Last week was Spring Break and the start of social…

Review (YA Lit)
Hope and Other Punchlines by Julie Buxbaum
This. Book. It is not often that you find books that deal with topics not previously read. I picked up this book because 1) pretty cover 2) loved the title (punchlines!) and 3) the author is relatively well-known. I typically do not read the backs of books because I like to be surprised, I want as little information before reading as I can get. This book, I had no idea. Absolutely no idea that it would be about 9/11. I honestly am not sure I would have read it knowing it was about that day because I have such strong memories of that day (even though I was not directly impacted by the event) and I didn’t want to see it fictionalized. However, once I started reading, I was hooked. When I finished reading, I did not have any negative feelings about 9/11 being part of the storyline-it was handled beautifully and made me want to research more about the survivors and families.
Other things I liked:
I really enjoyed the dual characters that both grew so much throughout the story. It was well done and not “too much” to handle.
I also enjoyed the short chapters and secondary characters. In my opinion, strong and well-developed secondary characters make a novel stand apart as great.
I will definitely recommend this book as one of our book club reads when it is released and look forward to seeing the reactions of others.
**this book is for more of a young adult audience, so while I would not recommend to my sixth graders, I would recommend to students in high school.**
I received this copy through my ARC sharing group, The Lit Review Crew.
Happy reading!