Hazel Hill Is Gonna Win This One by Maggie Horne
240 pages
publishes October 18th, 2022
A funny, feminist, and queer contemporary middle grade debut about 12-year-old loner Hazel Hill, who after one of her classmates is harassed online, devises a plan to catch the school’s golden boy in the act.
Seventh grader Hazel Hill is too busy for friends. No, really. She needs to focus on winning the school-wide speech competition and beating her nemesis, the popular and smart Ella Quinn, after last year’s embarrassing hyperbole/hyperbowl mishap that cost her first place.
But when Hazel discovers Ella is being harassed by golden boy Tyler Harris, she has to choose between winning and doing the right thing. No one would believe that a nice boy like Tyler would harass and intimidate a nice girl like Ella, but Hazel knows the truth—and she’s determined to prove it, even if it means risking everything.
Deeply relatable and surprisingly humorous, Hazel Hill Is Gonna Win This One is a wonderfully empowering story about friendship, finding your voice, and standing up for what you believe in.
This is a FANTASTIC middle-grade book about middle school, not having friends, being a kid and growing up is hard, and making friends and defending them in the face of a great injustice, even at great personal cost. It also tackles the subject of sexual harassment in middle school, which I think is really important. This book is full of heart, and incredible funny, and very important. Five stars. Booksweet link. Storygraph link.
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