Girl Made of Stars by Ashley Herring Blake

After spending most of December reading very long classics, I found myself wanting something a little bit quicker to read. While perusing my shelves, Girl Made of Stars caught my eye first. I heard about this book through a YouTube review a while back, and it sounded very sad and very intriguing. Young adult books tackling social issues are my guilty pleasure, so I decided to spend a few blissfully lazy mornings of my winter break making my way through it.

The plot of the novel centers around Mara McHale, a high school student in Tennessee. At the beginning of the story, her twin brother Owen is accused of raping a girl named Hannah at a party. Mara, who has always been very close with her brother, has an extremely difficult time processing this event. She can't believe that her sweet, caring brother would assault anyone. At the same time, Hannah is one of Mara's best friends, and she can't imagine that Hannah would make something like this up either. Her inner conflict over the situation begins to take a serious toll on her relationship with her brother and her parents, who believe Owen's version of events unequivocally.

The accusation also stirs up some past trauma in Mara's life that she has been keeping secret. Watching Hannah struggle through the ensuing investigation, and then suffer the shame of not being believed, start to bring her own repressed emotions bubbling up to the surface. Somehow, she must find a way to support her friend, deal with her brother, and take care of herself. Girl Made of Stars is a gut-wrenching story about surviving trauma, supporting victims of assaults, and finding the courage to ask for help when you need it. 

I very much enjoyed this novel, It's a quick read that packs an emotional punch. The writing was pretty and the plot was well-paced. Obviously, it deals with sensitive topics, and I felt like the author handled them in a realistic and thoughtful way. The pain of the characters is palpable and unsettling; their struggles leap off the page as they attempt to renegotiate relationships with people they thought they knew. This is especially true of Mara, who must grapple with a complex knot of emotions arising from both past and current events in her life. As the novel progresses, interesting questions emerge about how you can come to doubt people you have adored and trusted for your whole life, and how you can reconcile yourself to living beside someone that might have done something unforgivable. The novel places its characters in impossibly painful situations, and watching them try to sort out how to move on and heal made for extremely engaging reading. I wanted to see what would happen next, and if the real truth of the situation would ever come out. 

The novel does a good job of discussing several social issues as well. Of course, ideas related to feminism and rape culture are explored, but LGBTIQA+ topics are well-represented too. Mara is bisexual and has relationships with male and female characters throughout the story. Another major character is genderqueer, which allows for helpful discussions of what that identity actually means and how a young person that identifies that way might struggle with it. It's so important for diverse characters to be present in young adult literature. It helps normalize different kinds of people for readers who may be unfamiliar with them, and it also allows readers of varying identifications to feel seen. I appreciated the inclusion of these topics alongside the main story.

Where the novel is a bit weak is in the interaction of the teen characters with their parents. Simply put, these kids have too much independence. They move around their neighborhoods like adults, going wherever they want at any time they want without any authority figures asking them any questions or setting any real limits for them. As they are older teens, you would expect them to be somewhat self-sufficient, but the ability they had to just roam wherever they pleased was not realistic. They even skipped school multiple times throughout the text without anyone knowing or caring. From time to time, a parent would pop up and make a comment or ask a question, but for the most part, the teen characters had way too much freedom. This issue gives the whole story a vibe of being unbelievable, even though most other aspects of the story are fine in this regard.

Overall, Girl Made of Stars was an emotional and thought-provoking read. It dealt with tough issues in a realistic and respectful way. This is the kind of novel that is very beneficial for young people to read. It contains a nice diversity of characters and competently educates readers about the important issues associated with consent and sexual assault. This is definitely not a fun read, but it is an important and engaging one, and one that I will be remembering for a long time to come.


Challenge Tally
Finally in 2019: 49/6 Books Read - Complete!

Total Books Read in 2019: 80