Welcome to Love Bytes Cheryl 🙂
Reviewed by Cheryl
TITLE: My Crunchy Life
AUTHOR: Mia Kerick
PUBLISHER: Harmony Ink
LENGTH: 180 pages
RELEASE DATE: June 26, 2018
BLURB:
John Lennon fought for world peace, but sixteen-year-old hippie hopeful Kale Oswald’s only made it as far as tie-dying his T-shirts with organic grape juice. Now he’s ready to cement his new hippie identity by joining a local human rights organization, but he doesn’t fit in as well as he’d hoped.
After landing herself in the hospital by washing down a Ziploc bag of pills with a bottle of Gatorade, Julian Mendez came clean to her mother: she is a girl who has been seen as a boy since birth. Puberty blockers have stopped the maturing of her body. They’re also supposed to give her time to be sure she wants to make a more permanent decision, but she’s already Julia in her heart. What she’s not sure she’s ready to face is the post-transition name-calling and bathroom wars awaiting her at school.
When Kale and Julian come face-to-face at the human rights organization, attraction, teenage awkwardness, and reluctant empathy collide. They are forced to examine who they are and how they want to present themselves to the world. But until Kale can come to terms with his confusion about his own sexuality and Julian can be honest with Kale about her gender, they cannot move forward in friendship, or anything more.
REVIEW:
It’s difficult to find the words to describe this truly amazing book, filled with fascinating characters and dealing with difficult issues with more than its fair share of humour.
The first line of the blurb, apart from being the thing that drew me in is a pretty good introduction to the whole book
“John Lennon fought for world peace, but sixteen-year-old hippie hopeful Kale Oswald’s only made it as far as tie-dying his t-shirts with organic grape juice.”
This pretty much sums up Kale’s approach to life as a hippie. His carefully crafted and cared for dreads are only the start of Kale’s hopelessly idealistic and clueless attempts at embracing the Crunchy lifestyle. His journey toward self-realization only truly begins when he joins a local human rights organization, where he meets Julian.
Julian is snarky, funny, sometimes arrogant (*snort*), sometimes insecure and always yearning to be her true self. Julian is “the boy who tried to off himself”, the “faggot”, the “she-he” the butt of so many cruel comments and actions. Yet she truly is the strongest character in the book. Julian is relentless in her determination to become Julia. No, not become, to be allowed to be Julia. The struggle is a hard one, and not made any easier by the appearance of Kale. She figures him out pretty quickly, but it takes longer to figure out what that actually means for her.
Kale, for all his idealism and desire to embrace his crunchy life, is not quite prepared for all that brings. He’s excited about being part of a human rights organization, standing for social justice, but he has no idea what it actually takes to be a social justice warrior. What empowers him in the meetings (and inside his own head) is not so easy to put into practice in the school dining room.
To be fair, Kale does, very quickly, identify certain shortcomings in himself, but it takes longer to realize just how self-absorbed he is and what the consequences are.
As well as Kale and Julia, there are some cracking characters, some with big parts and some with small, but all delicately drawn and with characters that leap off he page, from Hughie, Kale’s cousin, to Hughie’s go-go dancing mother, Serenity, to the members of REHO (Rights for Every Human Organization), to the gloriously evil Sydney.
It’s difficult to find something to criticize in this glorious book. The only thing I think readers might struggle with is the style of writing. It’s first person present, with alternating points of view between Julia and Kale. I know some readers find this difficult or even a complete turn-off, but I loved the raw honesty of it and the opportunity to get inside both their heads. I don’t think this is a story that could be told any other way.
In conclusion, this was one of the best books I’ve read in ages. It’s young adult but deals with some very adult issues. Nevertheless, the boys are authentically sixteen-year-olds with all the insecurities and immaturity that goes with it. For all the heavy subjects this is not a heavy book. It’s funny, sweet, exciting, silly, and all kinds of endearing, especially as Kale keeps wandering of the track and throwing out “interesting facts” on all kinds of things.
RATING: 
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