Review: This Girl Is Different by JJ Johnson

This Girl is Different - JJ Johnson
Release Date: April 1st  2011
Publisher: Peachtree Publishers
Age Group: Young Adult
Pages: 320
Overall: 4/5

This girl is different… That’s what Evie has always told herself—and it’s true. Home-schooled by her counter culture mom, she’s decided to see what high school is like for the first time—for her senior year. And what a year it is. 
As it turns out, it’s not just Evie who’s Different. Lots of people are. Many of her assumptions about others are turned on their heads as she makes friends with kids her own age for the first time, discovers what’s good and what’s bad about high school, and learns lessons about power and its abuse—both by the administration and by Evie herself.

I have to say this book is quiet refreshing. It's so exciting to read something that is so up to date with teenagers. Especially to find a book that is so up to date it mentions things like Glee and Avatar. This book is one of the most up to date stories that I've read in awhile. The fact that it is so current makes this book likable and appealing to everyone in the younger generations.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a good read, and a well developed story. You aren't thrown into this book with a bunch of details to have to catch up on. Evie is a soon to be high school senior who is making the change from homeschooling to real school. She's a bit socially awkward and new to all the ideas of institutionalized learning. Then she meets Jacinda and Rajas, who not only save her in a pinch in the beginning of the book, but become her first friends at her school. Once Evie is in school, she realizes there aren't that many good things about being publicly schooled.

We follow Evie through the ups and downs of standard teenager problems that she has yet to face. Making friends, having a boyfriend, and being a normal teen. Then we see her world spiral out of control and her fight to regain everything and to right what she has done. I believe it's a good story and something fresh that I haven't heard. It also has a very good moral behind it and a lesson to teach.

There weren't too many things I disliked about this book. I felt the plot was amazingly paced, giving plenty of time to form different situations in my head just to find out something completely different was happening. The one thing that kind of bothered me was how often This Girl Is Different was repeated throughout the story. I understand it's the title of the book and is a main key in the story, I just got tired of hearing it in the end. I'd like to give this book a full five stars, but something is telling me that four is where it fits. It's a good book, when it comes out I will most likely buy it to read again, but I'm not going to rush right out for it.