Review of OyMG, by Amy Dominy

This book isn’t my usual historical fiction, but many of my subscribers know Amy Dominy or the Speech and Debate team she based her book on–Desert Vista’s very own champions, so here is a review lots of you will care about.
Amy Dominy’s debut young adult novel, OyMG will warm your heart and make you laugh out loud whether you are 13 or 53. With the precision of a stand-up comedian, Dominy hits every hilarious beat in the stressed-out world of high school speech and debate. With equal precision she portrays the confused inner world of fourteen year old Ellie, who wants more than anything to win the Christian Society Speech and Performing Arts Summer Camp Scholarship to attend Benedict’s High School in the fall (even if she is Jewish and her Zeydeh (grandpa) thinks Christian camp is no place for a Jewish girl). That is, Ellie thinks that’s what she wants more than anything, until a web of lies, a sick feeling in her stomach that might just be her conscience and her argumentative Zeydeh help her find out who she really is, even if that person isn’t the one the bigoted donor of the scholarship fund is going to choose. Along the way, Ellie falls in love—make that, starts to sizzle—with the hottest guy at Benedict’s summer speech camp, who just happens to be the grandson of the bigoted Mrs. Yeats. He has some identity issues to sort out also—this is the world of teen-agers after all. Dominy manages to give us a satisfying ending without portraying unrealistic transformations or denying the ugliness that often imbues our society. Whether a young adult is Jewish or not (the book is recommended for ages 12 and up), this thought-provoking book will give him or her plenty to digest and the humor will make it go down like a piece of chocolate angel food cake.