"Annie on my Mind" is a truely inspirational novel.
It teaches its readers that they can love and be loved, no matter the gender. But the book also tells its readers that love is not all butterfly kisses and frolicking through the meadows. It show that there are still many people out there who discriminate against homosexual relationships.
It did not take me long to read through and finish this book but as I read I could feel he emotions of the characters and found a little piece of myself hidden deep within the depths of the souls of the two main characters. By the end of the I felt the lonliness that Eliza felt and was near tears(weither joyful or sorrowful I cannot say in case thouse who have not finished stummble upon my comment).
I hope to find more books with a genre similar to this novel and written just as well. ( )

Reviewed by Sally Kruger, aka "Readingjunky" for TeensReadToo.com

Nancy Garden's ANNIE ON MY MIND, originally published in 1982, was recently re-released. (It includes an interview with the author herself.)

The book represents an early example of realistic young adult fiction depicting a lesbian relationship between two high school seniors. It is still a fitting portrayal for today's teens.

Liza and Annie meet in a New York museum and develop a fast friendship. Both seem to realize there is something different about their relationship, but admitting that at the start is difficult for both. The story is told as Annie remembers it, and focuses mostly on her struggle to accept the facts she is learning about herself.

The book's first half takes the reader into the growing friendship between the girls. There is considerable time spent describing how they discover their common interests and the activities they find to spend time together. The girls come from different backgrounds - Liza attends a relatively sheltered, private school currently struggling with financial difficulties, while Annie attends public school and is faced with drugs, violence, and other social problems public schools must deal with both then and now.

As the girls' relationship develops, the plot becomes more involved in Liza's role as student council president and her school's struggle with a fund-raising campaign. Liza and Annie begin to accept the true direction of their friendship, and of course, as other people become aware, controversy surfaces. Will the admission of their gay lifestyle cause acceptance or abandonment by family and friends? Could their situation adversely affect a similar relationship between two teachers in Liza's private school?

ANNIE ON MY MIND delves into the acceptance of homosexuality. It seems there will always be two sides to this controversy, but the re-release of the book may ask readers to decide if things are changing as time passes. What really matters in love - what is "right" for those involved or what is perceived as "right" by those whose views may differ? ( )

Liza meets Annie and they strike up an immediate friendship. Liza, loves architecture and visiting museums. Annie is a great singer and actress. They quickly begin spending all the time together they can. When they share a kiss, they have to figure out what that means for them. For Liza, she hasn't thought much about if she is a lesbian. But the two must address the issue. At Foster, Liza's private school, Liza is the president of the student council and pressured to be a role model. When the girls' relationship is discovered, the headmistress decides to go on the offensive to rid the school of Liza and the teachers on faculty who are a lesbian couple.
The novel is a beautiful love story told in flashbacks as Liza struggles to write Annie a letter the next year while they are apart at different colleges. ( )

I would describe this novel the way that Liza describes Annie: magical.


Annie on My Mind beautifully portrays the struggles of a high school student to both live up to others expectations and follow her own heart.

Garden perfectly captures being swept up in a new romance and the effects it can have on ourselves and others. The gradual realizations of the characters about themselves parallel the discoveries real youths make about themselves at this point in their lives.

Annie on My Mind is told from Liza's perspective as she forces herself to remember all the events of the previous year and tries to write a letter to Annie. These moments are particularly poignant; who hasn't found it difficult to express their sentiments after such a trying and awkward time? The shifts to the present are abrupt, however, do not interrupt the story, but rather facilitate the telling by emphasizing the powerful emotions Annie feels as she remembers past events.

My largest problem with the story is the way the last events of the story Liza tells unfold. It seemed too neat for a real world solution with everything working out just they way it's supposed to.

Garden uses prose that is both eloquent and simple making the novel accessible and powerful to the youth audience at which it is aimed. I would highly recommend this novel to teenagers as well as their parents. This book is one to which they can relate their experiences no matter what orientation. It is also a book which could help their family relate to what they are feeling.

Overall this novel's lessons and message are wonderful. It is a book you won't be able to put down and one you'll want to pass on to others. ( )

The first YA novel to feature queer characters with a happy ending, this is now a classic. Liza and Annie's tentative romance takes a serious turn when Liza's private school forces her to publicly acknowledge their relationship, and two teachers are implicated. While the homophobic attitudes may seem dated today, the book is still a sweet and positive portrayal of first love. ( )

Annie on my mind was the first YA novel to feature two young women in love to end happily. Liza is an aspiring architect in good standing at the private high school she attends. She meets Annie, a talented singer from an Italian-American family in the poorer side of town, at a museum. Their budding friendship turns to love, which they hide as best they can. Annie has known she's a lesbian for a while. Liza, however, struggles with this this new aspect of her identity and laments that here is no mention of love in the dictionary definition of homosexuality. Cat-sitting for two teachers provides them with an opportunity to live like the couple they want to be. They are caught by noisy and overbearing school officials from Liza's school, which causes understandable strain on their relationship. The plot is predictable and if this were a story about a heterosexual relationship, it would have been forgotten long ago. However, this sweet romance has endured censorship and should be recognized for it's role in releasing GLBT YA novels from it's former melancholy tone or problem novel role. Contemporary teens may find it outdated, in which case you may want to direct them to Keeping You a Secret by Julie Ann Peters. Keeping You a Secret is edgier and better reflects the current GLBT community, but if the reader is looking for sweet and simple, Annie on my Mind is for them. ( )

Liza is student council president at her snobbish private school in New York, and has plans to go to MIT. However, the school is having financial problems, and the principal is cracking down on "delinquent" behavior for fear of the school's reputation. Liza loves her school, but feels unjustly persecuted for an ear piercing incident due to her prominent position in the student council. Then she meets a girl named Annie at a museum. She and Annie find relief from the stresses of their very different lives in each other's company. Their friendship begins to consume Liza's thoughts. One day, they kiss, and must face up to the fact that their friendship is more than just friendship. But in a time where homosexuality is only just beginning to be understood as something other than mental illness, they both stand to lose a lot if their love is discovered. ( )

Really light, easy read.
Good read for those who can't understand how it really feels to be a teenager and discover love in a person of your same sex.
Good for teenagers who haven't completely lost their innocence, and fall in love with a friend.
Seems a bit outdated, read from a country with legal marriage, but it's good to remember what's like elsewhere. Still. ( )

To be young and in love, with a female and to be out enough to embrace yourself and herself. I read this when I was younger and I haven't gotten my mind off of it. It sits on my self ready for the next reader. I loved it. The sharing in it.. wow... I'm a hopeless romantic and would love for this to have been my first experience. ( )

This is one of those rare books that I won't give up. It was extraordinarily meaningful to me at an important time in my life. If you're an adult (or a savvy teen) you'll know where the story is going before it gets there, but it doesn't matter. You'll still be drawn in. Just like real life. ( )

Liza, a university student looks back at her previous year at high school. Most of all she is remembering her relationship with Annie from first meeting, through friendship to how they fell in love and how it fell apart when their secret was revealed.
This was a charming romance which left me wanting a little more. It was enlightening without being as heavy handed as some other glbt young adult novels I've read. Written in the early 1980s, I imagine it is unfortunately generally apt today.

Annie On My Mind was probably the best book I think I've read that really explains a homosexual's point of view of the world and how difficult it is to express how you feel about someone of the same sex. Lisa, the main character, falls for a girl named Annie. At the age of seventeen, it was more difficult than they ever thought, just to be together. I thought this book was amazing. ( )

This is a wonderful story and I can't believe I just got around to reading it! When Garden won the Margaret A. Edwards Award in 2003, Award Committee Chair Rosemary Chance said, "Nancy Garden has the distinction of being the first author for young adults to create a lesbian love story with a positive ending." This IS a love story. So many GLBTQ teen books (especially the early ones) focus on the troubles the teens face when trying to tell those around them that they are gay. This book focuses on the girls falling in love. They do have some troubles to face, so it is not unrealistic in the reactions of those around them. It is the perfect coming of age story for lesbians. I thought this was a sweet story and I am so happy that I finally read it! ( )

Annie on my Mind is a story of two seventeen-year-old girls in a relationship, and their struggle to find their identities as things fall apart when news of their relationship gets out. The writing and the story aren't spectacular - the characters are very flat and the relationship seems to blossom in a vacuum, with Liza (the narrator) essentially, unintentionally, forgetting the rest of her life in favor of Annie. However, this book was written in a more conservative time, and would have been a great emotional help to young LGBTQ teenagers. ( )

Liza wants nothing more than to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as an architecture student. As a senior in good standing, and class president, of a private high school, she has a good chance, as long as nothing terrible goes wrong. Annie wants to sing. She attends a public high school, but she is sharp and creative, not to mention talented. Both girls don't quite fit in with their peers.

They meet in the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, beginning a friendship that becomes much more than that. Liza is surprised to discover that she has fallen in love, complicating an already complicated situation that has developed at her school.

The novel follows Liza and Annie's deepening relationship, their struggle to come to terms with it and each other, as well as their attempt to hide their feelings from those around them. But when their private lives are thrust into public view, their world collapses into turmoil.

Annie on My Mind is simply a beautiful, heartfelt love story of two young women, making it a controversial and often challenged young adult novel which has been banned in several places in the United States.

Experiments in Reading ( )

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This book was a pivotal novel of it's time, and while I consider the writing to be trite at times, it's important to recognize that anything other than that wouldn't have been published in the early 80's. The story itself is a genuinely sweet one, with some very romantic scenes, and the author's treatment of the consequences of the teachers coming out publicly was honest. Although it would be difficult for teachers to be fired for their sexuality today in a public school system, it's not impossible, or unheard of in private prep schools. This book is still relevant to today's teen reader and doesn't have too much of that icky dated feel that some older teen novels do. I definitely recommend this to any teen wanting to read a reassuring love story. ( )

The Plot: Liza and Annie meet and fall in love. Both girls struggle with prejudice and self doubt, but they come out stronger in the end. The Background: Until this book was written, young adult literature rarely mentioned gay or lesbian teenagers. The few that did usually cast the characters in a negative or tragic light. This was the first novel for teens with a lesbian protagonist whose sexuality is portrayed in a positive and hopeful light. While the book is over 25 years old, it doesn't feel dated. ( )

A very good teenage coming-out type story about a girl who realizes her feelings for her best friend, but many people and situations stand in their way. ( )

Angsty early-80s teen lesbian novel. The main character is very stupid and also very pretentious, but it's still very cute. ( )

Angsty lesbian YA novel from the early 80s. I really loved the beginning, when the girls fall in love, before everything gets all scandalous and angsty. The happy (for them; their lesbian teachers lose their jobs) ending felt tacked on and unrealistic, but it's better than it ending with them never seeing each other again and being closeted forever, I suppose. The part where they meet at the Met and go to the Temple of Dendur and then have a date at the Cloisters, though? Best thing *ever*! ( )

School Library Journal - starred (from amazon.com)

"Departs from the fact-packed preachiness of the problem novel to become instead a compelling story of two real and intriguing women. There have been many books for teenagers, fiction and nonfiction, that give lots of
useful and accurate information about homosexuality; here's one that tells what it feels like, one that has, finally, romance." ( )

One of the best love stories ever. ( )

Liza, conventional senior class president of her prep school, meets imaginative and playful Annie and begins an “exclusive friendship” that becomes a romantic relationship.

Beautiful, sweet and mostly very joyful. I enjoyed this beginning to end. I am surprised that many Amazon reviewers found it dated, because I thought it had aged rather well. ( )

I agree with silleeputtee's review -- this book was a bit of a lifesaver for me, and is still a reassuring read. It's both historically important and also remains a really great book. ( )