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One of my favorite reads so far this year! I read it in two sittings. I loved the main character (Tola). There are so many things I loved about this book that I'm likely to forget to mention something in this review:
- The author's writing style is EVERYTHING!
- The family dynamic was super interesting and made for the story/characters to feel that much more fleshed out
- I love that the sister wasn't the typical foil to Tola's loner, sarcastic, dark-humored personality, like many YA books tend to do. She was just as flawed, if not more, as Tola
- The romance between Tola and Seven was really sweet
- I loved seeing the relationship between Tola and her parents develop as the story progressed
- I loved how each chapter ended with quotes from characters involved in the chapter. My favorite quote which is the epitome of the amazing writing style/sense of humor of Laura Ruby was "'Meow' -Pib the cat'". This line officially made this book get on my list for favorites of 2017.
- Hearing about the alleged inappropriate relationship between Tola and Mr. Mymer was really interesting
- The female friendship between Tola and June was awesome. It's so refreshing to see.
- This book included technology and it wasn't essential to progressing the plot, or an evil being that needs to be defeated; but it existed, which is rare in books

As much as I loved this book, I'd be remiss to not mention its shortcomings:
- Tola's nemesis, Chelsea, had a grudge against Tola for something more than your typical high school mean girl reason; but, it wasn't explored further than the implication of what happened to her mentioned briefly in one of her of chapter quotes
- Seven's backstory was kind of thrown in there just so you can find out about his name, but it was never really addressed afterwords either
I think both of these things would've been resolved if the book was longer. Oh well.

Overall, amazing read that is probably a hidden gem due to its low price in the Kindle Store. I couldn't recommend this enough.

See more of my reviews on Birth of a New Witch!

After reading and loving Ruby's earlier YA novel Good Girls, getting my hands on Bad Apple was a must. The woman can write, write well, and write great relationships between girls. That's exactly what I need more of in YA. I'm sad to say Bad Apple fails to match up to the quality work of Good Girls, but it's still well-written and has some standout characters-including one whose comments are the best sort of stealth horror.

Thanks to her former best friend lying to the community and saying Tora was having an affair with her art teacher, Tora is going through hell and that is putting it mildly. Sometimes, it's easy to sympathize with her, how people refuse to listen to her, and the harassment she has to deal with on a daily basis. When she decides she wants to pay Chelsea back for all her harassment by painting a portrait of Chelsea naked on a school wall and coaxing/tricking the school into letting it stay up the entire day? Not so much. That was going a little overboard. It would have been better for her to turn Chelsea's own trick against her, but it shows exactly what kind of person Tora is too.

When it comes to Tora's family, it's all a little over-the-top. There's the mother who doesn't listen to her; her depression-struck sister whose quirks, quotable lines, and make her outshine even Tora; her absentee father; her "evil" stepmother; her tech-loving grandpa with his failing health; and her grandma, who hates technology and has a hard time adjusting when her husband starts falling ill. It's all a lot to throw at readers, but it works somehow. That it doesn't stick out mid-reading and takes reflection to really see is a good thing.

Tora is well-developed, but there are two supporting characters that outshine her: her sister Tiffany (aka Madge) and her very own harasser, Chelsea Patrick.

Now, Chelsea is very close to being a cartoonish, one-dimensional character. She seems to exist solely to torture Tora and start multiple blogs slandering her. Every time Tora's mom gets one shut down, she uses her tech knowledge to get it started again. Her own comments are what make her stand out. It's never fully admitted, but it's implied she was raped or molested by friends of a man she met over the Internet. Even in the present, she remains friends with them, likely unable to escape. Such comments are equally horrifying and revealing of what her bad decisions and inability to escape in more ways than one have turned her into.

The twists and turns the story takes as we find out exactly what kind of relationship Tora had with Mr. Mymer are wonderfully written and there's even room to fit a jab or two at people who try to get books banned from school libraries without ever reading them, instead objecting to curse words present or sexual content all out of context. Oh, and adorable romance, of course. It's not often you find a love interest who genuinely stalks the girls he likes on accident and it works! (Her cat was fooling around in his yard and not knowing whose it was, he followed it. Voila.)

My only other real complaint about Bad Apple is the confusion of the "comment" interludes. Between each chapter, there's a small interlude in which comments from major characters in the story reveal a little more about others' opinions on the scandal, about themselves (usually reserved for Chelsea), or about Tora. These seem fine to begin with as they seem to be clipped from newspaper articles or "secretly" recorded or something, but Tora says at the end of the book that they were all comments on a blog. Huh? When presented like that, the sometimes-extended quotes from parties heavily involved in the scandal no longer work.

There's really nothing left to say other than that Laura Ruby needs to write more YA. I NEED IT.

I don't really know what I was expecting when I ordered the book, but I liked the summary, so I figured I would give it a shot. I'm glad I did, even though there were some lulls throughout the book, but I usually read faster paced books, so that might have just been me. I liked it, overall, because it was different from what I normally read. Also, it arrived faster than I was expecting, so that pleased me greatly.

covers so many good issues: depression, divorce, mother/daughter relationships, outliers and being bullied, young love, teacher/student relationships, need i go on?

Great read!

...that turned into another book I'm recommending to everyone, especially friends and associates with teenage children. How the author could channel my own mother like she did, I'll never know.