Author: Barbara Dee
Release date: September 5, 2017
Published by: Aladdin Books/Simon&Schuster
Rating: 4 of 5 stars
Norah Levy has just completed two years of treatment for leukemia and is ready to go back to the "real world" of middle school. The hospital social worker warns her the transition back may be tricky, but Norah isn't worried. Compared with battling cancer, how tricky can seventh grade be?
Very. Everyone is either treating Norah like she will break at any second, or acting weird about all the attention she's getting. Her best friend, Harper, does her best to be there for Norah, but she doesn't get it, really--and is hanging out with a new group of girls, leaving Norah feeling a little unsteady. Norah's other good friend, Silas, is avoiding her. What's that about, anyway?
When Norah is placed with the eighth graders for math and science she meets Griffin, a cute boy who encourages her love for drawing and Greek mythology. And Norah decides not to tell him her secret--that she was "that girl" who had cancer. But when something happens to make her secret-keeping impossible, Norah must figure out a way to share her cancer story. But how do you explain something to others that you can't explain to yourself? And then, once you find the words, how do you move forward with a whole new "'normal'? (Summary from Goodreads)
My thoughts: Halfway Normal is about a girl who just came back to school after 2 years of cancer. She is finding it hard to fit in because everyone is treating her like “cancer girl”. Even her parents. They are being so careful with her trying to keep her as healthy and germ-free as possible. Although Norah has a different idea. She wants to be able to do stuff. She wants to do after-school and have crushes and have friends she can commit to. She wants to go to parties or even to a friends house on weekends. She doesn’t want to have to stay home and have a specific time limit on being out of the house and having a specific time to be home by. Norah is like any other teenager wanting to go live her life but she she has lots of rules to follow. But instead of being that girl who feels like she fits in she feels like the girl who doesn’t fit in. She also gets bothered easily but doesn’t know why.
Final thoughts: This is an awesome book that is totally relatable.
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