HOW TO BE A GIRL IN THE WORLD

Lydia, 12, would rather swelter in heavy clothes in the August heat than endure her mom’s boyfriend, Jeremy, touching her bare skin.

Without saying why, Lydia gives her cousin Emma, 11, who lives with them, the candy he slips them. Jeremy’s not the only male threat in Lydia’s world: Andrew and their male Catholic school classmates find ingenious ways to look up her skirt. Knowing her friends happily seek male attention that sickens her, she keeps her reactions to herself. Is it normal to enjoy this? Lydia, who’s white, has distanced herself from Emma, whose mother is deceased and who longs to live with her dad. (Emma’s biracial; her mom was black and her dad is white.) Emotionally isolated from her squabbling, divorced parents, Lydia dreads hurting her attorney mom; her bartender dad often cancels their scheduled visits. Dreading the day Jeremy will move into their new house, Lydia discovers it contains a room with herbal extracts and a book of spells she hopes will offer needed protection. This ambitious novel covers significant, rarely explored ground. Do manspreading, unchecked sexualized teasing, and sexual predation share a continuum of exploitation? Who gets to define each? Why most female characters here accept these behaviors with passive resignation or active welcome remains frustratingly unexplored. Also hovering unacknowledged is the role of sexual objectification as a societal norm and value.

A flawed but urgent read set in the fading #MeToo era, this is sure to ignite mother-daughter book club debates.