Welcome back to Reading, Reading, Reading!

In honour of the Fierce Female Reads Readathon starting on Friday, I am going to be sharing my full review of our group read, Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu! I loved this book, and am so excited to hear all of your thoughts on it, since I know a ton of you have it on your TBR for this readathon!

Synopsis (Goodreads.com):

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 realizes that what she has started is nothing short of a girl revolution.

I loved this book! From the cover, to the main message, to the characters, and all of the social issues, it really was a fantastic novel!

By far my favourite thing about this novel is the characters. Vivian is the protagonist and main character in this novel. She and her friends experience a lot of sexist things that go on in the school, and are basically allowed to go on because the principal is the father of the star of the schools football team. People have accepted these sexist acts, as they know there is not much they can do to stop them. However, after Vivian finds a box from her moms childhood and discovers the kick-ass teenager she was, that inspires her to act against these awful teenage boys and stand up for what’s right. Her passion for equality was so inspiring to me, and she truly lived up to her fierce-written character! Claudia, Lucy, and Emma were three of my other favourite characters. They had a huge influence on Viv, so to see there characters develop as the story went on was great! I obviously absolutely adored Seth (Viv’s boyfriend)! They have one of the most healthy YA relationships I have ever read, and to see an author romanticize a teen relationship like that made me enjoy this novel even more! Anytime that Seth said made an “un-educated” statement about something that was going on in the school, Viv would clearly explain the issue and try to make him understand why it was not OK. Instead of Viv walking away and getting upset at her boyfriend, she helped him understand things, which made their relationship even stronger.

The school setting was a clear and easy choice for this plot line, but I liked how Jennifer incorporated the teachers and cafeteria setting into the novel, as that constantly reminded us readers that the novel was set in a school. I always loved reading the scenes where the characters would be talking to each other in the cafeteria or hallways, so I really enjoyed the school setting.

An element of this book that I really enjoyed was how all of the girls in the school stood up for one another together, instead of categorizing themselves by colour, race, or sexuality. While some readers have argued that this book excludes males from the gender equality fight, there is a scene in this book where Viv suggests to Seth that they should also include boys, but Seth says encourages her to make this group a safe space for girls only.

The Women’s Rights/Gender Equality movement is slowly changing society as we know it today, and I was so happy to hear that a YA book was tackling this topic head on. Not only was this book great, but it totally exceeded my personal expectations! Overall, I gave it 4.75/5 stars!

Are you guys reading this book for for the Fierce Female Reads Readathon? Have you read it already? Let me know in the comments so we can discuss!

Good Night Book Owls!