Secondly, she’d put all that time spent not worrying about the project toward getting reacquainted with former best friend and longtime crush Kodiak Jones who, conveniently, gets assigned as Cordelia’s partner.Īll she has to do is mail in her DNA sample, write about her ancestry results and breeze through the rest of senior year. For one, she wasn’t going to stress over the senior project all her peers were dreading-she’d just use the same find-your-roots genealogy idea that her older sister used for hers. Seventeen-year-old Cordelia Koenig was sure of many things going into her last year of high school. Here’s the book description from the publisher: It’s why I’ve been obsessed with the show Almost Family lately, and Medema’s novel in verse promises that same level of drama. And Dante Medema’s new Young Adult novel, The Truth Project? It’s one I can’t wait to inhale.Īs an adoptee, I’m drawn to stories about found and chosen families that explore what defines those complicated relationships. They’re books that can be both devoured and savored. (Oct.The wonderful thing about novels in verse is that you can read them in a single sitting-and then slowly read them again, getting lost in their beautiful language. Delia tells her story through passionate poems, texts, and emails that grow increasingly distressed as her obsession with meeting her biological dad leads to her letting down friends and lying to family, making for an effective exploration of identity, secrets, and what family means.

Debut author Medema brings the Alaskan milieu to life, including showing how Kodiak, who has Tlingit heritage, is seen as “trouble” after a few missteps in a way Delia, who’s white, might not be.

She’s always felt different from her family, and she can’t forgive her mother’s infidelity and secrecy and reaching out to her biological father only adds complications.

But when the DNA test shows that the man who raised her isn’t her father, Delia is shattered.

Her project partner is Kodiak Jones, her childhood friend and crush whose slam poetry sings. Delia will differentiate her assignment by writing in verse, although she rarely shows her lines to anyone. She’s planning to mimic her older sister’s: get a DNA test and write about the results. Delia, a high school senior in Alaska, has achieved early acceptance to Columbia, so she’s not worried about the big senior project.

The truth project dante medema