M — who has taken to raiding my TBR pile when she’s looking for something new — after devouring this book (which led to interesting conversations at school, she said), slammed it down on the desk and announced: “There is NOTHING bad that I can say about this book. You gotta read it, Mom.”

So, I finally got around to it. And I have to agree: there’s nothing bad that I can say about this book by Robin Brande.

The basic plot is best summed up with the back-of-the-book blurb:

I knew today would be ugly. When you’re single-handedly responsible for getting your church, your pastor, and everyone of your former friends and their parents sued for millions of dollars, you expect to make some enemies. Fine. It’s just that I hoped my first day of school — of high school, thank you, which I’ve only been looking forward to my entire life — might turn out to be at least slightly better than eating live bugs. But I guess I was wrong.

Mena is a wonderful narrator. As an evangelical Christian, she just wants to do what’s best. Church has been her whole life up until this point, and she’s finding the adjustment — from being part of the in crowd to being on the outs — difficult, to say the least. Enter Ms. Shepherd, biology teacher extraordinaire, and Casey, lab partner extraordinaire. Without biology class, Mena’s year would have been horrible. She would have been miserable. But Casey, and Ms. Shepherd through the battle waged with the evangelicals over teaching Evolution (versus Intelligent Design), challenge and expand Mena’s world view. And her her case, that’s a very good thing.

I’ll leave the rest of the details for your to find out on your own.

I loved this book. I was worried at the beginning of the book that the end line would be Christians = bad and close minded, scientists and liberals = good and desirable. That formula, often found in books, and expressed across the Internet is part of what keeps me from mentioning my church all the time. I don’t want to be automatically lumped in the former category, as my church sometimes is, mostly because I don’t consider myself closed-minded… But I’m not going to go there; this is not a political or religious blog. These were just some of the thoughts I was having while reading this book. (As a friend commented when I was telling her about the book after church today: a book that makes you think is a sign of a really good book.) But, I was gratified that Brande treated religion with respect. I came away with the impression that she feels, or at least Mena feels, that it’s not religion that is bad and closed minded, per se, just some people’s interpretations of it. And I can agree with that. I think my favorite part is when Mena comes to a conclusion about evolution, one that she comes to with her own God-given brain:

My brain tells me there are facts out there to prove Darwin had it right. My brain also tells me there must be a way to keep believing in the Bible while also believing in science.

Not quite as easy to fit on a sign as Darwin = Devil, I admit. Maybe if I had to boil it down to one easy sentence, it would be this: I believe in evolution, and I believe in God.

I just haven’t worked out the details yet.

It’s this balance between science and God (another digression, but yet something I thought a lot about while reading) that’s subject to so much debate. Religion on one side, science on the other. And yet, this book explores the gray in between the two. And does it wonderfully.

There are also a lot of little things I loved — Kayla, Casey’s older sister; the puppies; the Lord of the Rings references (watched parts of Two Towers last night because of the book….); and that Brande captured a 14-year-old girl’s search to find herself while remaining true to the beliefs she was brought up in.

And she does it most excellently.