Book Review: Misfit McCabe by LK Gardner-Griffie

I am a voracious reader. Science fiction enthrals me, fantasy rivets me, romance gives me goose bumps and detective stories intrigue. There are books that grip me so that I can't sleep until I find out the ending, and there are books that make me laugh out loud. However, very few books make me want to cry - LK Gardner-Griffie's young adult novel, Misfit McCabe is definitely one of them.

Reading Misfit McCabe stirred up long buried emotions - feelings of internal dissonance, disappointment, abandonment, fear, overwhelming embarrassment - all the ups and downs of a highly strung teenage girl that I thought I had long gotten rid of. What do you know -they were merely lurking beneath the surface, waiting for Gardner-Griffie's well-placed words to stir them from their slumber. One of the reasons I identified strongly with Katie McCabe, the story's protagonist, was when she claimed, "It's not fair I have to be a certain way just because of my last name." Story of my life, seriously. There have been times when I have wanted to yell, I am not my father, when people place ridiculous expectations of how I should behave just because of the family I grew up in.

Which of you hasn't ever felt driven to do something mischievous for revenge just because it seemed fun at the moment (AND would seriously annoy the person) and then regret it later? Which of you hasn't felt the pang of first love, when that cute guy you enjoy hanging out with just so innocently - or not so innocently maybe - slips his arm around your shoulder? Gardner-Griffie doesn't just deal with the good stuff, though. Katie has some pretty tough times to go through that none of us would like to deal with: a hospitalised father, living with unknown relatives, nasty bullies and a long cycle of revenge with horrible results.

Misfit McCabe is a well-crafted book that definitely deserves the Pearson Prize Teen Choice Award it received.

Where to obtain a copy

I actually got to know about the book through my interactions with the author(@lkgg) on twitter (see Twitter and the NaNoWriMo Experience) and it probably isn't on Malaysian shelves yet (Malaysia's book scene is way behind). I bought my copy online from smashwords, where it's available in Kindle, Epub, PDF, RTF, LRF and Palm Doc formats as well as plain text. It's also available as paperback on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.