Bonnie Shimko

I picked this up because it had won a Lambda award and I vaguely remember people talking about it when it came out. With hindsight, I think they must have been saying "Why on earth did this win an award?"

It's a perfectly agreeable little story about a wiser-than-her-years adolescent who tactfully helps her mother put her love-life back on the rails. There's some quaint sixties background, and it tries to score some LGBT brownie points by having the narrator say that she's fallen in love with the girl next door. But that's as far as it goes. The book ends before she has to face coming out to her friend or to anyone else except the reader, if we want to we are free to apply the "it's just a phase" theory. Probably well-intentioned, but a cop-out, and not likely to be of much interest to any reader over the age of twelve.… (meer)

Fifteen-year-old Mary-Magdalene thinks she’s going crazy because she hears a voice in her head who talks to her and tells her to do strange things. The man’s voice always gets stronger and louder, while giving her pounding headaches, if she tries to ignore him. When her next door neighbor friend tells her how his father regularly beats him and his mom, the voice reminds her of the good she would do the world and her friend by getting rid of his father.

Read the rest of my review on my blog: http://shouldireaditornot.wordpress.com/2013/04/14/you-know-what-you-have-to-do-...… (meer)