Away, by Megan E. Freeman

Recounting the same forced evacuation of Colorado that provided the background of Alone, this companion novel depicts the multiple viewpoints of a group of children who are relocated into refugee camps.  Each speaks with a different voice -- one in poetry, one as a movie script, one as a journalist, and so on.  Combining these voices with official announcements and news conferences, the story recounts how the children uncover a great conspiracy to defraud their families of their property and then to find a way to subvert the plot.

The original novel, about a girl abandoned by her family during the evacuation, always seemed a bit of a stretch.  While this installment provides the background to explain the evacuations, it does little to provide any sense of plausibility.  And while suspending disbelief for the original novel allowed us to enjoy the compelling survival tale, here the background conspiracy is the story.  That's a lot of stuff to suspend disbelief over!  So, I found myself far too distracted to enjoy the story, which is otherwise an adventure with a bunch of middle schoolers resourcefully saving the day!

All That's Left To Say, by Emery Lord

After the death of her cousin from a drug overdose, Hannah hides her identity and enrolls at her late cousin's school to try to determine who gave her the pills.  Against her will, she is joined by a former nemesis:  the champion of the school's debate team, with whom she frequently sparred when she was at her old school.  Combining their wits, they investigate leads and ruling out suspect.  The investigation reveals disturbing things about her cousin's friends and the way that the school is run.  Hannah's obsession to find the culprit eventually puts her in danger.

A thrilling and immersive mystery with a decent plot twist at the end that helps the awkward story structure (halfway told through flashbacks) make sense.  I found Hannah to be maddeningly opaque and the story full of details (like Hannah's interest in clothing and costume design) that had no bearing on the plot.  However, the main mystery of who contributed to the death of her cousin and how culpable they were is compelling enough to make this an enjoyable read.

Gather, by Kenneth M Cadow

Ian (short for Dorian) is trying to keep things together.  Mom struggles with addiction, Dad left them a long time ago.  Ian's closest (and maybe only) friend is a stray dog he calls "Gather." But while Ian is alone, he is far from helpless.  He's resourceful, knowing how to triage a problem and prioritize what needs to be done.  And he has a talent for fixing broken things.  Combining those skills, he's been able to keep the house intact, the heat on, and food coming in.

But there are limits to what Ian can do as a fifteen year-old.  He can't earn enough money to pay the bills.  He has to juggle taking care of the house and her mother with going to school to avoid raising suspicions.  And when a true crisis strikes that he cannot fix, Ian is overwhelmed and chooses to run.  He's then surprised to find a large number of people willing to help him.

Recounted in Ian's rustic inflection and in his meandering style that drifts freely from one topic to another, Ian's voice is distinctive and his storytelling rich.  At times charmingly naive, his endearing modesty and kindness make him a sympathetic protagonist.  As for the novel itself, this is something of a throwback to the classic boy-becomes-man story and it has a timeless feel reminiscent of classic like Huckleberry Finn or My Side of the Mountain.

Ollie in Between, by Jess Callans

When Ollie is assigned a paper in her sex-ed class on the topic of what it means to be a woman, she figures that she'll just ask a few adults and get the answers.  What she finds is that every woman she talks to has different answers or no answer at all.  In fact, the only common denominator seems to be that everyone thinks it must have been easier for everyone else!

Ollie herself certainly is having trouble.  Her friends say she needs to start wearing a bra and being more girly.  The boys on her hockey team won't let her play anymore.  And there are the unavoidable physical changes.  Her older sister is telling her she needs to start shaving.  When her period comes, she doesn't want to deal with it.  

Everywhere she looks, she is being told what she must do to be a girl and what she must not do because she is not a boy.  None of it feels right for her.  There's a trans girl at her school, but Ollie doesn't think she is trans herself.  She might be non-binary, but she hasn't really decided.  All she knows for certain is that she's not sure what she wants to be.  If only someone could answer the question of what a woman is so she could figure out whether it is what she wants.

Beautifully and sensitively capturing the transition from childhood to adult, Ollie is an updated Margaret (as in Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret) for the gender diverse world.  A supportive family and largely permissive school gives Ollie the chance to really lay out her feelings about puberty and the growing social expectations she is facing.  And thoughts she has!  Ollie has her small panic attacks and immature moments, but she's wonderfully level headed and well-spoken.  And it was fascinating to simply listen to her thoughts and concerns, many of which will resonate with grownups as well as children.  As for the story itself, I really appreciated the fact (spoiler alert!) that she doesn't manage in the space of this novel to figure everything out!

Try Your Worst, by Chatham Greenfield

Sadie and Cleo have been locked in competition with each other literally from birth, when their mothers tried to produce the first birth of the year (Cleo won that competition, but Sadie was the last baby born in the previous year).  Growing up, both girls competed for awards and grades.  Now, they vie for salutatorian and valedictorian.  At times, the competition grew intense and the girls lost perspective.

However, their senior year seems to be out of control.  Lockers are getting vandalized, tires slashed, and precious belongings stolen.  Their principal calls them in to warn both girls that they need to tone it down or he will expel them, putting an end to the competition for good.  However, neither Cleo nor Sadie are actually doing these things.  In fact, it seems that someone is actually trying to get them in trouble.  That's not hard to do as their homophobic school principal does seem to have an axe to grind with them.  

The question is who is doing this and can the girls expose that person before they succeed in getting them thrown out of school?  Complicating the investigation is the nagging suspicion that each of them have that the culprit is really the other person.  Sadie suffers from clinical depression and her unpredictable behavior makes her especially suspect and vulnerable.  Predictably, the shared adversity of having a secret enemy brings the girls together into an unexpected romance. That makes things yet messier as their trust in each other is serious tested throughout.  A bittersweet ending eschews easy solutions and felt right, even if it was also terribly unfair to the protagonists.

The competing storylines (mysterious malefactor, coping with depression, and romance) leads to a confusing story that I eventually lost track of.  The depression story, in particular, didn't work for me and seemed largely unnecessary.  That said, I enjoyed the characters and their struggle and rooted for them.

The Secret Language of Birds, by Lynne Kelly

Nina loves watching and learning about bird, although her passion goes largely unnoticed within her family.  When she gets invited by her aunt to come spend time together while her aunt sets up her summer camp, Nina grudgingly agrees to come. It's a good place to observe nature and Nina focuses on the birds and more or less ignores the other girls at the camp.

But one night, some of her fellow campers convince her to sneak out at night for a prank.  While they are out, Nina catches a glimpse of a large white bird in the woods that looks remarkably like a Whooping Crane.  That would be rare enough, as Whoopers haven't been seen around the camp in a century or more, but this sighting might actually be one of the first in Texas in a while!

Following her instincts. her existing knowledge of birds, and some help from the other girls. Nina is able to prove that it is a Whooping Crane.  Things get even more exciting when another bird appears and they seem to be a breeding air with a nest and eggs!  At this point, some adult supervision is called in and the rest of the story becomes a learning experience in wildlife conservation.

A mystery that helps Nina learn to get along with her peer and find her place. it is combined with academic material about cranes, their current conservation status, and interesting details about breeding, and calls.  The mixture provides a wonderful excuse to bring some focus on these majestic birds.  While the girls get to pursue their passion for animals, responsible adults provide valuable guidance about dealing with wild animals and how to be a good conservator.  A winning combination of heartwarming story and useful knowledge.

The Mystwick School of Musicraft, by Jessica Khoury

Amelia has always dreamed of attending the Mystwick School, her mother's alma mater.  Mom was once a great maestro who casted beautiful spells with her music.  But musicraft (the mixture of music and magic) was also what killed her mother.  Amelia's grandmother doesn't want Amelia to have anything to do with it. But Amelia nonetheless persists on apply and auditioning for a place at the school.

It does not go well.  A series of mishaps and bad luck derails her audition and it is pretty obvious that she won't be accepted and her hopes of becoming a musicrafter are ended.  But to her surprise, she is accepted!  It is not until she arrives that the mystery is solved:  a bureaucratic mishap has delivered her a place that was supposed to go to another girl.  However, fixing the mistake is complicated and the faculty make a deal:  if she can prove herself in the next two months, she can stay.

That is a tall order.  She plays well enough, but no way to the professional level of the other students.  And to make things even more challenging, she has lots of enemies: classmates who want to see her fail, teachers who distrust her, and -- something far more dangerous -- a vengeful ghost.  But with some sleuthing, a new friend, and perseverance, she will not only succeed but become a heroine of her class.

A Harry Potter-like fantasy about a seventh grade flautist who has to find herself to save her school.  The story lacks originality and has a pretty transparent target audience, but I enjoyed the combination of music and magic.  It danced a fine line between fantasy and metaphor -- making music into something that not only touches the heart but can manifest physical and material changes in the world.  Seventh graders who play flute (or any musical instrument) will appreciate the musical references and the story of a brave and hard-working girl who saves the day has broad appeal for anyone who wishes they could change the world with a song

Another First Chance, by Robbie Couch

The billboard mocks River.  Everyday, he has to drive by the picture of his late best friend Dylan, adorning a PSA urging teens not to text and drive.  River hates that his dead friend has been reduced to a safety lesson and will only be remembered for his fatal error.  River was so much more than that to Dylan.  So, one day he vandalizes the billboard.

Meanwhile, a company called Affinity has come to town promoting a new study they are doing into how relationships are formed.  They are soliciting River and his classmates to be participants.  And for some reasons, his friends and even the guidance counselor is pressuring him to sign up.  Initially, he has no interest but one of his classmates with knowledge of River's recent vandalism blackmails River into joining the study.

The study involves locking away twenty student in isolation for a week and conducting group therapy and meditation practices, which all seems pretty harmless.  But strange things start happening. People  experience particularly vivid dreams, River is accused of doing things he can't recall, and River himself meets a stranger who reminds him so very much of his dead friend Dylan.

A story dealing with loss and moving on, placed in a rather thin thriller about mind experiments.  Cue the gaslights.  At first, this seemed like a useful vehicle for getting River and his friends together to address their relationship with the late Dylan.  But as the story unfolds and the experiment itself grows more and more outlandish, I found it distracting to the far more interesting emotional growth that River was going through.  I think the story would have benefitted by being more rooted in reality.  As it was, the silly parts detracted from the story.

The Misunderstandings of Charity Brown, by Elizabeth Laird

Having spent several months in the hospital recovering from polio, Charity is having trouble adjusting to life back home.  Her schoolmates are still leery of her for being sick, but Charity has always struggled to make friends.  She cannot quite understand why they dislike her attempts to save their souls for Christ.  Shouldn't everyone want to be saved?  She could not imagine life without the comfort of her religion!

Through a burst of good fortune, the family inherits an old house and all of the possessions within it. As strict Christians, they are reluctant to accept so rich a gift but Charity's father decides that the family will dedicate the large house towards providing rest and rehabilitation of needy souls.  This leads to a variety of colorful guests coming to stay with them in their exciting new home.  Along with a number of other major family events, all of these changes open Charity's eyes to the wide diversity of life.  The certainties that she learned from her faith are challenged as she discovers that the real world is a complicated place.

A lovely period piece.  The plot is scattershot, jumping from one crisis to another up to the amusing climax, but the overall story of Charity's opening up to the world is touching.  Watching her go from childish blind faith to the realization that goodness (and evil) comes in many forms is inspiring and beautiful.

The Loss of the Burying Ground, by J Anderson Coats

Dura and Ariminthia have been at war for ages, each side convinced that they are right and neither prepared for peace.  But despite strong factions who want the war to continue and a hefty propaganda effort to promote the war, a fragile peace treaty has been drafted.  To sign it, the two sides agree to sail out into neutral waters on a ship called the Burial Ground with the entire leadership of both states on board. When the ship is destroyed in a freak storm and nearly everyone is lost, the chance of peace is put in jeopardy.

Two survivors -- Cora from Dura and a Ariminthian servant named Vivienne -- are washed ashore on a desert island.  After a lifetime of indoctrination, there is little trust between them.  But when pirates come ashore and threaten them, the two girls learn to cooperate for survival.  That buys them some time, but bigger challenges await these uneasy allies as they discover that the true nature of the conflict is far more complicated than they have been raised to understand.

A fascinating novel that explores the role of violence in politics and the impact of propaganda.  There's a lot to chew on here.  Perhaps a bit too much.  Things get rushed at the end and while we're being set up for a sequel or two, the care that was taken through the story to explain the competing interests gets muddied and rushed as events unfurl.

There's a human story as well about the two girls learning to see beyond their prejudices. Sadly, those human elements get lost in the end as Coats tries to tie up far too many loose ends.

The Cost of Bliss, by Kelsey Conkling

Jane has a pretty decent life.  Her family lives in a nice suburb and has enough money for her to enjoy nice clothes and the things she wants.  When she sees people like Preston, who gets on at her bus stop but lives in the poorer subdivision next door, she is thankful she's not like him.

But then her family suddenly loses their home and is forced to move in with her great grandmother.  She's been blissfully unaware that her family wealth was an illusion and that her parents were living beyond their means.  They are poor and in deep debt.  Now Jane has to face her old friends with the truth that she isn't who she thought she was.  And with her parents overwhelmed by their change of fortunes, Jane finds she can't even count on them.  But there is one person she finds she can count on -- Preston.

A briskly paced story that tackles class and poverty for middle schoolers.  Jane's quick turn of fortune grabs your attention and provides a relatable protagonist in an unfamiliar setting.  At the same time, I found the parents really selfish and horrible and over-the-top.  It is only because Preston and his mother save the day that it is bearable.

The story ends on a positive and hopeful note that encourages readers to think about, that no matter how bad things are, there's always someone out there who needs help more than you.  Sweet.

After the Wallpaper Music, by Jean Mills

Flora and her three friends are the Arden String Quartet, a talented group of middle schoolers.  They are always getting asked to perform at school functions (parents nights, etc.) -- the veritable "wallpaper music" group.  So, when the school announces a Battle of the Bands, the Quartet will of course play a piece.  But they struggle to decide what they should play.  Flora wants to play a traditional classical quartet while the other want to play music from a video game.  They settle that dispute amicably, but when Flora gets asked by a new boy to play in his band as well, jealousies appear and Flora is faced with conflicting loyalties that are harder to resolve.

Alongside that drama, Flora's aunt who lives with them has a health scare and Flora has to face the fact that people get older and people get sick.  From this she learns the healing power of music in giving people a means to come together and enjoy each other in the face of adversity.

A mixture of themes that ultimately tackles the topic of loss and grief rather more successfully than the interpersonal conflicts that Flora must contend with.  I liked the various different ways that music is brought up in the story, ranging from its role in cultural identity to the effects of fame for those who make it big.  In the face of all the different ideas brought up in the story, the lack of a nice neat ending felt right.

Skipshock, by Caroline O'Donoghue

Traveling alone on the train from Cork to Dublin, Margo nearly passes out and suddenly finds herself in another world.  In danger from the very start, a trader named Moon rescues her and smuggles her off the train at their next stop. Margo learns that she has been transported from Ireland to a universe where multiple worlds exist, each one with a different length of day.  The most desirable southern worlds have 24-hour days and the least (and northernmost) have days as short as two hours.  Travel on the trains (the only remaining way to get between worlds) is strictly controlled and northerners are largely cut off altogether.  Unrest is everywhere.

Margo and Moon learn that her arrival is not entirely coincidence.  Margo is carrying an antique watch that once belonged to her late father.  In ways that they do not fully understand, Margo and the watch have the power to disrupt travel -- a power that the south desperately wants to have.  Chased between worlds, the two of them must unlock the mystery while evading capture.  All around them the old order is disintegrating and inter-world revolution is brewing.

A feisty adventure fantasy with a dash of romance.  I liked the role of day length as a world-builder and there's some thought given to how shorter days (and shorter lifespans would affect a world).  The author does great exposition, but the pace is so fast that things get destroyed as fast as they get introduced.   At the same time, there's a fairly large number of characters and a high body count. Hopefully, the planned sequel will explore some of the unfinished business instead of creating more stuff.  The pace flags at times as characters get involved in lengthy conversations. This is not a story that benefits from chit chat.

Gay the Pray Away, by Natalie Naudus

For most of her life, Valerie's family has been part of a conservative Christian religious community.  And to keep her away from rival ideas, she's been homeschooled and strictly segregated from outside influences.  No television.  Supervised internet access.  Parental review of her reading and friendships.  She notes the way all the rules seem to favor her brother and she sometimes doubts whether she really believes that Jesus wants her to do little more than raise babies, but she's accepted that these are just the way things are.

And then a new girl named Riley and her mother joins the congregation. Riley is free spirited, outspoken, and amazingly beautiful.  Valerie has only ever known homosexuality as a vile sin.  The idea that she might like a girl is confusing.  And when she finds out Riley likes her, it is a revelation.  Suddenly, the world that Valerie has known seems too limited and too restrictive.  She wants more and she may have to abandon everything to get it.

Drawing on her own personal experiences with growing up in a Fundamentalist family, there's a didactic mission in the storytelling.  I didn't mind the agenda as much as the way Valerie herself is portrayed.  For a young woman indoctrinated for so many years, she seemed awfully articulate about her ideology.  There's some attempt to explain this by having Valerie spending time in the public library sneaking in lots of reading.  However, few adolescents are this well-spoken and her voice sounded informed for a few extra years on the outside.  That makes Naudus's point for her easier, but by depriving Valerie of authenticity.  

The story dwells on all the things that are wrong with this isolated community, but misses chances to explain why it works for the people trapped within it.  I'm fascinated by Valerie's Taiwanese mother and we are teased at points by Valerie's observations of why being a believer serves her mother's needs, but so much more could have been done with it.  Valerie's brother and her best friend Hannah are also interesting cases in alternative paths tread that could have been expanded to fill out Valerie's journey.  All opportunities lost for a slow and largely repetitive list of the community's faults.

The Otherwhere Post, by Emily J Taylor

Maeve has been hiding her true identity for the past seven years.  Her father, a scriptomancer, brought infamy on her family by causing the destruction of the world of Inverly.  That he and his wife died in the process, leaving Maeve an orphan, did not matter.  So great was the anger at his memory that Maeve quickly found that hiding who she was was necessary to stay alive.  But then one day she receives an anonymous letter that states that her father may have been innocent.

To find the author of the letter and the evidence that could exculpate her father, she must find a way into the school where scriptomancers are trained.  At great risk, she poses as an apprentice under a stolen identity and uncovers a series of mysteries that not only tell the truth of what actually happened seven years ago, but also point to a way of rebuilding the lost world of Inverly.  Within a richly drawn world of magic and steeped with intrigue, Maeve and her young cohorts must force secrets into the open to rehabilitate her family name.

There's lots of creativity behind the world that Taylor has created for this story and Maeve makes a compelling protagonist.  For the most part, this is an immersive and addictive read.  Unfortunately, the story gets severely compressed at the end with a series of convenient losses of consciousness and subsequent digested recaps.  Whether this is because Taylor struggles with writing climactic scenes or she simply ran out of pages, it steals a lot of the dramatic build up of the story to cram several months' worth of developments into a ten page summary.

The Complex Art of Being Maisie Clark, by Sabrina Kleckner

Maisie, at eighteen, has absorbed everything she can learn about painting portraits from her parents, but she longs to develop a style that is her own.  All of her work looks more or less the same as her father's.  So, she decides to leave New York and study art in London, focusing on every medium except painting in a conscious effort to stretch herself.

The new school year starts off inauspiciously as she nearly gets thrown out of photography class and then accidentally almost maims a fellow student.  But all of these things lead to adventures, some hilarious, some poignant as her term promises new adventures and even a possible romance.

Then an emergency sends her back home to help her parents and she finds that she's grown far more in her time in London than she realized.  And, in fact, her art and her life overall has begun to bloom in its own ways after all.

A lively NA novel whose first half is much better than its second.  The cause of that is that the book is in fact a sequel, albeit an unusual one.  Maisie was first introduced to readers in Kleckner's Art of Running Away in which Maisie is only twelve and dealing with a difficult older brother.  And while the first half of this current novel introduces new characters, the second half leans heavily upon details from the earlier novel from six years earlier.  Without that background, elements of the current story are hard to follow and it fails to stand up on its own.

This Book Might Be About Zinnia, by Brittney Morris

In the present day, Zinnia is working on her admission essay for Harvard but it isn't coming together.  Zinnia's decided to write about being adopted, but it isn't enough and a reader has advised her that it needs something to give it a stronger impact.  Zinnia struggles with what to do until she starts to read the latest book from her favorite author.  In that novel, the protagonist is given up by her mother and has a distinctive heart-shaped birthmark on her forehead.  So does Zinnia.  There are other similarities and Zinnia begins to wonder if the author is also her birth mother.

Eighteen years early, Tuesday was a pregnant teenager who made the agonizing decision to put her baby up for adoption.  During the pregnancy she was largely abandoned by her family and she poured her heart into a journal.  In the aftermath of the adoption, the journal was lost.  In two parallel storylines. the truth about what happened comes to light, impacting far more than Zinnia and her search.

The adoption story is interesting and beautifully told, but there's an awful mess of subplots that distract this story.  Everything from the nature of the author of the novel to Tuesday's family's mysterious connection to the mob.   There's arson at the adoption agency, an accidental drowning, and an implied murder.  Never mind the mess of an ending with an implausible manhunt and a bizarre hallucinatory episode.  The promise of a surprise ending that is never revealed and the introduction of characters in the final pages that play no part in the story left me confused and frustrated.  I want to like this story but it needed an editor with the will to trim this train wreck down!

Top Heavy, by Rhonda DeChambeau

For Esme, the single greatest obstacle in her life is her own body.  She loves to dance, truly coming alive when her body is in motion, but her breasts get in the way.  She can no longer do ballet and when she does interpretative dance, she is always conscious of them.  The other girls in her class make fun of her, so she works extra hard to be an even better dancer to draw attention away.

And it isn't just in dance.  On the street, men leer at her, women look at her like she's a slut.  She crouches over, trying to make herself look small.  She even looked into breast reduction surgery.

But the solution isn't surgical. It is about building self-esteem.  With help from her family and he friends, Esme comes to love herself and to stand up straight and tall. In the face of bullying and a brief sexual assault, she learns to allow herself to be proud and angry.  To use space.  Ultimately, she learns to accept her body and herself.

While this verse novel starts off slow and repeats itself a lot, the pace gradually builds up and as Esme builds self-confidence, the verses become more moving.  Clever typography on some of the better poems captures the dancing movement that brings Esme join adding a delightful dimension to the story.  In the end, an inspirational story for anyone struggling with a body that doesn't look or perform as we wish it did.

A Field Guide to Broken Promises, by Leah Stecher

For years, Evie's family has moved every year or so as her mother got promoted to better and better jobs.  But now, Mom says that she's finally landed the perfect position and with luck they won't ever have to move again.  Entering junior high this year, Evie is excited about making friends that she can hold on to.  Because of the constant relocations, her only real friend is Dara, a girl at Jewish summer camp.  With all the potential in front of her, Evie is excited to start school.

When Evie shows up on the first day, she is surprised to see her friend Dara in the first class!  What are the odds that the school that Evie would move to would be the same one that Dara attends? But to her surprise, Dara isn't happy to see her and immediately starts spreading stories that they barely know each other.  Worse, she says that Evie is a stalker and moved here solely to follow Dara.  Hurt by the rejection and the bullying campaign that Dara organizes, Dara becomes convinced that something bad has happened to Dara and Evie starts digging to find out why her best friend has rejected her.

While the story primarily focuses on Evie's desire to fix everything around her and the bad choices she makes to try to achieve this, there's also some room in here for family separation, siblings, and religion.  The story itself is a gentle fast-paced middle reader intended for "reluctant readers" but it isn't dumbed down.  In fact, it takes a pretty sophisticated take on the way that complicated grown-up relationships mess up children (Evie's Dad and Dara'a Mom are definite pieces of work!).  Unfortunately, the grown ups come in at the end and fix almost everything, so only a little bit of the story is about Dara learning some life lessons.

Nav's Foolproof Guide to Falling In Love, by Jessica Lewis

Nav and Hallie are best friends.  And while Nav is a lesbian and Hallie is bisexual, friends are all that they have ever been.  It's probably just as well because Nav is ARO and Hallie is a hopeless romantic.  But while Nav doesn't want a girlfriend, she can't imagine being apart from Hallie.  When she finds out that Hallie is going to be away this summer attending an academic program, Nav is obsessed with figuring out a way to join her despite her own lack of academic prowess.  

The solution to the problem turns out to be complicated.  Nav finds out that a bright but socially awkward girl named Gia is obsessed with dating Hallie.  Gia will do anything for Nav's help with Hallie. And so a trade is engineered:  Gia (who is attending the same summer program as Hallie) will give Nav her place in the program in exchange for help getting a date with Hallie.  But before that date can happen, Gia needs lots of help.  Nav may not believe in love, but she knows a few things about Hallie.  Through some training and "romance practice" Nav will teach Gia how to woo Hallie.  Everyone wins!

But of course it doesn't work out that way.  The more work that Nav does with Gia, the more they start falling in love with each other.  And in the end, Nav has to admit that she is not as ARO as she thought.  Along the way, all three girls deal with the changes in their lives and personalities, coming to acknowledge that change can be good after all.

The story was fine, but I really disliked the main protagonist.  Nav's irresponsible with absolutely no accountability (as well as no sense of how to charge her phone!).  She treats both her father and Hallie abominably.  She drinks to excess, uses her sexual partners, and skips out on work.  She's judgmental of others while constantly running away from her own faults.  Frankly, Hallie and Gia both deserve better and they probably have some work to do on their own senses of self-esteem.

Nothing Bad Happens Here, by Rachel Ekstrom Courage

After the traumatic death of Lucia's best friend, her mother decides that Lucia needs to get away from Pittsburgh for a while.  Mom's been on-line dating a real estate broker who lives on Nantucket and he's invited the two of them to come out for the summer.  It seems like just the thing:  A quiet peaceful place where nothing bad ever happens.  Lucia could be almost bored.

That plan is swept away when Lucia discovers the body of a dead girl on the shore.  She's an unknown -- no one identifies her, no one knows her, but somehow she ended up dead.  Obsessed with not one but two close encounters with death, Lucia starts to sleuth around.  The uber rich kid Tristan seems suspicious. When Lucia finds clues that the girl had been on Tristan's yacht on the night she died, Lucia knows that Tristan is covering up a secret.  Could he have murdered the girl?

The police have lost interest and everyone tries to encourage Lucia to forget about the whole thing.  Everyone, that is, except for three mysterious beautiful girls that Lucia has befriended.  They seem to have a way with men and a kleptomania habit that somehow falls below everyone else's radars.  Who are they?  And why do they want to help Lucia find out who killed the girl?

A lovely amalgam of beach romance, murder mystery, and a little dash of fantasy.  And, of course, a killer reveal of the killer themself.  You'll guess some of the plot twists that come along, but the final one is a total surprise and well worth waiting for.  Many individual parts of the story were weak (Lucia's traumatic backstory is underdeveloped and underutilized, sparring with Tristan and his girlfriend is surprisingly unrewarding, and so on).  It's a long story but thinly told, and editing the story to raise the pace and the tension would have made for a better read.  But nonetheless I enjoyed this story of summer beach fun with corpses!

Summer Girls, by Jennifer Dugan

Birdie is an obsessed social media influencer who ignominiously crashed her boyfriend's car on a live broadcast (it was justified -- she'd just caught him cheating on her).  As the daughter of a real estate mogul who is gentrifying their summer community -- a quaint small beach town -- she's hardly a popular figure locally.

Cass is the local who long ago swore off having anything to do with "summer girls" (the ones who come to the beach only during the season and then flip you off when they return to their real homes in August.  And as the daughter of the man running a non-profit that fights the aforementioned gentrification, she has every reason to distrust Birdie and her family.

But as a consequence of the car crash, Birdie is forced to give up her socials and Cass is hired to watch over and babysit her.  The two girls initially despise each other but soon enough become good friends and lovers.  That doesn't remove the class-based tensions between them.

With a predictable format and setting, it takes above-average characters to redeem this beach read.  The girls and their class awareness have enough depth to make them interesting to watch.  Unfortunately, the story stumbles at key points as it tries to explain changes that, while necessary for the conclusion, are sudden and implausible.  Having done such a good job of showing why Bridie and Cass should not be able to make peace, the fact that they do needs to be better justified and explained.  The final coming together and Grand Speech is pure Hollywood and felt forced, robbing the story of the emotional punch it called for.

Love Points to You, by Alice Lin

When Lynda's father gets remarried and Lynda gains a stepsister, it seems like it is Lynda who always has to make the sacrifices.  While Lynda is always having to forego things, the same rules don't seem to apply to her stepsister Josie.  Josie gets a practice room to work on her violin, a private tutor to help her get ready for recitals, and the support of the family to help get her into an elite music program after high school.  While Lynda's Buncleaver series is a minor commercial success already, Linda doesn't get private spaces or private trainers.  And when Lynda brings up wanting to attend RISD, her father demurs that it's too expensive.  So, Lynda realizes that if she's going to succeed, she's going to have to do it all on her own, and in spite of her family.

Good fortune falls into her lap.  Angela, a classmate, is working on an otome game and offers to hire Lynda to draw the characters.  She'll even pay Lynda for the work.  With the hope of gaining exposure (as well as the money), Lynda jumps on board.  She's always been a fan of otome (a choose-your-own-adventure romance video game) and is excited to play a role in creating one.  As the girls develop the game, they also develop a romantic interest in each other.  However, Lynda's ambitions (combined with the resentments she carries from her family) threaten to derail the project and the relationship.

Lynda definitely has a difficult life, but it's one in which she does herself very few favors.  I found it hard to sympathize with her.  She's prickly and quick to jump to negative conclusions, prone to lashing out, and very self-centered.  Flawed characters can be instructive and interesting, especially if they grow over the course of the novel, but Lynda's growth comes late and while I sympathized with her sense of being unfairly treated, her treatment of others was equally horrid.

(I had never heard of otome before reading this story.  No real surprise there as I'm far removed from the target audience.  I enjoyed getting exposed to the phenomenon.)

Eliza, from Scratch, by Sophia Lee

When a scheduling mishap in her senior year lands Eliza in a Culinary Arts class instead of AP Physics, she worries that her stellar GPA and her shot at being the class salutatorian is endangered.  She needs that AP class and the weight it carries to keep her at the top.  But far worse is that she knows nothing at all about cooking and the likelihood of bombing it is high in her mind.

In class, that proves to be the case.  Worst of all is Wesley, the class's best cook.  With a chip on his shoulder for the times that smart kids like Eliza have looked down on him, he mocks her lack of skills, setting off a battle of wills between them.  While Wesley is most likely to win the end-of-class cooking contest, Eliza is determined to unseat him and prove that she can be brilliant in any subject.  Sure of their talent and success, both of them refuse to cede to each other and predictably fall in love.

But more than a love story, Eliza's search to find a culinary edge sends her to her mother and a rediscovery of her grandmother's cuisine.  Cooking with her mother heals a rift in the family and builds an appreciation in heritage.

Largely formulaic and sparse on surprises, the novel delivers what it promises.  What it may lack in originality, it makes up for with character development -- in particular, the strong chemistry between Eliza and Wesley.  This is the rare case of a really fun and sexy romance, with strong build up and some pretty hot writing.  There's some attempt to bring in bigger themes of classism and cultural elitism, but largely this is a story about two young people learning that there are many ways to succeed in this world.

What Comes After, by Katie Bayerl

When Mari dies, she finds herself in Paradise Gate, a way station where one decides if your next stop will be the Afterlife or the Eternal Abyss of 3am.  She has ninety days to redeem herself, earning points by focusing on positive emotions, practicing "youga," and eating lots of kale.  But it's a hard path.  Her mother, who died a few days before her and thus has little time remaining, is in danger of flunking her exams and ending up in the Abyss.  Mari could soon follow.

As Mari struggles to sort her life out (beginning with a big question of why she died), she comes to understand that something is wrong at Paradise Gate.  People do not necessary pass on and Mari discovers evidence that the leaders are corrupt and the system is crumbling.  When she steps forward and joins a plot to expose the corruption, surprising things happen.

Billed as a farce, the story does start off as strong satire.  Life after death, it seems, is basically set up like a high school with meaningless classes, social cliques, exam pressure, and lots of sneaking about.  Once the gimmicks of this world are defined however, Bayerl gets lost.  The novel is stuck in a literary dead end.  To dig out, we get the strange drama of a conspiracy, an underground, and a revolution.  But the revolution doesn't really work either, so the ending becomes a jumpy montage of third party accounts which avoid the need to really tell Mari's story anymore.  Every thing wraps up nicely in the end, but the story withers away.  Cute concept, but never really reached its potential.

The Uncertainty Principle, by Joshua Davis and Kal Kini-Davis

Mia, her little brother, and her parents are adrift on an old boat in the Caribbean and it is all Mia's fault.  When she had a breakdown at school, throwing food against the walls of the cafeteria, they decided it was time for a change of scene.  But Mia is not the only problem here.  Her mother is a germophobe and won't let them socialize with others so they stick to sparsely populated islands.  Mia spends her days perfecting a homegrown solar cell to power her equally homegrown satellite transmitter.  One day, she hopes to use it to call her best friend back at school to explain why she flew off the rails.

The uneasy status quo in Mia's family gets disrupted when they meet two unusual families, each of whom have a child about Mia's age who force her to make decisions that will change her life.

A quirky novel with an unusual father-and-son writing team.  From the acknowledgements, it would seem that the story is mostly from Kal (the son) while his father supervised and edited.  Regardless of who wrote what, I was suitably impressed by the depth that they gave Mia -- a young woman with a believable mix of insight and immaturity to make her truly interesting.  The supporting characters never get to do much but I didn't mind that as everything is really about Mia and her growth. 

Old School, by Gordon Korman

For the past six years, Dexter has been raised by his grandmother and the other residents of The Pines, a retirement community.  Being the youngest permanent resident, he's been doted over by the old people.  School?  He is getting all the schooling he needs from the various talents residing here.  But when a truant officer shows up, Dexter is told that he'll have to go to a real school, with kids his own age.

He hasn't socialized with anyone like that in ages and his first days of middle school are rough. He is singled out and bullied for his old-people clothes and his old-fashioned way of speaking.  But slowly he reveals his own particular contributions and makes friends.  Then, an unfortunate incident leads to his suspension and suddenly he and his classmates realize just how much Dexter actually does belong in school.

A cute story that suffers from the author's peculiar perception that the residents of The Pines are a lot older than would be normally plausible.  He hasn't populated it with a twelve year-old's grandparents but with the author's own grandparents.  Sorry, but old people don't listen to Benny Goodman and talk about the Great War anymore.  They listen to Jefferson Airplane and talk about Vietnam.  They are not the Greatest Generation, they are Baby Boomers.  It's cute having the old people teaching the kids to play bingo and shuffleboard, but its a dated stereotype.

Spoon, by Stephanie Peters

Junior Macy is supposed to be the star on her volley ball team this year, but the arrival of a sharp new girl named Alliyah shakes things up.  Alliyah's skills threaten to eclipse Macy's rising star, but there's a bigger problem:  Alliyah has a manipulative side.  After nearly getting Macy in serious trouble, she uses that secret between them to blackmail Macy.  Macy doesn't know what to do to defend herself without disrupting the team as a whole and threatening their winning streak.  Everyone will think she's just trying to get rid of the better player who threatens her spot.

Meanwhile, Alliyah has introduced a game called Spoon in which everyone carries around a plastic spoon and then people try to steal them off of each other.  What starts as fun becomes disruptive and puts Macy in hot water with her employer, parents, and the coach.  When it becomes apparent that Alliyah will stop at nothing, including breaking the rules, to get what she wants, Macy has to make a choice that will be right for herself and for the team.

More of a novella than a full-length novel (149 pages of large type) and published by a small press, I didn't have high expectations for this book, but Peters has definite talent.  It takes major skill to write a sports story.  Too much detail and people who don't play the game get bored.  Too little or getting a detail wrong and real players throw up their hands and toss the book.  I know hardly anything about volleyball, but I found following the sports action easy and exciting.  Secondly, although the story could almost certainly be fleshed out, it didn't feel rushed.  And finally, while there was a boy in the picture, the story was all about the girls and their team.  I admired the decision to keep the focus on Macy's love of the game and her teammates.

A lovely story about the importance of loyalty and teamwork, and knowing how to tell who really are your friends.

Camila Núñez's Year of Disasters, by Miriam Zoila Perez

Camila suffers from anxieties.  Her best friend's idea to do a tarot card reading to predict the upcoming year hasn't helped any!  The cards that were laid out spelled suffering and loss, putting poor Camila on alert.  The cards prove both predictive and directive, but the year is not a loss as Camila learns to love and lose and come back again from it all.  She makes some terrible errors, but she is held accountable and takes responsibility and fixes what she can. As in life, things get messy and not everything is resolvable. Her character is refreshingly realistic.

But while the story is excellent, the writing itself feels clunky.  Written like it was Camila's diary, much of the prose is broken sentences and awkward tenses.  That gives the story telling some authenticity but it  isn't an engaging presentation. Her life as a gender queer Cuban American is well-depicted but pedantic and distracting. The strengths of the novel are more traditional features: an interesting protagonist who experiences growth and learns life's lessons.

Bye Forever, I Guess, by Jodi Meadows

Ingrid has a secret passion: curating a data feed dedicated to wrong number texts.  People seem to always be sending texts to the wrong numbers and the examples that people send to her can be hilarious.

Then one day she receives one of her own.  The sender is charming and she starts chatting with him.  When she learns that he likes to do on-line roleplaying, she invites him to join her game.  Soon enough, they are falling for each other.

What they don't initially realize (although he figures it out before she does) is that they are actually classmates.  And so a series of set ups occur where the two of them have near misses.  In the end of course all is revealed and a number of other loose ends including vanquishing a bully ensue.

It's cute and fast-paced, but it's hard to accept that Ingrid could overlook all of the clues regarding her online friend's identity.  There is also a mismatch between the characters' ages and the way they behave.  While there's a token effort to portray Ingrid's adolescent insecurity, she does a remarkable job of dispatching her tormenting ex-friend.  Her feelings for the mystery boy are strikingly level-headed (and his reciprocal feelings are equally grown up).  They simply don't sound like middle schoolers.

While We're Young, by K. L. Walther

Grace, Isa, and Everett are a three-some who have fallen apart.  But Grace hopes to bring them back together with a carefully crafted skip day in Philadelphia. Faking illness, she also manages to get Isa and Everett to join her and the three of them tour through the landmarks of the City of Brotherly Love -- climbing the Museum steps, eating South Philly cheesesteaks, hanging in Rittenhouse Square, and the sheer "joy" of driving and parking around the city.  Grace's plans get complicated by an unknown-to-her romance between Isa and Grace's brother, and the attraction of Everett to Grace.

A loving homage to Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Walther has moved the action to Philadelphia and given the main characters a gender swap, but she's also done a lot more.  I never cared for the movie as I found Bueller selfish and careless.  Grace in contrast is much more sympathetic character.  And the novel overall is a kinder story than the film.  The cost of this is the loss of the cruel humor of the original.  This is a more angsty retelling and the characters straighter.  So, while the inspiration of the novel is clear enough, it does not follow that fans of the movie will find the same things to like here.

Overall, I give this a mixed review.  I enjoyed their tour of Philadelphia.  As I said above, Grace was a kinder and more sympathetic protagonist than Ferris.  But overall, the romances were limp and lacked any spark.  For a lot of professions of love, I didn't see much at all.  And the misunderstandings that caused the kids to become divided and fed the drama were unclear and poorly explained.  I'm not really sure what all the fuss was about.

True Life in Uncanny Valley, by Deb Caletti

Eleanor is obsessed with tech titan Hugo Harrison, founder of an app that allows you to rate people and the developer of Frame, an AI program.  But she's not a tech geek.  She's the illegitimate offspring of the man.  Her Mom had a relationship with Harrison years ago and Eleanor and her older sister Ros were the result.  But Harrison no longer talks to them and Mom refuses to allow Eleanor to contact him.  So, Eleanor hatches her own plan.

With a little planning and a lot of luck, she gets herself employed as a nanny in the household, taking care of her half-brother Arlo.  It's tricky to juggle stories so that neither Harrison nor her mother find out who she is and where she is working, but she mostly works that out.  But her plan to simply get to know her father better gets complicated  when she discovers that Arlo is being exploited and abused by his father.

Being a Deb Caletti novel, there's much more to the story than that.  A short list of subplots would include: an homage to Golden Age comics, a diatribe against William Moulton Marston and Aldous Huxley, a fair smattering of childcare advice, extemporizations on German etymology, an extremely toxic family, a love interest (including one botched sex scene), and a screed against social media, robotics, and artificial intelligence.  Caletti's novels are never boring!  The overall point of all of this is the attack on artificial intelligence and the way it borrows/steals its material from artists. But I found the  repulsive mother and evil elder sister (drawn straight out of Cinderella) far more compelling.  The ending is a hot mess but it's an entertaining read.

The Song of Us, by Kate Fussner

Olivia and Eden fall in love at first sight in their middle school's poetry club.  But it's not smooth sailing.  Olivia has already come out to her parents and has a supporting family.  Eden is still struggling with her identity and has a homophobic father and sick mother.  Olivia wants to announce their relationship to the entire school, but Eden insists that it be kept a secret.

At a party, Eden tries spinning the bottle and kissing boys and when Olivia finds out, cruel recriminations ensue.  But then Olivia has regrets and tries to win Eden back. But Eden is trying to fix herself by learning how to fit in with a popular clique.  Back and forth they go, sorting out their feelings about relationships and about each other through verse and song.  And while Olivia tries to win Eden back with a grand gesture, in the end the reality is that at their age important decisions will be made by others.

A beautiful and bittersweet verse novel about first love and the sorts of mistakes we make in middle school.  I didn't see the intended retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice that the blurb promised, but I didn't need to. What I found was a very sweet romance and two girls willing to fight for it.  Ofttimes creative verse is an added benefit.  Delightful!

Say A Little Prayer, by Jenna Voris

Riley and her sister Hannah were raised in the Pleasant Hills Baptist Church, where she's always found comfort in Pastor Young.  But after she comes out as bisexual, the hostile reaction of the congregation and Pastor Young drives her away.  And when Hannah is expelled from the church for having an abortion, the entire family decides that they have had enough of Pastor Young.  Still, it's a small town and almost everyone she knows is affiliated with the church.  Even Riley's best friend Julia is the pastor's daughter, although they have an agreement  to never mention Julia's father.

Riley gets into a fight defending her sister at school and the principal lays out an ultimatum:  if she wants to avoid getting suspended she'll have to prove her intent to reform by attending Pleasant Hills's upcoming bible camp, led by none other than Pastor Young.  Getting suspended is not an option, so Riley buckles down and goes to camp, spending a week with her old friends and enemies.  She decides from the onset to cope with the week by subtly undermining the program, but as the week progresses she finds that harder to do.

My initial inclination was to cast this book off as the usual dig against Evangelical Christianity.  And the depiction of Pastor Young breaks no new ground.  He's your typical two-dimensional hypocrite/bad guy that YA novels like to truck out.  But the novel surprised me for its more nuanced views of the teenagers' faith and beliefs. That background, combined with a well-paced story that added humor and a small touch of platonic romance, provided a very readable story about young people hewing their own path through religion.

The City of Lost Cats, by Tanya Lloyd Kyi

Left with a neglectful aunt who would rather rush off every evening to work at Municipal Hall, twelve year-old Fiona wants to do something more exciting this summer than the dance class she's been signed up for.  And when she stumbles across an abandoned old mansion full of feral cats, she thinks she's found it.  The mansion, referred to as 'The City" by its feline inhabitants has provided a community for strays and abandoned cats.  Fiona, abandoned by the adults around her is sympathetic to their plight and helps care for them.  

When she discovers that a dastardly developer (who also happens to be her aunt's boyfriend) has tricked Municipal Hall into giving him the permits to tear down the mansion and put up luxury apartments, Fiona and the cats leap into action to save the city of last cats. And while it would seem a child and a bunch of abandoned cats would not have the resources, they manage to save the day with the help of their local library and some sympathetic city workers.

An amusing light-hearted adventure of brave girls, adventuresome kitties, helpful librarians, a pair of workmen who love to demolish things, and two lost parakeets that speak in verse.  All of them come together in a ridiculously overlapping series of coincidences that lead to everything turning out perfectly in the end. While lacking much seriousness, the story does celebrate community activism in an easy going way that will appeal to cat-loving middle school readers.

All the Stars Align, by Gretchen Schreiber

Within Piper's family, the women have always known their true love at first sight.  This quasi-magical trait, referred to as the Blessing, is a tradition that has ensured many happily-ever-afters for Piper's aunts and grandmother. So, it's something of a scandal that Piper's parents have divorced.  Is the Blessing's power fading?  The aunts and Piper are determined to keep the tradition alive.  This comes in two ways:  trying to get her parents to reconcile and also to make sure that she only falls for the right boy.

To most people, that would be Leo, Piper's best friend.  They've been together since they were little.  But Piper has never really felt any strong feeling for Leo.  Certainly not in the way that the Blessing should make her feel.  And instead, Piper discovers that another boy -- Forrest -- is the one.  She can literally feel it viscerally, the telltale symptoms of the Blessing.  But somehow, it doesn't quite feel right.  So, instead of happily ever after, Piper finds that fate is overrated and that even when true love is right in front of you, it may not be what you really need.

While an interesting premise, the novel was disappointing.  For a romance, the story and the characters are surprisingly lackluster.  Neither Leo nor Forrest really had much of a spark.  We get very little background on Leo, which is surprising as they allegedly have all of this history together.  And Forrest is something of a wimp.  You know it's a bad sign when the almost-kisses are more compelling than the kisses.  This is romance without passion and it all seemed bothersome.  Furthermore, Leo's attempts to sabotage Piper and Forrest came off as creepy and possessive, really turning me off to him.

In general, the storytelling is muddy, with the point of certain scenes (like the weekend at the camp) lost amidst the details.  Or the way that seemingly interesting details are introduced (e.g., Piper's disability, her father's culinary skills, Diana's costuming skills, etc.), but never fill any meaningful purpose in the story.  The details are lovely an flesh things out, but still need to come together to some meaningful effect.

Adventures of Mary Jane, by Hope Jahren

Based on a briefly mentioned character in Huckleberry Finn, Jahren has crafted the story of Mary Jane, who bravely travels down the Mississippi Rover in adventures worthy of Mark Twain's protagonist.  The story begins when Mary Jane, living with her Ma and her grandfather in fur-trapping country up north, gets summoned to help her aunt and uncle down river.  When she arrives, she finds her uncle incapacitated and the family starving.  And when the aunt and uncle die from fever, she ends up caring for her two cousins.  They are sent yet deeper south, where she encounters the sin of slavery first hand and has to use her wits to protect herself and her cousins.  All of this serves as background that fleshes out the mysterious girl that stole Huck's heart.

While stuffed to the gills with historical details that make the book feel a bit like a history lesson (and definitely like book report material), the adventures are rousing enough to make this 400-page novel an enticing read.  Some of the details at the end get confusing, but the story is enjoyable and Mary Jane is an adventuresome good-hearted heroine.

Birds on the Brain, by Uma Krishnaswami

In this charming sequel to Book Uncle and Me, Yasmin's best friend Reeni is setting out on a campaign of her own:  to get the people of her town to participate in Bird Count India.  It's not just about her town.  The bird count is world wide!  But people don't seem to care and worse, some of them don't even like birds!

While Reeni is trying to stir up interest in birds, she learns that in matters concerning the environment there can be competing priorities:  a neighborhood ironing woman who is losing her livelihood because her coal-powered iron has being outlawed, a bird's nesting site that is threatened by plans to put solar panels on the roofs.  And even between friends, Reeni and Yasmin find that their respective causes (birds and literacy) are in seeming conflict.  But as they did before, the children summon some inner courage and enlist their parents, neighbors, and teachers to take the cause to the government and make their city a better place.

Still very full of cultural and political details that show a snippet of everyday life and local politics from an Indian perspective, Krishnaswami's books show children how, wherever they live, that they can make a difference.  The sequel follows pretty close to the formula devised in the first book and so lacks the originality that made the story so remarkable, but it is no less delightful to read.

Everything I Promised You, by Katy Upperman

Lia and Beck lived a pre-ordained life.  Lia's mother, back when she was a teenager, had a fortune read to her that foretold how she would have a daughter (Lia) and her best friend a son (Beck) and the two kids would fall in love and live happily ever after.  It was a silly lark, but with the way it came true, everyone in both families grew to believe it.  

And then Beck died.

With Beck gone and the prophecy broken, Lia is cast adrift.  Despite her parents' assurances that there are no expectations, she feels compelled to hold on to her past promises, even enrolling at the college that she and Beck were going to attend together.  And when she finds herself attracted to a new boy, Lia can't acknowledge that her heart is moving on.

Good writing and an unusual family life (both Lia and Beck are army brats and spent their years growing up in various military bases) made the otherwise tired story interesting.  But it only takes things so far. For not only do we have the dead boyfriend, but the new love interest is your typical mysterious and moody boy from the wrong side of the tracks.  There's not enough new stuff here to really make for a memorable read.

13 Ways to Say Goodbye, by Kate Fussner

Much to her older sister's annoyance, Nina always wanted to tag along.  In Nina's eyes, her sister was so brave, always trying out new things and forcing herself to move forward.  Nina could only follow after.  But when her sister died, there was no longer anything to follow and Nina became even more reclusive and even less brave.

Right before her thirteenth birthday, Nina is sent to Paris to spend the summer with her aunt and study art. The most important thing she takes with her is the checklist her sister created years ago when she was in Paris.  Nina intends to follow one last time in her sister's steps and complete the checklist for herself (including the items that her sister never did).  In doing so that summer, Nina surprises herself by going much further and finally striking out on her own.

Written in verse, the story relates Nina's emergence as an individual, the flowering of her artistic creativity, and a sweet first romance (in Paris!).  Great material.  Unfortunately, the writing is merely functional and adds little to a well-trod milieu.  In the thin air of a verse novel, the characters feel undeveloped.

One Step Forward, by Marcie Flinchum Atkins

Teen-aged Matilda, growing up in a radical family in Washington DC, finds inspiration supporting and eventually protesting for the Suffragists.  Told in verse, the novel traces her involvement (including her presence at the "Night of Terror") to the eventual ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.  Rooted in well-documented history, Atkins gives herself license to explore the mind of the youngest radical suffragist.

There's no faulting the retelling of historical facts, many of which may be only hazily known by readers and the idea of focusing on a teen makes the novel inspirational for young readers.  However, for a story rich with people and events, the verse format provides too sketchy of a treatment.  And while the poetry is definitely above average, it can prove distracting and distancing to the storytelling.  That frustrates attempts to understand the events of the story.  Reading a more traditional historical account alongside this novel would prove beneficial and in fact be a useful complement.