I think it's safe to say that seventh grade was the most tortured year of my life.  Reading Jenny Han's Shug brought back all the feelings of inadequacy, the fear of being left out, and the confusing change from elementary school to junior high, when everyone starts pairing off in boy-girl sets, and kids you grew up with became strangers.

"Nothing is worse than looking like you are trying too hard.  I have always wondered why that is.  Trying hard is supposed to be a good thing.  It's in my nature to try hard, to strive to be the best.  So how do you know when you've crossed that invisible line of what is acceptable, and what is uncool?"

In the publishing industry, this would be considered a "quiet novel" with no huge dilemmas, dramas, or disasters.  However, Annemarie (call Shug by her mother) is so authentic in her struggles that the reader can sense how enormous these domestic issues feel to her, and thus consider them dilemmas of dramatic and disastrous proportions.  Shug is an pretty average girl, with an alcoholic mother, a father who is rarely home, and an alien landscape to negotiate, seemingly alone: seventh grade.  The sublety of the interwoven characters' storylines brings home how many kids likely deal with similar scenarios, hiding from their friends and family the extent of their fears.  This story is a fine balance of humor and pathos and a realistic portrayal of the awkwardness of being twelve, with a loveable protagonist who slowly grows to realize her own worth.