Echo Mountain, by Lauren Wolk

When the Great Depression came, Ellie's family lost everything and were forced to move out of town and into the woods, to live on the side of Echo Mountain.  It's a hard transition for Ellie's older sister and mother, but for Ellie and her little brother, life in the woods comes naturally.  Ellie's mother worries that Ellie is growing "wild," which is her way of noting that Ellie is braver and more assertive than Mom and her sister.  But after her father is injured and falls into a coma for months, these are useful traits to have as everyone has to step forward.  Because Ellie is blamed for her father's injury, she feels a particular obligation to bear the burdens of taking care of things and she rises humbly to the challenge.  It's a hard life but Ellie finds small joys in helping her neighbors and taking care of a puppy.

One day in the woods she encounters an old dog she doesn't recognize who leads her up the mountain, where she has never been (although her father always said that there was a "hag" up there).  Instead of a witch, Ellie finds an old lady who needs her help.  Helping her, in turn, opens up Ellie's world, revealing a talent for healing, an intuitive sense of how to fix what is broken, and insight to recognize what physical and psychic ailments people carry with them but are reluctant to share.

In this beautifully written novel, Lauren Wolk creates a story of a girl rescuing her neighbor, her family, and ultimately herself.  I read so many dystopian novels full of suffering, issue books about people with creepy problems, and message books exposing the hypocrisies of the adult world, that I forget that there are children's books like this:  about people living amidst each other, doing normal things, and making their small part of the world a better place.  The book comes with lots of adventure, a resourceful and humble-to-a-fault heroine, and a feel-good message about how neighbors can help neighbors.  While set in the Great Depression amongst rural poor people without a penny to their name, the story itself is timeless.  A deceptively simple story of a girl growing up (just a little) that illustrates the true power of children's literature to entertain and enlighten.  Obviously recommended!

The Assignment, by Liza Wiemer

Cade and Logan are shocked when their World History teacher assigns the class the opportunity to debate the Nazi's Final Solution.  The assignment, which the teacher argues is a chance to get inside the head of the men who made the decision to exterminate millions of people's lives, seems to Cade and Logan misguided at best and downright immoral.  More shocking than the assignment, though, are the reactions of their fellow classmates, ranging from treating it like a joke to exposing deep seated racism.  Cade and Logan want the teacher to cancel the project, but when he refuses to do so, they go to the media, which leads to greater ramifications than anyone ever imagined.

A tense, fast-reading novel that tackles an all-too-real issue in contemporary society.  Stories of similarly ill-thought-out classroom activities hit the news seemingly every month (and many more go unreported), making the premise particularly relevant.  Wiemer does a particularly nice job of slowly unfolding the nature of the threat.  As the story begins, I did entertain my doubts.  The teacher seemed pretty reasonable and the assignment (as he explained it) had pedagogical merit (although it was quickly subverted by racist students).  The administrative ambivalence felt realistic and it was a bit easy to eye the kids as hot heads.  The gradual crystallization of the fundamental problem with the assignment, combined with the way the community got sucked in by its poison is what really makes the novel effective.  And by the end, any ambiguity is lost:  the danger as clear as day.  Wiemer throws in a bit extra in the end, which in my mind is not really necessary, but it works.  The message that hate ultimately corrupts and destroys itself is realized.  It's probably fodder for an assigned reading in a classroom, but that should not detract from the fact that I  enjoyed the book and found that it gave me things to think about.

B*Witch, by Paige McKenzie and Nancy Ohlin

What if all those spell books and guides to witchcraft you checked out of the library and studied had actually worked?  Where lighting candles with your besties and doing incantations could keep your little sister from barging in or get your parents to forget a bad grade?  How would your life be different practicing magic in middle school?

Not that one would do so out in the open.  Technically, practicing witchcraft is against the law in this alt reality, but until the arrival of the current populist president and his "antima" (anti-magic) goons, it was something which you could get away with.  But his movement to crack down on witches has gained a lot of attention nationally and violence against witches is on the uptick so you can't be too careful.

There are two covens surreptitiously operating at school.  Greta's group has three members who use their magic to help each other, whereas the rival coven (headed by Greta's ex-bestie Div) use their magic for less nice things.  When two new girls show up who both show a knack for witchcraft, the two covens compete with each other to try to recruit them.  But when a series of threats surface, they realize that they have bigger issues to deal with and it is time to band together.

A fun romp that imagines how magic would change middle school.  Populated with well-drawn characters, the authors do a fine job of capturing young adolescents in a way that will make them imminently relatable to readers.  It's chock full of clever ideas and packed with satire.  But ultimately the book is burdened by trying to do too much.  One of the girls is on the spectrum.  One of them is trans (and uses her magic to pass as a CIS girl).  Racial and ethnic diversity is represented.  Criticism of MAGA is made.  All boxes are checked.  But in trying to do so much (and throwing in a large number of fed herrings along the way), the literally anti-climactic resolution is underwhelming.

Dear Universe, by Florence Gonsalves

Senior year and a life of avoiding life's questions has left Cham (short for Chamomile) with anger issues and a serious case of writer's block on her college essay.  Her father is dying of Parkinson's but Cham would rather think about Prom and graduation.  The problem is that neither of those goals address her growing sense of ennui.  With a tongue-in-cheek nod to Camus and a lot of sass, Cham ponders the many questions she wants to ask the universe, ranging from why her father has to do to whether her dress makes her boobs look big?

There are some great moments of humor and no small number of lovely insights here, but it takes a bit to extract them out of an aimless novel.  Cham's cynical and vulgar humor makes her entertaining as a protagonist and brings an edgy (and raunchy) quality to the novel that I normally associate with male protagonists.  But once you move beyond the things that make her funny, she comes off initially as shallow.  It really is not until two hundred pages have gone by that I started to warm to her when I realized that the shallowness was really just denial.  By that point, I was almost too far gone to care.

For a book about dying, it's strange that dealing with grief and coming to terms with death (the two usual themes for a dying-person book) are barely addressed at all.  In fact, resolution is largely lacking from the story.  By the end of the story, Cham hasn't exactly found any answers to her questions and she is pretty much as paralyzed by her ennui as she was at the beginning.  Clever and funny, but ultimately without resolution or conclusion, existential dread for adolescents does not make much of a story.

A Place at the Table, by Saadia Faruqi & Laura Shovan

Now that they are in middle school, Elizabeth worries that her best friend Maddie is drifting apart from her.  Maddie no longer seems to enjoy Dr. Who marathons and is always hanging out with snooty Stephanie instead of her.  And even though they signed up for cooking class together, Maddie just sits around and makes fun of the teacher Mrs. Hameed, her spicy cooking, and her Pakistani funny accent.  However, Elizabeth has to agree with Maddie that the teacher's daughter, Sara (who just transferred in this year) really is weird.

Sara, meanwhile, isn't thrilled to be dragged to her mother's new job teaching cooking.  Being shown off isn't going to help her fit in or make new friends.  In any case, she gets more than her fill of cooking at home, where her mother runs a catering business out of their kitchen.  The kids are rude and disrespectful. She'd rather be working on her drawing.

So, when the two girls end up getting paired together in the class, they aren't thrilled.  Yet, as they get to know each other, they find that they have a lot in common.  Elizabeth's mother is English and, like Sara's mother, studying for her citizenship test.  Both mothers are struggling, a fact of which both daughters are aware.  Elizabeth's grandmother has recently died and her mother struggles with depression.  Sara's mother is trying to keep the catering business afloat.  Racism and xenophobia are a big factor for Sara's family, but Elizabeth's mother faces discrimination as a foreigner and as a converted Jew.  Both girl's deal with the sense of belonging in two different worlds:  the homeland and their home.

What brings everyone together in the end is food and a love for cooking.  The cooking class and an international food fair at the end of the story serve as a catalyst for exploring differences and similarities.  And while the writing can get heavy handed and the premise sounds saccharine, it is deftly handled.  If nothing else, reading will give you serious craving for a curry!  

There's some obligatory effort made to explore xenophobia and racism.  That's probably the clunkiest part of the story, as Elizabeth's friend Maddie says some pretty extreme things that get quickly shut down by both adults and children in a bit of wishful thinking.  Far more effective is the portrayal of the Home Ec teacher's prejudice and micro aggressions from children and teachers that Sara and Elizabeth call out.

I enjoyed the descriptions of the cooking of course, but also the way that the girls got to talk about their mixed feelings about their heritage in an unforced way. Given the title, the obvious focus is about how everyone will come together in the end and they do, marveling over the differences and similarities in world cuisine and people.  The symbolism of the fusion dish that the two girl's concoct cements this message.

Tune It Out, by Jamie Sumner

Lou has a great singing voice, which her mother likes to put out front and center when they are busking.  It brings in better tips and, heavens knows, living out of their truck that they can use all the money they can get.  But performing in front of people is hard for Lou.  Loud noises hurt, being touched by strangers is painful, and crowds freak her out.  Lou has tried to explain that it's much worse than stage fright, but Mom won't listen to her.  And there really is no choice since they need the money to get by.

But when a snowstorm and an auto accident brings Lou's living situation to the attention of Child Protective Services, Lou gets sent to live with an aunt and uncle she barely knows.  They turn out to be quite well off and generous and, for the first time in years, she is able to go to school (which is both a blessing and a curse since schools are noisy places).  There, a counselor helps Lou explore the possibility that she may struggle with Sensory Perception Disorder, which would explain why public performance is so hard for her.

Lou is a strong (albeit stubborn) character and I liked her.  She's bright and the conversations she has and the questions she asks are insightful (to the point that they sometimes seem uncharacteristically mature for the alleged age).  In the context of a middle reader, that just makes thing simpler, the questions to be answered more direct, and the story ultimately more satisfying.

Ostensibly, there is very little new and original in this book.  Neglectful parenting, living out of cars, and skirting the law (usually combined with a fortuitous wealthy bailout) is a popular genre.  We certainly have plenty of books these days about children on the Autism Spectrum.  That said, this is a competent rendering of the familiar story.

If These Wings Could Fly, by Kyrie McCauley

The town of Auburn is struggling under a freak migration of crows.  Thousands and thousands of the birds have arrived and cover everything.  With their penchant for stealing things and getting into mischief, the residents see them as a tremendous nuisance.  But Leighton has bigger problems to deal with:  a desire to graduate and move away, a reluctance to open her heart to others, and a lack of safety at home.

Bearing the festering emotional wound of being the boy who lost the town's last chance at a football championship nineteen years ago, her father has grown from a hurt young man into a violent and abusive father.  In her younger years, his outbursts were infrequent but now they happen nearly constantly.  In her last year at home before she hopefully goes away for college, Leighton tries to encourage her mother to stand up to him.  But when Mom refuses to do so, Leighton has to focus on keeping her younger sisters safe from their father's rampages.  

In this bleak environment, Leighton cannot count on adults for help.  The grownups of Auburn largely turn their backs and ignore the problem.  Instead, she finds comfort in her boyfriend Liam and from two stranger sources:  her home itself (a house with walls that repair themselves and protect the girls) and the birds.  Crows are intelligent creatures with the capacity to remember slights and the ability to understand reciprocity.  Somehow, these birds seem to understand what is happening and help Leighton and her family but stealing things from Dad or leaving useful gifts.  So, while the town sees the crows as a nuisance, Leighton comes to understand that they are crucial for her survival.

A well-written, albeit terribly grim and depressing, story of domestic abuse.  McCauley's foray into magical realism, through the birds and the house is ambitious and fraught with creative tension.  On one hand, she wants to create a manifesto against domestic violence and the text occasionally digresses into policy.  But on the other, McCauley is taken in by the literary majesty of the crows and the house as extended metaphors and even crucial plot devices.  This conflict of purpose is most pronounced in the ending, where a literal reading of the resolution is almost impossible.  Does the house itself rid Leighton of her father's abuse?  Do the birds really physically interfere?  Or is it all metaphor for the family rising up and standing up against the father?  There's no way to really know and that leaves the otherwise fairly sober analysis of the causes for domestic violence and the societal forces that allow it to flourish subject to a literary whimsy -- poetic and beautiful but perhaps off-message?

Beyond the Break, by Heather Buchta

One of the truly rarest themes in YA literature are stories with a strong respectful approach to religion.  In these days of no holds barred children's literature, religion remains the one truly awkward topic.  Holding aside books written specifically for the Christian market, it's hard to find books for teenagers that tackle faith.  So when one comes along, I like to call it out.

When Lovette's older brother was seriously injured (and nearly died) in a surfing accident, her parents flat out prohibited Lovette from being in the ocean, let alone surfing.  That hurt a lot and Lovette couldn't pull herself away.  With her brother's life hanging by a thread and her parents distant and distracted, it was on the waves that she found her comfort.  And when her friend Kelly took her along with her to her church's youth group, she found a similar comfort in Jesus.

For a twelve year-old from a largely non-religious family, Christianity hadn't meant much to her before.  But in the companionship and the Bible, she found a place and a meaning that she needed.  Part of that  was her pledge to remain pure -- not to date until she meets the One and not even to kiss until her wedding day.  And while she's not made a big deal about it, not dating has been a bedrock part of her life, given her focus, an become interwoven with her faith.  At the same time, so has her secret trips to the ocean to swim.

Years later, she becomes reacquainted with a boy named Jake, who reignites her love for the surf and inspires her to confront her parents about their prohibitions.  When she finds she has feelings for him as well, it throws her into a spiritual crisis.  It was so easy to be a good Christian when she was a twelve year-old girl, but does that pledge really still work for her when it stands between her and Jake?  And is questioning that defying Him?  How do you keep faith as you enter adulthood and your world becomes more complicated?

The story features strong and nuanced characters who act authentically and are often surprising.  The story moves effortlessly and has a lot of good surfing scenes for fans of the genre.  The relationships between Lovette and her family, between her and her friends, and the complicated relationship between her and Jake are make for good reading.  But, of course, the primary purpose of the book is the spiritual challenges she faces and that is what makes this compelling reading.

I understand why some people will avoid this book altogether -- the characters' unapologetic love for Christ will trigger some readers.  However, that fidelity to God is key to this story and there is an intrinsic beauty to Lovette's journey as she navigates the ways that her relationship with her parents and with her God are changing that makes this novel worthwhile. The author's background as a youth pastor serves the story well and one imagines that Buchta is pulling on a lot of experiences working through these same issues with a lot of real kids.  That she creates an entertaining novel out of such emotionally authentic feelings is noteworthy.

The Surprising Power of a Good Dumpling, by Wai Chim

As the eldest daughter in her Chinese-Australian family, Anna carries a lot of responsibility.  Her younger sister and little brother need her help.  Her father is rarely home because he has the family restaurant to run.  Mother meanwhile is buried in her room, often for weeks at a time.  Ma suffers from fits of depression and bouts of psychotic delusions.  But in Chinese culture, one doesn't acknowledge these things.  Instead, we learn that one assumes that rest, "better thoughts," and time will solve everything.  It would be shameful to seek outside help. So, instead, Anna is forced to keep her family together, playing mother to her siblings as her father avoids coming home more and more often.

A boy with a past comes into Anna's life and provides both a romantic distraction and some useful insights for helping her cope.  But in the end when things grow so serious that Anna can't resolve them, the family has to face the facts that not everything can be solved by wishing for a better future.

An interesting cross-cultural look at mental illness.  Unfortunately, because the family is ultimately incapable of resolving the issues, it's an unsatisfying look.  Anna's acceptance of her responsibility for her entire family is questioned a few times by outsiders, but she never confronts it and the self-destructive behavior continues roughly unabated through to the end.  While the story ostensibly ends hopefully, a particularly grim postscript leaves us on a down note.  All of which leaves us with the question of what message we are supposed to take from this?  Otherwise, I loved the cultural details, the use of language, and especially the devotion to Cantonese cuisine (which left me with a strong hankering for Chinese take-out!).

The Girl and the Ghost, by Hanna Alkaf

Alkaf's new middle reader is a contemporary story based on Malaysian folklore.  Suraya is a lonely child but she has one true friend, an evil spirit, whom she calls Pink.  Born through witchcraft from the blood of a dead baby, Pink is bound to Suraya and Suraya (lacking any other friend) is bound to Pink.  This mutual need creates an uneasy symbiotic relationship.

But one day, Suraya makes a real friend with a girl at school named Jing who loves books and Star Wars and offers a bit of normalcy in her life that Suraya has lacked.  And Pink, who ought to be limitless in his power, finds he can't compete and unleashes a terrible vengeance.  Terrorized by her former friend, Suraya is forced to find help and share her secret.  Even with Jing's help, defeating a spirit will require ingenuity and great effort and the two girls sneak out and search for Pink's origins so they can return him from whence he came.

The clever merging of contemporary Malaysian culture and Malay folklore gives this book a unique feel. The local color, however, does not distract from a story to which young readers will relate (tackling meeting parental expectations, bullying at school, and the pressures of conforming to societal expectations).  The story in the end gets a bit muddled and felt rushed, but Alkaf writes well and the story and its two resourceful heroines were engrossing and fun to read.

Bloom, by Nicola Skinner

Sorrel is very good at following rules.  So good, in fact, that she is a shoo-in for Headmaster Grittysnit's new contest for the most well-behaved student, the Grittysnit Star.  She was last year's Head of Year and regularly earns Sensible Child and School Rule Champion certificates. How hard can it be? But that was before plants started growing out of her head! 

It all starts when Sorrel finds a packet of Surprising Seeds, learns the sad history of her hamlet of Little Sterilis from the owner of the town's neglected plant nursery, and accidentally releases an ancient curse.  With the help of her scientifically-inclined (but non-conformist) friend Neena, they find the cause of the unusual blooms.

Meanwhile, Headmaster Grittysnit won't tolerate sprouting scalps and when the pates of the entire school starts to germinate, he believes it is time to take drastic measures.  As the guardian for the forces of obedience, conformity, and rules (such as guide all sensible students!) the solution is paving over these unruly plants.  Sorrel realizes that that will never work, but to convince the others, she has to break the rules, jeopardizing her chance of winning the Grittysnit Star!

A very British satire attacking conformity. The targets (stuffy school administrators and property developers) are not particularly formidable and the struggle is not particularly fierce, but the whimsical text makes for a brisk and entertaining read.  For fans of Lemony Snicket and The Willoughbys.

[Disclaimer:  I received an Advance Review Copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an unbiased review.  The book is scheduled for release on March 16th, 2021.]

Willa and the Whale, by Chad Morris and Shelly Brown

After the death of her mother, Willa returns to the Washington coast to live with her father.  Before she died, Mom was a marine biologist and instilled a great love of the ocean in Willa.  Early on, her father takes her out for a whale watching trip and, during the outing, Willa is surprised to find that a Humpback Whale named Meg is talking to her!  In subsequent weeks, Willa and Meg become close, with the whale offering advice to Willa about how to handle the loss of her mother, her problems integrating into her new home, resolving trouble at school, and fixing things with an old friend.  These issues are big, but nothing compared to Willa finding a giant Blue Whale run aground on her beach.  To solve her greatest problem yet, she has to round up family, friends, and her whale friend.

A rewarding middle school reader about problem solving.  Willa has a wide variety of issues (including grief, family conflict, rebuilding friendships, jealousy, and accepting failure) but addresses each of them in a positive way.  Her strength, which comes through again and again, is that she thinks through her problems and does her best.  She does not always succeed, but gains strength even from her failures.  The wide diversity of issues threatens to make the novel seem unfocused, but the unifying theme is the power of communication, seeking help from others, and creative problem solving.  The result is a warm book with a positive message that even the most terrible issues can be solved and that what initially seems like failure is simply the first step towards eventual success.

As an added bonus, frequent fun facts about whales which are sprinkled throughout the book make for entertaining Google searches for inquiring minds!

Lies We Tell Ourselves, by Robin Talley

Davidsburg, Virginia in the 1950s was a place where everyone knew their place, white or black, man and woman.  But in 1959, after years of fighting in the courts, the school district is finally forced to integrate its schools.  Sarah is a senior and one of the first black students to attend Jefferson High.  It doesn't go well and in the first part of this novel, we are exposed to the immense cruelty and hatred that these young pioneers faced against the arrogance and ignorance of their peers.  It's a harrowing read and enough to turn your stomach, but well worth enduring for what follows.

In part two, we get introduced to Linda, a white girl and the daughter of the local newspaper's editor.  Like her Daddy, she's a proud opponent of integration.  The attempt of "Communists" and subversives to undermine the way things have always been cannot stand and she'll do everything she can to fight against Sarah and the other black students ruining her school.  She's a true believer in the separation of the races and the inherent superiority of whites over most blacks, but as the story progresses, she comes to question the things she's told herself are true.

All of that by itself would make for a a very powerful book, but Talley has grander ambitions.  The lies these characters tell themselves are not limited to issues of race and privilege alone, the novel also tackles sexism, classism, and even homophobia.  And while it is never said outright, the story makes it clear that not all problems were fixed by the Civil Rights movement.  The end result is a startling piece of historical fiction, brutal and unrelenting in its depiction of violence, cruelty, and indifference, but just as unrelenting in its vision of hope for a (not yet realized) better world.

I might quibble that Talley has bitten off a lot more than she really needed to (simply tackling racial injustice might well have been sufficient?) but there's a compelling logic to her decision to tie the way that all of these forms of arrogance and inequality are related.  And the ability of so many that stand on the sidelines and tacitly endorse the behavior with their silence is part and parcel of the same problem.  The forces that make a daughter subject to her father's physical abuse or the subjugation of an unmarried mother to economic injustice are no less destructive than a school full of racist bullies torturing their classmates and the complicity of the teachers and administrators who allowed it to happen.  For anyone who has been on the receiving end of injustice, this is a painful and uncomfortable read, but thought provoking all the more so for it.

The Falling in Love Montage, by Ciara Smyth

Saoirse isn't much of a believer in love.  Aside from one major girlfriend and being the handy available partner to every girl in school who wanted to experiment, Saoirse hasn't had much experience.  She certainly doesn't find much love at home.  Mom's confined to a nursing home with early onset dementia and hardly even recognizes her daughter. It would seem that even a mother's love is temporary.  Dad's gone ahead divorced her and is going ahead and remarrying, further proving that love is temporary and nothing lasts forever.  

None of this stops Ruby, obsessed with romantic comedies, from trying to interest Saoirse in a fling.  Ruby's only staying the summer and will university approaching, no one is looking for forever anyway.  Instead, she proposes a virtual "falling-in-love montage" just like they do in the rom coms.  Armed with a list of common thing that happen in romantic comedies, the girls set out to have a whirlwind summer romance that will help Saoirse cope with her feelings of familial abandonment.

A functional romance but unremarkable and hard to get into.  The plot (girl forswears love yet falls in love in the end) is utterly predictable and surprisingly short on spark or drama between the two girls.  The novelty of this being a lesbian romance isn't really that novel anymore.  The tension between Saoirse and her father over how he has treated her mother fizzles as well (although I'm not sure where Smyth could have taken the story and it seems like one of those things that looked better in outline than fleshed out).  The most interesting relationship in terms of growth is actually Saoirse and Ruby's straight cousin Oliver, who go from enemies to actual friends by the end of the story.  It works well, with Oliver ironically assuming the role usually played by the gay friend.

The Voting Booth, by Brandy Colbert

Marva is eighteen, which means that she finally gets to take part in her first election.  She's completely on top of this.  She's been studying the ballot and she's been doing everything she can think of to help get others out to vote.  It's time to change the way things have been run and that will only happen when the right people get elected.  On the day of the vote, she gets up early and is even the first person in line at her polling place.  She's done well before school starts.

Duke is the same age and determined to vote, because in his family, being politically active is expected.  But his mind is really on his band's first paid gig tonight and he just wants to get in and get out.  However, that's not how it turns out.  He's not on the rolls and when Marva overhears his plight she takes him under her wing and drives him from place to place trying to get him his vote.  Through a day filled with every possible (and sadly familiar) set back from closed polling places to ballot shortages and long lines, the two young people become friends and more as they share the quest to participate in the democratic process.

It's a clever setting for a YA romance that would have made an excellent short story.  Even as a novella, it probably would have had room for all the politics that Colbert puts in (voter suppression, BLM, interracial marriage, racial identity, etc.).  As a novel though the material is too thin.  So, Colbert throws in dead siblings, failed relationships, and even a missing cat -- much of which seems distracting and immaterial to the story.  Sometimes a great story doesn't need to be a novel, but I guess it was a more commercial proposition to make it so.

Agnes at the End of the World, by Kelly McWilliams

At Red Creek, life is simple and straightforward.  The Prophet speaks for God and rules all.  His Patriarchs administer his will over their plural wives and children.  Technology is evil and the outside world is dangerous and forbidden.  While Agnes has struggled with parts of the doctrine, she has always found great comfort in the structure, routine, and faith of the place  But her younger brother Ezekiel suffers from diabetes and he will die unless she can continue to get him insulin, which she smuggles to him in direct violation of the Prophet's rules that forbid outside medicine.  That window to the outside brings with it a crisis of faith for Agnes when the Prophet announces that End Times are upon them and everyone must take shelter in Red Creek's underground bunker.

Faced with the reality that retreating to the bunker will spell certain death for her brother, Agnes decides to take him and flee to the outside world. There she finds that the Prophet's warnings are not far off the mark.  A global pandemic has shattered civilization.  Millions have fallen victim through a process where their skin turns crimson and hard and they eventually swarm into huge masses of semi-living beings called "nests." Amidst this chaos and disorder, Agnes and Ezekiel try to find a new safer home before realizing that Agnes has a calling and must obey her own prophecy.

This original dystopian novel sounds like so many things but ultimately transcends them all.  Part One, which outlines the oppressive and soul killing world of a religious cult and Agnes's plans to flee it will sound like any number of novels about teenagers in cult compounds.  Part Two takes us into The Stand territory with its peculiar share of Stephen King thrills (much of which resonates strongly in a COVID-19 world).  But by the time we hit Part Three, the story has left those tired genres and moved into Agnes's search for truth.  Like all good prophecy stories, Agnes initially resists her calling (aching to remain mortal and insignificant), feels anger at being placed in a role of such great responsibility, and ultimately understands the sacrifice that she was always going to make.

The author's prediction of pandemic was a lucky strike and gives the book some extra gravitas, but McWilliams has created a keeper without that bit of serendipity.  Her story is ultimately about how faith creates religion or how religion creates faith (and when the two are at cross purposes).  This is sermon-worthy material packed into an exciting action story that will keep you turning pages, leaving behind ideas that will have you thinking for long after you've read the last page.  A stunning, astounding novel that defies the genres it mines.

Lupe Wong Won't Dance, by Donna Barba Higuera

This is no greater hell on Earth than a middle school square dancing unit.

Lupe Wong has a hero:  Fu Li Hernandez, the Chinese Mexican pitcher for the Seattle Mariners.  As a fellow Chinacan/Mexinese, she figures he's got to know her frustration when filling out the race item on forms.  Lupe's uncle is friends with Hernandez and has promised Lupe that he'll arrange for the two of them to meet if Lupe can get straight As this year.  It should be easy.  She's doing well in all of her classes.  But then she discovers that they are going to have to learn to dance in phys ed and suddenly Lupe isn't sure she can do it!

Lupe is a problem solver, so she turns her energy towards finding a way to get the curriculum changed.  She tries to convince the adults that square dancing is harmful (no luck!).  Then she uncovers that the words to the "Cotton Eye Joe" song they are dancing to are suspect (the school changes the dance music). She starts a change.org petition to protest the fact that boys choose the partners (the school pledges to change the policy next time). And so on.  But in the end, the real solution is for her to find a way to just dance in her own way.

In general, this was a pretty amusing book.  Lupe is creative and persistent.  While she exploits the Culture Wars for her own selfish gain, she's astute and in the long run comes to see the bigger picture here (the author's long-term solution to Lupe's complaints is certainly discussion worthy and will give readers food for thought).  Ultimately, the story is a winner because it focuses on how thinking about others and their needs will make you a winner.  For as much as Lupe wants to meet her hero, she proves that she is willing to put that dream on the line to do the right thing.  That is ultimately a pretty heroic thing to do.

Jelly, by Jo Cotterill

Jelly is the class clown.  Adept at mimicking her classmates and their teachers, she makes everyone in eighth grade laugh. But the truth is that she's hurting inside.  She'd like to tell people the truth about how their harsh words about her weight hurt her feelings, but people don't want to hear that.  Instead, it's simply better to smile, act like it doesn't hurt, and laugh it all off as a joke.  Life goes on and making a big fuss won't solve anything.

While her decision to deflect through comedy gives her agency and the appearance of confidence, Jelly still finds that she comes home exhausted after a day of wearing her happy face.  She's hardly alone.  She's seen the way her mother pretends to be happy around her friends and how Mom tries to please the selfish men she dates and placate Jelly's abusive grandfather.  Jelly's mother just pretends it doesn't hurt.  

But then Mom gets a new boyfriend who's different from the others. He's supportive of Jelly's Mom and solicitous to Jelly's hopes and dreams.  He comes with novel notions that it is alright to feel bad and that appearances are overrated.  It's attractive and yet terrifying at the same time and Jelly and her mother have to decide how much longer they want to keep pretending?

It's a middle reader that surprises.  On its face, the book is safely in the beauty-is-on-the-inside realm.  Jelly learns that she doesn't have to hide behind self-deprecation and that she can get what she wants without always making people laugh.  But the novel, by bringing in her mother's example (and exploring the abusive nature of her grandfather's relationship with his family) bites off much meatier material:  exploring the way that abusive patterns develop and what it takes for a victim to free themselves from them.  Jelly articulates the feelings of her age well, but her fears and the angst surrounding them will resonate with almost every reader to one extent or another, making this story of building self-confidence a universal tale.  A good choice for multi-generational reading and sharing.

Wildfire, by Carrie Mac

Annie and Pete are that rare set:  the boy and girl who have remained friends from childhood without drifting into romance.  What has allowed that is their code of rules and a shared history.  Bonding over a variety of near-death experiences (mostly as a result of poor choices with dumb luck rescues), they understand each other in a way that no one else does.

Hiking through the woods of the Pacific Northwest (amidst hundreds of wildfires) they make one irresponsible decision too many and find themselves in a situation that can't get out of.  This elicits a stream of recollections of each of their previous close calls, used to tells us the story of how they become so close.  Unfortunately, it also leaves them further and further away from any chance of rescue.

There's a tremendous depth to the characters and I admired Mac's storytelling ability, but these Annie and Pete are a bit hard to take.  Pete in particular behaves really badly, selfishly putting Annie into some impossible situations. Occasional bad choices are the bread and butter of YA.  They create the situations that the protagonists get themselves out of.  But here, they come one after another and the characters seem determined to let them happen.

Self-destruction is not pretty and not terribly inspiring.  Smart kids doing stupid stuff isn't really a story I want to read.

Mermaid Moon, by Susann Cokal

Sanna is not like the other mermaids.  She knows that she obviously has a mother, but no one can remember who she is.  They know that her mother was landish, a human, and for this reason a spell was cast that would cause all concerned to forget about each other.  Now, Sanna wants to find her.  An old witch helps transform her into a landish girl so she can do her search.

On dry land, her sudden appearance and an incident involving the transforming of roses during a feast day cause her to be mistaken for a saint.  As a result, she comes to the attention of the ruler, Baroness Thryla.  Thryla announces that such an important person as Sanna must become betrothed to her son, a rather self-absorbed boy named Pedar.

Sanna is non-plussed.  None of this brings Sanna closer to finding her long lost mother.  She's not particularly interested in Pedar or even in the ways of landish romance.  Pedar does himself no favors, acting arrogantly around her.  And something is a bit off about Thryla.  In fact, the woman is a witch, who gathers souls to help elongate her life.  Sanna, with all of her magic, could be a powerful source.  To exploit her and retain her, Thryla must keep Sanna close by.  In the end, when Thryla and Sanna face off, the outcome surprises everyone.

A flowing and melodic fantasy novel, but plagued by a painfully slow pace that both suffers from repetition and also from skips and jumps that are confusing to follow.  I never got much into it, although I slogged through to the end.  The story eventually does resolve (we find Sanna's mother by the end) it really isn't very interested in telling a story.  Instead, it delights in its words.  There is also an underlying misandry (men portrayed as either rapacious or vain) and anti-religious thread to the entire book which is a bit disturbing.  This is addressed in an afterward from the author as some sort of literary experiment but seemed out of place and pretentious.

A Home for Goddesses and Dogs, by Leslie Connor

Back when Lydia's mother was still alive, the two of them would work on collages.  Their collages, built off of pictures taken from an old forgotten family album, were their "goddesses" with each one signifying a different trait ("goddess of generosity", "goddess of the third heart", etc.).  Each of them is dear to Lydia now that her mother is gone and one of the very few things she takes with her.  With her father absent (aside from the annual birthday card which Lydia never opens), it's her Aunt who comes to take her home.

She relocates to the small town of Chelmsford, where Lydia's aunt lives with her partner in an old farmhouse with the house's owner, Elloroy.  The same week that Lydia arrives, the women decide to adopt a new dog.  Lydia isn't a dog person, so she isn't too sure about the dog, but despite his issues with becoming housebroken, the animal grows on her.  Likewise, while Lydia struggles with adapting to her new home and with coming to terms with her mother's death, eventually this home for her goddesses and for dogs becomes her home as well.

Full of lovely ideas, the execution of this fresh story of a non-traditional family leaves a lot to be desired.  So many of the themes of the story (adaptation, grief, identity, etc.) are handled piecemeal and largely unresolved.  A very late attempt to work out her father issues is half-hearted and incomplete.  The dog simply exists.  He struggles and she struggles but eventually they sort of bond, and there's no particular breakthrough beyond the realization that they have grown close.  And then there's the odd side trips that the story takes:  the hostile neighbor and a peculiar and upsetting case of animal cruelty,  Neither of these appear to serve much purpose.  The story's overall intent seems to be to simply show Lydia adjusting amidst a variety of challenges, but since none of these directly contribute, we left with wondering what the story was all about.

In the Role of Brie Hutchens, by Nicole Melleby

Brie loves soap operas, but she never counted on her eighth-grade life becoming one.  She gets caught by her Mom looking at nude pictures of her favorite soap actress.  Embarrassed and trying to distract her mother, she blurts out that she's been chosen for the honor of crowning the school's statue of Mary.  This is one of the highest honors at her Catholic school and only granted to the very best student.  The problem is that Brie is not that sort of student and the honor has not actually been announced yet.  But if it means keeping her mother from finding out that Brie might like girls, then Brie will do whatever it takes to win that honor.  Along the way there are Brie's dreams of attending a performing arts school next year (too expensive for the family), her father's unemployment and tensions over money in general, and Brie's tentative exploration of her sexual identity with another girl at school.

The result is a wonderful tone-perfect book about coming out, suitable for young people who are aware enough of adult issues to begin YA, but needing the comfort of a middle reader.  While this is an LGTBQ children's book, it moreover a book about learning how to say what you want, how to ask others for respect, and growing up in general.  Brie's struggles with her mother over recognizing her homosexuality are heartbreaking, but credible and sensitively handled.  Her struggle to be acknowledged and accepted by Mom and for her mother's difficulty in letting go is universal enough to be relatable to anyone.  Brie's relationship with the girl she likes, Kennedy, has all of the sweetness and awkwardness that one expects from eighth grade budding romances.  In sum, Melleby has a good ear and had produced an authentic, age-appropriate, and sensitive story about developing sexual identity.

Lila and Hadley, by Kody Keplinger

A lot of things lately haven't been going well for Hadley.  Over the last few years, she's been undergoing the loss of her vision and is now legally blind  Because her mother got caught stealing from her employer and been sent to jail, Hadley's had to move in with her older sister, Beth.

She's developed a short temper with good reason.  Having to leave her friends is frustrating.  The way her sister won't stop bugging her about learning how to use a cane before she loses all of her sight makes her angry (even though the truth is she's scared at just how fast her vision is deteriorating).  Her Mom calls every night to talk, but Hadley hates how her mother lied to her and won't pick up the phone.  Hadley is so mad but she doesn't know what to do about it.

One day, when she's forced to accompany her sister to a local animal shelter where Beth works, she chances upon Lila, a shy pit bull.  Something clicks between the two of them, much to the surprise of the staff who have had no luck in socializing and training the dog.  But Hadley sees a kindred spirit in Lila (and Lila seemingly does as well in Hadley).  Can the two of them -- both feeling abandoned, angry, and scared -- save each other?

A fairly predictable middle school animal novel with a lovable dog and a testy protagonist.  Hadley is the weak point to this book.  Keplinger puts a lot of effort into showing how angry she is and while it is understandable that she would be so with all the stuff she's dealing with, it gets wearisome to deal with Hadley's endless rudeness, meanness, and self-centeredness.  The story is about Hadley's growth towards acceptance and inner peace, of course, but it's a story that is poorly plotted.  It's not so much a gradual growth as much simply a sudden stop.  A couple life lessons along the way are intended to provide the justification for change, but we don't see the lessons actually being learned as much as simply occurring.  The narrator's poor grammar works fine in dialogue, but gets excessive and precious in the first-person narration and it actually hinders our ability to see her internalization.  Animal stories work best with humor and hijinks, both of which are lacking for the most part from this story.  More dog and less girl would have made this a better book.

Nevertell, by Katharine Orton

Lina has never known life outside of captivity.  Born inside a Soviet prison camp, she ekes by with her mother and her best friend Bogdan.  The Commandant has a soft spot for her (which many in the camp believe is because he is her father), but life is still very hard.  One night, Lina and Bogdan escape, with instructions to find someway to get to Moscow, where Lina's grandmother will help them.

The world outside of the camp is dangerous.  Not only are they in the middle of frozen Siberian steppe, but the land itself is full of spirits and sorcerers.  Ghost wolves and Baba Yaga herself roam free.  Constantly thrown from one danger to another, Lina and Bogdan navigate through a world that mixes Soviet reality and Russian folk tale in a magical quest.

The amalgam of historical fact and folktale is peculiar, and one that I never got used to.  Despite the inspirations, there was nothing that really felt particularly Russian about this story.  Names, places, and ideas were all there, but the characters were distinctly English.  The story itself is wildly chaotic and hard to really follow.  The bad guys (the Commandant and the witch Svetlana) are strange and inconsistent characters, and their motivations contradictory and obscure.  The goals of the quest are constantly changing.  By mid-point I gave on trying to keep track of why we were going places and doing things.  The plot had more loose ends than a well-worn Central Asian rug!  A colossal mess of a novel.

Girls Save the World in This One, by Ash Parsons

June and her friends are super psyched about attending ZombieCon! They've been saving all summer for the passes and this is going to be the last major blow out before they go their separate ways for college.  Zombies have been June's favorite thing for years and she's super psyched to meet her heroes - the stars of Human Wasteland -- in the flesh.

Despite some snafus accomplishing their goals and some run-ins with a former friend, the Con is turning out to be everything they hoped it would be.  However, something seems off.  A few of the cosplayers seem a bit too realistic. And then during the full cast panel discussion, the girls find themselves in the middle of a real life zombie attack!  As the infected attack the convention attenders, June and her friends team up with the cast of the Human Wasteland fighting from ballroom to atrium trying to save their lives.

As the girls call upon their fan knowledge of their favorite show, proving to often be savvier than the cast members, there are lots of little Galaxy Quest moments, but not nearly as many as one would have expected.  Instead, Parsons plays this mostly straight.  Part of the reason for that is that the story is really torn between two directions:  June's ambivalence about growing up (and a side story about a falling out with her ex-BFF) and the whole saving-the-world-from-Zombies thing.  The stories are distractingly different and Parsons only real solution is painstakingly attempting to connect them.  This leads to pretty jarring shifts in pacing.  In the end, I just wasn't invested enough in June and her friendships to follow the drama and focused instead on her slaying of the infected rotting corpses of her fellow fans.  Overall, a clever concept full of unrealized potential.

What I Want You To See, by Catherine Linka

The art scholarship was supposed to be Sabine's ticket out of poverty.  After her mother died, she's ended up on the street.  The scholarship, with a free ride and money to cover living expenses, would carry her through.  And then after art school, there would be a future as long as she worked hard enough.

The reality is that the scholarship solved little. It doesn't really cover her needs and it leaves her vulnerable.  An unsympathetic teacher, cut- throat competition from the other students, and a past that she can't run away from fast enough put her in a precarious place.  Worst of all, Sabine carries a chip on her shoulder.  Resentful that she always has to work so hard and the world is ganging up on her, Sabine makes a tragic error of judgment that snowballs.  As a result of her decision, she finds herself embroiled in a forgery scandal, the untangling of which will finish her career before it even starts.

After everything she has been through, Sabine can't imagine throwing it all away.  Her mother always told her that "the only way out is through." For Sabine, finding the strength to bravely plow on through her mess may be the only way out.

A tense story, combined with a protagonist who makes all the worst decisions (with the best of intentions), creates a novel that engages from start to finish.  You really want to root for this young woman, whose heart is truly in the right place, but her problems seem so insurmountable (and they keep on coming).    Along the way, she travels a truly impressive growth, moving beyond anger and wrath towards acceptance and forgiveness.

Ending a story like this was always going to be challenging, but Linka does a great job of providing a conclusion that, while not particularly rosy, at least offers some hope.  Given what Sabine has to endure, hope might be good enough.  So that, even if she doesn't get what she wanted, she gains understanding and growth that is its own reward.  That journey makes Sabine's hard slog a rewarding read.

Fable, by Adrienne Young

The Narrows are a dangerous place, where traders try to make a living sailing treacherous waters and navigating trade between people who have little and want more. It is a place only for the ruthless. It is a place where whenever you are on the verge of making it, there's someone ready to pull you back down. Nothing is free, Fable's father told her and she's learned the lesson well.  Four years ago, Fable was abandoned to fend for herself on a scrappy island.  Through struggle, ingenuity, and her wits, she's managed to make it to her seventeenth year, but she's running out of options.

Just as she is on the verge of losing her life, she finds rescue from a trader named West who leads a band of four young sailors on a ship called the Marigold.  While Fable wasn't exactly in a place to be choosy, there is definitely something wrong going on here.  In a place like the Narrows, everyone has secrets but the crew of this ship seem to have the sort of past that attracts trouble and gets people killed.  Nonetheless, they manage to reach the port of Ceros where Fable plans to confront her father -- the man who abandoned her four years ago.

Nothing ever works out like one hopes and the Narrows have a way of defeating you just as you think you have won.  Except now, Fable finds she has much more to lose,  "Never, under any circumstance, reveal what or who matters to you," her father also warned.  Far too late, Fable finds that more people are important to her than she have ever realized.

A breathtaking fantasy story set in a naval setting.  Young creates a tense world, teetering unsteadily between order and chaos.  Danger is ever present and haunts these young people's lives. There's never a restful moment in the story (Fair warning: as this book is the first of a duology, you won't even find rest at the end of this book!).  The tense storyline is enhanced by the complex relationships between the five young people on the ship and the overlapping threads with their antagonists.  There's rich drama here/

There is, in fact. much to love in this book:  an immersive and plausible setting with a complex socio-political structure, vivid scenery, lots of naval action, and meaningful human interactions between Fable and the four members of the Marigold.  Romance, a late arrival to this passionate story, almost seems like an unnecessary afterthought, but it certainly doesn't detract from the story.  The focus though is the usual lifeblood of a great adventure:  loyalty, betrayal, legacy, and destiny. A gripping page turner.

She Loves You (Yeah Yeah Yeah), by Ann Hood

In 1964, Trudy Mixer discovered the Beatles and she founded the first Beatles fan club in Rhode Island at her middle school.  They would sent fan letters, make posters, and whenever a new album came out, the members would pore over it.  Trudy could even get her Dad to join her in listening (Mom preferred Sinatra to four boys who needed haircuts!).  The Beatles and the affection she shared for them with her peers and her father were forever!

But two years later, the numbers in the fan club are dwindling as Trudy's friends drift away to cheerleading, her father has less time for her, and even the Beatles are changing the sound of their music.  With the world changing in both big and small ways, Trudy wants to find some way to bring everything back to the way it was.  When she learns that the Beatles are coming to perform in Boston in August, she realizes that this is what could finally do it!

A sweet period piece that captures lots of atmosphere.  The theme of learning to cope with change is tried and true material of course.  With a focus on what would seem most striking to young readers, we've got everything from the advent of disposable diapers and the first Barbie doll to Betty Friedan and the Vietnam War.  And then there's the Beatles themselves, which form an appropriately formidable place in Trudy's obsessed mind.  The strength of the story of course rests on Trudy who carries the story with a mix of determination and insecurity that make her relatable to middle schoolers.  The book's fantasy ending, which could have seemed overly contrived, works as it provides both payoff and a means for wrapping up a story that is more about friendship and loyalty than the music.

Burn Our Bodies Down, by Rory Power

Margot hasn't had much in the world except her mother (which isn't saying much).  Their relationship could at best be called "abusive," with Mom largely neglecting her daughter and leaving the girl struggling to find love and affection, but Margot has had no one else.  When Margot stumbles across the discovery that she has a living  grandmother, and that Gram wants to meet her, she is overwhelmed with the hope of finding love and a home at last.  Despite her mother's warnings, Margot flees to Gram's farm in rural Nebraska.

It is not the warm welcome she was hoping for.  All is definitely not right.  The townspeople eye her suspiciously, accusing of things that they refuse to explain.  A fire kills a girl that no one recognizes, but who bears a striking resemblance to Margot and whom Margot has never seen before.  Gram, denying knowledge of any of this, refuses to explain herself.  The mysteries pile up.

A creepy story that relies largely on gaslighting to propel its story.  It's well written, but the cruelty and abuse that permeates the novel (and is present in every adult character in the book) got to me quickly.  More so since this is a story that would have largely been resolved if people had actually started conversing and comparing notes.  Still, the ending feels compelled to go far into the deep end of implausibility making that ending poetic but a dramatic shambles.  A fast read that never dragged, but it never became particularly enjoyable.

Twenty Things I Learned from Reading 2000 Books

As I approached the milestone of my 2000th book review, I wanted to be able to share some sort of profound observations about young adult and children’s literature, but inspiration never quite struck.  Instead, I thought I might share some tongue-in-cheek pearls of wisdom I have learned from my time spent over the last sixteen years.  In no particular order, here is the World According to Middle Grade and YA literature:

1) If your parents throw a birthday party for you and invite the whole class, no one will come.

2) If the story is intended for Middle Graders and contains an animal, it will be the focus of the story.  If the book is YA, the animal will be quickly forgotten.

3) If you are American, you will always have two best friends.  If you are English, you will have only one.

4) Every teen party will be unchaperoned and have a keg.

5) Every time you consume alcohol, you will drink too much and vomit in the bushes.

6) Your phone will always either be turned off/muted or have a dead battery.

7) Assuming your parents have not bought you an expensive car, your vehicle will be a junker and have a cute name.

8) Kids only listen to music that was popular when the author of the book was a teenager.

9) Showing up for work is optional.  Your boss at the coffee shop will rarely mind if you miss work, especially for a good reason like having a fight with your boyfriend.

10) With the exception of the protagonist, pretty people are always popular and always mean.

11) Protagonists are always beautiful, even if they think they are not.

12) All girls have at least two eligible, handsome boys to choose between.  One of them will be nice and the other one mean, but the heroine will be the only person in the book who can’t figure out which one is which until the end of the book.

13) Teens only read nineteenth century English literature for pleasure.

14) When you are eleven or twelve and are the subject of the story, you will get your first period.

15) Schools don’t exist for learning.  Their job is to supply cafeterias, gyms, and libraries.  They also serve as useful settings for public humiliation.

16) Malls don’t exist for shopping.  Their job is to provide a place where you can run into people you are trying to avoid.

17) Never turn to an adult to solve your problem when you can spend 200 pages of pointless drama trying to solve it by yourself first.

18) Keeping secrets from your BFF/teachers/parents is never a conscious decision, but just something that happens.  It is always a good idea…until it isn’t.

19) Every family owns a beach house.

20) Mothers are usually dead.

Have I forgotten your favorite trope?  Let me know what it is!

Refraction, by Naomi Hughes

A year ago, an alien spaceship came to Earth.  No one knew what it wanted, but when it broke up in orbit into hundreds of shards and pieces, the world changed.  The stars realigned and the sky darkened.  The world came to an end and only three places still supported life:  London, Singapore, and Cisco Island.  On the latter, a stalwart group struggles to survive, fortifying themselves from the terrors of the mainland.

Reflective surfaces have become portals that spread thick fog everywhere and through which horrible monsters emerge.  Staring into a mirror is suicide and owning one has been quickly outlawed.  But people still needed mirrors, lenses, and other shiny objects and that is where Marty makes a living as an underground dealer in reflective contraband.  It's a dangerous occupation, both because of the materials handled and the classification of dealing as a capital offense, but Marty has no choice.  He needs to find his brother who he believes is in London and getting there is going to take money.

Before he can manage to make the money he needs, Marty gets caught and is summarily exiled from the island.  Along with him is the son of the mayor, exiled for the "crime" of having captured and turned Marty in to the law.  Now, ironically dependent on each other for survival, the two boys try to stay alive in a world of fog and danger.  With the enemy hiding in the fog and reflective surfaces, the paranoia and fear will keep you on the edge of your seat. But as scary as that world is, we quickly learn that the situation is much more complex and terrifying.

This highly entertaining science fiction adventure combines a terrifying premise with complex and interesting characters.  Marty suffers from OCD, which causes minor tics like his need to tap doorframes and triple check locks, but which also plays a significant role in the story.  Without giving away major spoilers, the OCD becomes an integral part of the solution to the story.  His complicated relationship with the mayor's son adds additional tension to the already tense and paranoid setting.  The result is a taut and scary thriller that gave me nightmares.  It stumbles at the end, but mostly because of the impossible standards it sets us up for.  Highly recommended.

Tweet Cute, by Emma Lord

I'm pretty convinced that the challenge I would face in writing decent YA would not come from the difficulty of remembering the trials of adolescence as much as my pedestrian understanding of social media and the prevalence of technology in contemporary adolescent life.  Lots of other authors seem to suffer from that same deficit, so it's nice to read a novel written by someone who handles it all with elan!

Pepper is an academic achiever and a driven perfectionist in everything she attempts, whether it is being captain of the swim team or baking amazing desserts. So when her mother's burger chain business Big League Burgers is struggling to make a bigger impact on Twitter, she naturally agrees to help their hapless social media director.  

Jack, who always feel like the lesser of his identical twin brother, does everything he can to help his family running the neighborhood deli.  At school, he's considered something of a clown and not the star achiever that his brother is.  But he has a secret: he's a coding genius and he's created the social media app Weazel which allows students to communicate anonymously.  It is both wildly popular and completely banned by the school.

When Big League Burgers unveils its new sandwich, Jack and his brother notice an uncanny resemblance to their own deli's fave.  Convinced that the corporate giant is trying to steal from their family, they launch an attack on Twitter that takes off.  Soon, although neither one knows initially that the other is behind it, Pepper and Jack find themselves wrestling in an internet battle using their family's corporate accounts.  At the same time, they are similarly haplessly entwined with each other on Weazel.

This update of You've Got Mail has all the usual rom-com charms.  It's a bit crowded between the Twitter battle, Pepper's baking finesse, and the Weazel app, but it manages to tie everything up neatly in the end (with some help from some convenient coincidences).  With all that stuff going all, it's a bit of a slog to get through the first eighty pages.  To really get the storying moving in fact, some of the key elements at the beginning simply drop away (Pepper's grade point average takes a dive, the swimming fades away, etc.).  So, this isn't anything spectacular, but it is fun if you don't overthink it.  And after I've had my head in the world of Panem for three days, I definitely didn't mind some food porn and smoochy bits!

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, by Suzanne Collins

Taking place decades before the events in The Hunger Games trilogy, this prequel gives us a taste of the early years after the war, opening with the tenth Hunger Games.  It is also an opportunity to give us background on Snow and how he came to see a young woman like Katniss Everdeen as his nemesis.

The story begins on familiar ground as we walk through the events of the Hunger Games themselves (as we did in books I and II) but where those were smooth running affairs, it is apparent that at this early date, they were still working out the kinks.  In striking contrast, the body count has racked up long before the Games even start.  

Snow is a student at the Academy and in a novel new twist this year the students have been enlisted to "mentor" the tributes.  Snow gets assigned to the female tribute from District 12, Lucy Gray.  She's a musician and and a member of a wandering troupe of romani-like entertainers called the Covey.  Like a gypsy, she flits around in colorful skirts and charms the people around her (including Grey himself) which proves decisive in her ability to stay alive and defeat much more able opponents.  But there is more than charm at play.  They have a mutual shared interest in her staying alive.  Her success in the Games will help Snow get a college scholarship he desperately needs.

That works fine during the Games, but when things go awry and the story shifts to District 12, their roles change.  The mutual interest persist, but there is suspicion and distrust and Snow doesn't know if he can trust her anymore. But in all honesty, could he ever trust her?

There are several things that make this a very different sort of story.  One obvious difference is the point of view.  In the trilogy, we are seeing the world through the eyes of Katniss and her rebellion against the Capital District.  Here, the story is told through Snow and life in the Capital is nowhere near as easy as we have grown used to it.  Some of that is because the Capital is still rebuilding from after the war, but Collins is also showing us that even those who benefit from the power structure suffer.

This is the origin story of a tyrant. While Katniss was heroic and fighting a good fight through most of the story, Snow is a troubling protagonist.  Some of his ideas (in particular his obsession with order and his selfishness) are odious.  One starts feeling uneasy when the book pushes us to root for the oppressors and we hope that the rebels get caught and killed.

But there's more going on in this novel than simply cashing in on the popularity of the trilogy.  While the trilogy used the Games as a metaphor for the cutthroat competition for college placement and job seeking, the goals here are simultaneously grander and more obscure.  Hints of that are seen in the five quotes that precede the story.  The first three come from the trifecta of liberal democracy -- Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau -- all speaking about the Social Contract.  Wordsworth follows with his ties to Rousseau.  The last quote comes from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which might seemingly be intended for the shock value of a monster let loose, but that would ignore Shelley's ties to her parents (Godwin and Wollstonecraft) and their critique of Rousseau.   Although heavy handed, this presages Collins's grander ambition in this story of critiquing the Contract itself.  The idea that we sacrifice our freedom in exchange for the order of authority is a key principle in our culture, and the tension that exists in that surrender was never fully worked out by liberal philosophers.  That it has these nuances is obviously lost on Snow and is the point that Collins in making.  While the Games were presented as a perversion of liberal democracy in the Trilogy, here it is dissected as a central component of it (seen much more clearly in the raw early years of Panem).  In an understanding with more than small nod to Foucault, Collins is demonstrating that the sacrifice of freedom does not give us order, but rather serves us control.

An interesting message to explore in a YA book, but what about the story itself?  It's long and meanders a lot.  Once the Games are over, the story truly drifts away from its focus, but it does eventually come back together in the end, in a rushed finale that solves problems by largely killing off characters (an approach also found in Mockingjay).  This is a less accessible story.  It is hard to imagine someone picking up this book without already having been drawn in by the trilogy.  In sum, not just a prequel but an ambitious political critique that is fated to be read by fans looking for some Katniss magic and disappointed to find only gloomy portents of the things to come.

Audacity, by Melanie Crowder

Clara Lemlich, an early labor organizer in New York and leader in the Triangle Shirtwaist Uprising, is the subject of this biography in verse.  Tracing the story of her life from a shtetl in Russia and her family's immigration to the United States to her involvement in organization women in New York's sweatshops, Clara makes an compelling subject.

Struggling against sexism, tradition, racism, and economic injustice to realize her dreams, it's a battle that one cannot truly say that she ever won, which makes the decision to tell her story in verse particularly poignant.  So much of what she faced and fought with goes unsaid in this novel.  For those parts of her life left in ellipses, a brief biographical essay and the transcript of the author's interview with her descendants fill in some details.

The verse is occasionally ambitious but overall sufficient to convey the action of the story and pull our focus to Clara's personality, accent her drive and ambition, and call out her doubts.  Faced with so many obstacles, she is particularly ravaged by regrets as the failures of her actions and the costs of those failures start to pile up.  Verse gives us the silent spaces and moments of reflection that a more standard text would have felt compelled to push through.  And so my usual skepticism about the format is set aside.  This is a good book, providing an inspirational approach to labor history and the role of women activists in the labor movement.  Recommended.

Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know, by Samira Ahmed

Stung by a humiliating academic failure when her application to art school is rejected, Khayyam accompanies her parents to Paris in disgrace. She was so certain that she had uncovered an earthshattering connection between author Alexandre Dumas and the artist Eugene Delacroix, but her thesis was demolished by the judge.

Her father is French and her mother a Muslim Indian, which makes her an exotic American transplant.  Right now, Khayyam wouldn't mind some quiet to take stock.  In addition to her bungled scholarship application, there's her frustration with her sort-of boyfriend back in Chicago.

But Paris simply takes her closer to the causes of her woes.  Surrounded by the places where Dumas and Delacroix lived, Khayyam picks back up her search.  In the process, she stumbles across a young man with a similar quest (and strangely enough a direct descendent of Dumas!).  Together they learn of a Muslim woman named Leila who crossed paths with not only Dumas and Delacroix, but also with Lord Byron.  A historical mystery (interspersed with Leila's story from her voice) unfolds.  Along with it, a contemporary romance in the streets of Paris develops.

While listed as Young Adult, this literary mystery is really more of an adult novel with a young protagonist.  Khayyam has some angsty teen moments, mostly involving the triangle with her American boyfriend and the young Dumas, but otherwise there is nothing here that particularly speaks to adolescence.  That doesn't mean that young readers will not enjoy the unraveling of the mystery or characters, but simply that the novel will appeal to a broader audience.  As a mystery it works pretty well.  

The book is less effective at promoting Ahmed's ideological goals. Using Edward Said's critique of orientalism as a launching point, she uses the example of Leila (and Khayyam's obsession with telling the woman's story) to illustrate the process of giving voice to women in history. Byron, Dumas, and Delacroix and their odious relationships with women make easy cannon fodder and this is entry-level criticism aimed at younger readers. Here, it hangs uneasily, much as her bombastic novel Internment did for anti-Trumpism. The polemic, which only becomes fully developed in the latter part of the novel, does not add much and largely occurs at the cost of Khayyam's story of personal growth and confidence building.