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Reviewed by:
  • Lux, the New Girl by Ashley Woodfolk
  • Deborah Stevenson, Editor
Woodfolk, Ashley Lux, the New Girl. Penguin Workshop,
2020 [144p] (Flyy Girls)
Trade ed. ISBN 9780593096024 $15.99
Paper ed. ISBN 9780593096017 $6.99
E-book ed. ISBN 9780593096031 $6.99
Reviewed from digital galleys Ad Gr. 7-10

This first title in a planned four-volume series, each following one of a group of four Harlem teenagers, chronicles the adventures of pugnacious Lux. After being kicked out of yet another high school, this time for assaulting a girl, she's sent to live with her stern ex-Marine father and his new family, and she enters her last-chance school, the Augusta Savage School of Arts, where she'll be studying photography. There she's desperate to make friends with Micah, Noelle, and Tobyn, the Flyy Girls, whose clever rebellions and effortless cool are aspirational for Lux, but what will happen when they discover her lie about the reason she left her old school? Lux is bad enough to be charismatic and good enough to be redeemable, and the narrative moves at a gratifyingly fast clip, especially for reluctant readers, who will appreciate the directness of the subtext-free prose. The book tosses details aside for narrative convenience, though, when it comes to the treatment of Lux's fight (she's let off the hook with surprising ease) and her parents' split (the story isn't successful in its attempt to redeem her dad for walking out without a word), and the other three girls aren't characterized with any interesting depth. That's likely to change in their own books, though, and there are definitely readers who would relish a speedy read about girls who rule the school.

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