I did a lot of reading over the summer, but I am a little behind on my reviewing! Over the next few weeks, I will be sharing my reviews of my favorite recent reads. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did. First up: a feminist YA read that pairs nicely with my most recent book, She Spoke: 14 Women Who Raised Their Voices and Changed the World:

Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu
Summary: Vivian Carter is fed up. Fed up with her small-town Texas high school that thinks the football team can do no wrong. Fed up with sexist dress codes and hallway harassment. But most of all, Viv Carter is fed up with always following the rules. Viv’s mom was a punk rock Riot Grrrl in the ’90s, so now Viv takes a page from her mother’s past and creates a feminist zine that she distributes anonymously to her classmates. She’s just blowing off steam, but other girls respond. Pretty soon Viv is forging friendships with other young women across the divides of cliques and popularity rankings, and she realizes that what she has started is nothing short of a girl revolution.

I loved this book! Vivian was a such a fully-fleshed out character, with all the hopes and fears and internalized insecurities of a girl growing up in small-town America. I loved the way Viv was inspired by the zines of her mom’s Riot Grrrl past, but what I loved best about this book was how it showed that all it takes is one voice, one spark to bring out the light in others. Viv may be the one writing and distributing the Moxie zine, but the movement she starts soon develops a life of its own, and it doesn’t belong to her, or to any of the individual girls who start speaking up – it belongs to all of them, together, and what they have created is bigger than any one person or single action. Inspiring, empowering, and downright fun, Moxie is a must-read.

MOXIE is out now.

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