Girl Made of Stars

This is everything I love most in a novel, particularly a YA novel – important issues, strong female characters, girls looking out for other girls, and strong friendships.

Every time someone steps forward to report they've been sexually assaulted, my heart goes out to them, and I admire their bravery. I hope they find justice and healing, and I hope they're believed. But I also wonder what it would be like to be put in Mara's situation – where you love both the accuser or the accused, or even just the latter.

How difficult it must be to love someone, to have had a healthy relationship with someone, to have that someone be someone you trust and who has been a force of good in your life, and to be confronted with the possibility that they've harmed someone so profoundly.

As much as I advocate believing the victim, I understand that it might be near impossible to do in this one instance, as illustrated in the character of Mara's mother, who is feminist and who has taught Mara to be feminist, but who cannot conceive of her son being guilty. Mara is able to come to perhaps a different conclusion than many might due to knowing her brother so well and because she has her own experiences related to the core issue.

Without giving too much away, I appreciated how Mara kept hearing in her head a derogatory phrase used toward her, and it was in realizing another girl was none of those things and still vulnerable to sexual assault, she was able to realize that she wasn't those things either.

Mara also grapples with still being in love with her ex, and a growing attraction to someone she'd never considered before, and this was also well written. The reasons for her break-up, the reasons she quickly grew close to someone else, and why the story line resolved the way it did.

I highly recommend Girl Made of Stars!

I have a few small nitpicks.

I found the occasional word choices odd and slightly incorrect. At one point, Mara avoided eye contact with a lake, which goes against my understanding of the term. :)

Mara and Charlie start a group called Empower for people interested in feminism and LGBTQ issues, and yet non-binary is treated like a new term, even though I think it should have been on Mara's radar for ... reasons.