Review: MOXIE by Jennifer Mathieu

FACTS ABOUT THE BOOK

Title: MOXIE
Author: Jennifer Mathieu
Publisher: Hodder Children's Books
Price: 8,53€ (Amazon)

Pages: 340
Genre: Feminism, Riot Grrrl, Girl Power, High School, Contemporary
Year: 2017

BACK OF THE BOOK / WHAT'S IT ABOUT?

'I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH!' Zoella

'... this is my new favorite book. I'm proud to be a Moxie girl!' Jennifer Niven, author of All the Bright Places and Holding Up the Universe

Vivian Carter is fed up.

Fed up with her high school teachers who think 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 mum 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 Moxie, a feminist zine that she distributes anonymously to her classmates. She's just blowing off steam, but other girls respond and spread the Moxie message. As Viv forges friendships with other young women across the divides of cliques and popularity rankings, she realises that what she has started is nothing short of a girl revolution.

IT'S TIME TO FIGHT LIKE A GIRL

A page-turning read with a feminist message, for anyone who has ever had to deal with #everydaysexism

'MOXIE is sweet funny and fierce. Read this and then join the fight!' AMY POEHLER

MY THOUGHTS ON THE BOOK

Wow.

I cannot even put into words how much I love this book and what an impact it had on me.

I want to encourage each and every one to read this book, but mostly girls of all ages and especially young girls in school who might experience something similar to what Vivian and the other girls had to endure at their High School.

I really wish that this book would get read in school because it is not only an amazingly entertaining book that makes you flow through the pages, but it is most of all an extremely important topic - feminism, girl power - that gets explained and actually put into action in such an inclusive way that nobody could read this book and not feel involved in it.

Feminism often scares people because they think that it stands for man hating/misandry and therefore want to distance themselves from it. This book has done such a great job in preventing that from happening in any way. This book is about EMPOWERING girls, SUPPORTING girls and UNITING girls against injustice, violence, mockery and harassment. And if anybody sees anything wrong in that, then you should really overthink yourself.

I am very passionate when it comes to LGBTQ* rights but I am also fiercely feminist. I therefore definitely support an intersectional feminist approach and was very glad that this book portrayed that.

This book was part of Zoella's 2017 Book Club and that's also how it got my attention. But since Adam Silvera's History Is All You Left Me (click here for my review) was also part of that book club and I didn't like that book, I was a bit sceptical whether I might not really enjoy Zoella's taste. But thank heaven for this book! Wow.

I loved so much about this book and I will never be able to get across to you how amazing and empowered this book made me feel, which is why I just want to highly encourage you to READ IT and experience it yourself!

There were so many pages in this book that I just wanted to take a picture of and post everywhere because their messages were so on point and I was just spending my whole reading experience praising the book and the main character Vivian with Queer Eye's Jonathan's YASS QUEEN all the time.

Since Zoella didn't come across as a very outspoken feminist to me, I had expected a rather light read with a few feminist elements sprinkled in there but to be honest with you, I hadn't even expected the book to actually use the word "feminist" because it is so controversial to so many people who don't want to rub somebody up the wrong way. But this book does definitely not only use Feminism as a promotional strategy on the cover and on the back but actually LIVES Feminism in a way that I have never read before. And I am so hyped now to read more books like this. (And also soo excited that Amy Poehler has already bought the rights to make this book into a movie!)

Just to give you an idea of how amazing this book is - here are some of my favourite excerpts of Vivian's MOXIE zine in the book:

Now, I always love when a book isn't only made up of words but has some drawing or pictures in it. And this book did not only do this but did it in such an awesome way that I was always hugely looking forward to Vivian's next MOXIE zine.

Vivian also had such a great bond with her mother, who inspires her so much, and I loved to see these two together and the backstory of her mother and how much that influenced Vivian. I'm always a sucker for loving mother/daughter bonds in books and was very happy with the one in MOXIE.

So I really loved this book and thought it was such a perfect book - when something started happening that I thought OH NO PLEASE NO WHY DOES THIS HAVE TO HAPPEN IN SUCH AN AMAZING BOOK? - well, basically the main character falls in love with a boy = ROMANCE.

I was a bit taken aback at first, not gonna lie, and felt that it was so unnecessary to squeeze a romance into this great feminist book. But now that I've read the whole book I really approve of it. Because it works as a great tool to show both Vivian and the reader that not all boys are assholes and that you don't have to be a man hater to be a feminist. Besides, what better way to make me approve of a boy than showing him as a feminist himself?

CONCLUSION

PLEASE READ THIS BOOK. And have a lot of fun doing so! :)

This is such a great book.

In fact, after I've read so many books lately that I didn't enjoy or that I even had to force myself through, I felt so HAPPY and relieved to finally discover an amazing book again.

But if this one great book ends up being as incredible as this one is, then it's so worth reading myself through so many pebbles, to finally find a gem. *-*

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