My Life Off-Key

Jen, 17. is an aspiring singer whose passion is music and performing. When a stranger shows up at one of her shows, Jen learns that he is her biological father and that her mother has been keeping secrets from her—and the man she thought was her father—for her entire life. Suddenly, Jen understands why she has never truly felt close to the man who raised her, and she finds herself struggling to make sense of all of the changes in her life.

My Life Off-Key is part of Orca’s newer “Anchor” series which are described as “short, high-interest novels with contemporary themes written specifically for teens reading below a grade 2.0 level.” While this novel met those criteria, there were a few things about the way it was written that I found troublesome. In particular, I found it unnecessarily choppy. Although it makes sense that chapters would be shorter and vocabulary would be lower-level for the emerging, reluctant, or struggling readers that this series seems to target, I wish the sentences had better flow and were more varied. There are also a lot of incomplete sentences—“But they are seeing each other.”; “And it seems to be helping.” I recognize that breaking the conventional rules of writing is something that good writers do; however, the fact that the audience for this book may still be working on learning the rules makes me worry that this could cause some confusion.

The plot, itself, is a little cliched. The mother tries to hide the truth but is caught in the lie. The father leaves the family home in anger, and the little sister refuses to speak to Jen who blames herself despite none of it being her fault. I found it took a little too long for the parents to reassure Jen that she was still loved, regardless of biological parentage. It all just felt a bit too predictable.

That said, there are some positives here. The plot was immediate, with no time for the reader to lose interest. Within the first short chapter, readers meet the main characters and are introduced to the conflict. I also really appreciate the underlying message about the dangers of social media oversharing; Jen’s biological father knew way more about her than he should have, and he was able to easily find her location based on her social media and internet presence. His intentions weren’t negative, but this part of the story could serve as a gentle reminder to readers that their online presence should be kept private.

While I didn’t love this particular book, I will definitely be looking at more titles from the “Orca Anchor” series as I find more and more students at my grade 7-9 school looking for lower-level fiction with topics that are age-appropriate and interesting.