First let me say that I really enjoyed this book. It was fun and witty, and interesting. It was more philosophical and political than I expected, but there was also plenty of plot. It was thoroughly enjoyable.

I must also say that it wasn’t quite what I expected. I’ve seen the musical, and I expected a longer, more detailed version of that story. I remember reasoning from the musical, such as how Elphaba and Galinda became friends, and the role Fiyero played between them, and Elphaba’s beef with the Wizard, and how the scarecrow, tin man, and cowardly lion fit in. It all made sense, but it was all different from the book. The musical is as if they took the barest bones of the book, the idea that the Wizard is actually the bad guy, and Elphaba was trying to effect social change in Oz, and applied it, and a few other things, but really it’s very different. Different good, but different.

I’m not going to go into detail here (to avoid spoilers), but I was disappointed with the ending. I wanted things to work out differently for many of the characters, and I didn’t like the open endedness that left room for the sequel. Basically, the book started out great, and went downhill from there. But it was good.

I had to stop reading this book when I realized it was overdue at the library. I have doubts about whether I’ll ever finish it. The strength is that the author accurately conveys what it’s like to be a dork. The fault is that I’m not interested in reading what it’s like to be a dork. I know plenty of dorks and what makes them dorks is their social ineptitude—talking way too long about something way too uninteresting. I don’t want to know your latest band name, band credits, first album, song lyrics, especially when I know nothing is going to come of it. This dorkiness, as well as a schizophrenia of storylines that I can’t keep straight 200 pages into the book, make it too long and too tedious. I’m not interested, and I’m no longer willing to invest my time in it.

At first, I felt like I was reading a younger version of “Beloved”, because the author seemed more concerned with conveying the feeling of an instant, with strong imagery, than with telling a story. But I kept reading anyway, and lucky for me, a story began to emerge. Evie’s/Toswiah’s father was a cop, and ratted on his colleagues for killing an unarmed black kid. Due to threats and gun shots, the family went into the witness protection program, and that takes some adjustment.

In addition to moving far from home and the girls starting in a new school, the family must deal with the situation that put them there, and learning their new identities. It’s one thing for a family to decide to move, it’s another to suddenly be snuck out of the house in the middle of the night. Each person has a different way of coping: The mom finds religion, dad stares out the window all day, older sister Anna/Cameron buries herself in homework with the goal of going to college early, and Evie/Toswiah joins the track team. She’s literally running from the past. Huh.

It’s a sad book, and if there were such a thing, it would have a stamp labeling it as a choice for “Oprah’s Girls’ Book Club”.

What is The Naked Mole-Rat Letters about?

A) Naked mole-rats. The author’s goal was to educate the reader about these strange and fascinating animals.

B) A single parent dating. The widowed father engages in a new relationship, and it adversely affects his children.

C) A good kid gone bad. A series of unfortunate events leads to Frankie turning from straight-A student, star of the school play, into a distracted, lying, house-burning mess.

D) First love. Frankie’s first romance begins under unlikely circumstances.

E) Johnny Nye. The bad boy in school turns out to be more complicated than we thought.

The thing is, I’m not sure. The author covers all of these topics, and though I think the overall story is how a daughter is affected by her single father forging a new relationship, there are a lot of other things going on. It’s tempting to say that the other topics were not covered completely. There was plenty of Frankie’s lying, cheating, stupid actions, and it would have been weird to actually read a love story about 7th graders. Certainly, I could have learned more about naked mole-rats, and I would have loved more about Johnny Nye. But maybe the book is better without those things.