THE TRUTH PROJECT

The results of a DNA test send a high school senior into a tailspin.

Cordelia has always felt out of place in her family of five. But when she crafts her senior class project around her ancestry and love of poetry, she never expects that the results of the DNA test she takes will shake the foundation of her identity. The test reveals that her father is not the man who raised her, triggering a myriad of questions and leading to a crisis of identity. The testing company connects her with the man who is her biological father, whom she contacts looking for answers. When he responds, she becomes increasingly fixated on getting to know him, going so far as to use a class trip as an excuse to travel from her home in Tundra Cove, Alaska, to Seattle, where he lives, so she can meet him. Told in a combination of verse, text messages, and emails, this debut stretches out a thin plot as Cordelia's expressions of emotional angst feel flat and repetitive. The communication between Cordelia and the adults in her life may strain readers’ patience and credulity. A lukewarm romance develops between Cordelia and her childhood friend–turned–troubled boy Kodiak Jones. Cordelia, who is White, often employs animal imagery to describe Kodiak, who is described as having Tlingit ancestry on his mother’s side. (An earlier version of this review misstated the hometown of the protagonist.)

This spin on a teenager’s search for identity wears thin without much substance to support it.