The Scott Fenwick Diaries
A middle school student daydreams and grows into her friendships and family relationships in the fun, goodhearted novel The Scott Fenwick Diaries.
Featuring bunnies, boys, and b’nai mitzvah, Kristin Nilsen’s entertaining coming-of-age novel The Scott Fenwick Diaries is set against the tempestuous background of a seventh-grade romance.
Millie graduated from a celebrity crush to a crush on Scott, who is in her social studies class. Even better, he seems to like her too. Now all Millie has to do is craft the perfect texts, master in-class note passing, and get herself invited to Scott’s bar mitzvah, where she is sure they will fall in love.
Millie’s perfect plan, however, keeps hitting bumps. These include Millie’s talent show–enthusiast parents; her lethargic bulldog, Pringles; and her own insecurities. But with the help of her friends and an advice-dispensing Magic 8 Ball, Millie determines to persevere and record it all in her new diary.
Millie is a lively narrator. At times dramatic and irreverent, even selfish, she is goodhearted at the end of the day. Shifts in pace and narrative style mirror her ever-changing emotions: When Scott notices her, eloquent prose matches her elation. When she obsesses that things are amiss, her tone becomes choppier and uncertain. And when Millie’s mind races, she makes use of short, repeated exclamations like “Oh my God!” and creative expressions in lieu of curse words. At other times, she waxes poetic, floating in daydreams about herself and Scott: They text each other “hi,” and then Millie cradles her phone “like a baby bunny,” imagining that their “Hi’s can find each other and fall in love.”
However, much conflict is driven by Millie’s flaws: She lies to her parents with general impunity and little remorse, and she wounds her peers with unintentional neglect. Her repeated selfishness and dishonesty veer into worn territory in the story’s final pages, where her much–accelerated character growth at last occurs.
Millie’s colorful cast of friends provide constancy in the midst of her emotional tempests, though. Feisty Tibbs’s creativity and love of bunnies work as comic relief, while Millie’s loyal best friend, Shauna, calls out Millie’s bad behavior. The influence of such characters is also the catalyst for Millie’s eventual growth. But the secondary cast members are also complex, intriguing individuals in their own rights. In particular, Shauna explores her Filipino identity and yearns for her absent father to be involved in her life. The adults, meanwhile, are both Millie’s foils and friends: Her parents embarrass her with grand performance plans; her more understanding grandmother, Cheryl, helps her rescue a confiscated phone. Subplots like Millie coming to appreciate her goofy but lovable parents deepen the lighthearted story, which climaxes in a tender moment of reflection at the bar mitzvah.
The story incorporates more serious plot points, too, as when Millie wonders about intimacy and whether there is something wrong with her for not wanting to do more than hold hands. Such reflections counterbalance the otherwise overwhelming focus on Millie’s various Scott-related musings. Indeed, wrestling with issues like intimacy and realizing, thanks to Shauna’s bluntness, that she has neglected her other loved ones at last pushes Millie to begin repairing her relationships. A series of sweet letters and a wholesome plot twist involving her outburst-prone great-grandmother round out the book with satisfying cheer.
In the endearing coming-of-age novel The Scott Fenwick Diaries, a spunky middle-school girl wades into the murky waters of young love.
Reviewed by
Vivian Turnbull
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
