Moxie - Jennifer Mathieu

Title: Moxie
Author: Jennifer Mathieu
Genre: YA
Rating: 4/5
# pages: 352
Date read: October, 2022

MOXIE GIRLS FIGHT BACK!

Vivian Carter is fed up. Fed up with an administration at her high school that thinks the football team can do no wrong. Fed up with sexist dress codes, hallway harassment, and gross comments from guys during class. But most of all, Viv Carter is fed up with always following the rules.

Viv's mom was a tough-as-nails, punk rock Riot Grrrl in the '90s, and now Viv takes a page from her mother's past and creates a feminist zine that she distributes anonymously to her classmates. She's just blowing off steam, but other girls respond. As Viv forges friendships with other young women across the divides of cliques and popularity rankings, she realizes that what she has started is nothing short of a girl revolution.


The book the movie is "inspired" by... which is a very odd way to put it as it's blatantly the same story (so what's the difference between inspired by and based on??? But I digress). I loved the movie, and I loved the book as well. Very captivating read. I liked that it showed that things weren't necessarily black and white, that nuances exist, and that there's room for growth.

The end frustrated me a bit as certain someones got off far too easily IMHO, but I guess that just makes it more realistic - unfortunately.

Written in the Stars - Alexandria Bellefleur

Title: Written in the Stars
Author: Alexandria Bellefleur
Genre: Chick-lit, LGBTQ+
Rating: 2.5/5
# pages: Audiobook ~11hrs
Date read: October, 2022

After a disastrous blind date, Darcy Lowell is desperate to stop her well-meaning brother from playing matchmaker ever again. Love—and the inevitable heartbreak—is the last thing she wants. So she fibs and says her latest set up was a success. Darcy doesn’t expect her lie to bite her in the ass.

Elle Jones, one of the astrologers behind the popular Twitter account, Oh My Stars, dreams of finding her soul mate. But she knows it is most assuredly not Darcy... a no-nonsense stick-in-the-mud, who is way too analytical, punctual, and skeptical for someone as free-spirited as Elle. When Darcy’s brother—and Elle's new business partner—expresses how happy he is that they hit it off, Elle is baffled. Was Darcy on the same date? Because... awkward.

When Darcy begs Elle to play along, she agrees to pretend they’re dating to save face. But with a few conditions: Darcy must help Elle navigate her own overbearing family over the holidays and their arrangement expires on New Year’s Eve. The last thing they expect is to develop real feelings during a fake relationship.

But maybe opposites can attract when true love is written in the stars?


Could have been a really sweet take on the fake-dating trope, but it just fell flat to me in so many ways. The "3rd act misunderstanding" is one of my biggest pet peeves in chick-lits, and it was even worse here than usual - to the point that I gave up on listening to it, and read the rest as an ebook, because I wanted to do the opposite of dwelling on it. In its defense (and one of the reasons I'm still rating this 3 stars on Goodreads) it handled to follow-up on the misunderstanding quite well, but it never should have happened in the first place. And the ending was far too quick and with far too little follow-up afterwards.

A 2.5 star rating. Rounded up, because I did enjoy most of it - but I'm not going to read any more of this series.