Book Review: Noah Frye Gets Crushed

If you’re looking for some sapphic middle grade to be reading, Maggie Horne’s books should be high on that list.

Publisher’s Summary

Noah Frye just had the Best Summer Ever. Not only did she have an epic time at science camp, but her new camp friend Jessa is going to Noah’s school in the fall. Noah can’t wait to introduce Jessa to her best friends Zoey and Luna when classes start. But when the friend group is reunited after their summer apart, something seems to have Zoey and Luna have discovered boys, and now it’s all they want to obsess over.

Suddenly, it feels like Noah is the odd one out in their friend group, especially since Noah hasn’t ever even considered boys in that way. When Noah finds herself caught in a lie about having a boy crush of her own, she decides she’ll do anything to fit in with her friends again — even if that means using the scientific method.

Noah’s crush experiment is find a boy, fake a crush until it turns real, and get her friends back. But that might be easier said than done, especially when Noah can’t stop thinking about Jessa. What ensues is a hilarious and heartwarming turn of events in this queer contemporary middle-grade story about friendship, first crushes, and self-discovery.

The Book Review

Noah Frye Gets Crushed is a sweet and funny tale of, at times, pure chaos, following Noah who, when her best friends start talking about boys all the time, decides the way to fix this all is to (checks notes) pretend to have a crush on a boy too. Yeah, Noah. That’s gonna go so well.

On the one hand, then, this is a bit like a comedy of errors. On the other, it’s a poignant story of Noah’s self-realization and the new friends she makes along the way. And Maggie Horne is so good at blending the two. One moment you’re laughing at Noah’s antics, the next you’re tearing up as Noah starts to feel like a spare part among her friends. It’s a book I just know is going to be great for a whole generation of young lesbian readers.

I think what’s key to that is the fact that Noah has the space to mess up. She screws up! She hurts her friends! But it’s about the growth she goes through surrounding that, not only in coming to realize things about herself. She is, ultimately, a bit of a mess, but she’s learning throughout the book. It’s honestly just a very satisfying character arc that she goes through to me. Probably, it has to be said, one of the most satisfying of all the middle-grade books I’ve read.

It helps that Noah is just an entirely relatable character. I don’t think there’s many people who won’t have felt like they just wanted to fit in with what their friends were doing at some point or other. Watching Noah go through that, but then come to realize that she can just be her own person separate from them too, was heartening. It was also very nice to see the support system she had around her, even if she didn’t always realize they were there, and it produced some sweet moments (and laugh-out-loud ones too!).

Just overall though, if you’re looking for some sapphic middle grade to be reading, Maggie Horne’s books should be high on that list.

Book Length — 272 Pages.

Hardcover Price — $18.99 (Amazon)