Midair by Kodi Scheer

Vanessa is a deeply unpleasant person, though her terrible attitude and suicide ideation might be the result of her brother’s recent death, her mother’s self-medicating with sedatives, and her being accused of cheating on her ACTs (which dashed her college hopes). So now she’s flying to Paris alongside three other girls from her school, and she’s planning to jump from the Eiffel Tower.

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Overall: Middling coming-of-age drama with an unlikable narrator. In a world where Mean Girls exists, the book doesn’t really need to.

Random Things

- In addition to Paw Patrol, ARR’s current obsession is Blaze and the Monster Machines. I think any show that uses the phrase (and thereby encourages preschoolers to shout), “This looks like a job for structural engineering!” is A-OK in my book.

- After two months and change at the calorie-counting thing, I’ve lost 14 pounds off my high weight or 10 pounds “for real.” I’m about halfway to where I want to be, which my app thinks will be in mid-September. It’s certainly easier doing this during the summer, when an abundance of good produce is available and taking ARR out for an hour of runaround is generally feasible.

- My sister likes to send care packages to her nephew, and one arrived last week. The big hits were Paw Patrol-branded watercolor paints (which we had to use to make bones for all the members of the team) and the “magic sand” modeling stuff. Also noteworthy was his first exposure to Silly Putty, which I showed him how to pick up newsprint with but he was more interested in bouncing.

- During the drive to the beach last weekend, we put on a mix CD which ARR woke up to. There was a Genesis track on this CD. ARR was randomly singing to himself, “I can’t dance, I can’t sing” over the course of the weekend.

- ARR met his great-uncles’ dogs this weekend, and that went reasonably well. They’re relatively small and chill dogs (and were more interested in the spinach dip than the small humans), which likely helped.

- Gramma ordered ARR some Paw Patrol sheets, which he loved except when he noticed that Skye wasn’t on them. Yep, they left off the only female character. Jethrien posted a complaint on the manufacturer’s Facebook page; Gramma called the seller and got them to ship an additional set of the Skye sheets.

- Our new kitchen table arrived today. It’s lovely except for the part where Huffman-Koos didn’t give us the second leaf, so it’s 20” shorter than we wanted. Complaints have been lodged. Gaming will be a little snug this week.