Okay, I hate to be that person who gives a book a low rating because of a little thing that ruined it for me. But it wouldn't be an honest review otherwise, so let's do this.

Audacious, you had me. The main character -- who is equal parts artistic, techie, and feminist. The plot, which deals with body shaming, personal autonomy, art and artistic expression, racism, religious beliefs, and more. The writing, which is gorgeous and poetic. I don't normally go for novels in verse, but this one pulled me right in.

And then I got to Ella's art project, which centres around a vagina as a determining factor of who is and isn't a woman, that thing that we all apparently have in common.

That doesn't sit right with me, for a couple of reasons. For starters, there's the existence of transgender people. You absolutely do not need a vagina to be a woman, and thinking that way excludes a lot of awesome ladies. Secondly, even from a cisgender perspective, I mean, I prefer not to be reduced to what's between my legs. I'm more than a body part.

And yeah, yeah, the main character is in high school. I don't expect her to have some nuanced understanding of gender -- I sure as hell didn't back then. But having a pivotal part of the plot be about anatomy being what all women have in common? That felt unnecessary.

So, much as it pains me to say because I love the rest of it, this really wasn't the book for me. ( )

There's an awful lot of issues packed into this one story but the author manages them all well. An engrossing YA story that will certainly appeal to fans of Sonya Sones and Ellen Hopkins. ( )

"I'm wary of them
Their glossy lips hide sharp fangs
And I have been bitten
One too many times."

After a spat of problems at previous schools, Raphaelle decides to remake herself at her new school as Ella, a good girl who fits in and doesn't say or do the wrong things. But her plan is short lived. The popular girls are quick to mock her and she finds that her audacious self soon shines through. She makes friends with Samir, a Muslim boy in her art class, she is drawn to. Each of them is pulled aside to make an art piece for the student art competition, and each comes up with a society challenging piece of art that evoke their frustration with their lives and the world, drawing a considerable amount of controversy and problems.

This novel is written in free verse and in some cases this means prose broken up into lines and stanzas. However, Prendergast does a good job of making each poem feel whole within itself and presents some good poetry in the mix of telling the story.

“The weight of that name
Is sometimes a mountain
With a cave of secrets

And sometimes a feather
Floating on a puff of air”

I didn't expect to like this story as much as I did. I didn't expect events to take the turns they did or the characters to be as fully fleshed out as they were. I have to say it was a very pleasant surprise. ( )

Some of Raphaelle’s behaviour is simply for the sake of being contrary, true. She is at that age. But there is a political side to the decisions that she makes.

Her actions are rooted in questions about identity, specifically her feminine identity and what roles she (and other girls and women) inhabit in society. And, in that process, she reinvents herself as Ella.

In many ways, her audacity is not just an act of self-insistence but an open declaration of war on convention.

In her own small corner of the world, Raphaelle acts as the revolutionary.

Gabrielle Prendergast’s language is unsentimental, and the everyday details in the verses balance the heavily emotional content. (The novel-in-verse does seem particularly appropriate for this age group.)

Sometimes the mood is relayed as much by the shape and layout of the poems as by the words themselves.

One of the most satisfying elements of the work, however, is the resolution. Or, more accurately, the lack of tidy resolution.

Raphaelle/Ella does not age substantially in the course of the novel and despite all the learning experiences she has in the story, by the end of it, she has even more questions than she had at the beginnings (or, at least, readers are more consciously aware of all the questions with which she is grappling).

So it feels realistic to have the questioning process continue at the end of Audacious, even while the heroine is still moving forward.

More talk of this novel here, at Buried.In.Print.

Loved the story and the characters!! I read it in one sitting. More please!! ( )