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A truly magical (and incredibly original) middle-grade book that this reader found thoroughly enchanting. With humor, pathos, and a highly relatable heroine, this book also contains a potential triggering happening and its follow-on effects (portrayed very sensitively) that younger readers may need help in understanding. To that end, there is a discussion in the book, following the epilogue, with a psychiatrist, who helps to walk a reader through the event and an appropriate real-life process for handling and healing.

Greta Goodwin, our third person POV narrator, is thirteen years old, and, as an independent thinker, who has never really found herself fitting in with her larger social circle, is feeling particularly on the outs as she enters her first year in middle-school.

Aided by the support of her level-headed and lovely best friend Lottie, Greta nonetheless finds herself facing the inevitable life-altering physical and social changes in her very own (unique and quirky) way.

No spoilers here, but when Greta is forced to experience an inconceivably awful event, (one that unfortunately, will read as not all that unfamiliar to many female readers), Greta’s deep underlying and intrinsic “refusal to accept things as they are”, sees her undertaking a slow and brilliant “metamorphosis” — revealing her as as “willing to go to great lengths to make changes”. And what lengths they are, as these changes, whether fantastical and real (in the story) or largely metaphorical ( I choose to favor the latter), are both spectacular and controversial (in the eyes of many readers before me).

A truly lovely lesson on coming to view one’s own skin as one’s own, and the burst of transformative freedom that follows, Greta’s journey is more than a little heartbreaking, and a hugely inspirational read.

I reviewed the audio version of this book, loving the easy approachability in the voice of the heroine as portrayed by the narrator, and taking my enjoyment of the story to a whole new level.

A great big thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author for an ARC of this book. All thoughts presented are my own.