
The story exposes a lot of things about human nature and daily life in general that we don’t always like to admit. This book reflects many aspects of real life in a way that feels incredibly relatable.

No family is perfect, not even in literature. All in all, I think Van Draanen does a great job of showing how complicated, imperfect, and dynamic families are in real life. The relationship between the Juli’s dad and his brother is also really thought-provoking and eye-opening, though I don’t want to say too much and spoil an important detail of the story.

I love that there aren’t only middle schoolers and their parents in this book rather, we get to know teenagers and grandparents as well.

The story sets up a sort of compare-and-contrast situation between the Loski and Baker families, allowing the reader to notice telling similarities and differences. Though Juli and Bryce are the protagonists of the novel, Van Draanen also focuses a lot on family dynamics in general. Flipped is yet another reminder of why I love character-driven stories. It’s so realistic that I felt as though I was reading something that could have been written by twelve-year-old me! It was really interesting to read about the same event from the different perspectives of Juli and Bryce and to see how their views of the world change over time. Let me just start by saying that Van Draanen is a master at channeling her inner middle school voice. When one of my best friends realized I had never read Flipped as a kid she immediately urged me to read it. The more they learn about each other the more topsy-turvy the story becomes as their attitudes flip in different directions. In this middle grade novel, Wendelin Van Draanen tells the story of two kids whose opinions of each other change over the course of several years. In fiction, it’s common for love interests to last forever and for desires to seem set in stone once they appear however, nothing is permanent in Flipped. We’re all constantly changing whether we’re conscious of it or not, yet sometimes this fact is ignored in books.
