By Ann Hood
Penguin Random House, 2018. Fiction p. 252
Set in the height of popularity of The Beatles, “She
Loves You: Yeah, Yeah, Yeah” is a truly delightful historical fiction that
explores the summer of 1966 from our main character’s point of view as she
obsesses over The Beatles and seeing them in concert while simultaneously
dealing with her own personal struggles.
Trudy shares a love of The Beatles with her dad, and
her closest friends. But as their concert quickly approaches, she finds that
her life is changing all around her, and she doesn’t seem to have any control
over it. Trudy is convinced that if she just sees The Beatles in concert and
meets Paul McCartney, her father will be more present, her best friend will
start actually acting like her best friend, and her life will make sense again.
Hood does an excellent job making Trudy a protagonist
that sometimes isn’t perfectly likable, but who is always relatable. Her
problems are the same ones that all kids growing up are able to connect with,
even though they weren’t alive in the sixties during Beatlemania. Although
young readers will not have experienced the cultural phenomenon of The Beatles,
they will still see themselves reflected in the universal struggles of family
and friendship that even kids in the sixties went through. The effect that
music has always had on tween culture will resonate with kids even if they
don’t experience nostalgia for the decade represented.
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