictured Freya.” 1 07 Tasha grinned.
There were also random examples of a bold lower case letter 'f' appearing in the middle of the text like so:
"The dots disappeared.
f
I called Sarah over and over,"
I have no idea what that was all about.

So technical issues aside, I cannot commend this as a worthy read when it has such a limp and misguided main character who never seems to learn her lesson and yet for whom everything magically works out in the end? No. Sorry but no! That's way too much fiction for my taste!

Pipi no longer likes her nickname, and wants to be called Penelope. She is trying to fix all the mistakes she made in elementary school, but is she willing to do so no matter the consequences? Middle schoolers will love and connect with Pipi McGhee!

This book was really, really good.

In June, I read Bringing Me Back by the same author, so when I saw that this was on NetGalley, and was definitely not disappointed.

WOW!!!! This was so powerful.
I did receive this for free from Netgalley in exchange for my honest review so keep that in mind.

This story stars out introducing Penelope or as she’s know Pipi Mcgee she’s an 8th grader who wants to finally break out of her embarrassing shadow. Every year like clockwork something horrible happens and she becomes the laughing stock of the school. But this year she’s determined to get redemption and revenge. But at what cost? Friendships are put to the test, the enemy become an ally and betraying a loved one seemed so easy. Things aren’t always what they seem.


I was very pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed this book so much, I tend to stay away from middle grade reads but decided to get out of my same old patterns and comfort zones and I’m very grateful I did. I wouldn’t of come across something this great.

As with some books, I did find some of it a little ridiculous but I had to remind myself that this is middle grade and with coming of age stories there’s some very childlike decisions. I still think that the story taught us so many admirable and good lessons.

It’s says that it’s okay to be weird, gay, wallflowerish, poetic. Fitting a mold doesn’t have to dictate yourself, love yourself is the important thing.

Wow.

Let’s go back to last May, when I was looking through NetGalley and downloaded THE RECKLESS CLUB. That was the very first Beth Vrabel book I ever read. And from there I proceeded to read PACK OF DORKS and CALEB AND KIT and all the rest of them, and I loved every sing one of them. I don’t think there was a single one I disliked. And I heard that THE HUMILIATIONS OF PIPI MCGEE was coming and I was very excited.

I was not disappointed with it.

The idea of a middle-school girl who wants a chance at redemption and revenge for all of her most embarrassing moments was an interesting premise. And I loved the way she ended it all. I also really, really enjoyed the little nods to THE RECKLESS CLUB.

Another classic by Beth Vrabel that I will definitely be purchasing in the fall.