A Little Like Waking by Adam Rex - OPTIONAL

A Little Like Waking by Adam Rex, 400 pages. Roaring Brook Press (Macmillan Publishing), 2023. $21.

Language: R (32 swears, 0 “f”); Mature Content: PG; Violence: PG

BUYING ADVISORY: HS - OPTIONAL

AUDIENCE APPEAL: AVERAGE

Each day is as perfect as the last and the next—Zelda (18yo) even manages to somehow easily avoid a collision between her bike and a car. The weird part is when a boy she has never seen before shows up during the not-accident. Seeing him shifts Zelda’s view of her reality, as if everything is too realistic—or not realistic enough?

Rex’s narration style is unique because his setting is unique, and I can’t decide whether I like it or absolutely hate it. It works for the story, despite being random and unexplainable in ways that would normally annoy me as a reader. But the random elements as well as the occasional shifts from text to graphic novel pages tell the story well—and I even laughed a couple of times. Don’t let the unconventionality of it scare you away.

Zelda is depicted as white on the cover, and Langston is depicted as Black. The mature content rating is for partial nudity and kissing. The violence rating is for mild fantasy violence.

Reviewer: Carolina Herdegen