Seventh grader Olivia feels out of place. Everyone in her life is focused on crushes and relationships, but she\u2019d rather spend her time drawing and watching her favorite YouTuber. Her brother, Malcolm, who\u2019s gay, is prioritizing his new boyfriend; her friends are obsessed with a new social media app called KruShh; and everyone\u2019s talking about who\u2019s taking whom to the fall formal. The more Olivia, who\u2019s cued Black, feels pressured to \u201clike\u201d people, the more invisible she feels, until she actually starts to flicker in and out of corporeality. Only tan-skinned Jules, her nonbinary classmate, and purple-haired, white-presenting Ms. Amelia, the new school librarian, can consistently see and hear her. Through a book club, the pair, who are ace, introduce Olivia to the idea that she might be aromantic and asexual. As she grapples with her identity, her interpersonal relationships, and her invisibility, Olivia must decide if she\u2019ll give in to allonormative peer pressure or find a way to be seen as she truly is. Burch deftly portrays the challenges of shifting middle school friendships, effectively using the fantastical element of invisibility to highlight Olivia\u2019s experience with external and internalized aro- and ace-phobia (Jules also periodically experiences invisibility). Olivia and Malcolm\u2019s parents are enthusiastic allies. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Seventh grader Olivia feels out of place. Everyone in her life is focused on crushes and relationships, but she\u2019d rather spend her time drawing and watching her favorite YouTuber. Her brother, Malcolm, who\u2019s gay, is prioritizing his new boyfriend; her friends are obsessed with a new social media app called KruShh; and everyone\u2019s talking about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5870,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5869"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}