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!