Book Review: Unstuck by Barbara Dee

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Publisher’s description

From critically acclaimed author Barbara Dee comes a middle grade novel about a girl whose struggles with anxiety and writer’s block set off unexpected twists and turns, both on and off the page.

Lyla is thrilled when her seventh-grade English language arts class begins a daily creative writing project. For the past year, she’s been writing a brilliant fantasy novel in her head, and here’s her chance to get it on paper! The plot to Lyla’s novel is super complicated, with battle scenes and witches and a mysterious one-toed-beast, but at its core, it’s about an overlooked girl who has to rescue her beautiful, highly accomplished older sister.

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But writing a fantasy novel turns out to be harder than simply imagining one, and pretty soon Lyla finds herself stuck, experiencing a panic she realizes is writer’s block. Part of the problem is that she’s trying to impress certain people—like Rania, her best friend who’s pulling away, and Ms. Bowman, the coolest teacher at school. Plus, there’s the pressure of meeting the deadline for the town writing contest. A few years ago, Lyla’s superstar teen sister Dahlia came in second, and this time, Lyla is determined to win first prize.

Finally, Lyla confides about her writing problems to Dahlia, who is dealing with her own academic stress as she applies to college. That’s when she learns Dahlia’s secret, which is causing a very different type of writer’s block. Can Lyla rescue a surprisingly vulnerable big sister, both on the page and in real life?

Amanda’s thoughts

I’m a Barbara Dee superfan. I love every book she writes. Thank goodness she’s so prolific and we get so many wonderful stories from her.

Seventh grade Lyla is having a rough time in middle school. Her best friend from elementary school, Rania, attends the other middle school in town. Things at home are tense, with her mother constantly on her sister, Dahlia, about her college applications and essays. And school? Well, Lyla is initially psyched for her creative writing project in ELA. Lyla loves to read and write! She has this great idea for a fantasy story about two sisters, one older and boringly perfect! She has an amazing first sentence! And… that’s it. She is STUCK. Lyla absolutely cannot get out of her own way to move beyond that first sentence. And this inability to spin out this story that she so desperately wants to be amazing is kind of ruining every aspect of her life.

Lyla is having writers’ block, but she’s also having kind of a life block. She feel completely abandoned by Rania, who is making friends at her other school (friends who don’t seem to like Lyla and who don’t seem particularly nice). There’s the possibility of new friends for Lyla at school, like Journey (who is nice but a little weird), but she can’t seem to think beyond the fact that Rania is her friend, and that’s it. Lyla feels obligated to enter the local library’s writing contest (because isn’t she a writer? isn’t that what she keeps telling everyone?) and has built this up into a massive issue in her head. Home is not great, because Dahlia is so burned out and stressed all the time–and when she confides a secret to Lyla, it’s just another way Lyla becomes stuck, this time stuck between her sister and her parents.

It’s a lot. And none of it is huge or super terrible, but it’s all these little frustrations and hurt feelings that can pile up and really make a person feel lost and overwhelmed. And Dee shows that. Lyla has a lot of feelings and is really anxious about so much right now. But Dee also gives Lyla great people there to support her (let’s all cheer for her ELA teacher and the school librarian) and gives Lyla plenty of space to work out on her own other people to support her (and that she can support). Lyla is learning that hard and inevitable lesson that everything changes. And sometimes you have to let go of the idea you’ve created in your head of how something should be, how perfect something should be, and just plow ahead and see what happens. As always from Dee, a thoughtful, compassionate exploration the changing interior and exterior landscapes of middle school life.