Hello everyone and welcome back to the blog! Today I have a review for you and oh boy this read has been a rollercoaster of emotions.

And now, without further ado, let’s start!

In the debut middle grade novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Gayle Forman comes a poignant and powerful coming-of-age story that follows a young girl and her new friend as they learn about family, friendship, allyship, and finding your way in a complicated world.

It’s the summer of 1987, and all ten-year-old Bug wants to do is go to the beach with her older brother and hang out with the locals on the boardwalk. But Danny wants to be with his own friends, and Bug’s mom is too busy, so Bug is stuck with their neighbor Philip’s nephew, Frankie.

Bug’s not too excited about hanging out with a kid she’s never met, but they soon find some common ground. And as the summer unfolds, they find themselves learning some important lessons about each other, and the world.

Like what it means to be your true self and how to be a good ally for others. That family can be the people you’re related to, but also the people you choose to have around you. And that even though life isn’t always fair, we can all do our part to make it more just.

Find it: Goodreads, Amazon, Kindle, Audible, B&N, iBooks, Kobo, TBD, Bookshop.org

Title – Frankie & Bug
Author – Gayle Forman
Publisher – Aladdin
Genre – Middle-grade Coming-of-age Novel
Release date – October 12th, 2021
Pages – 282

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Bug (Beatrice) is growing up in the ’80s, and she wants to spend her summer with her older brother Danny (Daniel) on the beach. Like she does every year. Unfortunately, this year (1987) is going to be quite different. Her brother doesn’t want to spend as much time with his little sister as he did in the past because he is now a teenager, and Bug doesn’t understand why her brother is distancing himself from her. The cherry on the top is that she now has to spend time with a total stranger named Frankie. And he is definitely not interested in the same things as Bug until they discover the shared interest about the Midnight Marauder.

“Frankie & Bug” is such an important and cute coming-of-age novel for our middle grade readers out there. But not only for them because Forman gives us an important lecture about acceptance, love, tolerance and friendship. This lesson can also be helpful for an older target of readers. Teenagers, Young Adults and Adults.

The author states that she is herself a cis-gendered white woman, but you can observe, throughout the whole novel, that she has done her research, as she talks about a bi-racial girl and a young transgender boy. I loved to read about how we saw Bug growing up maturity wise.

This heartwarming novel is a must-read that I cannot recommend enough to all of you.

About Gayle Forman: 

Gayle Forman is an award-winning author and journalist whose articles have appeared in numerous publications, including Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, and Elle in the US. Gayle Forman’s novel, If I Stay, was released as a blockbuster movie starring Chloë Grace Moretz in 2014. Her most recent YA novel is We Are Inevitable. Gayle lives in Brooklyn, New York with her family.

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*DISCLAIMER: A review copy of this book has been sent to me in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts are my own!

This post should have originally been posted on October 9th, during the Rockstar Book Tour, but due to some unexpected error it is only going to be posted today. I’m sorry for any inconvenience this technical error might have created.