{"id":5064,"date":"2015-05-15T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-05-15T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/booksyalove.com\/?p=5064"},"modified":"2015-05-12T09:38:11","modified_gmt":"2015-05-12T14:38:11","slug":"h-is-simmone-howells-summer-of-mystery-weird-in-girl-defective-book-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/?p=5064","title":{"rendered":"Girl Defective, by Simmone Howell (book review) – summer of music, mystery & weird"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"book<\/a>Scary-sad missing girl mystery<\/a>.
\nLittle brother thinks he’s a super-detective.
\nNew guy at their vinyl shop has a secret.<\/p>\n

Sky isn’t sure what’s worse – Dad ignoring the eviction notice, seeing friend Nancy drift away, or her dreams of drowned Mia.<\/p>\n

Watching Gully all summer will be dreadful, since the 10 year old wears his pig-snout mask always and logs every scrap of conversation like a secret agent – can’t Sky just work at the family record shop<\/a> and go to concerts like everyone else?<\/p>\n

Snag a free excerpt of the book here<\/a>, then ask for Girl Defective<\/em>\u00a0 at your local library<\/a> or independent bookstore<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Did family expectations every make you defer a dream job?
\n**kmm<\/p>\n

Book info<\/strong>: Girl Defective \/ Simmone Howell. Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2014.\u00a0 [author site<\/a>]\u00a0 [publisher site<\/a>] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.<\/p>\n

My book talk<\/strong>: This summer, Sky just wants to run her family’s vintage vinyl shop and fall in love, but dire secrets percolate up in their scruffy Australian neighborhood, and her social-skills-lacking little brother Gully keeps calling the police with clues.<\/p>\n

After Mom left them to “follow her art” and Dad crawled into his homebrew bottle, it’s been up to Skylark to take care of 10-year-old autist Gully (who melts down when everything isn’t just-so) and keep the doors of their vintage vinyl record shop open for collectors.<\/p>\n

Stylish pal Nancy tries to get Sky out for concerts before a developer razes local venues (“progress” – ha!),\u00a0 a missing person case is deemed suicide (who’s making those memorial murals?), and Dad hires new guy Luke to work in the shop (very cute, in a hidden-sadness way) – quite enough happening in St. Kilda before the eviction notice arrives.<\/p>\n

What will become of the vinyl shop?
\nDid Gully really find clues about Mia’s death?
\nCould Luke really be interested in Sky?<\/p>\n

Music, dreams, lies, love, death, and clues – not quite the summer holiday that Sky had envisioned! (One of 6,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scary-sad missing girl mystery. Little brother thinks he’s a super-detective. New guy at their vinyl shop has a secret. Sky isn’t sure what’s worse – Dad ignoring the eviction notice, seeing friend Nancy drift away, or her dreams of drowned Mia. Watching Gully all summer will be dreadful, since the 10 year old wears his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,51],"tags":[90,104,22,75,11,20,5,70,16,18,40,44,43,39,49,96,86,31,15,21,35,6],"class_list":["post-5064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-mystery","tag-abandonment","tag-australia","tag-behavior","tag-brothers","tag-communication","tag-conflict","tag-coping","tag-crime","tag-determination","tag-family","tag-fathers","tag-friendship","tag-growing-up","tag-love","tag-memories","tag-mental-health","tag-music","tag-non-us-author","tag-relationships","tag-self-image","tag-surprises","tag-travel"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5064"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5740,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5064\/revisions\/5740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}