I’m of two minds about this novel.
First of all, the writing is great, I loved the character development, and the perspective switching creates excellent pacing and context.
Fun fact: before I had children I began learning ASL in hopes of becoming an interpreter and becoming a Deaf ally. When my first child came along I couldn’t keep up with the training while also working. Anyway, as someone who loves learning languages ASL is pretty special to me and I have a great appreciation for Deaf culture. Since I can never be a part of Deaf culture, books like this one give us some insight. Sara Nović does some great work here to give hearing people an idea of the nuances and challenges of ASL and being Deaf alongside the rich culture and support system, while highlighting the long standing hardships and lack of understanding by the hearing majority to recognize Deafness as a legitimate and acceptable culture.

Anyway, the plot involving the teenagers and anarchist activities fell flat for me. It didn’t feel like an authentic progression of their stories. Maybe I’m not clever enough to connect all the dots but it just didn’t work for me. It also bugged me that I couldn’t clearly understand the teens motivations and intentions. Is that by design? Because lots of teens can’t even identify or articulate those for themselves!

All in all I liked the characters a lot and found this to be a very interesting and refreshing read.

✨Book Review✨
True Biz is PHENOMENAL. Two chapters in and I already knew this was going to be a five star read.

Charlie is deaf and her parents are hearing. She received the cochlear implant at a young age. With the push from her mother, doctors, and therapists, she was isolated from the deaf community and thrown into mainstream schooling in an attempt to learn English. Read that again, literal educated DOCTORS recommended she didn’t learn sign language, stating that it would impede her ability to learn English.

Result: She is barely passing her classes. At best, between the implant and lip reading, she catches about 60% of what is said, which in school is still a D. Due to her isolation from the deaf community, she never learned sign language and now in high school she missing a lot of learning due to not fully being able to understand what her teachers are teaching her.

While this book is fiction, this book is based on truth and real events that happen in the deaf community. One large part that IS true is that in the early 2000s, Big Pharma continued to sell defective cochlear implants for monetary gain. The defective implants had moisture buildup which led to shocking people [and their brains.] BIG PHARMA continued to sell them knowing this. Big Pharma is a business trying to make money and we all know how big corporations can be persuaded into making unethical decisions in exchange for a big paycheck.

This book is part coming-of-age, part political awakening, part love letter to the deaf community. Charlie is a badass MC and I love how she was fighting for her rights. It’s her body and her life and no one, not even her parents, imo, should be able to force her into getting a new cochlear implant. I loved the incorporation of signs so you could learn a bit, I also loved the explanation of how signing differs from the English we write and speak. It’s beyond fascinating.

Have you ever sat and thought how much you rely on hearing on a day to day basis? You wake up with an alarm clock that makes noise. Bells in school denote end of class periods. Tornado sirens make noise. I urge you to think about other ways you rely on hearing. There are alternatives to all of these: alarms that shake the bed to alert you, blinking lights to show alarms or doorbells etc.

I have always been fascinated by sign language. I remember sitting on the playground at daycare learning to sign my name [im signing my name in the pics above]. Apparently not all playgrounds have [or had] this since my husband doesn’t remember seeing the alphabet along with signs for each on the playgrounds he went to. I watched Switched at Birth on Freeform for the sign language and deaf community representation.

I cannot emphasize this enough. READ THIS BOOK.

Charlie is excited but also terrified to start at River Valley School For The Deaf. Having been implanted and in a main stream school until high school, without learning sign language, leaves her feeling well behind her classmates. Sure she can hear, but she could never process the words that were flying at her. Now she finally feels like she can not only communicate, but also start to fit in with her peers. Meanwhile, the headmistress February, is trying her best to keep the school running through budget cut threats, and popular guy Austin just found out his sister was born hearing. As the three begin to unravel, they find themselves connected in ways they didn’t expect.

This book is why I love @bookofthemonth. I hadn’t heard anything about this book. When the only choices this month I wanted were books I already had copies of, I decided to check out the ones I hadn’t heard of and decided to go with True Biz. This book was so fascinating. I learned so much about the deaf community and ASL, but in a fictional story that didn’t feel like I was reading a textbook. I found myself practicing the signs when they showed some in the book. It opened my eyes to the dangers of cochlear implants, though I still feel a bit conflicted on them. I have known a few people in my life with implants and they have never had any issues, but of course this is a technology so obviously it has it’s issues. I can also understand a parent wanting to give their child the gift of hearing if they are able to do so. I also fully believe whether you have implants or not you should be learning ASL. If this was one you didn’t get this month from BOTM, I highly recommend adding it to your next box! It is a fantastic story and can lead to some great discussions! Thank you @readingthroughspeech for encouraging me to pick this one up right away, and for the great discussion once I was done reading!

As a side note I realized late that the author lives in Philadelphia. One of my customers I work with is a School for The Deaf near Philly and while reading I kept picturing their campus because it sounded so similar. Now I need to know if she took inspiration from there!

I really struggled to get through this i felt like there were too many storylines and ideas it would have been better to stick with one, but i did love reading a book focused on the deaf community.

Books by deaf authors and books about the deaf community was/is a huge gap in my reading life, and I'm so grateful True Biz is out in the world for us all now. True Biz is the fictional story of the headmistress of a school for deaf children and two of her students. Real talk, I don't typically like teenage characters and I don't like campus settings. On paper, I shouldn't have liked this book, and I actually didn't like some of the plot for those reasons. But I loved the book overall and I'm so glad I read it. Let me explain.

"This is a story of sign language, lip reading, cochlear implants and civil rights, isolation and injustice, first love and loss, and, above all, great persistence, daring, and joy". THIS is why I loved this book. It truly opened my eyes to so many aspects of deaf culture I previously was very ignorant to. I've seen reviews about controversies in this book that I ignorantly didn't know were controversies until I opened these pages. The author also seamlessly weaves in non fiction chapters that further highlight deaf culture and even teach us some sign.

I love when fiction can teach us as much as nonfiction. Ableism was presented in ways that really made me think. I am so glad I get to zoom with Sara Novic for book club in May!

I find myself wanting to pick up several cases of Sara Novic's True Biz, so that I can keep them in the trunk of my car and shove them at all my favorite readers. This book needs to be read. It needs to be read now.

Novic's novel follows a year in the life of teenagers at a residential school for the deaf and the headmistress of that school. Before I address the book itself, I want to say something about my contact with/knowledge with the deaf community. I'll try to keep my explanation brief because the book is really what matters, but what the reviewer does and doesn't know can also be important.

In my years teaching university-level writing, I've worked with five deaf students. Years ago after working with the first, I thought to myself "I'd better go learn ASL (American Sign Language)" with absolutely no sense of how arrogant that idea was. I'm good with languages and usually learn the necessities for basic social interactions pretty quickly—so why not?

Here's why not. Because a) ASL is a language with an absolutely unique grammatical structure that my romance-language learning self was completely unprepared for and b) ASL, like any language, isn't just a communication system—it's the lynch pin of an entire community—and really learning ASL requires integrating one's self into the culture of that community as fully as possible. I learned that signing ASL was not something I could even begin to accomplish with a few semesters of community college classes. And I learned how absolutely remarkable were both my students who were determined to function in two vastly different languages and cultures and the translators working with them.

True Biz opens up the linguistic and cultural complexity of the deaf world—and its complicated, often tense relationship with the speaking world. The characters reflect a number of the experiential strands lived by members of the deaf community.

February, the school's headmistress, is the hearing daughter of deaf parents, who is fully fluent in both spoken English and ASL. As a child, she found navigating between the noisy world of public school and the lively, but silent wold of her parents painful both physically and emotionally.

Charlie, the deaf daughter of hearing parents and one of the school's newest students, had a cochlear implant as a toddler, but the hearing-world functionality her doctors promised never emerged. Instead, she's been spending years of her life being prohibited from learning ASL and fighting the discomfort and distraction of the implant while relying on lip reading that leaves her guessing about what those around her are saying. She perceives her parents' efforts to keep her in the hearing world as a demonstration of shame they feel as a result of her deafness.

Austin is "third generation deaf" (my tern). His mother and her parents are deaf; his father is an ASL interpreter who functions comfortably in both deaf and hearing communities. When his younger sister is born and turns out to be hearing, every member of his family worries about the impact this difference will have on the family's bonds. In particular, Austin is shaken by the ways his sister's arrival may change his relationship with his father.

There's a moment of tension in the novel when students clash over the use of ASL and BASL (Black American Sign Language). Historically, so many U.S. schools, including schools for the deaf, were segregated that the Black and white deaf communities have diverged lingusitically. And as is the case with "standard" versus vernacular English, one dialect is often seen as superior to others.

Novic makes an absolutely brilliant move in structuring her novel, regularly inserting excerpts from texts on signing ASL and Wikipedia articles related to deaf history and culture. The characters speak for themselves, but readers are given a bit of a formal structure within which they can perceives those characters.

The plotting in True Biz, which I've been carefully tiptoeing around in hopes of avoiding spoilers, is rich, complicated by issues like educational funding, concerns about the "ebbing" (again, my term) of deaf culture, and anarchism. Every character is living a driven life, one that is based on resistance to the status quo.

At any rate, as I said in my introduction, True Biz is a book that needs to be read—now. Novic has powerful stories to tell and a great deal to teach hearing readers. I may not buy entire cases of True Biz, but I will almost certainly be buying multiple copies of this title to share with others.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.

This book is centered around a school for the deaf in Ohio, and even if you know someone who is hearing impaired, I promise you that you’ll see those lives in a different way. The challenge for me was to keep track of the multiple storylines: the head mistress who signs and her wife who does not, a teen whose mother forces her to wear an implant but refuses to learn to sign, the deaf teen whose family has a thread of genetic deafness and what happens when a baby is born hearing.

I came away with some unanswered question. What would it mean if a patrolman shouts at a deaf teen to stop, but they keep running? Of if they do need help but have no way to call the police. Of if a child in Child Protective Services declines to have a cochlear implant installed and the authorities overrule them. I think CODA has given us all a lot to think about. The bottom line is - how can we effectively communicate.

This novel centers around two deaf teenagers who meet at the River Valley School for the deaf, as well as the hearing headmistress who is a child of deaf adults. This was both an engaging coming of age story, while also providing insight about the Deaf community. The story is interspersed with sign language lessons and history related to rights and resources for the hearing impaired.

This was a great YA coming of age story featuring a deaf teen girl, Charlie, as she navigates life in her enrolled in the River Valley School for the Deaf. Charlie spent years struggling in 'normal school' and when her parents decide to enroll her in this new Deaf school Charlie gets a crash course in deaf culture, sign language and the history of sign - all things she was never taught in her mainstream education.

Along the way she befriends and falls in love with a nonverbal deaf boy, Austin, who helps teach her more about the rich history and culture of the deaf community. These two also team up with some other friends to fight against the closure of their school. Perfect for fans of books like the memoir Deaf Utopia, The sign for home or the middle grade series Show me a sign and the television show, Switched at birth. Great on audio with some sections that include sound effects from people signing.

I really loved that this was the Reese Witherspoon April book club pick and that the novel covers a range of experiences with deaf people, from those who refuse to speak to those who have had cochlear implants (by choice or not) and the controversy involved in each choice. Much thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my advance review copy!

I read Nović’s Girl At War back in 2015 when my family took a trip to Croatia. It was wonderful, and so helpful to know the history of the country we were visiting. Their latest is even better. True Biz – an ASL expressing meaning “seriously” or “real talk” – brilliantly invites readers into the Deaf community, showing both the beauty and the struggle. I learned SO much from this story, in particular about ASL. ASL is its own distinct language, but there is no universal sign language, and it’s completely separate from English. One of the most unique aspects of the book was the ASL lessons interspersed throughout – it really gives you insight into the language and the characters experience. Chosen for Book of the Month and Reese’s Book Club this month, it’s a must read. The characters between these pages will stay with me for a long time. For fans of the Oscar-winning CODA.

Synopsis: True biz implies honesty and this encapsulates the book perfectly. It was a very honest exploration into the deaf community and deaf culture — accessing all of the main character’s POVs to provide a spirited, thought-provoking, and heartfelt contemporary coming of age story taking place at a boarding school for the deaf.

My Thoughts: In short I loved it. Within the first 20%, I could see how much thought went behind crafting this story to provide a diverse perspective into the deaf community with the inclusion of relevant history and demonstrations on how to sign with ASL knowing it would reach an audience who most likely has very little awareness or interaction with the deaf community, myself included.

We mainly follow Charlie, Austin, and February who have varying perspectives. Charlie has a cochlear implant with hearing parents who don’t know ASL, Austin was born deaf to a protective deaf family, and February (the headmistress) is hearing but is a CODA (Child of a Deaf Adult).

All communities have their own battles and one of the most debated is the repercussions and trade-offs of having a cochlear implant and the value of ASL. It is hard not to feel the saddest for Charlie as she probably experiences the most conflict having to navigate finding her identity and language due to the stigmas around deafness which have forced her to feel isolated even by her own family.

But the story is filled with character development for them all and there was no stone left untouched. I appreciated the intersectionality as no community is a monolith and there are nuances everywhere especially when it comes to race and gender.

The value of having a community and language is irreplaceable and transformative. They help you survive, create an identity, and safe-keep culture.

I truly have so much I can say about it! But in short, the story really made me think and reflect. We all want to feel included, respected, and have the ability to live a life free of as many restrictions as possible but it can only be done if we take the time to be more inclusive and remove barriers.

Thank you so much @netgalley and @randomhouse @saranovic for the advanced copy. It should be on everyone’s reading list.

This novel, about a school for the deaf and its students, held my interest all the way through. The characters had depth and uniqueness, and the author caught each of them in intriguing and in-depth ways.

February, the school's administrator is a CODA, child of deaf adults. She is balancing the emotional lives of the students along with trying to keep the school afloat during a time of economic downturn. She is paralyzed with fear that the school will close down and has hidden this knowledge rom her wife Mel.

The students are very interesting and quite political about their feelings of their place in the deaf community. Some come from a long lineage of deaf ancestry and others are the first in their family to be born deaf. Some have cochlear implants and others see these implants as a betrayal to deafness. Besides sharing deafness, they are adolescents on the cusp of their sexual identity, and hormones run wild.

Between every few chapters of the novel, there is historical information about the deaf, ASL, lip reading, leading innovators in deaf education, and the like. I found this very fascinating.

This book is a well thought-out story of the deaf community and the history that surrounds it.

What an excellent, worthwhile book.

The book opens with three high school students who attend a school for the deaf who are missing. It then goes back a few months as we learn about them, their hearing and non hearing families, and staff at the school.

The story is riveting, heartbreaking, tender; the characters well developed and compelling.

Beyond the narrative, though, this book is so much more. For those who have never worked in the field or known a deaf person, it is good introduction into the reality of the hearing world’s reaction to and treatment (and often, sadly, mistreatment) of the deaf. It is also instructive in the history of deaf education and the use of ASL, as well as the racism that has permeated the world of the deaf.

There have always been a lot of controversies involved in the education and treatemtn of the deaf and Novic introduces the reader to the complexities of some of them with sensitivity and knowledge.

The ending was a bit abrupt and left me wanting to read more about these characters and their lives.

I highly recommend True Biz…read the book and find out what that term means!

Thanks to #netgalley and #randomhouse for the DRC.

Excellent, utterly absorbing fiction that rings and resonates with (sometimes hard-hitting) truth about growing up deaf, the politicizing and controversy concerning cochlear implants, and does not overlook all the thunder and lightning of teenage relationships and family relationships.

Austin, February, and Charlie are memorable characters, and their story will remain with you, especially if you are unfamiliar with Deaf and deaf issues, rights, plus what I thought a terrific introduction to American Sign Language (ASL)--a subject I was utterly ignorant about until my son got interested in the language and began studying it after becoming buddies with a Deaf guy.

Well written, stylistically challenging at times, and at other times incandescent with rage, this book is not one I will soon forget. (I'm buying a copy for my son.)

I have so enjoyed reading True Biz. I've become attached to the characters and also learned so much about Deaf communities and families in the process. Sara Novic has created a set of characters that I felt completely invested in. I particularly enjoyed Charlie's story and learning about her frustration with her mother for making her get a cochlear implant when she would have benefitted from language immersion in ASL. I think there are a lot of misconceptions about Deaf people and hearing people. So many hearing people assume that a cochlear implant would be preferable to not hearing sound (or much sound) when in fact True Biz taught me so much about how hard it can be to be deprived of language (i.e. ASL or any other sign language) and in Charlie's case how challenging it can be to deal with that as an adult. Each of the perspectives in this book was interesting to me. So glad I was able to get this review copy and read this book.

Sara Nović is one of those books where you not only get a great story, but learn a whole lot, too. Like many of us, I really knew very little about the deaf community, nor the controversy surrounding the use of cochlear implants within that community. 𝘛𝘳𝘶𝘦 𝘉𝘪𝘻 takes place at the River Valley School for the Deaf, where February Waters is its Headmistress. February grew up with two deaf parents, though she is hearing. She’s leading the school through some tough times, particularly for two students who in some ways represent the extremes of views on CI.⁣
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Charlie, new to the school, had cochlear implants as a child and was mainstreamed in school, so didn’t learn to sign. Her implants never quite worked right and she’s fallen further and further behind. Austin comes from a family that has always embraced their deafness and he’s considered something of a deaf royalty within the school. The story follows the three as they struggle with changes that affect each of them personally, as well as threaten the community they love. I always like a good coming-of-age story and appreciated this one more than most. Nović, herself an advocate for the deaf, interspersed her chapters with bits of information about topics such as signing, history of deaf education, and different viewpoints on cochlear implants. All that and a really compelling story, had me flying through 𝘛𝘳𝘶𝘦 𝘉𝘪𝘻. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.25⁣
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Thanks to @randomhouse for an electronic copy of #truebiz.

This is maybe the first book all year I truly remember being unable to put down. Nović became one of my favorites after Girl at War, and True Biz captivated me all the same. Nović’s writing style is so engrossing-the characters are all perfectly balanced across the novel, I loved that the teenagers were exactly the right amount of earnest and embarrassed, truly just a wonderful book. Full five stars.

True Biz takes place at a school for the deaf and the reader is immersed in the Deaf culture as well as the coming of age stories of Charlie and Austin. This book manages to inform and give insight while you find yourself emotionally invested in the characters. Beautifully written; it would make a great read for book club groups. Highly recommend.

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley for this ARC.

𝐒𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐥, 𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧 𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐚𝐥𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐨𝐟𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞- 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝’𝐯𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐚 𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐝𝐞, 𝐚 𝐜𝐫𝐮𝐭𝐜𝐡. 𝐈𝐟 𝐬𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐬, 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐨 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧 𝐄𝐧𝐠𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐡.
This novel is more than a rich story, it is an education. I think a good majority of us can claim ignorance when it comes to the Deaf community. Over the years, with bouts of hearing issues from illness (it comes and goes with viruses) and watching my own father struggle with hearing as he’s aged, it’s inspired me to learn more. What do I know? That you can never know enough. There are so many assumptions I had, especially about hearing aids and cochlear implants. I have read other books, non-fiction too, on the obstacles hearing impaired and the Deaf community confront, centuries of horrific treatments and ‘cures’, and it left me incredibly outraged and horrified by the abuse that they have endured. I am not banging a drum here, simply reacting to facts and feeling disgusted by the inhumanity. With all that said, there really are good people out there fighting for rights, but think about that, ‘fighting for rights’. Takes away the whole meaning of ‘rights’ if you have to fight for them. My takeaway is Deaf culture is about a lot more than ASL, it is inheritance for some families, and not viewed as a doom and gloom diagnosis. It is about identity, on their own terms, and their choices of how they wish to live in the world where the hearing often dominate and push their way of life upon others. Often, it’s about fixing people, viewing them as broken and even loving parents make mistakes. It isn’t a tale demonizing the medical community nor hearing capable people, in fact, parents and CODA (children of deaf adult(s)) are represented and have a voice too upon the pages. The headmistress, February, grew up with deaf parents and now that world has become her career and her passion.

In True Biz (the title is an exclamation used in American Sign Language) we join the students at River Valley School for the Deaf, where as in any school there are cliques, couples, puberty, learning struggles and stress over planning for the future, here students have the added hassle of self-advocacy. Funding is dwindling, the world of support is shrinking, especially with advances in medical technology which the rest of the world treats as a quick fix, more to benefit others than the actual hearing impaired/deaf person. Sara Nović’s characters are full of internal struggles, and with transfer student Charlie, she exposes the seemingly, impenetrable wall a child hungry to communicate faces. It is gut-wrenching being in her shoes, witness to the dismissive attitudes within her own extended family unwilling to make an effort to really include her. The frustration over missing gaps in conversations that make comprehension challenging and mentally exhausting, having to focus on reading lips, her failing grades, her mother’s adamant refusal to let her learn sign language when she was young, because all faith was placed in her cochlear implant. The controversary surrounding implants is another important story, begging to be told. How it feels to be forced into a school where no one is like her, expected to learn and live just like the hearing students. She is also rebelling, sick of compliance, longing for connection and acceptance, trying to discover who she is, wrestling with self-esteem, and falling for bad boys. It is a relief to finally get to know other deaf children when her father finally gets to make the big decisions, but there are still fears, and even at River Valley, at first, she feels like an outsider. Her health isn’t taken into consideration until there is danger, will she ever get to make decisions about her own body and what is put in it?

There is another student, Austin Workman-Bayard, whose family is deeply rooted within the Deaf community and treated with reverence, based on their history. Fifth-generation Deaf, surrounded since his birth by sign language and love, he is the perfect person to pair with Charlie, to prevent shunning by the others. All schools have their social hierarchies and the Deaf are no different. Austin may learn just as much from Charlie as she does from him, and when his parents have a baby that can hear, it makes him question everything he thought was solid and true about the bond between he and his father. February is overwhelmed with more than the school she is fighting to keep open, her heart truly attached to all the students, keeping this safe haven running. She is having relationship problems with her wife Mel, now that a former colleague has returned shaking their trust and worse, her deaf mother’s mind is failing her as her dementia is progressing further. There are big decisions on the horizon and it seems she gets hit with more and more bad news. Things she doesn’t know how to tell Mel. As an aside, one doesn’t often think about how much harder it is for people with disabilities as they age. Mel’s mother’s story is just as important as the children at the school, as she is at a different stage in life, one they too will face.

It’s such a beautiful, intelligent novel that can certainly lead to discussion. Though fiction, it serves to educate us all, by dispelling myths and giving voice to the students. There are so many situations that gave me pause, things I never gave a second thought. Deaf culture is one of many choices and it is not one size fits all. It’s a shame, when I was coming of age, this was never really talked about in school, and so many of us grew up ignorant about the Deaf community. In all honesty, ignorant of disabilities period. It shocked me to think there are parents, siblings, family that don’t communicate with their deaf child/sibling/family member. How can that be? What is more isolating than not being able to communicate your needs, how lonely to live among people who are meant to love you, support you and they do not engage with you? On the other hand, the author does show that parents often push and make choices out of love and fear for their child’s future. There is a lot happening in this novel, even a spot of anarchy! The sign language provided in the book and historical facts make for a more immersive experience. Yes, add this book to your reading list. You will learn something and your heart will be engaged, you may even see things in a different light. It truly is an important book, TRUE BIZ!

Publication Book: April 5, 2022

Random House

Terrific read. Charlie arrives at the River Valley School for the Deaf after an epic battle between her mother- who has insisted on and continued to promote the cochlear implant that has never helped-and her father who realizes that Charlie needs not only a way to communicate but a community where she is welcome. February, the CODA who is headmistress at RVSD, is struggling with her mother who has dementia, her wife Mia who is unhappy about the arrival of February's old flame Wanda, and most of all with the plan to close the school. She assigns Austin, the scion of a famous deaf family, to be Charlie's guide to the school but Austin has some trouble in his future as well. Don't pass this by because the characters are mostly teens- these characters have a lot to offer all readers. Novic has included useful and educational sections on the various forms of sign language, cochlear implants, the way deaf people have been treated throughout history, and so on. Know that there are no easy answers for any of these people- that Charlie will make an unwise decision while she is away from school that leads her to wrap in Austin and his room mate into an unlikely (if I have a quibble, it's about this) act. No spoilers from me. I found myself rooting for everyone, including Charlie's mother (albeit for different reasons). This is a wonderfully written and heartfelt novel. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Highly recommend.