![]() This actually makes the novel feel inauthentic: it’s like an obviously fictionalized version of a teenager’s life, with the corners cut and sewn too neatly to resemble anything that I know of high school. It reads like a teenager trying out her hand at writing a novel about high school. It’s that literally this novel sometimes reads like something I would have written when I was in high school. I don’t mean that Goobie has captured and translated a teenager’s voice, or creatively expressed the way(s) teenagers think. Here’s what I mean by ‘clunky’ storytelling: the novel is written almost like a teenager would have written it. Either of these on their own would have been frustrating, but the two together really took away from some of the positive experiences I had reading the novel. Mostly, it was the combination of shaky characterization and clunky storytelling that eventually got to me. On the other hand, there were quite a few things that irritated me while reading this book-kind of like an itchy sweater. ![]() It’s also heartwarming as hell, which (young) adults or not, is something we all need a little bit of now and then. ![]() On the one hand, Hello, Groin is as earnest a teen novel as you’ll ever find. I’m not sure how to preface this review of Saskatoon-based Beth Goobie’s young adult novel Hello, Groin except to admit it: I have mixed feelings. ![]()
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