About the Book
Title: Biology Lessons
Author: Melissa Kantor
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary
Publishing Date: January 14, 2025
Synopsis
Biology Lessons is a heartfelt and profound contemporary young adult novel about the strength and importance of female friendship in a time when bodily autonomy is outlawed, from acclaimed author Melissa Kantor. Grace Williams has her future all mapped out. A high school senior in her beloved state of Texas, Grace plans to move to New York after graduation to study at Barnard College, and maybe, someday, win a Nobel Prize in biology. When she’s asked to tutor Jack Nelson, the star baseball player who’s flunking bio, she thinks it’ll be just another activity to list on her college application. Studying turns to flirting, flirting becomes secret hook ups, and despite her expertise in bio, Grace gets pregnant. In a state where abortion is illegal, with parents who would expect her to keep the baby, Grace’s future is over before it’s begun.With no one else to turn to, Grace must rely on her best friends, Addie and Sebastian, but anti-abortion laws put anyone who helps Grace in grave danger, and anyone they encounter might be an informant. When Grace finds a phone number and an offer of help scrawled in a bathroom stall, the three friends hatch a plan to sneak Grace across state lines. The risks to people she loves and those who have befriended her terrify Grace, but with Addie and Sebastian by her side, at least she isn’t alone.A love letter to hometowns, New York, and infinite possibilities, Biology Lessons showcases the transformative power of friendship in a world where choice is something you have to fight for.
Content Warning: abortion
Book Links
About the Author
Melissa Kantor is the author of Maybe One Day; Confessions of a Not It Girl, an ALA Booklist Best Romance Novel for Youth; If I Have a Wicked Stepmother, Where’s My Prince?, a YALSA Teens Top Ten Pick; The Breakup Bible, an ALA Best Books for Young Adults nominee; Girlfriend Material, a Junior Library Guild selection; and The Darlings Are Forever and The Darlings in Love, a Junior Library Guild selection. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her family.
Website
Instagram
Goodreads
Tour Schedule
My Thoughts — Book Review
Isn’t it ironic, we are fighting for equal rights for men and women and then decide for women that babies are a gift of God so they can’t shirk away from motherhood?
Abortion is murder; but snatching someone’s right to make their own life decisions isn’t a violation of human rights. Hypocrisy much?
A mass of cells has more value than a fully grown adult?
This issue must be spoken about and author Melissa Kantor has chosen the perfect time to present to the world with her literary masterpiece Biology Lessons.
One might expect a book on such a serious theme to be intense – preachy, opinionated, and/or highly dramatic.
But Biology Lessons is heartening and relatable. Especially meant for Young Adults.
A confused teenager who believes she has no options but to give up her life for a child, just because she had a sexual encounter with condom malfunction. A child she is not at all qualified to raise. She herself is so young. The struggles she goes through only because the state is curbing her freedom. The most impactful scene in the book was when Grace tears the Texas flag off her wall and shreds it. She feels caged in her own home. Her sense of identity and belonging feels askew. It hit hard.
Grace’s friends, Addie and Sebastian, though equally inexperienced in the matter at hand but they prove to be a super support system. This highlights that to be family you don’t need blood bonds. They’re kind of like my own group of friends. Their banters, jokes, squabbling — I found myself missing my gang. Though Sebastian has lesser appearance, his role in the climax is crucial. And hats off to Addie. She stood rock solid when Grace was falling apart.
It was a simple, fast-paced but heartening read.
My Rating
Thank you TBR and Beyond Tours and Melissa Kantor for the digital ARC.
