Rebels Like Us - Hardcover

Reinhardt, Liz

3.7

371 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0373212208 ISBN 13: 9780373212200

Publisher: Harlequin Teen, 2017

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"It's not like I never thought about being mixed race. I guess it was just that, in Brooklyn, everyone was competing to be unique or surprising. By comparison, I was boring, seriously. Really boring."

Culture shock knocks city girl Agnes "Nes" Murphy-Pujols off-kilter when she's transplanted mid–senior year from Brooklyn to a small Southern town after her mother's relationship with a coworker self-destructs. On top of the move, Nes is nursing a broken heart and severe homesickness, so her plan is simple: keep her head down, graduate and get out. Too bad that flies out the window on day one, when she opens her smart mouth and pits herself against the school's reigning belle and the principal.

Her rebellious streak attracts the attention of local golden boy Doyle Rahn, who teaches Nes the ropes at Ebenezer. As her friendship with Doyle sizzles into something more, Nes discovers the town she's learning to like has an insidious undercurrent of racism. The color of her skin was never something she thought about in Brooklyn, but after a frightening traffic stop on an isolated road, Nes starts to see signs everywhere—including at her own high school where, she learns, they hold proms. Two of them. One black, one white.

Nes and Doyle band together with a ragtag team of classmates to plan an alternate prom. But when a lit cross is left burning in Nes's yard, the alterna-prommers realize that bucking tradition comes at a price. Maybe, though, that makes taking a stand more important than anything.

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About the Author:

Liz Reinhardt is the author of several young adult novels, including Inherit, Forgiving Trinity, and the Brenna Blixen series. She is also coauthor, with Steph Campbell, of the Silver Strand series and A Toast to the Good Times.

From School Library Journal:

Gr 9 Up—This well-done romance offers up a chivalrously complex Southern boy and a transplanted heroine who accepts the mantle of reluctant social activist. Agnes Murphy-Pujols is a take-no-prisoners refugee from heartbreak and Brooklyn. Her mother, a professor, uproots the two of them just a few months from the end of Agnes's senior year and deposits them in a small town outside of Savannah, Georgia. On the one hand, Agnes is angry with her mother for causing the implosion of their life and family. On the other, she is glad to escape her inveterately cheating former boyfriend. The teen is a standout with her mother's Irish temper and her father's Dominican coloring, and Doyle Rahn's flirtatious attention within the first week at her new school moves her from a curiosity to a target of the school's best connected mean girl. The first half of the book is overfilled with "electric touches" and sexually frustrated banter. It is the second half that redeems the opening chapters. Doyle and Agnes defy tradition by organizing an alternative to the segregated proms sponsored by members of the community and, concurrently, struggle to find balance in a relationship that moves beyond physical to intimate. VERDICT Fans of teen romance will find a thought-provoking and nuanced story that transcends its initial dosage of clich�d descriptions of lustful longing. A must-have for YA romance shelves.—Jodeana Kruse, R. A. Long High School, Longview, WA

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