The Teenager with a Chameleon Soul by Cindy McElroy

I am delighted to kick off my first blog tour with YA Bound Book Tours and introduce The Teenager with a Chameleon Soul by Cindy McElroy.

Genre: YA Contemporary Fiction
Release Date: September 28, 2017

ABOUT THE BOOK

Meet Sadie MacPhearson. She’s seventeen and lives in a ritzy, artsy beach town called Mariposa Beach, California. Blond, bootylicious and beautiful—she’s a main chick of the Pop Crowd: the most flawless looking, smartest, trendiest, richest, fabulous group of party animals at Mariposa Beach High School. She wants one thing, to keep her secret but it’s always lingering above her head. When the administrators want to assess her for a learning disability, she coats inhibitions and fears with alcohol, which, in turn, causes serious damage in her life, mostly her chameleon soul.

After struggling to blend in, senior year, Sadie finds herself without her dear grandmother, with disgusted parents, three hundred and sixty mandatory volunteer hours and AA meetings, no driver’s license or Jeep, zero friends, and cognitively low classes. Feeling like success is not an option with her learning disability, she sits behind building C next to an overweight, military loving, book nerd Jay Felix on the first day of senior year. He pushes her to be her best self. But even at her best, can Sadie overcome her learning disability, her struggles with alcohol and graduate from high school at the cutthroat Mariposa Beach High School or will the lure of the Pop Crowd take her down?

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MY REVIEW

I read this book in a day! Sadie is the epitomy of many teenage girls today who want to fit in with the popular crowd no matter the cost of their self-respect and self-worth. Her character is very crass, bitchy and just unlikeable at first, but when she hits rock bottom and claws her way to the top again, you are rooting for her all the way!!

I really loved the supporting characters, Jay (nicknamed Big Fat Mexican, BFM for short) and Adriana (nicknamed Orange). Their strengths of character are what everyone wants in a true friend.

Overall, Ms. McElroy’s writing embodies the YA genre. Her characters are funny, vulnerable, inspired, confused, and determined. Also, Sadie’s poem is noteable of Ms. McElroy’s poetic talent. There are several prudent quotes in her book, but one that I believe sums up the book and is good advice for all ages is “before you settle down, heal yourself, find yourself, know yourself, correct yourself, see yourself, love yourself, be yourself and respect yourself.” A fantastic first novel!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Cindy McElroy is a young adult novel writer. The Teenager with a Chameleon Soul is her first book. She’s the wife of a firefighter, and the mother of three children and a Rhodesian Ridgeback, but she’s also been a special education teacher, a camp counselor and police decoy. She does her best writing when she’s beach camping, or her kids are asleep or at school. If she’s not writing or with her family, she’s reading, doing yoga, water skiing, snowboarding or SUP boarding near her home in Ventura County, California. Cindy loves to write humorous yet emotional novels about young adults experiencing young adult things.

AUTHOR LINKS

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Website
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Amazon U.S.
Amazon U.K.
Barnes & Noble
GoodReads

Thank you to Cindy McElroy, G ateKeeper Press and YA Bo und Book Tours for giving me the opportunity to review this book and be a part of this book tour!