Imagine Us Happy, by Jennifer Yu

Ostensibly a story about the way that depression wrecks relationships, this is a teen romance that isn't.  As the narrator explains in the beginning, "I don't want to disappoint anyone in search of a happy ending. I'll say it from the start: this isn't that kind of story." to prove the point in an original twist, the novel starts off with the end of the romance -- the final fight.  With the matter of whether these two teens will find true love settled before the story even begins, we are left with an extended autopsy instead. 

Stella not only suffers from depression, but also from a neglectful father and a clinging mother.  The parents use Stella as a weapon to launch at each other -- each accusing the other of being the worse parent.  Traumatized by her parents' behavior, Stella seeks comfort where she can and stumbles across moody intellectual Kevin at a party.  When Kevin isn't drowning himself in existential literature or contemplating doom and gloom, he practices self-harm -- a behavior that he too weaponizes against Stella, but claiming that she bears some responsibility for it.  Barely into the relationship, Kevin's nasty side appears as he launches into abusive jealous tirades against Stella's friendships with other boys.  Stella, desperate to keep the one thing she feels is "safe" puts up with Kevin's abuse. You get the picture.  It all ends (at the start of the novel) when Stella accepts that she can't help Kevin and needs to just let him go. 

Like Sarah Dessen's Dreamland, it is pretty obvious from the beginning that Kevin is manipulative and Stella is manipulatable.  Between her depression and low self-esteem and the poor parental exemplars, she's completely unequipped to deal with Kevin's head games.  Any sane person would run far far away from him, but Stella is easily sucked in.

The light in this otherwise grueling story, is the authenticity of the characters and the insights they shed on themselves.  Stella, her mother, and their friends all seem enlightened (not that it halts the corrosiveness of their relationships).  The males are (Kevin and Stella's Dad), however, are pretty useless. Whether those insights would actually make a difference seems unlikely given that the type of people who fall into these toxic relationships generally don't accept advice from others.

Stepping Off, by Jordan Sonnenblick

Fatefully, when Jesse was young, his parents bought a place in Pennsylvania in order to get away from NYC in the summers. In the neighborhood there were two girls of his age as well -- Ava and Chloe -- and they became close summer friends.  They never bothered to stay in touch during the year and they safely knew that they were friends and nothing more. But maintaining the friendship has grown harder as they have grown older.  Jesse fantasizes about going out with Ava, but knows she doesn't care for him in that way.

The summer of 2019 (between their sophomore and junior years) begins fortuitously with the three of them taking a ceremonial leap off of a nearby bridge together as part of a local rite of passage. But it is also a summer when they will take much riskier leaps together.  By the end of the summer, Jesse and Chloe find themselves together, but neither one knows what it means and things are left hanging.

Back home during the fall, Jesse's parents are separating and when he reaches out to Chloe for support, she doesn't answer.  So, he turns to Ava and things start developing between them.  Or do they?  It would seem that the friendships are changing, but the more they do so, they more a sense of dread develops that they are losing each other.  And then in March, everything changes as the world shuts down for Covid.

The arrival of Covid is interesting but not really organic to the story.  And the book loses its focus as Sonnenblick shifts the story to the challenges that the three of them face trying to sort out their feelings in isolation (not that any of it seems to stop them from spending a lot of time in close proximity). For that reason and others, there really isn't anything essential about the Covid Pandemic to the plot and it is actually distracting.  I’ve been waiting for a good historical YA set during the Pandemic.  This might have been it, but the first 2/3 of the novel isn’t about Covid and thus the story isn’t either.
 
I still loved the characters, their near misses and misunderstandings, and the anxieties about the changing nature of their friendships are topics that are all handled well.

Dispatches From Parts Unknown, by Bryan Bliss

Julie and her mother have lived without her Dad for three years.  And while the death still affects them, life goes on.  Julie goes to the Mall and gets two Orange Juliuses and her best friend Max who works there never asks any questions about the extra one.  It might be for herself, or for her Dad, or for her constant companion, a professional wrestler named The Masked Man that no one except she can see.

In comparison, the rest of the story makes sense.  Like her favorite teacher's decision to put Julie on the prom committee to help get her out more.  Or the way that a popular extrovert Bri would latch on to her and fall in love with Max the Orange Julius guy.  Or the way that two skaters (God and Legs) would commandeer the prom committee and convince the school to embrace a Top Gun (the original version) - themed prom.  Or that Julie would find herself actually going to the prom with Legs as her date in the end.  Somehow, all of these non-sequiturs add up to a story about moving on from your grief.

The book is quirky and weird and funny, but surprisingly slow.  With so many storylines (few of which actually resolve), it is hard to say what the story really is about.  The invisible pro wrestler is a cute idea but doesn't really add much to the story and quickly becomes repetitive and dull.  Almost everything else simply peters out (prom is anti-climactic, a wrestling match in the Mall which ought to be the climax gets cut off at the end suddenly).  It's an original story, but weird and unique does not make for compelling reading.

We Shall Be Monsters, by Alyssa Wees

An atmospheric parable about three generations of women, told in alternating chapter by Gemma and her mother Virginia, that involves a witch, a man-eating beast, a curse, and an enchanted forest in rural Michigan.  It's one of those stories where the girl is warned by her mother to not venture into the woods, but she does so anyway.  Bad things happen.  Cut to next chapter and the whole thing repeats with the next generation.

But the story here is only a small part of the novel.  Behind the magic and the monsters lies two mother and daughter relationships with much more everyday magic and drama.  It's a story, for example, where cutting your mother open and eating her heart can be both literal and figurative.  And that fuzzy elision between reality and fantasy leads to some fantastic prose that feels deep and meaningful.

The story's complexity, vast cast, unclear direction, and jumpy narrative makes the book hard to read.  I did so very slowly, but I was left with a clear sense that I would only understand the story through re-reading it a few more times.  That's too much like work and the tale simply didn't interest me enough to put in the time.  A hard pass on this for me due to its demanding storytelling, even though I enjoyed the beauty of the writing.

The Fragile Ordinary, by Samantha Young

Comet has lived a private bookish life almost all the way through high school.  She has friends but keeps them at arm's length.  She and her parents barely talk.  She's terribly lonely and she just counts the days until she'll graduate and go to college somewhere far far away.

But then she meets Tobias, a boy with a bad attitude who hangs out with a bad crowd.  She'd ignore him, but he has a spark that intrigues her and he turns out to be smarter and nicer than he appears.  Soon, as always happens in the world of YA, she is swept away and spreading her wings.  That is, until they are riven apart by forces outside their control.

The novel never quite worked for me.  It's not the hackneyed plot, for that particular crime would condemn a thousand YA romances.  It's not the characters -- who are wondrously diverse and intriguing.  It's the storytelling, which is surprisingly clunky and wooden.  The story meanders with frequent surprises along the lines of "oh, and by the way, there is this character who I have never mentioned in the first 200 pages who is suddenly the central focus of the story" or "remember that subplot I labored over at the beginning? never mind, I've just resolved it in a page." In other words, real interest killers.  

I've liked Young's other books but this was just painful.

The Notes, by Catherine Con Morse

Claire Wu, a junior at a performing arts high school, wonders if she has what it takes.  Is she a good enough pianist to make it into a conservatory in two years?  Is she Asian enough to be accepted into the school's exclusive Asian Student Association?  Is she attractive enough to get the attention of senior Rocky Wong, the school's best pianist?

A new teacher, Dr. Li, thinks so and she inspires Claire to take risks.  She gets Claire a job as the accompanist for the dance recital, she assigns her harder pieces, and she makes her come in for extra practices.  Rocky and her other fellow students make fun of Claire for being a teacher's pet.  Rocky warns her that it isn't worth it to throw away her life trying to please this new and mercurial teacher.  But Claire likes Dr. Li and wants to prove she is good enough. 

Then things take a sinister turn.  Someone starts leaving notes lying around for Claire, warning her that Dr. Li is hurting her, that Dr. Li is using her, that Claire is wasting her time, and so on.  The messages grow threatening as the time of their piano showcase approaches and Claire is left wondering who is trying to hurt her?  And is she the real target or is it the new teacher?

A thriller with an engaging cast of characters and beautiful attention to detail, but an unevenly paced story.  The first two-thirds of the novel rolls out this story of threatening notes, backgrounded by the engaging mystery of Dr. Li's past and Claire's on-and-off relationship with Rocky.  But then that mystery of the anonymous messages is quickly resolved and a new issue is unveiled -- one involving the mental health of the notes' author.  This essentially new story is quickly run through with no development, completely changing the mood of the piece.  Character's personalities change, new motivations appear, and things that were so important in the first half fade from people's minds.  Worst of all, the story grows sketchy and the tempo speeds up dramatically.  This second part is not a bad story, but it's really not the same tale. 

Everything Within and In Between, by Nikki Barthelmess

One day, Ri discovers a letter under her grandmother's mattress written to her from her mother -- a mother that her grandmother claims has disappeared.  This is just one of the many lies in Ri's life from her controlling grandmother. 

Despite the fact that Grandmother is Mexican-American and Ri is half Latinx, her grandmother has never allowed her to learn Spanish.  Forging a permission slip to switch to Spanish class at school, Ri is determined to learn Spanish, become more familiar with her cultural roots, and find her mother.  And while she manages to do these things, it doesn't work out as she has planned and Ri has to come to terms with the realities of her family.  While that search for her mother doesn't quite work out, she does manage to connect with her heritage despite her grandmother's interference.

The novel raises some good points about discrimination in the Mexican community towards lighter skin colors, general racism, and classism.  The tone can get fairly preachy, but Ri makes an articulate and principled stand against her classmates who tolerate racially-motivated microaggressions. She stands up against classist behavior, especially when it is coupled with racism. While the story also brings up alcoholism and drug abuse, it handles these less convincingly.  But overall, my chief complaint with this story is how repetitive and slow the pace is.  A less-than-convincing change of heart by grandma saves the day so the story ends on a happy note, but it feels over convenient and unsatisfactory.