Girls on the Verge

Camille is 17 and pregnant.  She's supposed to be going to a prestigious theater camp but instead she finds herself jumping through hoops trying to get an abortion. It's 2014 and Texas doesn't make it easy for a woman to get a legal abortion. Camille has met dead ends at every turn and when she tells her best friend Bea what she's going to do her best friend is a dead end too. Like her parents, she's religious and doesn't understand why she won't keep the baby. In desperation she turns to Annabelle an older actor who Camille has idolized for years. Together they decide that they will have to journey down to the Mexican border and try to get the pills that way. This is like Juno on a road trip. Full of humor, levity, seriousness, and friends coming together. A wonderful novel that explores what women are forced to do when all routes to a safe abortion are closed. Perfect for teens and adults. Very powerful without being uber preachy.

Body of Christ

.... Very rarely am I at a loss for words but this book made me uncomfortable and I don't even know what to say about it. Like, I need to take a shower and call up Jesus and tell him I'm sorry for reading this. In this book, period blood screams, Jesus is made out of soggy communion wafers, a boy's father commits suicide by cops (the son then saves bits of his torn apart by bullets dad in a ziploc bag for later - yay father flesh!), and .... like there's more but I can't even. This book will make you feel like you just accidentally did crack and rolled around in shit and dirty glass. It's bizarre and not in a good way. It's unique but that don't make it good...

The Mothers

Small secrets can fester and grow and have a ripple effect that will last far longer than anyone ever could have anticipated. After the loss of Nadia's mother, high school becomes unbearable. She cuts loose, flirts, stays out late, anything to pass the time. When she meets Luke, the pastor's son, the world seems to tip back on it's axis and everything is right again.That is, until the pregnancy. She makes a decision to abort the money and although he doesn't want that to happen he gives her the money and then abandons her at the abortion clinic. Their high school romance dissolved, Nadia goes her own way and Luke his... until they meet up again years later. Is something still there? Is the secret still haunting them. Bennett does a wonderful job creating flawed characters who readers will try to root for even though they continue to make the wrong decisions. A great book club selection.

Red Clocks

I was momentarily disoriented in the first 25 pages, but once the format and story-line clicked, it was magic. Fascinating, dark, dreamy, beautiful magic. Told from the perspective of five wildly different women, Red Clocks re-imagines what the United States would be like if abortion was once again illegal and criminalized. The new personhood amendment overturned Roe vs. Wade and harshly persecutes women who abort or attempt to abort while also outlawing single parents from adopting. The women in this novel each deal with this new reality in different ways; with contempt, fear, outrage, and anarchy. It's a perfect read for fans of Margaret Atwood and fans of feminist literature and is more timely then ever. This book will make you think and feel. What a wonderful journey; I look forward to reading more by this wildly talented author.