Between the Bliss and Me, by Lizzy Mason

While Sydney sometimes imagines that her Dad is right there with her, she knows that he's somewhere else.  Addiction destroyed his life and he abandoned the family long ago.  Sydney is certain that it's part of the reason her Mom has always been so clingy.

Mom's long insisted that Sydney should go to Rutgers when she graduates and live at home, but Sydney has her heart set on NYU.  NYU offers more options and it also puts her nearer to her crush Grayson.  Thanks to her grandparents, she can afford the tuition.

When they also kick in a generous graduation present to boot, Mom blows a gasket.  But why won't Mom let go?  It's not as if New York City is all that far away from central New Jersey.

Sydney flees to her grandparents' beach house for a week, where she learns some facts about her father that she never knew, in particular about the decline of his mental health and his current whereabouts.  Burdened with disturbing new information, she reexamines herself and her choices.

The story starts out strong as a study of Sydney and the way she copes with devastating truths about her family and herself, but it gets dragged down into the issues of how mental illness is mishandled.   There's a lot to be said about gaps in healthcare, underfunding of social services, and the difficulties of recovery, but there really is too much to say to cram it into a novel (not that that stops Mason from trying!).  By the second half of the book, the action has become simply a device for Sydney to engage with various people (e.g., grandmother, mother, family lawyer, psychiatrist, police officer, etc.) in long expository discourses about mental health and public policy.  The dialogue sounds less and less authentic, sapping the energy out of the story.  My interest in the characters waned and I ended up browsing through the last thirty pages just to finish it off.

Taking Up Space, by Alyson Gerber

Sarah loves playing basketball, but lately she's noticed that she has trouble keeping up.  Her uniform is getting tighter too.  Maybe she's just getting fat?  Certainly, that's what her Mom would think.  Mom would never say such a thing, of course, but Sarah knows how concerned her mother is about food.  So Sarah starts to develop her own rules about eating: deciding what she can eat and how much.  But when her friends start to notice her behavior, she is forced to come clean or give up basketball.

This being seventh grade, there's also plenty of drama floating around including a cute boy who teaches Sarah how to cook (and also enjoy eating).  Together, they decide to try competing in a cooking contest.  When Sarah develops a crush on the boy this triggers a problem because one of her teammates already has a crush on him.  So when Sarah doesn't promptly come clean to her friend, it drives a rift between Sarah and the rest of the basketball team.

An important topic, but this take on puberty and eating disorders is a clunky recitation.  Gerber has a good sense of the dynamics of middle school, but she doesn't handle dialogue well.  The kids talk aloud like they are IM'ing each other which sounds awkward, but the adults are the worst talking largely in mini lectures (except for Sarah's parents whose sole purpose seems to be to apologize and agree with everything she says).  The whole thing is stiff and artificial -- more of a PSA than a story.

One Jar of Magic, by Corey Ann Haydu

In Rose's town, people collect magic in jars.  Big magic, small magic, magic that makes rain, magic that turns your finger nails pink forever.  And in Rose's town, it's her father who has amassed the largest collection of magic.  It is her father to whom the town turns when they need some special sort of magic.  Magic makes you powerful, says her Dad, and the more magic you have the more important you are.  Her father is very important.

Gathering magic isn't something you can do until you turn twelve.  And so the children look forward to the first time they will be able to fill their own jars.  They wonder how many jars they will fill.  But Rose doesn't worry about it because Dad has told her that she is special just like him.  He calls her "Little Luck" and tells everyone how powerful she'll be.  She believes him.  She always believes what he says because when she doesn't do so bad things happen.  And while she isn't really sure herself, she won't tell him her doubts because that will just make him mad.  And she doesn't want him to be mad.

The great day comes when Rose will go out and gather her first magic.  However, it doesn't turn out the way anyone expected.  Try as she might, she ends up with nothing more than a tiny bit of magic her brother helped her catch.  Why?  What does it mean that she wasn't the great magic collector her father said she would be?  And if she is in fact not intended for magic, who is she?  For years, she's made fun of the others for not being as magically-inclined as her family so payback is being subjected to the ridicule of her peers.  Worse though is how her father treats her for not fulfilling her promise.

This strikingly beautiful and original meditation on self-acceptance stands out as one of the best books of 2021. The magic that Rose's family collects in jars serves in so many roles.  First, as metaphor for status and prestige.  Second, as means to pursue the tragic consequences of greed and its accompanying corrosion of the family.  Third, as a safe way to explore the darker topic of domestic violence that lies underneath all of this.  Finally, as a device through which Rose rebuilds her sense.  This relatively simple concept also allows Haydu to delve into a variety of other topics like peer pressure, possessive friendships, bullying, crushes, and forgiveness, amongst others.  The result is a very dense book that delivers a strong emotional statement, but the text with its graceful prose feels light.  With such potentially triggering subjects, it is striking that one comes out in the end feeling refreshed and inspired (instead of drained and spent).

Haydu has written several lovely books (I have given strong positive reviews to at least two of them) but this novel is truly on a different level.  Strongly recommended.

It All Begins with Jelly Beans, by Nova Weetman

It all begins in the nurse's office where Meg and Riley meet and share a bag of jelly beans.  The two girls are very different.  Riley hangs out with popular girls like queen bee Lina, while Meg is a misfit who comes to school in ratty old clothes and a pair of bath slippers.  Yet, what they don't understand at first (but come to appreciate in time) is that the nurse's officer serves a common purpose for both of them:  a refuge from the pressures they are facing at the end of sixth grade.

Meg wears old clothes because her mother has become a recluse since the death of her Dad.  With her mother unable to leave the house, Meg has to find a way to feed and take care of them both, which involves relying on the generosity of a few adults.  This includes the school nurse, who finds ways to smuggle Meg leftovers from the teacher's lounge.  Riley, who seems so popular and happy, is in fact living in shame of her diabetes, for which she has to constantly monitor her glucose levels and wears a programmable pump.  This makes her stand out in a not-so-good way and she wishes her friends would not make fun of her for it (and maybe also whether they are truly her friends).

When both girls are tapped to give speeches at their graduation ceremony, the acquaintance they developed over candy blossoms into a real friendship.

While not very original material, Weetman's book about friendship, peer pressure, and standing up for oneself is heartwarming and sweet.  It features two of my least favorite scenarios (i.e., a child who won't seek help from adults and a child who succumbs to peer pressure at the risk of their own well-being -- in both cases out of pride), but it has a happy ending that shows that things don't have to be so bad and that there is a pay off for demanding what you need.

Kind of a Big Deal, by Shannon Hale

Josie peaked in high school.  Back then, she was the indisputable star of the stage.  When she won a nationwide drama contest, her teacher encouraged her to leave school and go to Broadway.  But life in the Big Apple was not the same and she quickly washed out.  Now, she nannies for a little girl in Missoula and tries to save money to pay off her credit card debts.  She's not only lost her dream, but also alienated her friends and grown distant from her family.

One day she walks into a bookstore and her life changes.  She hasn't read a book since high school and certainly not read one for fun for longer than that, so the owner talks her into taking a book (and throws in a pair of reading glasses since she finds she has developed nearsightedness).  Sitting in the park while her charge plays, she gets immersed in her book.  Literally completely immersed.  She's become a character in the story and while days pass by for her, when she is finally done (and finds herself back in the park) only mere moments have gone by.  This starts a new set of adventures for Josie.  But these immersions are far from harmless and by the time Josie realizes how much the books are changing her life (and not necessarily for the better), it is too late.

Shannon Hale is a very inconsistent writer in my experience.  I loved Princess Academy, Book of Thousand Days, and the Bayern series, but her more recent books have generally lost me.  This novel unfortunately continues that trend.  The device of the immersive books is very clever and it allows Hale to engage in some really hilarious skewering of a number of YA genres (e.g., romances, rom coms, zombie apocalypse stories, and even graphic novels) that really deserve to poked out.  I loved this part of the book and if she had managed to tie everything together in the end, this book would have gone down as one of my favorite YA satires (following in the absurdist traditions of writers like Libba Bray), but the ending tries to get too serious and is an absolute disaster.  It's as if Lemony Snicket wanted to write a problem story.  With a conscious effort to tie up her loose ends, Hales gets buried in all the inconsistencies (which were unobtrusive in a satire but are now glaring in her late conversion to realism).  The result is humor is far too mean to be taken seriously, a story far too wild to be explained, and characters too symbolic to be meaningful or interesting.

Glimpsed, by G. F. Miller

Charity is a modern-day fairy godmother.  Thanks to powers she inherited from her grandmother, she receives "glimpses" of the future that reveal some heartfelt dream of a stranger.  Far from benevolent, once she has had a "glimpse" she is physically obligated to do what she can to help the people involved (who she calls her "Cindies") realize their goal.  She's long seen this secret responsibility as a series of good deeds, but when she is confronted by Noah (a very angry victim of one of her projects) and another glimpse goes very very badly, she begins to wonder if this is really just a terrible curse.

Meanwhile, Noah blackmails Charity into helping him undo the damage of the glimpse that hurt him.  At first unwilling collaborators, the two of them predictably grow close.  That complicates the plan, which involves Noah finally getting back the love of his life -- another girl named Holly.  Will Charity successfully bring Noah and Holly together or will the growing affection between Noah and Charity undo it all?

Cute concept, with a well-written story and decent characters, but the book is grating.  The issue is poor storytelling.  Miller knows what she wants to happen, but her delivery is clunky and out of proportion.  The initial tension between Charity and Noah starts with them spraying each other with chemical weapons and Noah threatening Charity!  Once written into that corner, it is a major chore to bring our protagonists into romantic bliss.  Every dramatic moment in the book is like that -- exaggerated and so uncharacteristically shrill that they seem like they are from a different story.  Even the predictable happy ending is cringeworthy and over the top.

American Betiya, by Anuradha D. Rajurkar

Rani is the type of girl that parents and aunties always point to when they want to show other children what a good girl should be like.  She helps take care of the younger children at parties, she does well in school, and she stays away from drugs and boys.  And while Rani is eighteen now, she knows that obeying her parents isn't just expected, it is essential in her Indian-American community.  She's seen what happens to others who stray away from traditions and adult expectations.

That works for her until she meets Oliver, a bad boy from a troubled family, but with beautiful ideas and a beautiful face.  Swept off her feet, Rani agrees to sneak around behind her parents' backs to see him.  There's no future in it and she makes sure that Oliver understands that she can never ever introduce him to her family.  That too works for a while, but Oliver is definitely unhappy and complains that it is unfair that he can't meet her parents.  He might not be Indian but he belives that he can prove that he's still worthy of dating their daughter.  Shocked that he cannot understand how offensive his presumptions and prejudices are, Rani begins to doubt the relationship itself, which drives Oliver to become more and more obsessive and clingy.

While a large part of the novel focuses on the tensions that exist in cross-cultural relationships, the story also addresses the more universal themes of obsessive first love.  Rani is pretty much an innocent thrown in the deep end, but Oliver's troubled background creates a combustible situation that she is ill-equipped to handle.  Rajurkar herself wants to call out Oliver's racist micro-aggressions, but for me Oliver comes across as more clueless than racist.  Their relationship is less an indictment of institutional racism than a case study in immaturity.

This Will Be Funny Someday, by Katie Henry

Isabel is a good kid.  She doesn't cause any trouble at home, she gets good grades, and she doesn't make waves.  With her popular but controlling boyfriend Alex, Isabel always does whatever she can to be pleasing and smooth out conflicts.  But she misses the best friend that Alex made her dump, she feels hurt that her mother can never make time to be with her, and she's tired of always worrying about what everyone thinks of her.  She has plenty of thoughts, but no confidence to express them.

By a series of accidents, she finds herself on the stage at the open mic of a local comedy club.  To her surprise, she loves it and the whole opportunity to speak out on the things she hasn't felt able to before.  Afterwards, a group of fellow aspirational comedians invite her to tag along with them.  The problem is that they are all in college and she is still just a junior in high school.  Afraid that they won't like her if they know the truth, she lies and claims to be a college student just like them.  And while that lie creates tension and causes trouble, the liberating effect of her new persona as "Izzy V" are too important for her to ignore.

While this novel exhibits all of my least favorite YA tropes (e.g., lying when you know you'll get caught, refusing to seek help from friends and trustworthy adults, imagining that you are the center of the universe, amongst others), it deals with Izzy's failings in a very smart way.  For while Izzy's self-centeredness and dramatics are cringeworthy, they are called out.  The seemingly endless times that her friends advise her to smarten up eventually have an impact.  And, best of all, the dramatic payoff at the end isn't just a forgone conclusion, it's a well-earned dividend that exceeds expectations.

Henry hasn't uncovered any new territory in the topic of confidence-building, but with Izzy she has created a heroine who gives you something to cheer about.  Izzy doesn't just grow a backbone through self-reflection, she shows the way forward in a satisfying story of self-realization and growing assertiveness.  The result is a story that validates the fears that young women have about putting themselves forward and celebrates what successful personal development can look like.

Dragonfly Girl, by Marti Leimbach

While subject to ridicule at school, Kira is a precocious science wizard.  She has learned how to use her skills to win science contests to make money to help support her mother.  Not just little ones.  Her latest scoop in the international Science for Our Future, where she is slated to receive one of the finalists awards in Stockholm.  The problem?  The contest is intended for junior academics who have recently received their PhD and Kira has not even graduated high school (and if she doesn't pull up her English grades, she won't).

Somehow managing to get her reward without getting caught is simply the start of a journey that takes her into a part-time research job and a remarkable accidental discovery -- the ability to revive the recently deceased.  While Kira is stunned by the achievement for its scientific merits, she is not prepared for the dangerous attention that such a scientific feat brings to her.

The novel, broken into three very distinctly different parts, varies considerably in quality.  The first part, tracing her appearance in Stockholm, is by far the best.  Combining a rivalry with a snooty competitor named Will and some mildly comedic misadventures, it makes for a charming novella.  The second section, which deals with her scientific discovery, also further develops the rivalry with Will and is the logical extension.  But the last section for me is when things fly off the rail.  There's a cruelty and a sadism to this section that represents a dramatic break from the tone of the rest of the story.  In fact, the conclusion seems far removed from the rest of the story.  The result is a novel of discarded ideas (whether they are Kira's relationship with her mother, her problems at school, her romantic feelings for her co-workers Rik and Dmitry, or even the conflict with Will).  By the end, it is clear that none of that really mattered -- Kira's feelings and motives are largely ignored in the end.

The story was engrossing enough to keep reading, but the characters became less coherent and unimportant to that story.  So, a good read, but frustrating and ultimately unfulfilling.

These Violent Delights, by Chloe Gong

Juliette is a multi-lingual flapper girl and heir to lead the Scarlet Gang.  Roma and his fellow Russian are their competitors, the White Flowers.  The two gangs view for control of Shanghai in the 1920s. 

Shanghai itself is a city in turmoil and chaos.  Foreigners hold all the power and the people are rebelling, some seeking the promise of independence provided by the Nationalists and others seeking to throw off the chains of their oppressors, as foreseen by the Communists.  Amidst all of this, a monster is on the prowl, bringing a terrifying contagion to the city that causes its victims to claw themselves to death.  Juliette and Roma were once secret lovers, but their warring clans divided them. Can the threat that the monster brings with it unite them together to save their city?

An extremely involved story that already has promised a sequel.  It mixes elements of historical fact with fantasy, adding a little flavoring from Shakespeare, and a decent serving of anachronisms, this novel seeks to provide a fast moving adventure.

It left me cold.  Rather than build up heat with the romance that you want to happen, Gong mostly ratchets up the body count to such a ridiculous extent that the violence no longer matters.  There are lots of characters and most of them die.  Few of them grow important or interesting enough to develop an affection for before they do so.  While there's lots of promise here, from all of the color of Shanghai to various different (and changing) conspiracy theories, so little of this gels together.  Having created so much exposition, the last fifty pages of this first installment tosses much of this aside and becomes largely incomprehensible.

Yesterday is History, by Kosoko Jackson

Recent kidney transplant recipient Andre considers himself pretty lucky to be alive. He's not simply gotten a chance to live his life, he has acquired a surprising side effect: the ability to travel back in time for brief periods.

One moment he's in his bedroom and it's 2020 and then suddenly it's 51 years earlier and he's in the same house -- with house's inhabitant Michael.  Michael is surprisingly nonplussed to see Andre and they hit it off.  But just as soon as he arrived, Andre is back in the present with lots of questions.  It doesn't take long to get answers when the family of the donor of Andre's new kidney contacts him and urgently wants to meet.  In a hastily arranged gathering, they explain that they are time travelers and when their son died and his kidney was transplanted, it apparently transplanted some of the dead boy's abilities to Andre.

To make sure that Andre uses his powers properly and responsibly, the dead boy's brother Blake becomes a reluctant teacher.  This is awkward and strained and made all the more so by a romantic triangle that develops between Andre, Michael (the boy in the past), and Blake.

I loved the character of Andre.  He's intelligent and a great mix of driven and impulsive.  He's also one of the more authentic black male characters I've seen in YA.  It's a role that could easily have been overblown (particularly when he's gay as well).  I also liked this particular vision of time travel, which focuses more on the emotional impact of being able to see the past than the usual scientific and ethical paradoxes.  The dialogue and the pacing are both brilliant.  I cared less for the wasting of characters (like Andre's alleged best friend Imogene who gets almost no air time) or the half-hearted love triangle.  Jackson does such a great job fleshing out Andre, but the two love interests were boring and there was almost no spark there.  I was supposed to feel some great poignant pain at the end, but it really comes across flat.

The Love Curse of Melody McIntyre, by Robin Talley

Mel lives for the theater and she has the fortitude and the organizational skills to have earned the right to be the youngest stage manager at her school.  But where she is able to keep a hundred things straight and solve others' problems without hesitation, her own life is a mess.  When her last relationship blew up spectacularly during the opening night of Romeo and Juliet, she made a promise to not fall in love with anyone again until after the Spring musical was over.  While her promise was not sworn in blood, it might as well have been!

Legend has it that the theater is cursed and the only way to avoid having a play performed there from falling apart into chaos is to perform a wide variety of "countercurses." So, for example, if an actor whistles or someone utters the name of the Scottish Play, there are ways to undo the damage.  But the most important thing is a special rule that the stage crew come up with each production.  And after the R & J disaster, the crew has decided that Mel's forswearing of love and romance should be the magical key that protects their next production.

Mel doesn't foresee the obvious:  that she won't just fall in love during the production of Le Mis, but that it will be the Love of Her Life.  But what are superstitions anyway?  How could Mel falling for pretty Odile be anything so cataclysmic?  But then the accidents and misfortunes start to beset the production.

Talley got some great advice and details to put in her book, but there's a stiffness to the storytelling that betrays her lack of comfort with the world of high school drama.  Too many details are dropped in for authenticity, rather than importance to the story, so I felt like Talley was trying to earn cred rather than describe kids doing a play.  Mel is too perfect (and too polished) to be believable, her fellow crew members too professional, and the always fascinating tensions between cast and crew too unexplored.  This is high school drama as it likes to describe itself, rather than as it actually is.

At over 400 pages, this is a long novel that doesn't offer enough of a payoff to reward the investment.  For a well-written book with some decent characters, it felt strangely cold for what should have been a heartfelt exploration of letting go.  Mel's blind spot for nurturing her own needs sits like the elephant in the room.  Like Mel, Talley races to bury herself in technical details of drama whenever the emotions start to get interesting.  While Mel has some growth at the end, it isn't really clear even in the epilogue that she's found life-work balance.

Don't Stand So Close to Me, by Eric Walters

It's early March, six weeks away from the eighth grade dance, and Quinn can't believe that Isaac (the class president) isn't taking it seriously!  There's so much to plan for and so many arrangements to make!  But then at an emergency school assembly, the principal announces that spring break has been moved up and is starting tomorrow (and is being extended for an extra two weeks).  It's all to do with this virus that Quinn has been hearing about from her Dad (an ER doctor at the local hospital) and the need for "flattening the curve." 

At first, having a longer break seems like fun, but things are so different and are changing fast!  "Non-essential" businesses are closed and no one is allowed to visit the residents at the local nursing home.  Her father moves down to the basement to distance himself from the family, her mother starts working from home out of their guest bedroom, and Quinn has to attend school through something called Zoom.  When the original date of the return to school is extended out (and eventually cancelled altogether), Quinn begin to wonder if life will ever return to normal.

This short middle grade book, given its topical content and short shelf life, was rushed out in the Fall of 2020.  As such, it's quite rough, with underdeveloped characters and clunky storytelling, but I think it is important that someone attempted to create a middle reader to address all of the changes that went on during the crazy early days of the pandemic.  Years from now, this will make a nice historical novella.  For now, it tells a story to which young readers will personally relate.

You Know I'm No Good, by Jessie Ann Foley

Mia is trouble.  She's never found a drink she wouldn't drink, a drug she wouldn't take, or a guy she wouldn't hook up with.  And when she assaults her stepmother, it's the last and final straw.  Her family has her sent to a rehab facility out in rural Minnesota.  She's furious about her involuntary relocation, but she doesn't really blame them.  After all, all she's been doing for the past couple of years is screwing up.  Her father and stepmother blame her bad choices on the lingering trauma of her mother's death, but Mia herself figures her behavior is just because she's a no good slut.  Tracing how she actually got from her brighter beginnings to this nadir is half of the journey of this novel.  Getting herself back out is the rest.

There are plenty of examples in the troubled-teen-in-rehab genre and while this follows the general model, it breaks from it in notable ways.  As usual, the reader is only slowly brought in on the details and Mia performs the duty of unreliable narrator with aplomb.  She rations out the facts slowly enough that gradual enlightenment substitutes for drama for most of the first 150 pages or so.  Similar to other examples in the genre as well is the colorful cast of misfits that our heroine meets in rehab.  Sympathetic counselor?  Check. Sadistic warden? Check. All per plan.

But these things are simply the furniture that makes the more complex story of Mia herself easier to tell.  She's a much deeper and interesting character for one thing.  She's certainly self-destructive but she's really conscious of her decisions.  The contrast between her anger and rage with her rationality is a shock.  And while she's self-critical, she's never self-pitying.  Mia, in a word, is compelling and wanting to find out what happens to her will keep you turning pages. The ending itself turns out to be is a real surprise (aliens invading Minnesota would have been more expected than what happens here) but is satisfying.  So, while this is a yet another book in a heavily used setting, this novel is a strong contribution.

One Speck of Truth, by Caela Carter

Whenever Alma asks her mother about her father, Mom either gets evasive or angry. Alma knows that he died when she was really young (her Nanny told her that much), she knows his name, and she knows that he was Portuguese -- but that's about it. She can't even get her mother to tell her where he was buried. So, she searches for his grave whenever she can, dragging her best friend Julia around with her, but so far she's had no luck in finding him.

Then, out of the blue, her mother moves them to Portugal.  In the same way that her mother refuses to talk about her father, she is similarly evasive about why they have moved to Lisbon.  But Alma realizes that now she is finally able to meet her father's family and get some sort of truth.

I liked Alma's creativity and energy, but her family really drove me nuts.  The adults in this story are really horrible human beings, gaslighting Alma, outright lying to her, and refusing to answer her questions -- all because of some inflated idea that she isn't old enough to know some version of the truth.  What a load of pretentious crap!  I found the mother particularly self-absorbed and detestable.  Early on, the story intimates that she might be suffering some sort of psychic break from a recent divorce, but really she just seemed selfish. Predictably, Alma emulates her mother and struggles with being honest with the people she loves as well (she at least recognizes the problem and works on it). Still, the rampant abuse in this story really left a sour taste for me.

The Gilded Girl, by Alyssa Colman

Emma Harris has lived a life of privilege for her first twelve years. Like other girls of her status, her father has now enrolled her in Miss Posterity's Academy of Practice Magic, the best school mastering her "kindling." Emma may be rich, but unable to conceptualize poverty or class, she is open hearted to everyone and clueless of the social norms she is violating.  She doesn't recognize that her fellow students (with the exception of one shy girl) are simply exploiting her for her wealth.  And when she tries to befriend the servant girl Izzy, it is misinterpreted as ridicule.

While Emma and her classmates have a bright future before them, Izzy is condemned to a life of misery.  It's 1905 and, although there is talk in progressive circles about helping the poor, only the rich are allowed to kindle.  The poor are not considered worthy and are required to "snuff" out their magic when it develops in adolescence.  Without the ability to kindle, the poor will then stay poor as the best jobs require magic.

Emma's fortune changes suddenly when her father is killed in the San Francisco Earthquake.  Not only orphaned but destitute, the headmistress forces Emma into servitude to pay off her debt.  Her peers reject her now that she has been reduced to a servant (much to her innocent surprise).  While Emma is forced to work alongside Izzy, the servant girl distrusts her.  But through hard work and a true heart, Emma wins over Izzy and hatches a plan to attempt to kindle by themselves, flying in the face of convention and the law.  To succeed, she has to enlist a variety of allies ranging from a friendly newsie to the "house dragon."

Derived from the classic A Little Princess, the addition of magic is a nice touch, but Colman takes the story much further, adding a stronger theme of socioeconomic equity that draw on the Progressive Movement and the real historical currents of the Gilded Age.  It's a loving tribute to the sentimentality of the period (complete with an over-the-top rosy conclusion) and also a fun magical romp.

Girl, Serpent, Thorn, by Melissa Bashardoust

Soraya has lived her life to date as a prisoner in her own home.  Cursed at birth as a result of her mother's rash decision, Soraya is unable to touch anyone without killing them.  As a result, she has to wear gloves to protect others and is secluded in her family's palace as a secret to prevent the shame of her curse from becoming public knowledge.

On the occasion of her twin brother's ascent to the throne and marriage, she is offered the opportunity to break the curse, but it will require her to betray her family.  Despite some misgivings, she does so with the help of a young warrior named Azad,.  But breaking the curse has huge ramifications and it becomes clear that she has only understood part of the story of her origin.

A lush fantasy based on Persian myth and Zoroastrian beliefs.  Soraya is a fascinating combination of anxiety, anger, and long -- very much the paragon of adolescent angst -- and thus familiar and sympathetic in the eyes of young readers.  Her voyage from reclusive outcast to brave leader is a satisfying journey -- part physical and part emotional.  Overall, the result is a sophisticated and enjoyable read, but I found her romantic outings (and implied bisexuality) distracting and forced and the ending exhaustingly heavy with symbolism.

Read the Book, Lemmings! by Ame Dyckman (ill by Zachariah OHora)

I don't often review picture books, but that doesn't mean that I don't read them!  And when a really good one comes along, I want to give it a little publicity, as in this case.

First Mate Foxy and Captain PB of the SS Cliff wish that the lemmings would just read the book.  It's plain and clear:  Despite what people think, lemmings don't jump off cliffs!  But try to tell that to the lemmings!  Time and time again, the lemmings jump overboard and Foxy has to go rescue them.  Why won't they just read the book?!

From the team that brought you the delightful Wolfie the Bunny, this hilarious and clever book is well suited to dramatic reading.  Grownups (especially those working in documentation and end-user training), who have wondered why their own lemmings wouldn't just read the instructions will identify strongly with Foxy.

Unscripted, by Nicole Kronzer

Zelda is dreaming of breaking into the Big Time in comedy, landing a job at Second City before getting plucked up by Saturday Night Live.  She's completely excited about the summer she is about to spend at improv camp.  If she can only land a spot on the camp's varsity team, she'll be able to perform for the famous alums who come back to watch the end-of-camp show!

Winning a spot turns out to be the least of her challenges.  Her fellow teammates are sexist jerks, who try to sabotage her performances and make her look bad.  Ben, the team's sexy coach, is the worst of the bunch.  Confusingly for Zelda, he's nice when they are out of practice.  He seems to be taking a special interest in her.  A wallflower, Zelda is flattered by the attention and Ben's blatant grooming, but things still feel off and fellow campers and Zelda's brother try to warn her off.  When Ben becomes possessive and violent, Zelda doesn't know how to cope.

This is a book that I had a hard time getting through.  Reading it was fine.  It was well written, the pace was brisk, and the story quite compelling.  However, Ben was repulsive and exaggerated to the point of caricature and Zelda was simply too wobbly and weak.  I understand the author's intention to show the importance of fighting back against sexism and violence, but when the villain is this transparent, there really is no justification for Zelda's perpetual stupidity while her friends and family spend most of the book giving her good reasons to get smart.  With so many reasons for Zelda to end this, the only reason that Zelda didn't stand up for herself seemed to be so the story would run a few more pages (oh! how I longed for us to reach whatever the page minimum for the contract was!).

All this dumbing down basically teaches young women is that bad men are pretty easy to identify and you'd have to be a moron to keep hanging on to them. I could find zero reasonable motivation for Zelda to not turn Ben in to the authorities, but that isn't realistic. In the real world, abusers are far less easy to identify and the forces that keep women from turning them in far more difficult to overcome.  Zelda has a group of supportive friends, a brother backing her, and even several grownups ready to come to her aid.  Few abused women have that much.  I too believe that #MeToo stories need to be told, but I want them to be mildly realistic so young readers understand the challenge.

These Vengeful Hearts, by Katherine Laurin

Ever since her older sister was permanently crippled during a high school prank run amok, Ember has wanted to wreak vengeance against the secret society that was responsible for the injury.  The Red Court is an anonymous group of girls at her school who have the ability to grant anyone's wishes and the power to enforce their will through blackmail and extortion.  Once you've engaged the Red Court, you can be sure of two things: what you ask for will happen and you'll then be permanently in their debt.

Ember is determined to take them down and gets herself invited to become a member with the intention of destroying the organization from within.  Her plan is to work her way up the ranks from a lowly initiate to the inner circle, where she'll expose the "Queen of Hearts" who leads the group.  But despite her intention to avoid causing harm along the way, she finds that hard to do as a member.  Instead, as she gets sucked into the string of lies and deceit that the group relies upon, she finds that  she is losing her bearings, her moral compass, and her friends.  

The characters are not well drawn and are developed unevenly (Ember's sense of horror in discovering that she enjoys extortion is more stated than shown, her aversion to committing her assignments cursory and shallow, and the on-off relationships with her allies confusing). With few to no sympathetic characters, the book falls back heavily on the plot, which is all over the place! Possibly (just possibly) a younger teen reader might find this story plausible, but most readers will recognize how silly the set up and the entire plot is. The author is at extreme pains to explain how this amazingly fragile arrangement could work, frequently revealing in the exposition why it really would not.  There's also this annoying repeated attempt to debate the morality of the group, but it falls on the same silly arguments (the people who ask for the favors are as guilty as the Red Court members) that grows weaker and weaker each time it is brought up.

Still, readers might enjoy this simply for the campy fun of watching mean girls exercise power.  After all, this is breezy read!  But we've seen much better versions of this story before.

The Truth Project, by Dante Medema

Cordelia is feeling pretty smug about her senior year.  She's going to ace her senior project, basically by copying her older sister's one:  using the results of a genealogy test to create a poem about who she is.  But when she gets the results back, she's in for a big shock:  her sister is actually only her half-sister.  Her father is not her biological father.  Her parents have lied to her!

Feeling betrayed, Cordelia seeks solace from childhood playmate  and occasional heartthrob Kodiak.  Last year, he had a rough time where he dropped out and got his girlfriend pregnant.  Now that he's putting his life together, he can appreciate the difficulties that she is having coping with the lies.  While her mother discourages her, Cordelia reaches out to her biological father and immediately feels a strong bond.  In her mind, he's the missing link and suddenly all the times she felt like an outsider make sense.  But he's also surprisingly reluctant to meet her  in person and the harder she pushes for direct contact, the more he pulls away.

A story about the meaning of family and identity (spoiler: it's more than DNA) told in a mixture of verse, snippets of IMs, and emails.  The format is thin and the many half-blank pages make this book a really quick read.  There's plenty of drama but not much depth and Kodiak's story, while interesting, is not always a good fit and becomes distracting.  Occasionally, it provides useful contrasts (e.g., when comparing the circumstances of Cordelia's inception and Kodiak's previous year misadventures).  Still, it feels like a weak link in the story.

Placed in Alaska, where there ought to be lots of potential for scenery and local color, the setting is underexploited.

Blood Moon, by Lucy Cuthew

When Frankie and Benjamin start liking each other, things follow their natural progression, except that when they hook up for the first time in what what otherwise have been an amazingly romantic and sexy experience, Frankie gets her period.  She's mortified, even as Benjamin assures her that it's not a big deal to him, but the whole matter seems like something that they can just put aside.  Then someone posts a hideous meme about the incident and suddenly not only the whole school, but the whole world knows about the time that Frankie fooled around while she was having her period.

Who would have done such a thing?  Benjamin denies it was him and the only other likely suspect is Frankie's former BFF Harriet, who has recently grown really mean.  But even she wouldn't be that cruel, would she?  Not that it really matters who did this as the public humiliation is ruining Frankie's life, until she decides to take matters into her own hands.

The novel is awfully thin, written in sparse verse that makes for a very fast read (it took me just over two hours to read the entire thing).  It's not very memorable verse either. While the book is pitched as a feminist paean to body positivity, the incident involving Frankie and Benjamin does not even occur until 140 pages into the book.  The story is really about bullying and the way that social media amplifies and distorts jealousy and petty acts of vengeance.  The themes of sex positivity are clearly reinforced (by both the teens and the adults), but it didn't really sum up to much.

Who I Was With Her, by Nita Tyndall

When Maggie dies in a car accident, her girlfriend Corinne has no one to turn to.  Publicly, Corinne and Maggie aren't even friends.  Corinne, as far as all of her friends know, is straight.  The only person who knows is Maggie's brother who in turn introduces Corinne to Elissa, who dated Maggie before Corinne came along (a fact that comes as a shock to Corinne).

At home, Corinne can't seek solace from her parents.  Her mother refuses to come out of the bottle.  Her father is obsessed with only one thing: seeing Corinne get an athletic scholarship so she can go to college and get away.  Neither one of them would be ready to deal with a bisexual daughter.  And Corinne, who was never willing to have her relationship come out in the open, doesn't want to risk what little family she has.  Instead, she struggles to maintain the status quo, even as it becomes more and more untenable.

The story suffers from poor pacing.  It starts off very slowly and covers pretty well-trodden material with little to add to the grieving-a-secret-lover rubric.  However, towards the end the novel grows more interesting as, through flashbacks, it becomes clear that Corinne's memories of the relationship are flawed and she has some difficult truths to face about herself.  None of that redeems the poor integration of the stories of the parents, which end up as peripheral to the story.  That seems a wasted opportunity as it ought to be possible to connect the dots between her unhappy family situation and her other difficulties.

Grasping Mysteries: Girls Who Loved Math, by Jeannine Atkins

Continuing a model Atkins used successfully in Finding Wonders, this book explores the lives of seven women who made a difference through math:  Caroline Herschel, Florence Nightingale, Hertha Marks Ayrton, Marie Tharp, Katherine Johnson, Edna Lee Paisano, and Vera Rubin.  Though the book's primary intent is to encourage girls to study math through the inspirational stories, Atkins focus on their childhood and the early challenges each remarkable woman faced make each story a pleasure to read.

Written entirely in verse, the stories could easily have been trite, but in most cases the opposite is the case.  Verse allows Atkins to focus on specific formative anecdotes without having to tie them all together, relying on the reader to connect the dots.  Subtle cross referencing between the stories intimates the way that science itself (and the growing role of women in science) builds off of the efforts of those that came before.

Each story, while calling out each woman' accomplishments, also notes external obstacles (which range from family commitments to institutional sexism) as well as personal challenges (failing grades, research setbacks) making it clear that success did not come without effort.   And in each story, a personal connection is found, whether it be a favorite dress, a marriage proposal, or a first child, showing that these women's lives were more than just professional accomplishments.  The overall theme is that girls may have to struggle harder to realize their dreams, but those dreams are still attainable.

Love in English, by Maria E. Andreu

Ana has always had a way with words in her old home in Argentina, but when she and her mother emigrate to New Jersey to join her father, she realizes that years of studying English in school and of watching TV shows has not prepared her for living in the United States.  Everywhere she goes, she is confused by cultural differences and the language barrier.  At first, every other word is #### and #### and we share her frustration while she tries to figure out what is going on.  But she makes friends and slowly develops the tools she needs to express herself as she wishes.

Life brings other challenges for Ana as she grows close to two boys:  Harrison (the sharp looking American boy who is everything she has ever imagined having an American boyfriend would be like) and Neo ( the Greek boy in her ESL class, who shares her challenges and truly understands what it is like to adapt to life in a new country).  Unlike English, there is no class for learning to juggle the feelings with which  Ana is dealing.

Sweet and humorous, this is good YA romance fare, but with the delightful twist of Ana's astute observations on the surprises of American life and the devious complexities and contradictions of English.

Every Single Lie, by Rachel Vincent

Things have been tough since Beckett's father died from an overdose of the OxyContin he was taking to numb his battle injuries.  In the aftermath, Mom spends too much time down at the station focusing on her job as a police detective.  Beckett's little sister Landry obsesses over cooking healthy meals and her older brother Penn is getting pumped up for her West Point application. Beckett herself has grown tired of the looks and the rumors at school.  Her boyfriend is hiding things from her and she's had enough of all the deception and secrets.

All of this pales in comparison to what happens when Beckett discovers a dead baby in the girls' locker room.  Within hours people are claiming it was hers!  There is no way it could be, but in her small town, there is nothing people like more than a juicy rumor and Beckett's family is already in the crosshairs of the town's gossips.

The rumors don't just stay local.  Thanks to the attention drawn to the dead baby by an anonymous Twitter account, the story goes viral and the crazies start coming out, threatening Beckett's life.  There's little she can do to change the things that people want to believe, but she's left wondering whose baby it actually was, especially since all the evidence does actually point her direction.

A suspenseful page turner that explores the way people like to talk and make up stuff.  Sometimes brutally, Vincent puts her heroine through the paces of being a small town pariah.  It will make you mad and sad to read about, yet it felt very realistically portrayed.  Some of the twists of the plot (and especially the ending) stretched credulity, but none of that diminishes a well-written story.  It's not deep and it won't teach you new things about addiction, teen pregnancy, or the corrosive impact of secrets and gossip, but it tells a good story well.

Aftershocks, by Marisa Reichardt

Ruby can't deal with her mother starting to date her water polo coach.  She can't deal with her best friend Mila, whose life is going off the rails and into the bottle.  Even her boyfriend Leo is too much for her these days.  How much worse can it get?

Her answer comes at the laundromat, where she's in the process of getting a cute guy to go next door and buy her beer when the the walls start to shake and the world around her collapses.  It's an earthquake  (not so unusual in SoCal) and it's unlike anything Ruby's ever seen before.  With the foresight to shelter under a table as the building collapses, Ruby survives but finds herself trapped under the rubble.  Charlie, the guy she with whom was just talking, is similarly pinned down nearby.  Suddenly none of her problems seem that big of a deal.  Now she needs to stay alive.

Reichardt's story of survival after the Big One paints a fairly realistic portrayal of the disaster and its accompanying chaos.  As a story of Ruby's struggle for survival and reunion with her family and friends, it makes for an entertaining adventure.  It does less well at trying to address Ruby's life reprioritizations and how the trauma of living through the earthquake changes her life.  That it changes Ruby is very clear in the end, but Reichardt struggles with how to show that evolution and ends up simply making it so.  It is the process of that evolution that is so important to the success of the story and quite a cheat to simply skip ahead to the result.  There's some attempt through flashback to show the precedents for her growth, but without the growth itself, these segments seem wasted and distracting.  Similarly wasted is Ruby's boyfriend Leo, of whom she spends far less attention than she does over Charlie.

The Year of the Witching, by Alexis Henderson

Thanks to Hulu, the true political subtlety of Margaret Attwood's Handmaid's Tale was long ago lost to the spectacle of exaggerated misogyny.  On its face, Henderson's debut novel seems to want to travel down that same blunt force approach to politics by creating a religious dystopia where women suffer for no other reason than because men can get away with making them do so.  With the blurbs on the back of the book, that's certainly the way the publisher is marketing this novel.  But Attwood's condemnation of Reagan's neoconservatism and reborn American exceptionalism was always more than a dystopian fantasy novel and Henderson's subtle and engrossing book is similarly more than the sum of its parts.  They are similar works, but not for the reasons that are immediately apparent.

In Bethel, the Prophet's interpretation of the Father's Will and the Holy Scriptures is law.  Along with his trusted Apostles, these men rule over the people, keeping order and surrounding them with fear of the outside and of the encroaching Darkwood forest.  No one dares to enter the forest, which is still teeming with the witches that Bethel's founder beat into submission ages ago.  Certainly, shepherdess Immanuelle would never venture there on her own free will.  But one day, chasing after a runaway ram, she is forced to enter it and is accosted by two witches who hand her a gift -- a journal belonging to her mother Miriam (who died in childbirth).  The book is full of forbidden writings and Immanuelle devours the book for glimpses of her mother's life.  Miriam, who had enjoyed the trust and love of the Prophet fell from grace due to infidelity.  For her actions, Miriam was persecuted, but not before setting up a terrible retribution of four plagues that now Immanuelle has unwittingly unleashed.

The plagues though are really the natural consequence of the betrayals, jealousies, fears, and hatreds that underpin the dangerous and ultimately unsustainable status quo.  As Bethel itself unravels, Immanuelle becomes the only one who can make it right, but doing so will require knowledge that she doesn't have, the assistance of people who refused to help, and mercy from people unaccustomed to granting it.  Can she succeed where no one else wants her to?

Dark and complex, there's a lot to chew on in this book.  I found it too gory and bloody for my tastes, so I wouldn't recommend it if copious descriptions of bodily fluids are not your thing, but it is a compelling story.  There is a complex back story that supports the twisted and overlapping contemporary alliances that drive the story and make it interesting (and difficult to fairly summarize).  This isn't a great book for developing sympathetic characters, but it is definitely good for creating really detestable villains.  Immanuelle herself becomes ultimately a dark anti-hero, but in the more ambiguous background of Trumpian politics, this works surprisingly well.

What We Found in the Corn Maze and How It Saved a Dragon, by Henry Best

Ever since the DavyTron (which can convert tomato juice into any delicious vegetable you want) came out, the family farm stands of the world have been going out of business.  Cal's family is one of those threatened with foreclosure if they can't make enough money on their corn maze (although some of their troubles date back to Cal's unfortunate accident with the family's Fireball 50 harvester that left it a charred wreck).  Cal could really use a miracle or at least a bit of magic.

And magic is what literally rolls by his astonished eyes when he and his friend Drew witness spare change rolling uphill on the ground in front of them.  They follow the errant coins to their neighbor Modesty, who has learned how to cast a spell that retrieves lost change.  It's one of many spells in a notebook that Modesty discovered in her locker, none of which seem terribly useful.  The spells can only be cast at certain times of day and have limited functions like opening a stuck jar lid or picking something up without having to bend over.  

Be that what it may, soon enough the three children find themselves on an adventure to a parallel world called Congroo, which is full of magic.  All is not well there.  A strange force is draining Congroo of magic, leading to global cooling, and it all points back to an evil magician named Oöm Lout.  The DavyTrons back in our world are part of this plan and the kids set out to save Congroo and coincidentally save the family farm by shutting down the DavyTrons.

A wild rollicking adventure that touches on themes of bullying and climate change, but it ultimately just good plain lighthearted romp with magic and dragons.  The story is full of puns and inside jokes for all ages.  So when you've had enough dystopian stories about abused children and just want to have a smart funny adventure, pick this one off the new releases shelf!

He Must Like You, by Danielle Younge-Ullman

Perry Ackerman is a known pest.  All of the waitresses at The Goat know that he'll try to get his hands all over them given the opportunity.  So, Libby knows what she's up against when she has to wait his table.  But he's a good tipper and Libby can usually handle him.  However, things haven't really been normal for her.  Her college fund has disappeared and her parents are going to unceremoniously eject her from the house so they can rent her bedroom out for an Airbnb.  So, she needs the job and she needs the tip, but not enough to put up with the creep's pawing.  When he goes too far, she shocks everyone by dumping his drink over his head.  The repercussions of her action have even more surprising consequences.

Like the middle grade book Maybe He Just Likes You, this novel explores the social intricacies of sexual harassment.  Aimed at teenagers, the approach is far more complex and the author brings up a wide range of issues from family violence to workplace harassment (especially in the service sector) to racial violence.  As it turns out, Perry Ackerman is hardly the first male with whom Libby has had to negotiate matters of consent and the novel serves as a useful primer on a wide variety of issues revolving around consent in general.  Libby's toxic family and the story around them seems initially unrelated and distracting, but gets neatly tied into the story by the time we reach a gratifying conclusion.  It's a lightning fast and entertaining read about a serious subject and all ages can benefit from it.

Across the Pond, by Joy McCullough

By an unusual chain of events, Callie's family find themselves heirs to a castle in Scotland.  While renovating it will present quite a few challenges, the family decides to leave San Diego and move in.  For Callie, this is far more than a change of scenery, it's chance for a restart.  Her friends have abandoned her and no one will talk to her, ever since she got blamed for getting them all in trouble.  There's nothing she'll miss when she goes and everything to gain by going someplace where no one knows her or her past.

While living in a castle sounds very exotic and exciting, it's really just a dilapidated and very drafty old building.  And not terribly comfortable to boot!  Also, while she hopes that being an exotic American will give her special cachet, she realizes quickly that kids are basically the same and that nothing will fix her fear of going through the same trauma all over again. Her parents, concerned that she's not making friends, deliver an ultimatum that she needs to join a club.  She doesn't play sports or a musical instrument and the idea of being around strangers terrifies her.  In desperation, she tries the local birdwatchers club, but the sexism of the group's leader drives her away.  Still, when she learns that Lady Philippa (the old woman who lived in the castle before them) was an avid birder all of her life, Callie is inspired to follow in her footsteps.  Along with the granddaughter of her groundskeeper and a helpful local librarian, they compete in a Big Day contest against the established club.

There are lots of great ideas in this book, but it's terribly busy.  Is the book about Callie confronting her fears of standing up for what is right ever again?  Is it about the ways that her life mirrors the life of the Lady Philippa (whose story is told in the pages of a diary that Callie finds)?  Is it about helping the gardener's granddaughter come out of her shell?  Is it about girls taking charge and defeating the boys in the contest?  And that's not even covering the inclusion of some trauma involving a cat or the dangerous and forbidden castle keep -- both of which are underutilized as plot devices.  There is, in sum, plenty to talk about here but a plethora of ideas doesn't make a story.  Charming but rudderless.

Poisoned, by Jennifer Donnelly

Sophie is a good princess, but she won't make a good queen, so says her stepmother and anyone else who dares to speak of the matter aloud.  She's none too bright and far too timid and soft to be a leader.  She lacks the will to make difficult decisions and punish the people who could hurt her.  Proving her stepmother's point, Sophie is led by her huntsman into the woods and he cuts out her heart.  And so she dies.

"Mirror mirror on the wall!  Who will be the source of my downfall?" the Queen commands.  But despite the fact that Sophie has been disposed of, the mirror insists that it is the princess who is to be the cause of the Queen's demise.  But how can this be?

You'll have to read the novel to find out.

Donnelly's Stepsister was a clever, witty, and ultimately poignant reinterpretation of Cinderella. Here, she takes on Snow White.  But while the formula is intoxicating, the result is less impressive this time out.  Part of the reason for this failure is that the point of the story is a mixture of messages (the importance of confronting fear, the strength of kindness, and the value of ignoring naysayers) that never really gels.  Nor is the revelation that a Grimms tale can be told this way all that revelatory.  Sophie is nice, but she makes an uncompelling heroine.  She goes through a number of transformations, but is a slow learner.  Her most common response is the wail that her friends are dead (people die often and repeatedly in this story).  And having set up a very convoluted plot with at least two enemies to vanquish, Connelly has to rush the ending to accomplish it all.  The last fifty pages are mere sketches of a story.

The Sea in Winter, by Christine Day

Maisie's plans of becoming a ballerina are sidetracked when she sustains a knee injury in class.  While there is some optimistic news from her physical therapist that she still might be able to practice again, Maisie struggles with depression.  All of her friends were in ballet class and now that she can't participate, they seem to have deserted her.  By no small irony. the girl who talked her into trying the dangerous pose that injured her is now headed off to New York for a summer program.  She will realize her dreams, while Maisie is stuck in Tacoma.  When a later tragic setback cements the fact that Maisie's career is probably finished, she falls back on a counselor, her family, and her rich Indigenous American traditions for support.

A promising book full of fine ingredients but that fails to deliver.  The story of dealing with injury and the struggle for a comeback is great dramatic material but is undeveloped and unexplored.  The injury happened, but without any sort of special note.  The fact that her friends have moved on and that Maisie is having trouble dealing is noted, but not used in the story in any particular way.  And while she mopes a little when it seems her career is over, the author simply skips over her counseling.  She simply doesn't find the story worth telling.

Moreover, Maisie seems largely secondary to the story.  There are long digressions about the mother's life story and various elements of recent Native American history.  All of which is actually fascinating, but is never tied in to the story.  It's as of the author really wanted to write a story about the mother or a non-fiction book about the Makah tribe in the Olympic Peninsula, which makes you wonder why she chose this half-hearted attempt at a story about recovery.

Goodbye from Nowhere, by Sara Zarr

Kyle has has an idealized notion of his family as a perfect gathering of different people united by love, best illustrated by the noisy messy gatherings of his extended tribe at his grandparents' farmhouse.  It's such a warm place and Kyle proudly shows it off to his girlfriend (as well as proudly showing her off to them) at Thanksgiving.

But then his father drops a bombshell on him; his mother is having an affair with another man.  Kyle responds by cutting off his friends,  ghosting his girlfriend, and quitting baseball.  Unable to tell anyone or confide in his friends, he turns to his cousin and eventually his siblings.  While his parents try to keep the affair a secret and fail miserably to keep their marriage together, the whole thing tears Kyle apart.  To put the icing on Kyle's miserable cake, his grandparents have decided to sell the farm.  And so now the whole family -- some in the know but most not -- are converging for a final family gathering.

An emotionally complicated story of family with some impressive nods to Russian literature.  The overall message is not so much a Tolstoyan tale of unhappy families, as it is about how families are really webs of imperfect people behaving imperfectly.  Kyle's idealism may take a hit, but in the end he comes out with a healthier understanding of what is reasonable and unreasonable to expect from family.  At the same time, the novel really does have a Russian feel to it -- an enormous cast of diverse characters who each deal with each other in unique ways.  I always have trouble keeping up with large casts, but in this case, it's really the dynamic of that large family that is the point.  Zarr does a superior job making the whole thing work.

Amelia Unabridged, by Ashley Schumacher

Amelia and Jenna are obsessed with N. E. Endsley's Orman Chronicles.  For Amelia, the books are a source of comfort since her father left and her mother withdrew.  For Jenna, who has the loving parents and wealth that Amelia lacks, the books are simply something to bond them together.  She enjoys bossing Amelia around and Amelia, happy to be pleasing, does what her friend tells her to do.

When it is announced that Endsley will be appearing at a local book festival, the girls have to go.  Jenna's parents get them VIP passes so their be able to meet the author and get their books signed.  But things at the festival don't go well.  Endsley cancels and Jenna betrays Ashley in a way that leaves them broken apart.  And then, before they can mend their relationship, Jenna is killed in a car accident.  Reeling from the tragedy, Amelia withdraws.  Despite Jenna's parents' attempt to draw Amelia out, eh loses her interest in reading or pretty much anything else.  

A mysterious package arrives for Amelia with something in it that should not exist.  Following clues left on the package, Amelia impulsively travels to a bookstore across the country.  There, she finds out what happened for real at that ill-fated book festival and a lot more.  By the end of a week-long stay, she comes to an important crossroads where she'll have to decide whose life she wants to live.

A creative and complex romance and coming of age story.  The writing is beautiful, the characters deep, and the story well-developed and fresh.  But I still found myself unmoved.  I enjoyed reading the book, but the subject matter didn't engage me.  I love reading, but I don't swoon over bookstores or book authors and Schumacher presumes that her readers will.  The book's epilogue, with its hypothetical suggestions of what is to come, nicely encapsulates the gauzy vision that the author seems to like.  It's a pretty style but it doesn't make commitments.

Four Days of You and Me, by Miranda Kenneally

Lulu and Alex have a way of coming together and breaking apart, but whenever they are apart, they ache to get back together.  In a story that traverses four years of high school, but which focuses on four class trips, we track the ebbs and flows of that relationship.  The class trips start modest (local science museum and amusement part) and grow increasingly elaborate (New York City and London).  The relationship grows correspondingly complex.

Lulu and Alex try to manage their fleeting interests in others and the competing claims of their career aspirations (he wants to play baseball and she wants to become an author of graphic novels).  If their career goals seem unrealistic, their relationship seems even more so.  Mostly, they don't seem to be able to keep their hands off of each other (which has an embarrassing habit of making them late for all of their class outings) but they are too emotionally immature to really mean the earnest commitments they make to each other.  Thankfully, the story ends before they do anything stupid.

It's a brisk and easy read, but the lack of an honest spark between Lulu and Alex and the sheer annoying quality of their self-centered personalities makes this a hard romance to swoon over.  The story's timeline ebbs and flows backways and forwards.  Sometimes that works, other times it gets distracting.  Kenneally packs in lots of amusing anecdotes which she has collected, but they feel exactly like that (i.e., anecdotes stuffed in to fill out the story and provide some amusement).  The  moments don't really fit in the story.  Some elements (like the student group from Italy) seem largely thrown away.  In sum, a readable but largely disposable romance.

The Poetry of Secrets, by Cambria Gordon

Isabel loves literature and runs risks sneaking out to listen to poetry recitals.  But for her family, recently converted to Christianity to protect themselves from anti-Semitism, life is far too dangerous to run risks.  For while life for the Jews is hard, the conversos are distrusted  even more and subject to much of the same violence.

Isabel has been betrothed to a lawman, who will be powerful enough to protect her, but she doesn't love him.  Instead, her heart belongs in secret to the son of the tax collector.  If that betrayal should ever become known, her fiancé could easily destroy her family -- all the more so when the Grand Inquisitor shows up in their town.

The second historical novel set in 15th century Spain at the time of the expulsion of the Jews that I have read this month. Unfortunately, that makes it hard not to draw comparisons between this one and Larson's (reviewed on April 25th).  Larson's book, while it had a number of anachronisms, makes more of an attempt to recount history and is mor of a survival story.  Here, the focus is on the romance between Isabel and her forbidden love and less on family.  This adds some heat to Gordon's story, but I think I prefer the suspense of Larson's novel.  Either book will give you a good feel for the basics of the historical context, so it's really a matter of your preference for romance or adventure.

Sparrow, by Mary Cecilia Jackson

Sparrow is a gifted dancer about to achieve her dream of starring in Swan Lake.  And she's caught the eye of rich and handsome Tristan King, who's become her first boyfriend.  But within a few months, things are going to hell.  Tristan treats her badly and when she tries to break up with him, he brutalizes her and leaves her for dead in the woods.  Her dance partner Lucas, wracked with guilt for not intervening forcefully enough before the assault, throws his own career into a tailspin by trying to administer vigilante justice.  Both of them hit rock bottom and have to learn how to put together their own lives, instead of trying to fix others.

In short, a grueling and ultimately unfulfilling story about rebirth and rebuilding.  Jackson knows how to stage out a traumatic scene and create characters that are deeply hurt, but she doesn't know how to tell the story about how they got there.  Rather than show the descent into hell or the healing to recovery, she simply jumps ahead (a few days, weeks, or months) until we are at the desired result.  Thus, we go from Sparrow and Tristan's first kiss directly to him smacking her around, with no transition and no explanation for why Sparrow stuck around.  The recovery is just as abrupt.  I don't mind reading traumatic stories, but that's because I want to see the process of recovery.  Simply being recovered at the end of the novel is not enough.

The other issue are the characters.  Both Sparrow and Lucas ought to be sympathetic protagonists, given the amount of suffering that they have endured, but they really are not.  Lucas, in particular, has an uncontrolled temper that goes way beyond a fleeting rush of anger.  He's downright pathological (and scary).  Sparrow's grief eventually gets explained, but it's frustrating and hardly as heroic as all the other characters profess it to be.  Perhaps this is realistic, but it's not inspirational.  In order to have a story about horrible things happening to nice people they have to be nice in the first place.