Wolfpack, by Amelia Brunskill

In an insular cult living deep in the woods, nine teen girls have formed their own little subgroup, supporting and looking out for each other.  Living in an outbuilding away from the rest of the people, they have gained a level of independence and self-government even though they must still follow their sect's rules. 

One day, they wake up to find one of their number is missing.  Worried about the consequences of the defection being discovered and convinced that she will eventually return, the girls attempt to cover up the disappearance.  But when they find out that the missing girl was pregnant and that she was subsequently murdered, they start to investigate what actually happen.  They end of unraveling layers of corruption within their utopia that exposes that their home is far from safe.

As I never tire of saying, verse novels are either great or terrible.  There is no half-way point.  Usually, a verse novel works best for a sad melancholy story because it amps up the poignancy of the protagonist's angst.  Here, the spare verse makes the story more suspenseful and more paranoid.  With so many characters, its hard to get much development in them, but it doesn't matter as the story just races ahead.  The surprise ending isn't well foreshadowed but the conclusion is satisfying and thought provoking.  Entertaining and engaging.

The Cat Who Saved Books, by Sosuke Natsukawa

Reclusive and awkward Rintaro would be perfectly content to sit on his stool in the back of his grandfather's secondhand bookshop, but his grandfather has passed away and the shop is being closed down.  He doesn't know what will come next, but he's resigned to move in with a distant aunt he does not know.  But before that can happen, he is visited by a talking cat, who informs him that he must take three epic trips into the Labyrinth to save books.

The trips, which involve visiting three different men who each threaten literature in specific ways, are allegories that provide cover for deeper criticisms about modern culture and society (the fetishization of literature, the dumbing down of culture, and the triumph of mass production over craftsmanship).  In each case, Rintaro must defend literature and culture against its enemies.  And in the end, through an unexpected additional fourth quest, he must defend the world against his own defense of literature.

The novel name drops a large body of literature, but it is its mention of The Little Prince that is most appropriate.  For it is Antoine de Saint-Exupery's existentialism-for-children classic that this translated Japanese novel best resembles.  As such,  it is packed with symbolism and cryptic conversations.  There is little in the story to take literally and the most enticing parts (the talking cat, the quests, and Rintaro's growth to adulthood) are all duds dramatically. As a story, this is a slog. Instead, it is Natsukawa's critique of modern society that resonates the most and provides ample fodder for debate on such topics as whether digesting a book saves it or destroys it, and does collecting rare books preserves culture or harms it?  Whether that crttique makes the book worth reading depends on what you want to get out of a book.

Girls Like Girls, by Hayley Kiyoko

Coley's father Curtis was not around for the first seventeen years of her life, so it's strange to have to move in with him.  But after the death of her mother, there isn't much choice.  She's only got to put up with it for a few months, so she can just lay low and count the days.  For his part, Curtis tries awfully hard to reconnect, but Coley isn't having any of that.  Instead, she latches on to a volatile group of bored teens and  through them meets Sonya.  The attraction between the two girls is immediate and undeniable to Coley.  But Sonya runs hot and cold, begging Coley for attention one minute but then running to her ex-boyfriend and denying that she's a lesbian in the next.

The relationship is ruptured when Sonya goes too far and betrays Coley's trust and then conveniently goes away to summer camp.  During the break, Coley falls into another destructive relationship before hitting rock bottom.  She comes out of that, managing to pull things together with her life and with her father, but when Sonya returns, the bad old dynamic pops up again.

What the story lacks in terms of activity, it makes up for with authenticity.  The characters felt real and the behaviors seemed plausible, but there is an overly languid nature to the narrative that underplays just about every scene.  We're just laying back in the midst of a long and boring summer, drinking and smoking our way from one scene to another.  Even a surprise act of violence at the end is depicted with detachment.  You're left feeling underinvested in the outcome, not really caring what happens to these characters.

Wolfwood, by Marianna Baer

Indigo's mother achieved fame and critical renown many years ago with her violent watercolor series Wolfwood.  But before she could finish the cycle, she suffered a mental breakdown.  Since then Indigo and her mother have struggled to survive living on the streets.  Now, her mother has been granted an opportunity to finish the series.  The sales from these works would bring in a substantial sum of money and give them a chance to start again.  But as the date of the unveiling of the paintings approaches, Indigo discovers that her mother hasn't painted anything at all and she's in no shape to do so.

Seeing the ruin that awaits them if her mother can't deliver the paintings on time, Indigo takes it upon herself to finish her mother's work.  As she does so, she finds herself literally drawn into the horrific world depicted in the works.  Painting means enduring the suffering of the subjects, being wounded, and potentially being killed.  And while Indigo finally understands her mother's reluctance to finish the works herself, Indigo knows that she has no choice but to attempt to do so.

A grueling story that mixes a touch of magic and an important series of flashbacks to Mom's early life to tell a story of guilt and grieving, and of a mother and daughter achieving mutual understanding.  I found the endless series of setbacks and suffering to be difficult to stomach, but I admired the creativity and the immersion into Indigo's world.  Intermittent attempts to provide relief through Indigo's relationships with various boys felt distracting and broke the narrative in an annoying way.  However, without that respite, the story might have become unbearable.

One Small Thing, by Erin Watt

Ever since Beth's sister was struck and killed by a reckless teen driver, her family has been locked in grief.  Her mother and father refuse to discuss the matter.  They meticulously maintain the dead sister's room and personal spaces as if she will be coming back.  And Beth herself can't process the event enough to even be sad about the loss.

Perhaps that is because her parents have become suffocatingly protective, watching her every move and obsessed with who she is seeing and where she goes.  To escape, Beth sneaks out at night and goes to parties and engages in risky behavior.  One night at a party, she meets Chase, a dark mysterious bad boy.  And while she acknowledges that it is cliché, she has sex with him -- her first time.  It's only a few days later that they even bother to learn each other's name and are faced with a shocking revelation: Chase was the driver of the car that killed Beth's sister!

From here, the two lovers must grapple with their feelings of love and their guilt over how wrong it is that they have those feelings.  They must also hide the relationship, especially as their classmates and virtually the entire town goes on a rampage to lynch Chase.

A melodramatic and dark, but nonetheless irresistibly page-turning novel.  The bad guys (pretty much everyone except Beth and Chase) are often unbearably mean.  The level of misogyny and violence against women is disturbing -- with most of the male characters being depicted as controlling of women and prone to angry outbursts accompanied by physical violence.  The female characters meanwhile are weak and enabling of the abusers.  Beth's parents in particular are absolutely over-the-top.  All of which makes great drama but leaves a bad aftertaste.  That the only long-term solution is to leave is hardly the sort of redemption a story like this needs.  I enjoyed reading it but I can't say that it left me feeling very good.

Gut Reaction, by Kirby Larson & Quinn Wyatt

Tess loves to bake and her cookies and cakes help her make friends at her new school.  Baking also makes her feel close to her father, who died a few years ago.  He taught her the skills and encouraged her to compete to get better.  Now, her friends and fans want her to go to the Jubilee Flour Junior Baker West Coast competition, but she hesitates because it was at this same competition that her father died. Competing there will bring back all of those memories.

Overshadowing this drama is another issue:  Tess keeps experiencing episodes of extreme gastro-intestinal pain.  Certain foods seem to hit it off and she starts trying to alter her diet to prevent the "porcupine" inside her gut from attacking her.  That works for a while, but the episodes become more frequent and more intense so that she renames it a "knife" instead.  In the end, she lands in the hospital with a diagnosis of Crohn's disease.  And now the question is what sort of chance can she have to have a normal life (let alone continue in competitive baking) with such a debilitating disease?

Crohn's is a particularly embarrassing disease because it deals with a part of our bodies that we don't usually talk about.  And for a middle schooler like Tess it would be particularly awkward.  So, I think it was really important to create a book like this in which a young  reader facing this condition for the rest of their life could find some representation.  

And it's a nicely done book.  Tess has enough of a sense of humor to make the rather serious stuff she's dealing with not overwhelm the reader.  I'm less taken by all the other stuff in this story. The baking story  often distracts, but the book would have been too short without something else for Tess to do.  And having it be food related carries a nice irony.  The dead father seemed less useful as a storyline and never really got developed.  It's also terrible cliché.  Perhaps letting the Dad live would have been better.

Noah Frye Gets Crushed, by Maggie Horne

Twelve year-old Noah returns from summer camp having had an amazing time.  She made a great new friend named Jessa and the girls were so excited to learn that Jess and her Mom were moving to Noah's hometown!  Noah can't wait to introduce Jessa to her two best friends at home.

But when she gets home, she finds out that her friends have a surprise of their own:  Over the summer, they have each gotten a boyfriend.  Now, all they want to do is talk about tips and tricks for managing their crushes.  Noah, afraid that she'll be left behind, lies to her friends and claims that she too has a boy she likes.  To prove it, Noah makes a mad dash to find a good boy who she can pretend to have a crush on and she settles on Archie.  But the harder Noah tries to prove she is infatuated with Archie, the less and less comfortable she is with the  whole idea.  The thing is she sees how her older sister is with her boyfriend and Noah knows that her feelings (or lack thereof) for Archie are not anything like that, no matter how much she tries.  Strangely, the person she does have those feelings for is her new friend Jessa.

A very nicely written book about self-discovery and early sexual identity, that in rather painful detail depicts the confusing world of first crushes and middle school drama.  While kids in my day wouldn't have seen same sex attraction as an option, the overall dynamic of needing to be able to say that you were in a relationship because everyone else was feels painfully familiar.  The obsessive plotting and manipulation to create those relationships also feels pretty authentic. The twist of having Noah come out as gay really doesn't change much (unless you live in Florida, in which case you probably can't read this book!) -- middle school romance is pretty generic.

There's much to like in this book.  While I found Noah more than a little clueless, that's sort of a prerequisite in a romance based on near misses.  Her knack for making lots of mistake and her ability to rebound from them makes her very appealing.  The romance between the girls itself is sweet.  While facing numerous misunderstandings along the way, it does finally achieve a satisfying conclusion.

The Sister Pact, by Stacie Ramey

Allie and Leah made a pact to be together in life and in death.  It was the only way they felt they could survive the battleground that their parents laid out in their home.  So, when Leah commits suicide and Allie fails to follow her, Allie is left with grief and guilt.  At the end, when it mattered most, Allie wasn't there for her sister and now she must pay the price.  Faced on her own with a father (who, in failing to control his one daughter, now seeks to gain mastery over the survivor) and a helpless mother drowning herself in sedatives, Allie has trouble finding allies.  Her boyfriend is unsure how to help and wary of opening up, especially as Allie is also flirting with Max, a player who just wants to use her but provides relief from her pain.  And then an angel appears in the guise of the school's drug dealer, who turns out to know more about Leah than Allie does herself.

A story about secrets in a very toxic family, littered with lots of drug abuse and suicidal ideation.  It's not a cheery tale.  I tolerated its very slow and miserable grind because of the familiarity of the characters and their dynamics.  Still, this might well not be your taste in entertainment and the emotional abuse is quite triggering, making this a book that I frequently had to take breaks from.  The story, of course, hinges on Allie and she's suitably nuanced and complex, defying easy solutions and in the end achieving a level of peace that, while rushed, felt satisfactory and believable.  You're not going to find much sense that her war has been won, but at least these soldiers have survived their battle.

Deep Water, by Jamie Sumner

Right before Tully's mother left them, she promised to help Tully train to swim a twelve-mile marathon across Lake Tahoe.  Now that she's gone, Tully knows how to grab her Mom's attention so that maybe just maybe she can get her Mom to come home.  With the help of her bestfriend, she's going to secretly do it on her own and become the youngest person to successfully complete the swim.  Along the way, she fights cold water and bad weather, but the hardest obstacle of all is her own mind and the thoughts that spring up inside it.

Told in verse, this spare story of a sex-hour swim across the lake becomes much more:  Tully's confrontation with her feelings about her mother's abandonment about how Tully will move on.  It doesn't steer into any particularly novel territory and the verse itself is not particularly adventurous (except for a few clever pieces that take advantage of some fancy typography).  Still, it's a pleasant enough story and a brisk read.

Mascot, by Charles Waters and Traci Sorell

Ms. Williams's eighth grade honors English class gets assigned the topic of debating their school's traditional mascot -- an Indian brave.  But the classroom debate pro and con quickly bursts out into the wider school community as the students find that they and their families have legitimate feelings about whether such a mascot is appropriate at their school.  Told in verse, six children -- representing a variety of racial, ethnic, and economic backgrounds -- discuss what the issue means to them and play an active part in a movement to change the mascot.

This is one of those cases where verse works against the story.  There are complicated issues at play here and the verse structure causes the authors to gloss over them.  We get soundbites, but no real depth of understanding.  So, for example, native-American Callie finds lots of research on the psychological damage caused by racist mascots, but we're provided with no details.  We're introduced to Sean's love of tradition and the importance of the mascot as a rallying point for his family's otherwise miserable existence. But again, without detail we are forced to conclude that the family is just poor and ignorant.  

So, I found the book frustrating and unenlightening.  It may raise the awareness of young readers to the importance of the issue, but it won't help them navigate the real world of the political debates and the motivations behind them that surround any attempt to change things.

Always the Almost, by Edward Underhill

Miles is plagued by the thought that he is not enough.  As a trans boy, Miles feels he's not enough of a boy and knows he was not happy as a girl.  He'd like to win back his ex-boyfriend Shane, but Shane isn't interested in guys.  To Miles, this feels more like a rejection of him, and that he is not enough to be worthy of love.  It doesn't help that, on the verge of a new round of piano competitions, Miles' teacher keeps telling him that he needs to figure out who he is and that until he does he will never be a great pianist.  Perhaps, Miles isn't enough of a musician either?

Then Miles meets a boy named Eric who gets his pronouns right and likes Miles however he sees himself.  And while Miles still aches to get back together with Shane, everything is much easier with Eric.  Is Miles going to figure out who he wants to love and who he wants to be? Will he win his piano competition?  Well, you'll just have to read it to find out!

Underhill does a great job with his main character.  Miles starts off annoyingly shallow and insensitive to others, but his understanding of himself is complex and nuanced.  It's not that he doubts that he's a boy so much as he struggles with what that in fact means to him.  And his behavior -- which overwhelmingly reads as feminine (with its socially-sensitive, intuitive, and emotional instincts) -- feels authentic for a newly-transitioned boy.  That's a subtlety that authors rarely capture.  I also enjoyed watching Miles grow as a person, becoming better at negotiating his relationships and losing much of that initial insensitivity.

While the supporting characters are not as interesting as Miles, they do exist in a rather complex dynamic that will feel relatable to teens and painful to adult to reminisce about.  Underhill has a good sense of the insecurities of the adolescent mind.  On the other hand, the lack of any straight characters -- while fashionable in contemporary YA -- feels less authentic.

This is a well written romance that presents a strong and sympathetic trans character in a meaningful and realistic relationship.

The Lake House, by Sarah Beth Durst

Three girls are dropped off at summer camp in a remote part of Maine.  While they don't know one another yet, Claire, Reyva, and Mariana each have unique things to overcome and they are looking forward to attending the camp that their parents all insist is life transforming.  But when they are dropped off, they find that the entire camp has been burned to the ground with no immediate sign of what happened to the staff and the other campers.  Instead, they find a dead body.

Unable to return to the mainland, and with no means to communicate, the girls have to figure out how to survive.  Being suburban girls, they have little to no outdoors experience and working out food, water, and shelter becomes a matter of trial and error -- a terrifying thought when there is a killer is there with them.  And that's before they find that there is a much worse adversary out there!

Needing a distraction from politics, I could have embraced an intellectual classic, but I grabbed for a trashy survival/horror novel instead.  It wasn't nearly as bad as I expected it to be.  Yes, there were plot holes and some really stretched logic in the storyline, but the tension was kept at a high level and the story was full of irresistable cliffhangers.  For anyone who likes clever characters, it was engrossing to watch the girls MacGyver their way out of their problems.  But maybe more to the point, each of the girls were interesting and sympathetic.  They had very distinct personalities, strengths, and weaknesses.  It helped that they didn't snipe at each other but instead worked together to get through it.

The story itself has a wonderful dramatic arc that allows each of the girls to have a moment to grow and be tested.  That I cared about their ability to face those fears was startling to me for a book that I had assumed would be a mindless scream fest.

Chaos Theory, by Nic Stone

A story of two young people with an incredible amount of emotional baggage who fall into an ill-advised relationship.

Shelbi suffers from a bipolar disorder that sends her into extreme bouts of depression.  While medication helps, keeping her head down and out of any relationship is the best course.  But she can't help herself with Andy, who seems nice and sensitive, even if the first time she meets him it is due to him drunk dialing her.

Andy wants to be a good guy and, after Shelbi explains her issues, he promises he can be trustworthy.  However, that's hard to do as he's dealing with the recent death of his baby sister and a somewhat more shocking loss (which is not revealed at first).  His recourse to his problems is to escape into the bottle.  Shelbi recognizes the risks, but she still wants to believe Andy when he promises it is all under control.  It isn't and when Andy falls off the wagon one time too many and hurts Shelbi, things fall entirely apart.

A brisk, fast-moving story that feels authentic and addresses emotional health issues.  The writing, however, lacks clarity at times and Stone has an excessive supply of melodrama to toss in from time to time when the story lags.  The characters are strong and really make the story.  Despite their faults, Andy and Shelbi are both sympathetic protagonists, but one wishes the adults had been a bit faster on their toes in keeping their children on the rails.  A lot of well-meaning denial causes a lot of unnecessary pain (and some learning experiences).

I Kick and I Fly, by Ruchira Gupta

A gripping story of an Indian girl named Heera who lives in a red-light district in Bihar.  Raised with the understanding that when she reaches puberty her father or brother will pimp her out, Heera wants more in life than to be a prostitute.  But faced with bullying at school and the hostility of her father, receiving an education seems like an impossible dream.

Things change when she starts to study kung fu through a local program for endangered girls.  She excels at the sport and gains confidence.  However, the more she becomes determined to break free, the harder the forces arrayed against her try to keep her down.  Several times, her martial arts skills actually save her life.  Featuring unapologetically explicit depictions of child prostitution and international sex trafficking, the compelling story is impossible to forget.

The author, an Emmy winner for her documentary about the same subject, has created a very digestible novel for young adults.  The strength of the story is it veracity.  While names are changed, every hero and villain in the story is based on a real person.  The storytelling leans towards the melodramatic and the events depicted are conveniently coincidental (probably for the purposes of compressing the storyline), but this helps move everything along at a fine pace.  While an upsetting read, the novel balances its grim depictions and its urgent calls for reform with glimmers of hope that provide what is ultimately an inspiring conclusion.

The Ghost of Us, by James L. Sutter

Cara has spent years trying to live down the infamy of a sexting mistake by hosting a YouTube channel about ghost hunting.  Accompanied by her Christian friend Holly, she's searching for evidence of the existence of ghosts.  So, when she stumbles across a real one -- Aiden, a kid in her school who was killed in an accident last year -- she finally has something that can make her famous and get her out of her deadend town.  

Aiden's ghost, however, has goals of his own.  He wants Cara to ask his sister Meredith to the Senior Prom to raise her out of a year of depression and mourning.  Cara agrees to help out and (against the advice of her friend Holly) starts romancing Meredith.  While initially she does this as part of a deal to be able to use Aiden for her channel, she finds herself falling for Meredith for real.  But what will happen when Meredith learns the truth?

A rather clever supernatural romance that has a lot to say about self-acceptance, as well as some wise words about friendships and familial bonds.  The pacing is off and things get compressed at the end, but Sutton has created very full characters who interact nicely.  Sutton manages the rare feat of being a male author who can cross the gender divide and create authentic female characters.  The writing is witty and the story is lively and fun.

Unbecoming, by Seema Yasmin

In this nearly-fictional YA dystopian novel, Texas is imagined as a place that has outlawed and criminalized all abortions.  Even hormonal drugs and basic medical supplies (like the gel for ultrasounds) are carefully monitored and regulated.  Some activity is even a capital offense, creating a state of fear.  But in the midst of all that danger, a system of undercover mobile clinics still struggle to make OB-GYN services available, including birth control, IVF, and abortion.  Working against them are not only the police, but gangs of armed vigilantes trying to track down the renegades at all cost.  Nearly fiction or maybe not fictional enough?

Laylah and Noor are two Muslim teens who have taken it upon themselves to produce a guide for their fellow Texas teens about what to do if you find out that you're pregnant and want to terminate it.  Noor is a diehard journalist with a conviction to getting her facts right and keeping the guide relevant and up-to-date.  That's a particular challenge when the people who are providing services are constantly on the move and trying to stay hidden.  Laylah is the scientific mind with plans to enter a pre-med program and become an OB-GYN.  So when she discovers that she is pregnant, she is afraid of what the pregnancy will do to her career plans.  Suddenly, the guide is even more important to her and her fact checking work takes on a personal urgency.

For a book vying for Most Likely to Be Banned From Your School Library, the novel disappoints.  A great premise and a strong start get quickly bogged down in a series of poorly paced adventures as Laylah struggles to find a source for medications for her abortion.  Whether it's to create dramatic tension or to simply pad out the story, everything is s t r e t c h e d out and made entirely more complicated than it needs to be.  As the story progressed, I great more and more annoyed at the digressions.  This is topped off towards the end by a very powerful but largely unrelated story that packs a punch but serves to suck the energy out of the climax.  We get feels and a lot of deep thoughts but no decent release of the dramatic tension of the main plot.  

It's a gutsy book with a lot to say and occasional laugh-out-loud moments, but overall poor storytelling.

Six More Months of June, by Daisy Garrison

Caplan and Mina have been next door neighbors and best friends through their school years.  Mina is shy and withdrawn, an outcast at school.  Caplan is popular and dating the school's Queen Bee Hollis.  But there has always been some sort of connection between Caplan and Mina that no one can explain (but people assume that it is some sort of crush).  But now, approaching the end of high school, Caplan is forced to face some uncomfortable truths about his feelings for Mina when she starts dating his best friend Quinn.  And as things explode emotionally around them and the curtain closes on their childhoods, a reckoning comes to all.

A beautifully written story that has all of the tropes but none of the expected endings.  The biggest surprise is Hollis who, far from being some uber-popular bitch, ends up being the nicest person of all.  Yet each of the other main characters (Caplan, Mina, and Quinn) manage to surprise with their independent non-stereotypical actions.  The book is littered with favorite scenes and fulls of brilliant quotes and one suspects that Garrison has spent her lifetime collecting favorite anecdotes to stuff into this first novel.

Anecdote packing, unfortunately, is also the weakness of the book.  For while the book is an exquisitely exposition upon the cusp of adulthood, it is bereft of an actual story.  The plot boils down to "four kids graduate and realize that they love each other in ways that transcend romantic or sexual feelings" and that's basically it.  You'll want to read it very slowly and carefully to suck out all the goodness, but in the end there isn't much substance here -- no deep meaning, no emotional climax -- just a sense of young people (through the author) making fantastic observations about life and growing up.

On the Bright Side, by Anna Sortino

For Ellie, living at a boarding school for deaf students was a godsend, helping her come out and thrive.  So, when the school closes and she's forced to come home and finish her senior year at home, it's hard to adjust to being the only deaf student at the public high school. And it's never been easy with her family.  Her parents are less than understanding about her needs and subconsciously favor her (hearing) older sister.  She can't wait until she graduates so she can get away from everything and everybody.

After a pretty rough introduction on her first day of school, the counselor arranges for chronic overachiever Jackson to help show Ellie around.  Ellie resents Jackson's enthusiasm despite his earnest (albeit awkward) attempts to ingratiate himself to her.  However, being a romance, it just takes some time and few more awkward incidents for the two of them to find each other and connect.  And along the way, we explore the many difficulties of building a relationship between a hearing person and a deaf one.

But there's more to the story.  Jackson has been experiencing random loss of motor control and sensation, and bouts of vertigo and nausea.  After some misdignosis and a harrowing scene where Ellie has to rescue him, the doctors eventually determine that Jackson has Multiple Sclerosis.  Faced with such a complex and terrifying condition, Jackson has to work through his shock, grief, and anger.  Ellie tries to help him, but it's a lot for a young love to take on.  Never mind that she has her own issues with her family to deal with.

It's a busy story with lots of issues (disability, prejudice, abuse, amongst others) that works surprisingly well and manages to bring up a lot about the experience of being hearing disabled.  It helps that the author is deaf and she draws heavily on her own life to bring in fascinating details (like the mistakes that beginners at ASL tend to make or the need to provide good lighting at parties where deaf people are attending) to fill out the story.  I enjoyed those little bits while appreciating a satisfying romance that, while not straying too far from form, still delivered an above average novel about two young people struggling with some major difficulties and overcoming them.  Eschewing an overly rosy ending, the story's issues and problems are addressed and we are left with a hopeful future for the two protagonists.

Unstuck, by Barbara Dee

Lyla has plans for a major fantasy novel.  The story's so complicated that she has trouble explaining it and it's going to take several books to cover the whole tale.  In other words, it will be truly epic!  At least, the story will be when she can get around to start writing it!  But there is background to research, geography to sort out (maybe she should draft out a map?), and a whole genealogy to draft out; to say nothing about coming up with names for all of the characters and places.  With all those distractions to figure out, it's understandable that she's struggled to put even a single sentence to paper.  And while she has a very supportive creative writing teacher, she really needs to get started!

Back home, her older sister seems to be suffering from a form of writer's block of her own.  She's supposed to be writing her application essays for college but hasn't gotten started.  Mom and Dad are going crazy nagging her and homelife has become unbearably tense.  Lyla wonders if any of the advice her teacher is giving her about writing could help her sister as well?  But Lyla is also confused by her sister's unwillingness to try.

Dee is really one of the best contemporary writers at capturing middle school mindsets.  Lyla has all of the awkward tween-ness of the age -- negotiating new school, new friends, and new avocations.  Rebelling against things she judges to be "babyish" while still struggling to understand the world to come, Lyla bravely experiments.

Dee's description of writer's block and real advice on how to work through it is a clever topic for a book, suitable for all writers, young and old.

The Wonderful Wishes of B, by Katherin Nolte

Ten year-old Bea has experienced a lot of pain lately and she has five wishes connected with those losses. She wishes her grandmother had not died, that her best friend had not moved away, that her Mom could keep her business afloat, that her Dad would visit, and that her grandma's old doll would come alive and become her little sister.  And, if nothing else, she wishes she could become like Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz and lose her heart so it would stop aching.

A new boy moves to town and convinces her that his own grandmother is a witch and can perform magic.  For the price of doing some things for the witch that Bea grows to regret, the woman is willing to grant Bea's wishes.  And while grandmother can't manage to grant all of the wishes, Bea's father does reappear with promises of his own to grant Bea's remaining wishes.  But in the end, Bea discovers that there is no magic fix for the losses we feel and that a heart is made for feeling the bad and the good.

A folksy middle reader featuring small bits of magic, adorable kitties, and plenty of friendly and quirky side characters.  While a few bad things happen, this is a light and safe story that manages to reach a predictable conclusion with a few  unexpected surprises along the way!

Emmett, by L C Rosen

Emmett is popular -- a fact that he attributes immodestly to how nice he is.  He's always thinking of other people's needs.  He's even taken it upon himself to help all of his friends find partners and he's overjoyed with planning ways in which his single friends can find each other.

He has no interest in finding a guy for himself.  He doesn't mind hooking up for sex, but getting into a committed relationship will inevitably lead to heartache and Emmett has no intention of getting hurt!  The human brain doesn't physically stop growing until you're twenty-five and so that's the earliest he'll be ready to find his life partner.

It's all very neat, but Emmett's perfect world is starting to come apart.  A string of matchmaking failures make Emmett question his skills.  And when he hurts some of his friends in the process, he doubts whether he is really as nice as he likes to to think he is.  But most grievous of all is the nagging doubt in his mind that maybe (just maybe) he would like to have a romance of his own.

I'm not sure that we need yet another adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma for the YA market (even if this version is the most flaming gay boy version to date), but my primary complaint is that I found it hard to really engage with the story.  Perhaps, because the characters really didn't seem like high schoolers, but rather more like college students.  You don't really get the feeling that Emmett and his friends live at home with their parents.  Their lives seem to mostly center around parties and flirting.  That's very Jane Austen, but it's not very American high school.  There's a fair amount of emortional drama, but not really any emotional depth and the result is more satire than romance.

Hunger, by Donna Jo Napoli

Life in the Irish countryside has alwatys been a bit precarious.  Lorraine and her family lease land from an English lord and subsist on the potatoes they grow, selling their grain harvest for income.  But when the crop fails in 1846, things start to look dire.  And in the year that follows, mass starvation leads to societal collapse.  

In the midst of the suffering, Lorraine befriends the naive but kind-hearted daughter of their lord named Susanna.  Miss Susannais a complicated character: arrogant, ignorant, and rude, but she nonetheless performs important acts oif charity that ultimately keep Lorraine alive.

Based entirely on historical fact, this is a story that won't exactly qualify as a pleasure read.  So while Napoli writes excellent historical fiction, but it's hard to imagine too many young people who would pick this book to read on the beach.  That's a shame as the book doesn't just serve as a historical account, but raises significant questions about how racism and ignorance affect the topic of immigration and of charity.

The Color of Sound, by Emily Barth Isler

Feeling burdened by her mother's expectations, violin prodigy Rosie declares that she's "on strike" for the forseeable future and not going to play.  Her furious mother punishes her by taking away her internet privileges but still holds out hope that Rosie will return to practicing.  Steaming at each other over the impasse, mother and daughter are forced have to cohabit as they visit Rosie's dying grandmother.

To get away from her family Rosie explores the property and runs across a peculiar girl her age.  Through some time travel magic, the girl turns out to be Rosie's own mother.  While Rosie frets a bit about impacting the future by interacting with her past-Mom, she is able to use the experience to learn why her mother is so controlling.  At a pivotal moment, she is also able to repair their relationship by solving a crisis in her young Mom's life.

A touching story of family regrets and legacies that is laser focused on being a Mother-Daughter Bookclub read (there are even discussion questions at the end of the book!).  I found myself getting annoyed by the way that mom's anxiety is portrayed and excused.  I also bristled at the or the heavy handed discussion about social interactions between children of different ages.  It felt like a kind of story that someone let Rosie's overbearing mother edit for appropriate content.  That made things safe, but not necessarily fun.

Those objections aside, I loved the magical time travel angle and the device of daughter teaching mother in the past (which of course was more famously done in Back to the Future).  I also enjoyed the fact that both Rosie and her mother have synthesia and hear music as color, an idea that has been explored in nother middle readers.

Break To You, by Neil Shusterman, Debra Young, and Michelle Knowlden

A series of bad choices in friends hands Adriana a seven month stretch in the Compass juvenile detention facility.  Allegedly based on novel approaches to rehabilitate young adults and avoid recidivism, Compass is really a morass of selfish and embittered adults who manipulate the children under their control for their own ends.  So much for the social critique element of this team-written novel.

The meat of the story though is an unusual romance.  Strictly segregated, boys and girls don't interact.  But when Adriana accidentally leaves her journal at the jail library, it is discovered by Jon, who reads and writes in it before leaving it for her.  The two develop a correspondance, clandestinely writing entries and leaving the book hidden on the shelves for the other to find later.  Soon, simply writing to each other is not enough and Adriana and Jon hatch a plan to find a way to meet face to face.  Doing so sets in motion a series of events with tragic consequences.

The story is gripping and briskly paced.  The characters are well developed and diverse, illustrating a variety of different incarceration experiences.  The adults are far less interesting, but do a good job of moving things forward.  The end, while unexpected, is satisfyingly open-ended.  I enjoyed the book, but I doubt it will do much more than entertain.  The authors bring up a number of flaws in the justice and corrections systems, but it is unlikely readers will make much of a connection between these one-dimensional baddies and the real world issues that exist.

The No-Girlfriend Rule, by Christen Randall

In the six years that Hollis and Chris have been dating, Hollis has been shut out of Chris's Friday night Secrets and Sorcery games.  That's because his group has a strict "no girlfriends allowed" rule -- a rule that Hollis is determined to chip away at.  It's not that Hollis particularly likes the misogynistic and homophobic group that Chris plays with, but she wants to be in Chris's life.  So, Hollis has been studying how to play and she's found a group of her own to play with to get better.

The new group is made up solely of young women, racially diverse, and representative of a variety of gender and sexual identities. The woman who runs the group is all about building a supportive and safe environment.   In a nutshell, it's everything Chris's group is not.  And when Hollis finds that she not only likes them better but also, for the first time in her life feels she has real friends, it causes her to question why she cares so much for Chris.  And while breaking up seems unthinkable, there's no denying that she is discovering that there's so much more to life than being some guy's girlfriend.

I was initially going to write this off as a fluffy romance set amidst table-top gamers, but it has a surprising amount of substance.  Dungeons and Dragons (and gamer culture as a whole) is notoriously misogynistic.  Randall takes some pretty easy shots at that at the start, but then she imagines what a campaign would be like if it wasn't and Hollis's group is a wonderful exploration of how one could play the game without succumbing to toxic masculinity.  I'm sure the discussion has been had in the gamersphere but I've never seen it in fiction before and it's eye-opening.

Beyond that is a really strong story of Hollis's growth from an anxious and dependent girlfriend, unable to see her own self-worth, to a young woman with contributions to make and a right to be loved.  It's hardly smooth sailing and she has a lot of very relatable struggles with doubt and insecurity, but the honesty of the portrayal makes the payoff at the end so much more moving.  She also has a very authentic struggle with her sexual identity when her heart leads her towards a girl in the group -- a search which is never fully resolved and feels very satisfactory being left as such.

Throw in a couple other topics like body images, clinical anxiety, and abusive relationships, and you get a lot of value for a story about girls and gaming.

Such Charming Liars, by Karen M. McManus

After years of life as a jewelry thief, Kat's mother has finally decided to go clean.  She just needs one more job to make a new life possible.  It ought to be pretty straightforward: under the cover of being a caterer for a rich guy's 80th birthday run off with a valuable ruby necklace that belongs to his daughter while everyone is distracted blowing out the candles.  But things go wrong from the start:  on the way to site, their car gets a flat tire and the person who stops to help them is hardly a stranger.

Years ago, Kat's Mom married a man in Vegas and his son Liam was friends with Kat for 48 hrs.  But after a series of best-left-forgotten adventures, Mom and Dad split up non-amicably.  And now by strange fate they've suddenly been reunited, but it's not random chance: Liam's father is catfishing the same rich guy's daughter.  So, we have two con artists targetting the same person for very different reasons and their children are thrown into the middle of it all.

The story's a LOT more complicated than this, of course (especially when we start stacking up dead bodies), and there are layers upon layers of crosses and double crosses.  In the midst of all that story, it's easy to lose track of the characters and forget who is what to whom.  The characters are not particularly memorable and the plausibility of the plot wanes as things get complicated, but none of that really matters.  This is a well thought-out story and it's great fun to take a ride on the adventure, but it wasn't much to my taste. I had to wonder in the end if any of this made much sense.

Leila and the Blue Fox, by Kiran Millwood Hargrave (ill by Tom de Freston)

It's been six years since Leila has been with her mother.  They've spoken on the phone and on the computer, but there's never been a provate moment.  A climate scientist working above the Arctic Circle in Norway, Mom's work has been a convenient way to keep her and Leila from talking about their time in Syria and their forced emigration to the West.  But now during a summer visit to a land where the sun doesn't set and land easily becomes ice and melts to water, Leila finally has that time to talk.

Mom is tracking an Arctic Blue Fox, who they have named Miso to learn more about the impact of climate change.  Searching for a new home, Miso is undertaking an epic migration of her own, traveling what will eventually be a 2700 mile trek from Norway to Canada.  

Beautifully illustrated, this short and quick read deftly merges two very different stories (the reconciliation of mother and daughter and Miso's instinctive fight for survival) into a seemless story about the travels we take and what we hold on to.

The Final Curse of Ophelia Cray, by Christine Calella

When your mother is a feared and hated pirate and reputed witch, it's hard to keep a low profile.  Raised by her father, Ophelia has borne not only her mother's name, but the weight of her mother's notoriety.  Hated by the townspeople, Ophelia longs to run away from her small island and sail the seas -- not as a pirate like her mother, but as a sailor in the Royal Navy.  When her bloodline prevents her from enlisting, she presents herself as her half-sister Betsy and joins on.  Her sister is a helpless homebody and unlikely to be noticed by anyone, or so Ophelia thinks.  But when Ophelia slips away, Betsy surprises everyone by racing off to sea after her.

And soon, the best laid plans go astray as a set of curses cast by Ophelia's mother at the gallows come to pass.  Pirates, sword fights, sunken ships, gold, betrayals and doublecrosses, and endless adventure unfurl over the next 300+ pages of this frenetic adventure.  The cast is huge (although so is the body count) and keeping track of who is on whose side at any point in time is an ordeal, but if you let the story just take you along you are guaranteed a good ride.  It's not every YA novel that lets the heroine duel and get whipped in the first hundred pages so don't imagine that this is much of a "feelings" book or particularly focused on character development. But if pirates are your thing, there's plenty of that to go round here.

The Luminous Life of Lucy Landry, by Anna Rose Johnson

Orphan Lucy Landry comes to live with the Martin family at a lighthouse on Lake Superior.  Life on an island in the middle of the Lake is harsh and isolated, and the Martins are a large family.  Lucy, who has never spent much time with other children, struggles with learning how to get along with her new step-siblings.  

Lucy is her own worst enemy as she weaves wild imaginations about herself as a queen, a fairy, or the daughter of a famous actress and tries to lord over the other children.  More troublesome is the way that her active imagination leads her into a series of mishaps -- some amusing, some cruel.  Key amongst these fantasies is a legend of a ruby necklace lost at sea nearby which Lucy feels compelled to locate, ultimately putting herself and the Martins in danger.

The story makes for an interesting peek at the history of the lighthouses on the Great Lakes.  But while the whimsical romanticism of Lucy Landry evokes the beloved melodrama of Anne from Anne of Green Gables),  Lucy's behavior is more selfish and thoughtless (and her caregivers overly indulgent) to really become a sympathetic character.  Lucy's willing to put her adopted family at risk out of greed and then her stubborn refusal to accept responsibility turned me off so sharply that I didn't care that, in the end, she gets a chance to become a heroine and save the day.  The damage was done.

Salt and Sugar, by Rebecca Carvalho

Lari's family owns Salt, a bakery in Olinda, Brazil.  Pedro lives across the street from them at Sugar, their culinary competition.  For generations, Lari's family and Pedro's family have been locked in a feud, convinced of the treachery of their neighbor.  Both of the kids have been raised to distrust each other.

But the two families have acquired a much greater enemy:  a grocery store chain called Deals Deals, which threatens to run both family bakeries out of business.  Divided, they are easy pickings for the megastore, but Lari and Pedro realize that teaming up might give them a chance.  After generations of hatred and accusations, can the two young people form an alliance and can they learn to trust each other?  And when their plans end up sparking romance, can they open their hearts to learn to love their enemy?

A loving tribute to Brazilian food and the melodramatic stylings of Brazilian telenovellas!  There's a rather tiresome amount of feuding and talking past each other, but the story is saved by its mouth-watering depictions of cuisine, strong supporting characters, and Lari's iron will.  True to its inspiration, the ending is also amazingly over-the-top and you can't take much of it seriously, but everything resolves in a surprisingly satisfactory and believable fashion.  Formulaic, but I enjoyed it like a good cake!

The Word, by Mary G. Thompson

Caught in a custody battle between her parents that also pits her between the harshly patriarchal (but safely predicatble) world of the Word and the frightening freedom of the outside world, Lisa struggles to figure out where she fits in.

Stolen from her mother at the age of seven, Lisa's been raised in her father's religious community and taught to obey men without question.  Even after her father is expelled, she follows him nearly unerringly as they end up on the streets.  And when she is finally rescued and returned to her mother, she must perform one final act of loyalty for the man.  But having tasted a world of freedom in which she can make her own choices, is she still obligated to obey her father's last order?

A suspenseful thriller that follows a well-worn path.  But while it uses familiar tropes, Thompson avoids spending inordinate time on them.  Yes, the reclusive messianic cult that Lisa and her parents are involved in has lots of abuse, hypocrisy, and shaky theology, but we spend little time on it (and the focus is mostly on how incompatible her Dad is with the faith). Lisa has plenty of symptoms of PTSD, but we skim over the events that caused them. In place of gratuitous scenes of physical jeopardy, there a strong drive to race to the end.  The plot's notable feature is its focus on its goal.  Strong characters and some unusual supporting rules (like Lisa's homeschooled boyfriend) also give this novel some originality amidst the familiar.

In the Orbit of You, by Ashley Schumacher

When they were little, Nova and Sam were inseparable playmates.  They played with snails in the backyard and styled themselves as the King and Queen of Snailopolis.  They planned to be friends forever, but Sam's father was hurting him and Sam got taken away.  And then Nova and her Mom moved away as well.

Moving is a big constant in Nova's life.  Thanks to her Mom's job as a consultant, they have to pull up stakes every few months.  When she was younger, Nova liked the excitement of going to a new place and having a new beginning, but as she grows older it has begun to wear on her.  Not only has she been unable to form any lasting friendships, but also she has struggled to develop any sense of herself and who she wants to become.

The latest move seems like all the others until she stumbles upon Sam at school.  At first, he doesn't recognize her, but thanks to a gimmicky personality test the students take, he is drawn to her when they are matched as "99% compatible" (much to the chagrin of Sam's girlfriend Abigail).  After the initial shock of the reunion, they agree that they will just be friends.  Nova will be moving on in two months.  Sam has a good thing going with Abigail.  They agree it is better to stay "on course." But of course that isn't what ends up happening.

While the idea of destiny and fate can seem very romantic, there is the hanging dread of eventual discovery as Nova and Sam start fooling around that weighs heavily on any of the fun.  And with Abigail portrayed as unusually nice and understanding, their betrayal seems cruel and selfish.  In the end, Abigail herself rightly calls them on their immaturity and I was left without much sympathy (and even less empathy) for Nova and Sam's angst.  It doesn't help that the story gets dragged out far longer than it needs to be.  The subplots about Nova and Sam's individual struggles with their futures would have been far more interesting with less of the secret forbidden romance (maybe without any of it).

The Wilderness of Girls, by Madeline Claire Franklin

With her father arrested and her stepmother on the lam, Rhi is left trying to find her footing living with her uncle, a forest ranger.  Hiking in the woods one day, she comes upon a pack of four feral girls dressed in furs and animal skins, guarded by two wolves.  

From where did they come and how did they survive for so many years?  The girls believe that they are enchanted princesses, who have been raised by a man named Mother, in an old collapsed tree that they call a "castle." Mother's magic protected them, helped them find food, and healed them when they grew sick.  It was Mother who explained to them that they were four of five and when they met the fifth princess they would be ready to fight to free the people of a kingdom in another dimension.  Through all their hardships, the girls believed in Mother.  But when he died, the magic went away and the girls sought out help.

Who was Mother?  Was he magical or some sort of psychopath who kidnapped the girls.  Are the girls princesses or victims? Finding the answer to that question will tell the girls as much about themselves as it will explain about the man.  Now thrust into the modern world, they are pressured by the authorities, the media, and the people who are caring for them to define themselves so they can be properly categorized.

For Rhi, their struggle to understand and explain themselves feels like her own and it soon becomes apparent that she might share their destiny.  But what is the fate for young women raised in the woods and totally unprepared for the brutal wilderness of the larger world?  Their instincts are to fight for their survival and they are unversed in the subtleties and duplicities now around them.  They don't understand the behaviors that are expected of them as young women and, while they desire to integrate into society and uncertain that they can compromise themselves to do so.

This complex and multi-layered novel explores female friendship and companionship.  While Franklin brings in some pretty horrific abuse and violence (including a brief scene of cannibalism), the story is less about pointing out the brutality of the world for women and more about the way women connect and communicate in the face of such abuse and violence.  This can occasionally grow preachy for the benefit of young readers who may struggle with the nuanced reading of feminine negotiations with patriarchy that Franklin employs, but this is all good Feminism 101 stuff.

Written in more of the style of a legend or an extended parable, as if Franklin is recounting an epic journey, there's not a lot of depth to the characters or examinations of their personal feelings.  Instead, the girls are largely symbolic from their backstories (which are a catalog of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse).  Even their names (Verity, Sunder, Oblivienne, Grace, and Eden)`suggest meaning.  

Overall, the writing is gorgeous, the thoughts profound, and the story memorable.  Definitely one of the best YA books of 2024. 

Flyboy, by Kasey LeBlanc

In his daily life as a senior, Asher can't find the courage to tell people he's a boy.  All that anyone sees is him wearing the stupid plaid skirt that the girls have to wear.  But in his dreams, Asher is an acrobat in the Midnight Circus, a magical place where everyone sees him for who he actually is -- a boy.  And for months, that is how it is:  daytime spent dealing with controlling prejudiced grandparents and a largely absent mother, nightime sailing through the air. The two worlds never meet, until the day Asher discovers that his trapeeze partner walking the halls of his school.

The discovery corresponds with troubles befalling both worlds and Asher must take drastic measures to save the Circus.  These steps will involve coming clear in the daytime world about who he is and accepting what that will cost him.

The novel is a peculiar mix of a realistic coming out story with a fantasy element.  It's clever and allows for a steady comparison of the brave hopes that Asher has in his dreams conflicting with the reality of the way fear paralyzes him.  But while Asher has some nice depth, the other characters seemed more like caricatures (especially, the odious grandparents).  And the story, which  builds towards a nice climax with Asher finding strength in his fantasies to take action in the real world, gets sidetracked with an ending that pulls out lots of unnecessary drama involving his mother's unrelated backstory and a similarly out-of-the-blue disaster.

These Bodies Between Us, by Sarah Van Name

What starts off as a typical summer beach story, transforms with the help of a little magic, into an extended metaphor about how we see ourselves and other.  

Callie and her friends Talia and Cleo have always spent the summer in a small town on the North Carolina beach.  This summer, Cleo has brought a friend -- quiet, haunted Polly -- along with her.  And she's also brought a grand idea:  she wants to spend the summer making herself invisible.  She's been reading secret webpages and YouTube videos about the process and she's convinced it will work.

Callie and Talia aren't so certain, but it's an annual tradition that the girls have a summmer project to work on together and this one is as good as any.  Callie knows it won't work, but what is the harm in playing along?  To her surprise, though, it does work.  The girls gain the ability to make themselves disappear at will, and it opens up a whole new world for them.  When things get tough because of nagging parents, a scary guy, a violent boyfriend, or just the stress of being an adolescent girl, who wouldn't enjoy the ability to simply disappear?  But as the girls grow accustomed to using their new superpower, they discover its addictive nature and some scary side effects.  Eventually the danger of continuing to make themselves invisible becomes too great.  They need to reverse the process and give up their power -- but can they?

An original, albeit heavy-handed, exploration of the struggle of young women becoming comfortable in their bodies.  The girls are interesting and uniquely distinct, but thinly drawn and I found myself frustrated by how little we explored their motivations for disappearing.  The overall idea and its exploration of both the male and the parental gaze was interesting and thought-provoking though, and that mae it a worthy read.  Definitely, one of the more memorable books I have read.

The Worst Perfect Moment, by Shivaun Plozza

Tegan is dead, killed while riding her bike.  But heaven isn't anything like she expected it. Instead of clouds and pearly gates, she'd found herself at the Marybelle Motor Lodge in New Jersey.  The motel is hardly a happy memory -- this was the place where her father took her and her young sister after their mother walked out on them.  It was the place where he promptly had a four-day breakdown and Tegan had to take care of her sister.  It is not any sort of afterlife that Tegan ever imagined.

But that's exactly what it is, explains Zelda, a smart aleck girl Tegan's age who appears at the motel's front office.  She's Tegan's angel (she even has the wings to prove it!) and she's reconstructed the Marybelle in all its run-down glory because she's convinced that the absolute happiest moment of Tegan's life was during the time she spent here.  And that being so, it is the place where Tegan will now be spending all of eternity.  Tegan is flabbergasted and horrified, insisting that this is in fact the worst moment of her life and that Zelda has made a mistake.

The two girls tussle over this matter until Tegan learns that she can appeal her angel's decision and sets in motion a process of review.  Within the next month, Zelda must convince Tegan that the Marybelle was actually Tegan's moment of "peak happiness" or the forces of heaven will accept that a mistake was made, with grave and dire consequences for both tegan and Zelda.

The end result is a sort of YA This Is Your Life as Zelda takes Tegan traveling through time to highlight particularly pivotal moments in her sixteen years that gradually unravel the mystery of why Zelda believes that Tegan needs the Marybelle.  Along the way a very unusual romance develops between Tegan and Zelda and the notion of "perfect happiness" takes a bit of a beating.  

YA books about the afterlife are always a curious genre (Zevin's Elsewhere is my personal favorite) as they doesn't seem like they have an obvious go-to topic.  What teen really frets about dying or wants to read about what happens after death?  But nonetheless, some of the most creative work is done in books like this.  Plozza's vision of the afterlife is a bit dark and malevolent for my tastes, but largely she makes it out to be like an alternative high school, complete with a really cool guidance counselor, a cranky office secretary, and various hapless assistant principals. She posits that a successful life in heaven consists of being at peace with the mistakes and regrets of your prior life (but then allows Tegan to challenge those ideas).  The conclusion that heaven itself is flawed will give theologians headaches.  Regardless, the book's weightier themes are refreshing.

Thirsty, by Jas Hammonds

For the last couple of years, Blake, her BFF Annetta, and her girlfriend Ella have had the same dream:  get accepted at Jameswell College and pledge the Serena Society.  For Annetta and Ella, joining the Serena Society means following in their mothers' footsteps.  For Blake, whose parents did not go to college, Serena a gateway to a new world.  The Serena Society is a sorority for women of color, populated with some of the most influential women in the country.  Membership means a lifetime of networking and support, and an opportunity to enter a world of power and privilege that Blake can only dream of.  But she knows that, unlike her friends, she doesn't really belong there, so she does everything she can to fit in and be liked.

And for Blake, being liked has come easiest when she's drinking and  acting the life of the party.  The fact that she blacks out and does irresponsible and dangerous things when she drinks doesn't initially bother her because everyone occasionally drinks to excess, don't they?  And anyway, Ella assures her that it's fine.  But as Blake's behavior starts to hurt her friendship with Annetta and strain relations with her own family, Blake starts to wonder if she's gone too far.  With the future of her candidacy at Serena on the line, Blake must make choices between her friends, her family, and her dreams.

Tackling racism, classism, transphobia, alcoholism, suicidal ideation, and many other triggering subjects, this is one very busy story!  Blake, in a word, has issues: mostly, problems with confidence but tinged by family tensions and her discomfort with being mixed race.  That lack of confidence makes her easy pickings for the toxic affection of her abusive girlfriend.  The whole business of pledging Serena just pours gasoline on this smoldering mess.  Of it all, alcohol dependency is actually the least of her issues.  Her real "thirst" is for self-respect and she's not good at finding a potable supply.

I think this was a really good book and I was very impressed with how it dealt with its many issues.  It's one of the few books on racism that I've read that didn't feel like it was lecturing me (even though I was most certainly learning).  It's a bit of a spoiler, but the fact that Serena does not end the book at an AA meeting took me by surprise.  And the relationship between Blake and Ella ends with a lot more nuance than I was expecting.  I haven't read Hammonds first novel, We Deserve Monuments, but I'm now very intrigued and may well go back and do so.  Original and profound, with a strong uncompromising voice.