True Believer

Re-read. Strong and believable characters make this novel in verse stand out. There's a strong undercurrent of love which redeems the grimmer moments. I liked the subplot about LaVaughn's friends being drawn into a Christian chastity movement, and I found the rest of it right on.

I read the first book in this trilogy as a library school student in a young adult literature class. At first I couldn't place where I recognized the characters from but as I continued to read I remembered LeVann and eventually Jolly and her two children.

I really enjoyed this book. I felt so proud listening to Levonn better herself. She was so impressive dealing with all the things around her. Sometimes I felt like her mother was overly tough on her, but then other times I could see how easy it would be to slip and totally understood why she as so tough on Levonn.

Well deserving of awards received, including

National Book Award Winner,
ALA Michael L. Printz Award Honor Book,
ABA Pick of the Lists

this is an amazing book! LaVaughn is 15. She is strong, intelligent, sensitive and she longs for a college education that will take her from a crime-ridden housing project and thus provide a better life.

I liked LaVaughn for her strong personality and her compassion toward others. Through LaVaughn, the author addresses very powerful subjects, including strict, judgmental religion that harms rather than heals, first love, homosexuality, abandonment of friends and the incredible positive influence that a mother and teachers can make!

The author has a gift for addressing all these issues without overwhelming the show more reader.

LaVaughn is confused when her childhood girlfriends embrace a strict, fundamentalistic religion. They abandon her because she is "not saved." Then, when LaVaughn's childhood friend Jody returns to the neighborhood, she is immediately drawn to him. Sadly, LaLaughn's love cannot be returned in the way in which she dreams. Trying to make sense of all the emotions and feelings is difficult.

In the end, LaVaughn realizes that a religion that judges those whom are deemed unworthy, does not equate to a "true believer!"

Highly recommended. show less

in a sentence, or two: LaVaughn has wanted to go to college since 5th grade, and despite the odds of being in a crappy apartment building, part of a school where shootings aren't rare, losing her two best friends to Jesus, and to top it all off - boy drama, she fights for her hopes of college to happen.

LaVaughn is 15, and opens the self narrated novel by talking about the importance of why and how to avoid boys. Her options are less than desirable to her, and so she creates her own - basically playing it smart and focusing on her path to college. It's interesting that she strives for college both for her education and as her means of escape from the situation she lives in. Rightly so, the majority of her narration focuses on school, show more boys, and friends - the centripetal forces of any teenage girl's life...with a little mom tossed in for good measure. LaVaughn indulges the reader with her insights on her situations, and the way she expands on her thoughts draws the reader closer to her and makes it less of a narration and more of a journey.

The characters in LaVaughn's life are amazing and unique. However, they cleverly designed by the author so the reader may find themselves connecting them with people in our own life. While there is a twist with the love triangle that develops early and finishes late, I feel like the novel could be complete without it. This novel is really about LaVaughn and her life, which is so much more than boy drama (although that is never downplayed from her perspective). I love how the novel is written in verse, and highlights the inner ceiling-painting artist in LaVaughn. The creativity of the execution of the text and the mass amounts of authentic teenage feeling are perfect together. I (as the adult reader) never felt bad for LaVaughn, and I don't think I was meant to. The reader is invited in for this deceptively heavy journey, to feel as LaVaughn does and she (refreshingly) never feels sorry for herself.

With the authentic young adult voice and creative prose format, I give this book a 5Q and 4.5P according to VOYA standards. show less

4Q, 4P
Fifteen year old La Vaughn knows all the traps that ensnare girls like her; raised in poverty, by a single mother, with a friend who became a teenage mother of two babies, and two friends from childhood that have found Jesus. But there's a cute boy down the hall, and nothing can stop her feelings from overwhelming her. She knows it won't help her getting into college, but she can't help herself. Or can she? I loved this book because it felt the most true to adolescence- and my adolescence was completely different but I had to learn some of these same universal lessons. A smart girl, totally lost in her own path, can only help herself find her way.

I did this as an audio book and I think that is the wrong way to enjoy this book
You lose the lyrical quality because the audio book is just reading. I didn't even realize it should be read/understood as poems because she just reads.....

I think this might have been a 4 star for me....except how I read it. But an audio was the only way for me to get the book so I read it that way anyway.It was cute and I like how much growing each person does as the book progresses. and I like how the secret was handled, without shame or "wronging".

True Believer is a powerful book, one that could easily fill a number of categories on this list. It is not the quality of realism that author Wolff attempts to create throughout the book that makes this a good book, rather it is the believable and sympathetic characters with which she populates this compelling story. Part of a trilogy, True Believer can be read and enjoyed as a stand-alone. Now 15, LaVaughn struggles to avoid the sorts of decisions and influences (boys, sex, school, regular and not so regular urban teen living) that might derail her plans to finish high school and attend college to become a nurse. True Believer is a story about seeking more than your circumstances can give you, and even if LaVaughn makes one or two show more less than perfect choices she manages to stay true to her goal, goals that seem to both change her subtly into a person she likes while slowly and sadly alienating her from others around her. Also recommend S. Draper’s Forged by Fire (1997). show less