Quick summary before we start, because I'm willing to bet not a lot of people have read this book yet. Gut Reaction, by Kirby Larson and Quinn Wyatt, is a story about a thirteen-year-old who has just moved to a new school and is trying to balance making friends with schoolwork and her passion for baking. The book focuses on her working to win a baking competition with the help of her new friends. But there's a catch, one that's supposed to be a shock but if you know about this novel at all, odds are you already know what it is because it's in all the marketing material; she has Crohn's, and has yet to figure out how to manage her condition. After being diagnosed, she becomes determined to prove that her disease does not hold her back and (spoilers) gets all the way to the finals of the baking competition she joined.
Overall, this book is just boring. A lot of the reviews for this book say that this book is better if you're familiar with baking, but what they mean by that is that unless you're looking for a book specifically about either bakers or kids with Crohn's, this book isn't for you. Which, frankly is my biggest problem with the book; there just isn't anything interesting in it. Every problem has a simple solution, all of the people are nice (including the main character's step-father), and despite this being a story about how Crohn's doesn't have to stop you from living a normal life her disease is easily her biggest opponent in the novel, which I feel undercuts the message a tad. Honestly, I could forgive all of that. Were it not for the Language Art's teacher.
I'm willing to bet that a lot of you had a Language Arts teacher who was tragically awful at their job. I had one, and I only went to middle school for three months before my mother pulled me out and homeschooled me. That's what this woman is; she wears schlocky jewelry, only teaches from classic novels, and doesn't let her students use the bathroom during class. If you're like me, you expected that to come up again, especially since the main character worries about this specifically and a huge plot point is that she can't get anything above a C-minus in her Language Arts class. If you're like me, and waiting eagerly for them to but heads over this, you're going to be gravely disappointed because once the main character gets diagnosed, her Language Arts teacher never gets brought up again. At all. The class does, and we get a brief scene with one of the girls who also butted heads with the teacher, and we see the essay the main character wrote that finally got an A+, but that's it. No dramatic moment when the main character rushes to the bathroom and the two get in a screaming match, no discussion between the main character or the main character's mother about why she has to be allowed to use the bathroom during class, no moment where the teacher tells the main character that she got a note from her mother about needing to be allowed to use the bathroom in class if she asks.
I've mentioned this before, but for those who are new, I'm Autistic, and one of my issues is that my handwriting is illegible unless I write really slowly. So once computers were cheap enough, I used one for my classwork and from the time I entered High School, and a class where I had to take notes, I've always used a laptop in class. As such, I'm familiar with both needing accommodations and the fear of a teacher telling you that you aren't allowed to have them for bullshit reasons. As such, I was waiting to see how this book would tackle the topic of suddenly needing an exemption from your teachers ironclad rules. Lack of accommodations is part of the reason I got pulled out of middle school, and I have had to tell teachers they couldn't force me to not use my laptop even as far in as college. But the thing is, most teachers were just fine with letting me use a laptop, and the one time one of them wasn't, it got resolved the next day. So a book like this, without a lot of conflict and people who are genuinely understanding of someone's illness, is the perfect place to help kids who are sick/disabled see that there's nothing wrong with telling your teacher that you need something the other students don't have. Especially since the Language Art's teacher was a bit of a bitch, so the main character would have every reason to worry about being denied. As someone who to this day worries about entering new places because she's afraid of how people will react to finding out she needs extra help, this feels like an important message to give not only disabled kids, but everyone; don't worry about people judging you for needing help, worry about what happens if you don't get it.
Yeah, I'm annoyed that a book didn't give me one scene I can imagine happened offscreen, but when you set up that a teacher doesn't allow bathroom breaks in her first appearance, I expect that to pay off at some point before the novel concludes. Especially when you only need to mention it happening for it to pay off. Doubly so when your book has no purpose for existing other than as a gift for people who know kids who were just diagnosed with Crohn's. No lie, if this had paid off the way that I wanted it to, I feel like this book could have been just a little bit meaningful. The kind of meaning not a lot of kids get. Instead, it was just left by the wayside, and I get that it was probably between this one scene and paying off the baking competition, but I'm still disappointed. Mostly because I made the mistake of reading this book as someone who had no interest in baking and, as far as I know, doesn't have Crohn's.
On the whole, this book isn't bad, this is just one thing that bugs me specifically. I'm not even going to pretend that fixing this one problem would have fixed it, because I think this book isn't very well written. It's okay. Does the bare minimum, has a gimmick, that's it. So yeah, the reviewers were mostly right; if you're a middle schooler with Crohn's and a passion for baking, this book is for you. Otherwise, don't bother.
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