It was like the author had a checklist of events that commonly happen in YA books, and she tried really hard to check everything off that list.

The story is about Emilie, a teen girl who has been homeschooled for most of her life because she has epilepsy and a dead father. Then, her mother and therapist decide she should try public school. She takes about 5 steps into the school before running into a mean girl and developing a crush on a star athlete. Of course Emilie is a genius, and her crush needs tutoring, so they're forced to hang out. She spends 200 pages dithering about how to tell her classmates about her epilepsy. Then she tells them, and they clap for her. The end.

I realize I'm not the target audience for teen books, but I've read this story so many times that it had no suspense for me. I kept waiting for it to deviate from the script, but it didn't.

I did like the complicated relationship between Emilie and her mother. Emilie is too scared to break out of her comfort zone. Her mother is the opposite. This causes problems in their relationship, but they attempt to work through them, and Emilie learns to see things from her mother's perspective. Life is boring if you never try anything new.

This book wasn't for me, but maybe I would have liked it when I was younger. I've just read too many YA books.