My friend Jane, who is a school librarian - shout out to all school librarians! - visited me in August and we were talking about the state of UK Young Adult contemporary fiction, which is one of my favourite types of YA fiction. I really feel like contemporary YA has dropped off in the past decade or so and specifically over the past six years. Everything in YA seems to be fantasy or romance, neither of which I'm massively keen on. I was complaining and Jane told me to check out Tia Fisher. So I looked on my library system and this was available, so I requested it. When it came in I took it on a weekend away and read it really quickly.
It is a book told in verse from two points of view. It's similar to other books told in verse, and I really liked using that form to tell a story like this.
The first point of view is Marnie's. She has been thrown out of her private boarding school and has to go to the local comprehensive to get her GCSEs done. The only spare seat in the classroom is next to Zed, who is a loner and a nerd and who absolutely doesn't want to talk to her. But they do form an unlikely friendship and Zed starts tutoring Marnie in Physics. She is very arty and wants to do Art at college but she needs her other grades to be high enough too.
She makes Zed go to a party and while she's there she has sex with a boy who pretends to wear a condom. This is called stealthing and it is SEXUAL ASSAULT. It is coercing sex under false pretences and it is NOT right. I want to be SO clear about that. Marnie does eventually realise what exactly has happened to her IS assault, IS rape, and so on. She gets help.
She ends up pregnant and she ends up getting an abortion. I was SO pleased to see an actual medical abortion written about on page. She takes meds and yes it isn't pleasant, but Marnie gets through it. She is a fighter, I really liked her. She makes Zed be friends with her and she also makes some other friends whose names I've forgotten but I really liked the little gang they had forged together.
Meanwhile Zed. He's harder to get a read on but I did like him. He definitely read as autistic to me, as does his mother. His mum is a single mum and got pregnant via a donor, so it is just her and Zed. He's very set in his ways and he thinks he's fine being a loner at school, but he realises that actually, maybe making friends and being a bit bolder isn't a bad thing.
I loved how this explored sexual consent and abortion. Tia Fisher clearly did her research and I think it's a really powerful book. I definitely want to read something else by her! I'm giving this four out of five.
