Myra's a girl living in a little town called Landon, Utah. She's never really felt as though she belonged there, because there's basically one religion and everyone belongs to it, it seems, except for her. Her older sister Melissa is going to her first year of college and pregnant, which is causing some major strain in her family. And her boyfriend, Erik, breaks up with her, pretty unexpectedly. So Myra's kind of left on her own, she had a few friends before Erik, but kind of spent all of her time with him, so they moved on without her. School after he breaks up with her is so awkward, especially AP Biology. Things look up for Myra when a college student comes into their biology class to talk to them about a scholarship for an internship on Galapagos Island to study the animals that are there and nowhere else. This kind of becomes a competition between her and Erik, because they're the only two kids from their school trying to win the scholarship. The problem with the scholarship is that to be able to win it, the applicants must come up with $1000 on their own, this is pretty tricky for Myra, because she's from a family of 6 kids and all but Melissa are younger than her. But she's not about to let Erik win the scholarship! I wasn't sure about this book when I read it, it's another Whitney nominee. But the more I think about Myra and all the things that she went through until the end of the book, the more I realized just what a strong female character she is. I think about how she is in the beginning of the book versus the end and I can tell just how much her character grew in compassion and understanding of others. I did enjoy the story, and it was a fairly clean book, although there was talk of teenage sex in it, you didn't really "see" any. I would read this one again and more by this author.Labels: Whitney Nominee, Young Adult
