Calli

Calli
Jessica Lee Anderson
198 pages
Publisher: Milkweed
Source: NetGalley.com
★★★★☆

You can read the Goodreads summary here.

Calli is a coming of age story about a fifteen year old girl.  Calli is trying to get through high school while avoiding the teasing resulting from having two moms.  She's also trying to get along with her foster sister, Cherish, who has a penchant for stealing Calli's things, including her boyfriend.

The first thing I noticed about Calli was that the story was refreshingly realistic, though at first that meant the plot fell flat with useless details like what characters ate for breakfast.  Things picked up significantly around page seventy or so while staying realistic, and soon Calli became a real page turner for me.

I give the author major props for having a lesbian couple as the parents of Calli and reiterating a few times that having gay parents does not make the child gay.  This is a great lesson that many of our youth should be learning.  In a more general sense it was about the way people treat other people.  I think this book may have a place in classrooms in the future, or at least I hope it does.  There was also a great focus on the relationship between daughters and mothers.  Calli has a solid relationship with both her mothers, something I think any mother and yes, even their angsty teenage daughters, would envy.

I really and truly enjoyed reading this novel.  I would encourage others to read it as well.

Calli will be released September 13th.