CHANGERS

On the morning of the first day of high school, a boy named Ethan wakes up as a girl named Drew.

Turns out Drew is a Changer, one of “an ancient race of humans” who wake up as a different person on the first day of each year of high school (how ancient Changers transformed before the existence of high schools is one of many questions left oddly unaddressed). Similarly, readers learn that Changers will “help make the world a better place,” that Changers see non-Changers’ (aka Statics’) futures when they kiss, and that all Changers wear an emblem branded on their hips—but they are never told why these things are true nor what’s wrong with the world and how Changers will help. Drew’s narrative voice is engaging, often sarcastic and sometimes poignant. Her outsider observations about how it feels to be a girl and how girls are treated are genuine, keenly observed and sometimes funny (“Also, girls aren’t allowed to fart. Ever”). Two love interests develop for Drew, a Changer boy and a Static girl, and their genders are, refreshingly, a nonissue, though Drew’s interest in a Changer violates another seemingly arbitrary Changer rule against Changer-Changer liaisons.

A fresh and charmingly narrated look at teens and gender, but the worldbuilding is distractingly bizarre.