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10.0 |
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10.0 |
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Additional Information
Lifelong best friends, Nina, Avery, and Mel face their first separation the summer before their senior year, when Nina attends a ten-week program at Stanford. But how much can happen in ten weeks? Plenty, it seems. Nina finds herself blindsided by Steve, the adorable ecowarrior down the hall. Too bad he lives in Oregon and she's from upstate New York. When the Stanford program ends, she has to wait 8,736 hours before she can see him again. At least she'll soon be reunited with Mel and Avery. But Nina isn't the only one whose life was turned upside down in ten weeks. While Nina was gone, Mel had her first real kiss. With Avery.
Mamma Bookworm review
Simple teen read? Yes. Groundbreaking and controversial? No.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
The Bermudez Triangle by Maureen Johnson have been up for being banned in LOTS of places around the country. Even though it's just a basic teen summer romance novel with absolutely no sexual content other than deep kissing, the fact remains that a lot of people are very upset that the two teens kissing happen to be girls.
First off, let me say this, I did not give the book a 6 due to it's controversial content - I gave the book a 6 because it's just a pretty average book. The characters are very one dimensional - the smarty, the girly-girl, and the punk. Even with these one sided characters, I still had a hard time remembering which one was which. I also wondered why, if the author who was trying to show that your average girl next door could be gay and that doesn't make them any less of a person, that you would give them typically male names.
The book was pretty much the standard formula for a teen romance - whirlwind start, not sure how to break up, and everyone stays friends. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary.
Now, I do want to congratulate Maureen Johnson on being forward enough to even create a novel with lesbian characters. Their romance was interesting to me BECAUSE IT WAS AVERAGE. I want to make sure I get that across - their relationship in the book was your normal, run of the mill, teen stars-in-their-eyes-and-then-just-broke-up-and-moved-on kind of relationship. It is a great example of the fact that just because you are gay it doesn't make your relationships any different then any other average teen. Nobody was killed, or scarred for life, or jumped off a bridge in despair - they just dated for a while and then they didn't, just like any other teen.
But in another aspect she still dealt with a lot of things that would come with the territory - telling friends and family, being 'outed' at school, still being confused about what you are exactly (straight, gay, bisexual), and discrimination. I found it interesting that the author decided to keep the discrimination and abuse very minimal in the story and focused more on how little it actually 'ruined' their lives. In fact, the only character who seems to have a meltdown about the whole situation is a frequently absent parent who is portrayed as kind of paranoid and prone to fly off the handle. For the most part, the majority of the side characters in the story take the news in a stride and actually, I think these days, that would probably be the more realistic response to the situation.
Will some parents have a problem with this book? Oh yeah, of course. Is it really something to get crazy about? Probably not. My guess would be that most of the people who have a very, very strong negative opinion about this book probably haven't even read it. The gay girls are not obsessed with sex, they are not stalking other girls down the halls, trying to catch them naked in the locker room, or trying to convert anyone. They are just normal girls. And as I stated earlier - there is no crazy lesbian sex scenes in the story anywhere. There are a few allusions to staying overnight when a parent is out of town, but it doesn't go into any other detail than that, and you find that in any typical teen romance story.
If you have a young gay teen who feels like he/she is constantly an outsider then this would be a great read for them. Or if you have any kid over the age of 16, this is nothing they haven't already heard of or have probably encountered with homosexual friends or acquaintances.
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6.0 |
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6.0 |
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6.0 |
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6.0 |
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