POSTED

 

Set in a middle school where phones are banned, the student body starts leaving post its on lockers. Naturally, this spirals into bullying. 

The cast of characters kept this book going for me. 

Frost: POV guy. A poet who won an award once. 

DeeDee: The most nerdy one. Into LotR and D&D. Has a dad who's described as an "Indian Santa Claus," which made me sad he was never "on-screen" in the book. 

Bench: The athlete who rarely gets off the bench. He's one of two black characters mentioned, the other being the girl who got phones banned in the first place. (She never plays another role in the story.) The one closest to being middle school cool.

Wolf: Not because he's a badass, but because he's like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. A piano prodigy. 

Rose: The new girl trying to find a place to fit in. She's such a big girl that the guys' initial opinions of her were that she had to play some sort of sport. So think athletic girl bigger than a lot of the guys her age. Except she's not into sports. Rose is awesome. She was my favorite pretty early on. 

The drama begins when Rose joins the four guys at their lunch table and no one but her is comfortable. Wolf and she quickly become besties, while Bench gets teased by his teammates and abandons the group, especially after making a game-winning catch. Frost, who was closest to Bench, is upset by this, but it's never properly addressed until nearer the end. 

Meanwhile, there's homophobic harassment aimed at Wolf, who I don't think clearly comes out, but I got the feeling he wasn't straight. And Rose stops the bullies from bothering DeeDee by taking on a possibly dangerous bet. 

I liked this, but it was frustrating to not really like the POV character. Frost isn't terrible, but he's too wishy-washy for me. I can't remember if he ever even shared his poems with the others by the end of the book. I would have talked to Bench much earlier. I wouldn't keep my friends at arm's length, which is kind of what he does. Wolf and Rose are the two best characters, so I kept reading for them. Not something I'd reread, but I don't regret reading it.