Name: Sophia
Grade: 11th
Title: Twelve Steps to Normal
Author: Farrah Penn
Published in: 2018
Pages: 366
Rating: 3 stars
Review: Twelve Steps to Normal follows a young girl, Kira, who struggles with having an alcoholic father. Her life was uprooted when he went into a rehab center and she was moved to live with her aunt in Oregon. After being gone for months and months, she has become disconnected with her friends and is still pining after the boyfriend she broke up with. Now being back it feels like she is a stranger in her own home and it doesn’t help that her dad has brought some of his friends from the rehab center to live with them. Kira creates a twelve-step list to try and bring her life back to normal, but what she doesn’t realize is that no matter what she does there is no normal.
I really enjoyed this book. While it didn’t have the best writing style and some of the character development was subpar, it was entertaining nonetheless. I felt like I could connect with many of the characters and their struggles. Even if addiction and alcohol abuse isn’t present in your everyday life, there are still characters that you can relate to. This might be a bit of a cliche, but my favorite character was Kira’s love interest Alex. Alex is a really supportive and caring person and, even though he has his flaws he overcomes them in the end. This book made me feel like not having a perfectly “normal” life is okay. It seems like not having the norm may in itself be the norm, and this book depicts that fairly well.
I would recommend this book. While it isn’t extremely groundbreaking it is still an entertaining read. I definitely recommend this book to anyone who is a little bit of a sucker for a cliche storyline and likes a good realistic fiction. I hope that if you decide to pick this book up you enjoy it.
AFL Teen Book Reviews 