Review: Girl Against the Universe by Paula Stokes

Title: Girl Against the Universe
Author: Paula Stokes
Publisher: HarperTeen
Release date: May 17th 2016
Source: Edelweiss
Format: eARC

Rating: 4/5

Buy on: Amazon | B&N | BookDepository

Maguire is bad luck.

No matter how many charms she buys off the internet or good luck rituals she performs each morning, horrible things happen when Maguire is around. Like that time the rollercoaster jumped off its tracks. Or the time the house next door caught on fire. Or that time her brother, father, and uncle were all killed in a car crash—and Maguire walked away with barely a scratch.

It’s safest for Maguire to hide out in her room, where she can cause less damage and avoid meeting new people who she could hurt. But then she meets Jordy, an aspiring tennis star. Jordy is confident, talented, and lucky, and he’s convinced he can help Maguire break her unlucky streak. Maguire knows that the best thing she can do for Jordy is to stay away. But it turns out staying away is harder than she thought.

From author Paula Stokes comes a funny and poignant novel about accepting the past, embracing the future, and learning to make your own luck. 

Maguire is a 16 year old girl that thinks she has bad luck or some kind of curse because she was the only survivor of a car accident in which her father, uncle and older brother died and in which she turned out without a scratch. But that was not the only accident in which she was involved and where other people got hurt and she was the only one uninjured, for that reason Maguire has tried to isolate herself to avoid that her bad luck hurt others, as a result she doesn´t have friends and if it was up to her she would never leave the house for fear of harming others, but even with her bad luck she must go to school.

At the start of the story Maguire is going to therapy and she set herself some tasks/homework to achieve a goal that she set to herself, and her first task is to join the tennis group at school, and it is there where she finds a friend (something she hadn´t had for the past years) and a boy - Jordy whom will help her in her homework therapy, in order to be in the world a bit.

Maguire is a girl that´s suffering from post traumatic stress disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder, she´s so afraid of being in crowded places for fear that her bad luck will harm others, plus she has a "rites" or charms for good luck that she does all the time.

The main story focuses on Maguire trying to overcome her fears and learn that everything that happens around her is not her fault. There is also some cute romance, friendship and I like the familial relationship she begins to develop with her mother and stepfather.

Girl Against the Universe is a contemporary young adult novel with a compelling and emotional story with a good ending.