The Year I Stopped Trying
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4.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
Booksmart meets The Perks of Being a Wallflower in this novel of overachieving, existential crises, growing up, and coming out, from the author of Girl Crushed and Never Have I Ever.
Mary is having an existential crisis. She's a good student, she never gets in trouble, and she is searching for the meaning of life. She always thought she'd find it in a perfect score on the SATs. But by junior year, Mary isn't so sure anymore.
The first time, it's an accident. She forgets to do a history assignment. She even crosses "history essay" off in her pristine planner. And then: Nothing happens. She doesn't burst into flames, the world doesn't end, the teacher doesn't even pull her aside after class.
So she asks herself: Why am I trying so hard? What if I stop?
With her signature wit and heaps of dark humor, Katie Heaney delivers a stunning YA novel the sprints full-force into the big questions our teen years beg--and adeptly unravels their web.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Junior class council secretary Mary Davies, a white, "tightly wound" Catholic 16-year-old, earns excellent grades. Then she accidentally misses an assignment, the world doesn't end, and she begins to realize how much she is defined by being good. She doesn't know what her relationship with her parents "outside my achievements and my obedience" looks like; "I don't know who I am without grades and rules. What if there isn't anything else?" Soon, Mary has stopped trying in school, devoted instead to seeking a distraction in the form of a boyfriend: specifically, Mitch Kulikosky, a white, pink-haired "bad boy" who was "briefly fake boyfriend in sixth grade" and is now "insanely, stupidly hot." Frequent after-school drives lead to a mutually felt closeness—but simultaneously, Elyse Jhang, a gay Korean American girl, starts working at La Baguette, the fast casual restaurant Mary works at, and they become friends. In short, often sharply humorous vignettes from Mary's first-person perspective, Heaney (Girl Crushed) offers a quiet narrative that shines in its depiction of the indignities and boredom of high school jobs, the malleability of identity, and navigating expectations versus desire. Ages 12–up.
