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Book review: Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu

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Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu (first published in 2017 by Hodder Children’s Books)

About the book:

Moxie girls fight back! 

Vivian Carter is fed up. Fed up with her small-town Texas high school that thinks the football team can do no wrong. Fed up with sexist dress codes and hallway harassment. 

But most of all, Viv Carter is fed up with always following the rules. 

Viv’s mom was a punk rock Riot Grrrl in the ’90s, so now Viv takes a page from her mother’s past and creates a feminist zine that she distributes anonymously to her classmates.

She’s just blowing off steam, but other girls respond. 

Pretty soon Viv is forging friendships with other young women across the divides of cliques and popularity rankings, and she realises that what she has started is nothing short of a girl revolution.

Review:

I really enjoyed this book. Moxie really pushes a strong feminist message and I think, in this day and age, that is really good for young adults to have access to books like this.

There are a lot of other things to appreciate with this book, so it deserves bullets. I love bullets.

• Vivian is no one special. She is just a regular teen who does something awesome.
• All the teens in this book talk and behave like teens. 
• It also deals with other issues like family and friendships.
• Not all boys are bad.
• Not all adults are perfect.
• All relationships have issues. But it is up to us how we handle those issues.

I really don't want to go into detail, as it is so easy to give away elements of the novel which would add to the reading experience.

I will say this though. Read Moxie if:

You are tired of boys being the answers to girls' problems in YA.
You feel oppressed by the system and need a little motivation.
You want to engender some independence and self-worth in your own daughters.
You love books set in high schools.
You love realistic characters.

I hope this goes on recommended reading lists for schools. It probably won't because it will surely not be approved by all members of the faculty or even some conservative parents. 

But, I still hope it finds its way into the hands of teens, not just girls, but boys as well.

Purchase a copy of the book from Takealot.com

Read more of Monique’s reviews on her blog.

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