In Verse

What My Mother Doesn't Know by Sonya Sones
At first glace this book is a fairly typical YA novel. High school girl deals with feeling in and out of love, worries about what her friends and peers think, and argue with her parents. Except what makes this unique is that the entire book is told in poems. After page of two is the start of a new poem, with the title giving the basic idea of what is occurring. Some of these probably could stand on their own, but when taken together it turns into a fun little story.

Honestly, I probably never would have picked this up on my own. I'm not a huge fan of poems, and the only reason I read it was because it was lent to me by a friend. I'm glad I did because I really enjoyed it. Reading it really brought me back to high school. There was one bit where she falls for a guy she "meets" online, that brought me right back to all my random AOL conversations. And all the obsessions, and all the highs and lows, a lot of me felt like I was reliving high school with Sophie.

It is a quick read, which in some ways is my only complaint. I finished it in less than 24 hours, in total it was about an hour and a half of reading. I would have liked it to have been longer, but I think the story works just the way it's written and doesn't really need anything else. It was a pleasant surprise, and I'm glad I gave it a try.

4.5/5