All Better Now, by Neal Shusterman

A new virus has begun to spread around the world called Crown Royale.  It carries a 4% mortality rate and for the survivors the after-effects are particularly striking:  recoverees find themselves free of all worldly cares.  Unhappy people find happiness.  Rich people give away their money.  Fighters become peacemakers.  The virus is transformative.

For people with problems, there is something appealing about the changes that the virus triggers.  But for others, particularly with things to lose, the virus is dangerous.  With no cares, greed is eradicated and along with it capitalism.  With fear erased and war ended, power structures that rely on them are threatened.  While many recoverees come to embrace the changed world and promote the spread of the virus, a shrinking group works hard to find a vaccine that will curb the infection.

Three young people with an important role to play form the crux of the story.  Ron, the son of one of the richest men in the world.  Mariel, penniless, but ultimately one of the most powerful people on the planet.  And finally Morgan, ruthless enough to make the decisions that could change the course of humanity.  

Given the time that has passed since the COVID pandemic, the themes of the book feel less vital and vibrant, but Shusterman's exploration of the spread of greed and fear, a countervailing movement of empathy, and the struggle between them feels quite relevant in the present day.  Making the contemporary clash of social movements that currently wrack havoc in our world into viral pandemics may lack subtlety but it provides biting commentary in a highly digestible form. 

In the end, I enjoyed this action adventure with some moral heft. The storytelling itself is lively and page-turning and most of the time Shusterman keeps the philosophical debates to a minimum (not that those are not interesting, but it can become burdensome and negatively impact the pacing).  The balance between action and social commentary that he achieves left me feeling entertained but also full of thought-provoking questions (like whether infecting the world with kindness would make us truly better off or whether people should have the right to make wrong decisions).

16 For Ever, by Lance Rubin

When Carter wakes up on the morning of his sixteenth birthday, he's psyched and ready to give his little brother hell.  But he finds his little brother is now older than him, as in fact is the rest of the world.  To him, it may seem like he was fifteen years old yesterday, but six years have gone by since then.  For unknown reasons, Carter is stuck in a loop.  Every year, instead of turning seventeen, he turns sixteen all over again.  And with no memory of the past year, he's forced to relearn everything, aware that time has passed for everyone else and his friends have gotten older.

This is especially hard for Maggie, his girlfriend for most of the past year, whom he no longer even remembers and who is now a year older than him.  If Carter is going to loop every year, what chance does their relationship have?  At first, Maggie tries to keep the fact that they even dated a secret, but that doesn't last long.  And since this is a YA novel, they are pretty much fated to come back together.

All of which leads to the pressing question of why Carter is stuck in his loop in the first place. At first, Carter thinks that there was a mistake that he made somewhere before his seventeenth birthday that triggered this.  But as he and his friends and family dig into the matter, it seems much more complicated.

I liked the premise of the story, but it's a hard idea to pull off.  Not only fantastical, the concept of getting older without growing up raises all sorts of logistical issues (some of the funnier of which, like a high school junior being legally old enough to buy booze, are explored).  Rubin goes down a few rabbit holes trying to logic these out, but the story suffers the harder he tries to explain it.  It works best if we just take the aging thing on faith and run with it.  The rest of the story is fairly average -- entertaining and enjoyable summer reading -- but without much to help it stand out.

Messy Perfect, by Tanya Boteju

Years ago, Cassie and her best friend Ben got caught dressing up in each other's clothes.  It wasn't so bad for Cassie to be seen in Ben's trousers, but Ben wearing her skirt took some more effort.  But rather than explain the truth when the rumors began to fly, Cassie abandoned Ben to bullying homophobia.  A few weeks later, Ben left the school.

Now, he's back. Wracked by guilt for her childhood cowardice, Cassie is determined to make things right and she alights on the idea of setting up a Gay Straight Alliance in her very conservative Catholic school.  Allying with an existing GSA at a nearby public school, Cassie starts a secret campaign of "pop ups" to make her school more gay friendly (and thus easier for Ben).  But as the project consumes more and more of her time, Cassie's grades start to suffer and her relationships with her friends and family begin to fray.

As for her goal to fix the mistakes of her past, it doesn't quite work out as she planned.  Ben is amused, but strangely non-committal to the project and Cassie begins to realize that making her school more accepting to queer students may be more important to her personally than she's comfortable admitting.

Cassie is a perfectionist who makes plenty of messy mistakes along the way in this story but does a decent job of knowing how to fix those errors and come back better -- a mash-up that gives the book its title.  While the novel can be boringly repetitive and overly preachy about the importance of safe spaces, Cassie's journey into self-discovery is compelling.  I liked her and also the many supporting characters as well -- a colorful cast of peers who represent an exuberant form of teen queerdom that has fallen out of fashion in YA lit shockingly quickly in the wake of terrorized libraries.  Far more so, I appreciated a strong presence of adults in this story, ranging from the keen librarian to the surprisingly sympathetic principal to a mother who was confident enough to know when to crack down and when to let up.

The Winter of the Dollhouse, by Laura Anne Schlitz

Tiph struggles to be seen by her family and at odds with her stepmother.  Tiph loves dolls and everything about dolls, but her stepmother doesn't understand why she wants to spend all of her money on doll house accessories.  But one day, outside of the local toy store, Tiph meets an old Hungarian woman who does understand her.  Tiph is fantasizing about owning an antique German doll of Gretel when the woman collapses on the street.  Tiph ends up helping the woman gets home and is entranced to find that she owns a fabulous old doll house.

The old woman needs help around the help and they develop a plan whereby Tiph will do chores and earn money to purchase dolls.  meanwhile, the woman invites Tiph to play with hers.  Tiph, however, has a problem with kleptomancy that is getting her into trouble and when one of the lady's dolls disappears, suspicion falls in Tiph.

Gretel the doll is in a panic.  She wants to be Tiph's as much as Tiph wants her and if the mystery of the missing doll is not solved, this will never happen.  So, the toys work away at a plan to fix everything.  And in the process of doing so, they discover an ancient doll that reveals secrets about the old lady.

Meanwhile, there is a school production of The Wizard of Oz that Tiph is in.  Disappointed with her part as a munchkin, she is encouraged by the old lady to volunteer to understudy for the Wicked Witch (which is the part she really wants).  When the actress playing the witch falls ill, Tiph gets her opportunity.

Along the way, Tiph works out her issues with her stepmother and learns that adults have very complex lives.  All in all, it is a very busy story!  While much of this is well-written and the individual threads make great stories, it is terribly unfocused.  Was this a story about Tiph learning to stand up for herself and/or understanding the importance of honesty?  Was this a story of the old woman coming to terms with her lost childhood?  Or of a mother and daughter coming to mutual understanding?  Or of the dolls getting the humans to sort out their problems so they would be played with?  Likely, it is all of those things, but it left me with distractions, being thrown from one thread to another when, even at the very end, nothing seemed to come together.

Orris and Timble: The Beginning, by Kate DiCamillo

The first in a trilogy of early reader books about the unlikely friendship of Orris the rat and Timble the owl. When Timble gets caught in an abandoned mouse trap, Orris struggles with whether to help free him or not.  Remembering the tale of the Lion and the Mouse, Orris reasons with himself that helping Timble will mean that Timble will owe him a debt of gratitude.  When Timble simply flies away, Orris is upset that he didn't even get a thank you.  But a much greater gift awaits.

Quirky and sweet in the way that all of DiCamillo's works tend to be.  The deeper meaning of the story is probably not going to sink in to the target audience's minds, but this easy-to-read book is engaging enough to lead the reader to the rest of the series.

The Danger of Small Things, by Caryl Lewis

In the near future, the bees have died off.  And along with them, the various species of plants that rely on bees to be pollinated.  And along with those, the animals that feed on those plants.  In sum, the death of pollinating insects has caused a global food collapse.  Panic, wars, and the downfall of civilization follow shortly thereafter.  So far, so interesting.

In the aftermath, young girls are sent to concentration camps where they are worked to the bone using brushes to pollinate the fruit and nut trees by hand in hopes of raising a crop that can in turn be sold to support the totalitarian regime under which they live.  This is only until they reach puberty, when they are "married" off to young soldiers to make children for the regime.

Jess is one of those girls.  She was sent to the camp when she and her brother were caught trying to cross the border and escape.  Initially distrusted by most of the other girls and targeted by the camp's queen bee, Jess becomes the leader of a quiet rebellion in the camp.  To foment an uprising, she creates secret works of art to agitate the masses.

From a fascinating premise, the novel falls back on so many familiar dystopian tropes -- from the beginning (lifted from Handmaid's Tale) to the pro-natalist plotline (Divergent).  An evil priest and a bullying queen bee offer little new to a story that can't seem to decide whether military regimes or high school cliques are worst.  It's tired material and a story that adds little to the genre.  It also makes very little sense -- the fruitless effort to hand pollinate on the industrial scale that modern apiculture attempts, the strange waste of resources using hand-made brushes, the mystery of what the little boys are up to, and so on.  Disappointing exposition on an original and thought-provoking idea.

Bad Badger: A Love Story, by Maryrose Wood (ill. by Giulia Ghigini)

Septimus loves to watch sunsets from his porch as he listens to opera and sips chamomile tea.  All of which makes him a bad badger.  He doesn't even look like one!  Instead of the stripes that all badgers are supposed to have, he has spots.  Perhaps he isn't even a badger at all?  He might have a better time sorting out his conundrum if he knew any other badgers.

For while Septimus enjoys his quiet life, he longs for a friend.  And when he is visited by a friendly gull, Septimus does everything he can to make Gully feel at home.  In subsequent visits, the two of them explore their shared interests and their differences (Gully loves the ocean, for example, but Septimus hates to get sand in his fur!).  The visits become so regular that Septimus comes to take Gully and her company for granted.  But then one day Gully doesn't show up on the porch.  Days pass and still no Gully!  Septimus goes in search of his friend and learns some powerful lessons about friendship along the way.

A delightful and quirky book.  Charmingly insecure, Septimus (a badger "within acceptable parameters") frets and worries in a funny way that will delight children and adults.  While there is a story for children here, it really is an adult story -- full of meditations about the compromises that one makes in friendships and the way in which friendships enhance our lives.  The ultimate lesson about acceptance ties the story's sweet and timeless message with a bow.  

The first of a series intent on exploring relationship building.