Runaway Max by Brenna Yovanoff

Cover Art Courtesy of Goodreads

With Stranger Things Season 3 having just been released (it was SO GOOD!) I've been snatching up all the ST books I could find! The first one I read was the YA fiction Runaway Max by Brenna Yovanoff. This story basically tells the entire plot of Season 2 from Max Mayfield's point of view. If you haven't watched Season 2, make sure to do so before reading this book!

Max is the new girl in town in Hawkins, Indiana. Sporty and a tomboy, she always fits in with the guys more than the girls, so when Dustin, Lucas, Mike, and Will start spying on her, she thinks she might have found her new group of friends. But the gang has a secret, and secrets are for party members only. Content only to eat lunch with her and invite her trick or treating, the group keeps leaving her out of secret meetings and Max is fed up. What are these boys hiding? Will they ever actually be her friends, or is she bound to wind up friendless in her new town?

In addition to Max navigating a new life in Hawkins, there are also a lot of family dynamics discussed in this book. From her abusive stepfather and timid mother, to her angry, off-the-rails stepbrother Billy, Max has it pretty rough at home. You got a tiny bit of this in the show, but this book really delved deeper into the things that Max has experienced outside of her interactions with the boys.

I did enjoy getting to know Max more as a character, since a lot about her was still an unknown while watching the show. This book was good, but was mostly just a written regurgitation of Season 2. As a huge ST fan, I liked it, since anything ST is good in my book. If you are just meh about the show, this definitely wouldn't give you anything new other than a bit more about Max's family dynamic. 

Overall Rating: 3 out of 5 Stars