My Big Nose and Other Natural Disasters Book Review by ChristineMM

Title: My Big Nose and Other Natural Disasters
Author: Sydney Saltar
Genre: Young Adult Fiction ages 12-16 (Girl interest, main character girl age 17)



Summary Statement: Realistic Characters, Good Lessons Learned, Funny & Sad

Star Rating: 5 stars out of 5: “I Loved It”

**At the very end of this post is a spoiler that some parents may want to know about. Do not read the very bottom of this post if you don't want to hear a spoiler.**

Unfortunately, this book and I got off on the wrong foot. It is a shame that in the first few pages I was turned off by the main character’s complaining tone and mistook it for whining. Thus this book sat on my “to be read” pile neglected for three months! When I finally picked it up to read it I was surprised at my initial impression. I grew to understand the main character more deeply and I realized she was NOT as shallow as her complaints about her life and about the appearance of her nose first implied.

I wound up being glued to the book. It was funny and later, sad. I started it in the afternoon and in between doing other things, had to find out what happened so stayed up until two in the morning to finish it off! For me it was a page-turner.

I quickly grew to like the main character as to me she is a very real girl. She and her friends reminded me in some ways of my friends and me as teenagers (despite me having been a teen back in the 1980s). The story focuses on the summer before their senior year of high school. Each has goals for their summer. These three close friends are imperfect, make mistakes and learn from them. Bad choices have negative consequences and in all the cases the girls learned from their errors.

At times I literally laughed out loud (when in public), which is a compliment to the author’s storytelling. I found myself thoroughly liking the main character and rooting for things to go in the right direction for her, wanting a good outcome in the end.

A deeper message in the story is to love yourself as you are and to realize that people care more about your authentic, unique self rather than liking or loving a person based on the size of their nose, which I bet you can tell based on the title of the book is the main character’s big complaint about her looks.

I also appreciated the message with multiple characters in the book deciding to not be promiscuous and to choose to remain virgins at least through the end of high school. The lessons learned when some drink too much alcohol (as underage minors) are clearly stated and it is not glamorized. The mother's constant attempts to clim the social ladder in town are clearly negative and the topic is handled well in the end. These messages are a wonderful antidote to the many young adult fiction books presently on the market for girls that focus on external appearances, designer clothing, having a social life filled with promiscuous sex, alcohol consumption and sometimes drug use, and being rich as the main points to the story.

I felt these characters were very “real” and believable. I grew to like them all.

This book has many talking points and lessons to be learned, which would make a great book discussion for a mother/daughter book club.

With the publication of this book I felt there is hope for young adult fiction for girls after all. We need more books like this and less of the other type, please!



Disclosure: I received an Advance Reading Copy of this book from the Amazon Vine program. Retail value of this ARC is $0 and it cannot be resold by me for profit. I received no money in exchange for writing this review.


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SPOILER for my blog readers not included in my Amazon Vine review on Amazon.com:--- some parents may want to know about: A male character winds up being gay. He is in the closet and limited kids find out. His parents do not know. I didn't mention this in my Amazon Vine review as Amazon reviewer guidelines (for both customers and Vine reviews) now prohibit spoilers in the reviews. Homosexuality in YA novels seems to be on the rise, meaning while a book's main focus is not about homosexuality or the main character is not a homosexual, but sometimes it is a topic with a minor character, as is the case in the book. If you don't want homosexuality in any book your child will read, you would want to know this. Most characters in this book are aged 17 and it is about the summer before their senior year in high school. There are no homosexual sex scenes in case you are wondering.