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Rebels Like Us

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
"It's not like I never thought about being mixed race. I guess it was just that, in Brooklyn, everyone was competing to be unique or surprising. By comparison, I was boring, seriously. Really boring."
Culture shock knocks city girl Agnes "Nes" Murphy-Pujols off-kilter when she's transplanted mid–senior year from Brooklyn to a small Southern town after her mother's relationship with a coworker self-destructs. On top of the move, Nes is nursing a broken heart and severe homesickness, so her plan is simple: keep her head down, graduate and get out. Too bad that flies out the window on day one, when she opens her smart mouth and pits herself against the school's reigning belle and the principal.
Her rebellious streak attracts the attention of local golden boy Doyle Rahn, who teaches Nes the ropes at Ebenezer. As her friendship with Doyle sizzles into something more, Nes discovers the town she's learning to like has an insidious undercurrent of racism. The color of her skin was never something she thought about in Brooklyn, but after a frightening traffic stop on an isolated road, Nes starts to see signs everywhere—including at her own high school where, she learns, they hold proms. Two of them. One black, one white.
Nes and Doyle band together with a ragtag team of classmates to plan an alternate prom. But when a lit cross is left burning in Nes's yard, the alterna-prommers realize that bucking tradition comes at a price. Maybe, though, that makes taking a stand more important than anything.
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    • School Library Journal

      March 1, 2017

      Gr 9 Up-This well-done romance offers up a chivalrously complex Southern boy and a transplanted heroine who accepts the mantle of reluctant social activist. Agnes Murphy-Pujols is a take-no-prisoners refugee from heartbreak and Brooklyn. Her mother, a professor, uproots the two of them just a few months from the end of Agnes's senior year and deposits them in a small town outside of Savannah, Georgia. On the one hand, Agnes is angry with her mother for causing the implosion of their life and family. On the other, she is glad to escape her inveterately cheating former boyfriend. The teen is a standout with her mother's Irish temper and her father's Dominican coloring, and Doyle Rahn's flirtatious attention within the first week at her new school moves her from a curiosity to a target of the school's best connected mean girl. The first half of the book is overfilled with "electric touches" and sexually frustrated banter. It is the second half that redeems the opening chapters. Doyle and Agnes defy tradition by organizing an alternative to the segregated proms sponsored by members of the community and, concurrently, struggle to find balance in a relationship that moves beyond physical to intimate. VERDICT Fans of teen romance will find a thought-provoking and nuanced story that transcends its initial dosage of cliched descriptions of lustful longing. A must-have for YA romance shelves.-Jodeana Kruse, R. A. Long High School, Longview, WA

      Copyright 2017 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • The Horn Book

      January 1, 2018
      Preppy, biracial New Yorker Agnes ("Nes") lands in rural Georgia for the end of high school. The stark contrast between those settings is made palpable when the deep-seated racism of the South shows up at her doorstep. Amid a whirlwind, page-turning romance with "golden boy" Doyle, Nes fights to desegregate her school's prom in this dramatic story of modern bigotry.

      (Copyright 2018 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

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Languages

  • English

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