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Book Blurb:
After an accident on the football field leaves Noah with a traumatic brain injury, shattering his life as he knew it and leaving him with a whole heap of new disabilities, he’s no longer at the top of the high school food chain. In fact, he’s right down at the bottom with Lily.
In a cruel twist of fate, if Noah wants to graduate high school on time, he needs Lily’s help to complete a project—a book he wants to write about his experience. Lily’s not sure she can put aside her anger and hate for the boy who destroyed her senior year, but she desperately needs this project to get a scholarship to college.
It doesn’t take long for Lily to realize that the Noah who got injured is not
the same Noah who survived the accident. He’s different. Way different. Slowly,
Lily softens to this new Noah, but can she find it in her heart to forgive him?
Can the two most unlikely people find friendship in adversity and help each
other pick up the pieces of their broken lives? “
My
Review:
What
happens when the school’s quarterback and biggest bully is shunned by the
in-crowd and made fun of after a football injury? What happens if the girl next door was his
biggest bullying target, but everything changes after his injury? Dig into this well-written YA Contemporary to
find out!
The
Starburst Effect is both the title of the book, and another way to say concussion,
or Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). Noah, the
love interest, was the captain and quarterback of his high school football team
until he got knocked down really hard during a game, resulting in a concussion
and Traumatic Brain Injury. Author Kelly
Oram does a great job showing how serious the TBI is and the many ways it creates
challenges in Noah’s daily life. The
concussion is handled realistically and it respects the fact that Noah has retained
his knowledge, it’s just being accessed differently.
The
TBI, and all its cognitive and psychological challenges, give Noah a new
perspective on everything in his life, and he doesn’t mind that his former friends
turn on him. The in-crowd and top
bullies in the school, his ex-girlfriend and fellow football teammates, now
laugh at his expense, at how different he seems. But it doesn’t bother him. It’s when Noah gets close to Lily, the girl
living next door to him, that the bullying bothers him – because his former
friends are bullying her.
Lily
has never done anything to the high school jock living next to her; she has no
idea what won his attention and contempt.
It seems that being neighbors put her at the disadvantage of being
nearby when the school’s most popular crowd comes and goes from Noah’s house,
and Noah himself starts the most vicious of all the bullying – right before
getting injured on the football field.
Lily
is facing multiple challenges all at once, she’s losing friends due to the
bullying and she’s taking care of her younger brother, all while trying to
pretend that her parents deciding to get divorced doesn’t bother her so much. She may even be losing scholarship
opportunities for college because she’s closed herself off in order to cope
with it all. She desperately wants to go
away for college and escape all the bad things happening all around her, so she
joins forces with Noah in a school sanctioned Independent Study, to help him
write a book about his TBI experience.
As Lily
gets to know post-accident Noah, she realizes that his values and priorities
have truly changed. Despite her best
efforts, sparks fly between the two of them, and the PG romance that follows is
sweet and heartwarming.
#TheStarburstEffect
#NetGalley - I voluntarily read a Review Copy of this book. All opinions stated
are solely my own and no one else’s.
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