#MMGM: Audiobook review, Mountain Upside Down

I meant to do another series of LGBTQ+ books for Pride month, but here we are in the middle of the month and I'm just getting started. I also totally missed the deadline for the Marvelous Middle Grade Monday postings, but check them out anyway. Better late than never! 

 

Title: Mountain Upside Down
Author: Sara Ryan. Read by Elena Rey

Publication info: Listening Library, 2025, 6 hours. Original hardback, Dutton Books for Young Readers, 2025, 240 pages 

Source: Library

Publisher's Blurb (Goodreads):

A funny and heartfelt LGBTQIA+ middle grade novel set against the backdrop of family drama and a library funding campaign in a small town.

Alex Eager lives in Faillin, OR with her grandmother, a retired librarian. Life should be great for Alex, since she finally worked up the courage to ask her best friend PJ if they could be more than friends and she said yes. But their new relationship will have to be long distance, because PJ is moving. On top of that, Alex is worried that something is wrong with her increasingly forgetful grandmother. And to make matters worse, Faillin is holding a referendum on library funding, and things aren’t looking good. Will anything good for Alex ever last?

Mountain Upside Down is a beautifully crafted story of a thirteen-year-old girl finding her place in her family and her community. It’s a queer-positive story that doesn’t center coming out. It’s a story of a library’s role in a community that doesn’t feature book banning. And it’s a story of long-held family secrets and resentment that focuses not on final resolution but learning how to communicate again.

My Review:
One thing I love about this book is that, as the blurb says, it's an LGBTQ book that isn't actually about being gay. In other words, it makes Alex's sexual orientation just another part of her, like being 13 or living with her grandmother. Sure, the young romance element is there, but the issue is PJ moving away and a misunderstanding between them, not them being gay. There is an awareness that there are homophobic people out there, but it's not happening to Alex. Fat-shaming seems like a bigger problem in her school than homophobia.

The bigger life problems in the book are complicated and difficult to solve, and I love that the adults in her life--including those she doesn't know at the start are her people--admit that there are no easy answers to any of what goes wrong. In the end, we don't have a tidy resolution with everything fixed. We, along with Alex, just have a more adult understanding that things go wrong and we cope--and that as long as you have family, you're probably going to be okay.

The narrator does a nice job with the different people, making them distinct and easy to sort out while listening. And I like that although Alex has no sense of connection to her father and his family, they aren't bad people--we don't like all their choices, but we can see that the main problem is that they aren't HER people.

My Recommendation:
This feels like a slightly older middle-grade book, partly because of the romance (which never goes beyond kisses), and partly because the problems of dementia and family struggles are ones you hope younger children don't have to deal with.

FTC Disclosure: I checked  Mountain Upside Down  out of the library, and received nothing from the writer or publisher for my honest review. The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."  

 

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 ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2026 

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