Those Kids From Fawn Creek (Erin Entrada Kelly)

Those Kids From Fawn Creek (by Erin Entrada Kelly) is just the book I needed to kick off my summer! What a joy!

Orchid is new in town, and far from fitting in. Fawn Creek is tiny (only twelve kids make up the entire seventh grade class) and bland, bland, bland... till Orchid arrives. She doesn't fit in, and that's a good thing. She's worldly, she's carefree, and she's a complete mystery that every ordinary kid wants to solve.

The titular kids are complex characters wrestling with the drama and mysteries of adolescence, but Kelly doesn't sacrifice humor and joy to tell a grown-up story about childhood. The novel is so much fun and ultimately uplifting, but not thanks to artificial, easy answers. Feelings get hurt, safety is risked, and truth—real world truth—is revealed.

The Orchid and Greyson characters are especially recognizable to me—as real people I knew and that I was growing up. Savvy readers will suspect that Orchid isn't as perfect as she presents herself to be while Greyson has layers of color and complexity his family and classmates can't appreciate and perhaps resent.

This book gives me everything I want from fiction: heart, brains, and a tight, knotty plot. It was a gift to start summertime in Fawn Creek, and I'm planning to revisit the town when fall arrives.