NaNoWriMo Research: Shug

Shug by Jenny Han: Shug is a tomboy, but she and her friends are getting older, and now she has a crush on one of them, and nothing is going right with her friends, teachers, or family.  POV: 1st person limited, present tense.

(It's pronounced like the first syllable of the word sugar, something I wish they would have pointed out earlier, so I didn't have to unlearn the wrong pronunciation.)  Another Southern girl novel!  Wow, I really had no idea they were so well represented in Tween lit . . .  This is a first novel and somehow shows it.  Too many smoking guns for something this size and a somewhat clunky, out of gas ending but lots of charm and heart and painful honesty not just about crushes but about transitions and family dysfunction and other things handly less delicately than I've usually seen or assumed. Delicate isn't quite the right word.  Sharper?  They're less blunted, somehow.  More honest while still filtered realistically through the character's point of view.  Totally worth the 3 bucks I paid at the used bookstore.