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A review by liralen
Girls on the Verge by Sharon Biggs Waller
4.0
It's a road trip with a purpose: Camille and two friends—an old friend and a new one—are heading deep into Texas, all the way to the border, because Camille needs an abortion...and in Texas, getting a legal abortion as a teenage girl is a tricky proposition.
The book weaves back and forth between the present-day road trip and the weeks that came before, as she tells the whole story to her friends. Hooking up, the condom failing, and then thing after thing after thing (or person after person after person) conspiring against her as she tries not just to get an abortion but to confirm the pregnancy in the first place. A pharmacist who won't sell a seventeen-year-old a pregnancy test; a judge who won't allow her an abortion without her parents' knowledge; a 'crisis centre' whose purpose is to trick her into delaying an abortion until it's too late...and on it goes.
It's a road trip with a purpose, then, and a book with a very clear message. I'm not normally a huge fan of 'message' books, but...it's important. And there are so few books out there in which the question of abortion (for a teenager, no less) is addressed, let alone books exploring how few options people can have an how much shame is heaped upon them even when they know they're doing what's right for them.
I wasn't super fond of the back-and-forth structure, because for me it meant less tension—that is, I knew ahead of time that none of the things Camille tried prior to the road trip would end up well, and I knew that ultimately they'd lead to the road trip. I also think there was maybe one dramatic moment too many (the arrest) and that the end could have used a bit more exploration. But I hope this one makes it into a lot of libraries.
The book weaves back and forth between the present-day road trip and the weeks that came before, as she tells the whole story to her friends. Hooking up, the condom failing, and then thing after thing after thing (or person after person after person) conspiring against her as she tries not just to get an abortion but to confirm the pregnancy in the first place. A pharmacist who won't sell a seventeen-year-old a pregnancy test; a judge who won't allow her an abortion without her parents' knowledge; a 'crisis centre' whose purpose is to trick her into delaying an abortion until it's too late...and on it goes.
It's a road trip with a purpose, then, and a book with a very clear message. I'm not normally a huge fan of 'message' books, but...it's important. And there are so few books out there in which the question of abortion (for a teenager, no less) is addressed, let alone books exploring how few options people can have an how much shame is heaped upon them even when they know they're doing what's right for them.
I wasn't super fond of the back-and-forth structure, because for me it meant less tension—that is, I knew ahead of time that none of the things Camille tried prior to the road trip would end up well, and I knew that ultimately they'd lead to the road trip. I also think there was maybe one dramatic moment too many (the arrest) and that the end could have used a bit more exploration