Freak Show by James St. James

Billy Bloom, the main character of Freak Show by James St. James, has been living with his mother in a suburb of NYC in Darien, Connecticut until she becomes totally fed up with him trying on her favorite clothes. Imagine, at the age of 17, he is sent to Florida to live with his father and needs to adjust to a new high school where he knows no one. He makes a startling entrance, providing plenty of ammunition for the students who are amazingly blonde, tanned and gorgeous to harass him. No students or teachers come to his assistance until he befriends a girl who knows all the gossip, then the star of the high school football team. Freak Show is about young people finding themselves, testing the waters and learning how to tolerate those who are different from ourselves. St. James wrote the story humourously inserting bits of pop culture. The beginning of the book talks a lot about makeup application and dressing for effect, but events develop in an entertaining and reaffirming manner to stress how each of us has a little "freakiness" in us, but that helps us to be stronger, more confident people. -L. Turner