Review: It's a Green Thing--Diary of a Teenaged Girl

This is book two in a series and while it was obvious I missed some backstory not reading the first book, enough was recapped so that the book stood on its own. As the name implies, it is about a teenaged girl. She happens to be the daughter of a touring pop music star and a junkie who is now in jail. Somehow (probably told in the last book) she recently became a Christian and started to live with her widowed uncle and her cousin. Maya just wants to be normal, something she has never been in her life, and she is trying to figure out this whole Christian thing--like why are some Christians not nice to be around?

Maya is also into green and the book is scattered with green tips. As a matter of fact in the book Maya starts writing a "green" column for the newspaper. She contemplates how "green" and Christian go together. Mostly though the story is about her spiritual journey that summer. She meets weekly with a youth pastor for what we Catholics would call spiritual direction. She deals with issues like dating, non-Christian friends and Christians she doesn't like. She works on forgiving those who have hurt her. In other words, it is very much a novel about Maya's Christian walk.

Just a little rant--one part of the story involves a lawsuit. Maya is supervising a bunch of volunteers who are painting a mural at the playground. One of the girls falls off a scaffold and gets hurt. Her parents sue the playground, the church (since the church encouraged the kids to participate) and Maya. The process server was real cloak & dagger, whereas in reality, serving the papers at a person's home is generally sufficient. Further, Maya's dad has to hire a lawyer. I find it hard to believe that someone in his business wouldn't have liability insurance, and the insurance company would handle hiring the lawyer. Seeing the lawsuit process incorrectly described is one of my pet peeves.

In short, this is a novel about a girl's spiritual growth with a strong environmental message added.