Again, but Better, by Christine Riccio

Shane is stuck in a life that she cannot stand. She majors in premed solely because her parents insist upon it and she struggles to make friends because she is shy.  And a boyfriend?  Forget about it.  When the opportunity arises for her to study abroad in London, she jumps on it.  A new place.  A chance to restart and be the person she wants to be.  Have friends.  Study creative writing (because writing is what she truly loves).  Because her parents would never approve of her studying anything other than medicine, she lies to them and claims to be continuing her premed program.

Once there, she does manage to come a little out of her shell and make friends with her flat mates.  And she falls head over heels for a boy named Pilot.  He sends encouraging signals but turns out to have a girlfriend already.  And after a few close encounters, he becomes cold and distant.  Eventually, her parents find out about the deception and are furious at her, forcing her to abandon the dream of writing.  By the end of the semester, nothing has worked out as Shane had hoped and she returns to the States in shame and disappointment.

Flash forward six years when Shane is ostensibly a successful doctor, but still torn apart by the unfinished business in London.  She finds herself presented with the opportunity to go back in time and re-do the whole thing.  Given how horrible it was, is this something she would really wish upon herself?  But what if, armed with the knowledge of when she made mistakes and six years to consider better choices, she could do it right?  Would it make any difference?

A little like Groundhog Day but more similar to Before Sunset, this charming story of what you might accomplish with a do-over is a crowd pleaser.  First of all, it has the adventure of impulsive youth set loose on Europe, which is always good makings for a beach read.  But when we shift to the second half,  the book shifts tone significantly and there's some wonderful opportunity for reflection on how we change as we grow up.  It's helpful to pay close attention to the first half of the book as much of it is referenced in the second half, and it is apparent that the initial run through was full of misperceptions.  So, even though you are running through much of the same story a second time, it's really entirely new.  The book's clever, but it is also no small feat to engineer a book that well.  I did think that the end comes on a bit too fast and loose ends get wrapped up entirely too neatly in a brief epilogue, but I enjoyed the book.

Somewhere Between the Trees and Clouds, by Chuck Murphree

Dylan struggles with violent behavior and bouts of self-hatred.  The recent death of his mother buys him sympathy from others but the truth is that Dylan's problems go back to when he was twelve and his uncle molested him on a hiking trip.  He's never found the strength to tell anyone besides his best friend TJ about what happened until he meets Audrey.  Audrey has just transferred to their school to get away from bullying and harassment that started when she was raped at a party and tried to press charges.  The transfer didn't help and her "reputation" has followed her to Dylan's school.  

Drawn to each other through their recognition of how much they have in common, Dylan and Audrey's relationship that should have warning flags all over it.  Two fragile people grappling with the scars of sexual assault and self-loathing and somehow helping each other seems like a very bad idea, but in this story it all works out.  Each of them finds the strength to rise to each other's aid and also rebuild their own lives.  It's depicted in a way that seems so deceptively easy.  Yes, there are some relapsing and plenty of bad days, but they are basically perfect to each other and manage to never hurt each other.  That's not how these things play out in the real world.

Beyond my reservations about the wisdom of the blatantly codependent relationship that is at the core of the story, I was put off by the writing itself.  This is a verse novel with nothing particularly outstanding about the verse.  Instead, it is more of a trick to turn a really thin story into a nearly 400-page book.  In fairness, there are some great characterizations here and I think it's great to have a book that explores the impact of sexual violence on boys (a topic that is rare in YA literature), but it's a disappointing read.

Breathe and Count Back from Ten, by Natalia Sylvester

Since she was little, Verónica has always wanted to be one of the performers in the Mermaid Cove show, to be a mermaid swimming beautifully in the water.  In reality, she's a girl with hip dysplasia, enduring multiple surgeries and the bearing the scars to show for it.  For her parents, she must be the good girl who stays away from boys and studies hard.  For her friends, she must be a brave warrior fighting the pain she lives with.  And to strangers, she must hide her scars and do anything she can to avoid their pity.  She never does anything for herself.

When a position opens at Mermaid Cove, Verónica's friends try to convince her that she should try out for the part.  Her parents are utterly opposed.  Performing in public as some sort of sex object in the water is hardly something her immigrant parents approve of (or even understand).  But Verónica is tired of never having a say in her life.  After enduring years of submitting to painful surgeries and denying herself the things she wants, it's time to take responsibility and take charge.  And with support from her secret boyfriend and from her friends, she takes the scariest step in her life.

While ostensibly the well-trod story of an intrepid first-generation teen breaking free from the bounds of her conservative parents (for heavens sake, can we have a story about permissive immigrant parents sometime?!), this novel actually avoids wallowing in that morass and finds something exceptional.  So while we do have to endure the endless refrains of "good girls don't" from her parents, the sneaking out/lying, and the inevitable getting caught, we also get treated to an strong story of a young woman rejecting ablest labels.  The parental disapproval is actually a side show to the bigger problems Verónica faces with societal judgments of her body and her capacity.

<Spoiler> The parental resistance is never truly overcome, and instead Verónica and her parents achieve an uneasy peace.  They come to mutually accept that there will always be conflicts between what her parents and what she needs and that the family can still love one another in spite of this.  So, rather than the catastrophic corner that these stories usually find themselves in (where either the parents or tghe child have to bend), Sylvester allows the characters to back away, retain their beliefs and creeds, and yet recognize that doing so doesn't mean having to give up on what is truly important:  each other.</Spoiler>

A Bird Will Soar, by Alison Green Myers

 

Axel loves birds.  The way they live, where they nest, and where they go is so easy to understand.  And for Axel, who is autistic, there is a comforting simplicity in that.  But when a tornado comes through and damages not only Axel's house, but also the nest of a local pair of bald eagles, even simple things become complicated.  Like the way his father, who he hardly ever sees, shows up to repair the house.  Or the way that everyone comes to help when they discover an abandoned eaglet. The world is full of mysteries, secrets, and things that transcend rules -- the love of an extended family, for one!

A sweet meditation on the complexities of family, depicting the way that behaviors are far from fixed, but instead can bend when needs arise.  Myers is an excellent builder of characters, creating memorable protagonists in this gentle story which is about people doing good things and helping each other.  I did find that Axel gets on my nerves from time to time, but his is a fine sympathetic portrayal that articulates his confusion as he is presented with new situations in a way that was insightful and helpful to the reader.

Before Takeoff, by Ali Alsaid

James and Michelle are two strangers, stuck at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport (ATL) when their flights (and in fact every other flight) are delayed.  It's a common enough story until they discover a strange blinking button on the wall and decide to push it.  Suddenly, the laws of the universe change.  It starts snowing in Terminal B but becomes unbearably hot and humid in Terminal C, where a jungle sprouts up.  Terminal F becomes a small microcosm of the world, with passengers breaking off into national identities that match their original destinations. As the delays continue (this being Delta, no flights ever get cancelled), people start disappearing, mobs of zombies appear, and strange monsters lurk.  Terminal C's Sky Club is taken over by the Diamond Medallion frequent flyers and they set up their own oligarchy.  Earthquakes and sudden death abound.

It all eventually ends, but not in a way that is particularly satisfying or meaningful.  Cutting to the chase, I found the novel pointless and normally would never have finished it -- if it wasn't about an airport that I know like the back of my hand.  And the author seems to know it pretty well also, except for the strange decision to describe massive windows everywhere (a mistake also featured in the cover -- which looks more like Detroit).  After all, the one very defining characteristic of ATL (and indeed ATL's most terrifying characteristic under normal circumstances) is its lack of windows.  It is a terribly claustrophobic airport.  For some reason, while Alsaid spends a lot of effort making up terrors, he skips past the one that is inherent to the airport -- the lack of windows.

So, why did I read a book I hated so much?  At first, I enjoyed all the details and the pleasure of recognizing the landmarks.  Throughout, I occasionally enjoyed the clever in-jokes ("fresh" sandwiches and salads, that SkyClub takeover, the patchy airport WiFi, etc.).  As we raced through larger and larger catastrophes, I kept hoping the pointless violence and high body count would amount to some sort of clever ending, but it never comes.  Alsaid proudly calls this a "weird trip of a book" but you need something more than weirdness to create a book worth reading.  And this flat out fails to deliver.

The Wolves Are Waiting, by Natasha Friend

Fifteen year-old Nora finds herself lying on the golf course with no idea how she ended up there.  Last thing she remembers, she was attending a party and drinking a root beer.  In the aftermath, her best friend Cam urges her to immediately collect evidence and report the incident, but Nora doesn't want the attention.

In the ensuing weeks, Nora continues to resists her friend's entreaties.  Cam takes things into her own hands and starts investigating what happened and uncovers a tradition of sexual assault, which implicates Nora's own family.  Eventually, Nora comes around and testifies in the name of helping other victims.

Fictional, but based on actual events, the novel explores a wide variety of topics including toxic masculinity, slut shaming, sexting, fraternity hazing, college sports, and the ethics of college disciplinary practices.  None of the topics are particularly novel and the story does veer a bit into fantasy, but it is immensely entertaining and posits a few good talking points about addressing rape culture amongst high schoolers and undergraduates.  In an attempt to build a truly dramatic dilemma, Friend paints herself into an impossible situation at the end that she is unable to resolve, but that leaves a bit of poignant unfinished business that actually works in the story.

There were definitely parts of this story that put me on edge.  I really didn't like Cam's pushiness and her inability to respect Nora's privacy and her decisions.  That felt very much like a violation and Cam got off far too lightly for what was really a terribly selfish act of breaking confidentiality.  I also found Nora's conversion to activism unrealistic and her family's turnaround far too easy.  The ending was definitely rushed and sucked out a lot of the energy that the story had built up.  The "wolves" (a term which one presumes was supposed to refer to the public reaction to Nora's assault) are largely underplayed, depriving the story of much of its dramatic impact.  The end result is a surprisingly tame story.

The Agathas, by Kathleen Glasgow & Liz Lawson

Alice is a girl with a scandal in her past.  Last summer, she disappeared, setting off a huge manhunt, before reappearing a few days later.  Her little stunt cost her her credibility and a lot of friends. In contrast, Iris is a girl with no history.  No one notices her.  She's bright and intelligent but off of everyone's radar.  The two of them are thrown together when their guidance counselor decides that Iris would be the perfect tutor for Alice.

And then in an eerie repeat, a girl named Brooke disappears.  Brooke was once Alice's best friend but the girls were split apart when Brooke stole Alice's boyfriend.  And it is at a Halloween party, where Alice confronted Brooke that the latter girl disappeared.  But it was Iris who saw Brooke fleeing the party and was probably the last person to see her.

When Brooke's body turns up dead, Alice and Iris discover that they  share a fascination with mystery and solving crime.  And they also find that the deeper they go into investigating what happened to Brooke, the more the grownups around them seem to want to stop them.

Through a fabulous series of twists and surprises, the adventure never stops as these two teen sleuths (with an immense debt to Agatha Christie) solve true crime.  I've never been much of a fan of detective novels, but I have to admit I thoroughly enjoyed this one.  I think most people will.  It's already part of a series, so there's more out there if you want it!

We Are the Ashes, We Are the Fire, by Joy McCullough

After Em's older sister was raped, Em supported and fought for her sister through the whole process of seeking justice.  And when the jury found the attacker guilty, she rejoiced that her quest was at an end.  But when the judge sets aside the verdict and releases the rapist with time served, Em realizes that the fight is not over and never will be.  And while her sister and her family want to move on, Em finds that she can't.  Everywhere she looks she sees the toxic masculinity that perpetuates violence against women.  So, instead, she funnels her anguish into a story she is writing about a medieval woman who seeks vengeance for the violence inflicted upon her family.  The story, meant to provide release and catharsis, instead takes over Em's life, leading to life-threatening consequences.

I loved the conceptual structure of the book, which tells the contemporary story in prose while placing the historical story-within-a-story in verse.  However, the concept eventually fell flat because the verse was simply not very good.  In fact, given the lyricism of the main character, I think I would have preferred Em's story to be in verse and her historical novel to be the part in prose.  

The story also suffers because the heroine is simply not all that compelling.  Em's character is intense, angry, and wound-up...and largely painted into a corner.  As angry as she starts off, she can undergo very little growth throughout the story, which makes her a hard sell for the reader.  The story itself was strong, though, and I particularly liked the nuanced depiction of the family members, showing how each was affected differently by the assault and the subsequent failure to punish the assailant.  McCullough writes excellent characters but made a strategic misjudgment in the portrayal of Em.

Overall, a story with a lot of promise and a tremendously important topic, but ultimately failing to deliver a story that truly moved me.

The Not-So-Uniform Life of Holly-Mei, by Christina Matula

Holly-Mei has a bad habit of speaking rashly and getting herself in trouble.  And when she gets her whole class in trouble, she makes herself persona non grata.  So, when Mom announces that she is being relocated to Hong Kong for work, Holly-Mei actually feels a sense of relief.

Sure, a new place can be strange and scary, but it will also mean a fresh start!  Holly-Mei is excited, even if she has to leave his beloved grandmother behind. It is her grandmother who warns her that moving won't be easy and she'll experience some tough times even if things work out in the end, but Holly-Mei can't imagine it will be worse than things are for her now.  

Hong Kong does provide a fascinating change of scenery, but Holly-Mei learns that kid are pretty much the same everywhere and that she still needs to watch what she says aloud.  More so, because in China, families are judged by the behavior of their members.  Now Holly-Mei's mistakes won't just be her own problem, they could also affect her parents.

The cultural details of this book are its strength. The author, who spent fourteen years living in Hong Kong, delights in sharing her favorite parts of the city and readers will enjoy learning about the fun things one can do there.  I'm less taken by the story (which felt superficial) or the characters (who seemed spoiled and privileged).  Holly-Mei and her friends are rich (in the chauffeur, private yacht, and fancy penthouse level of wealth) and while she is mildly aware of being slightly lower on the totem pole than her friends, she lives a pretty exalted life.  This isn't Hong Kong as most of us would experience it and that makes the cultural details less interesting than they might have been.

Nettle & Bone, by T. Kingfisher

As the third daughter of the royal family of a small and weak kingdom, Marra never had much in the way of ambition beyond life in a convent. It was the eldest who was married off to the crown prince of the  neighboring Northern Kingdom.  And when she died, it was the middle daughter who replaced her on the throne. Marra might have been happy to stay where she was, embroidering tapestries and assisting the midwife.  However, after a rare visit with her sister for her niece's christening, Marra grows suspicious about her sister's situation and after the child's death she learns of the abusive nature of the marriage.

She is torn apart by the news of her sister's suffering, but can a princess in a convent do about it?  Rescuing her sister from the grasp of a jealous husband, especially one of royal blood, seems impossible.  But Marra is determined to try.  Through a series of feats ranging from reanimating a dog from its bones to shopping at a goblin market to interviewing the dead, Marra bravely tackles one impossible task after another, all to rescue her sister.  A quirky cast of characters (an old woman who talks with the dead, a fairy godmother, a disgraced warrior, a demon chicken, and others) join her on her epic adventure.

A lively and lovely horror/fantasy tale that entertains, even as it addresses the sobering topic of domestic violence.  That said, while this is feminist-inspired fantasy, the storytelling itself is too fast paced to dwell for any significant time on the topic.  In other words, we acknowledge the oppressive patriarchal structures of traditional fairy tale narratives, but then move on to the next adventure.  And that's much of the way of this novel overall.  There's some hint of a romance, but the story never slows down enough for that either.  Instead, it is mostly an endless parade of supernatural monsters and magic.  You'll like this if you enjoy stories of ghosts, demons, and the undead.

Little Bird, by Cynthia Voigt (ill by Lynne Rae Perkins)

Little Bird is a crow who has struggled because of her diminutive size to get the rest of the crows to respect her.  But when the flock's Our Luck, a human's necklace and their protective talisman, is stolen from the nest where it's kept, Little Bird vows that she'll find it and return it.  Facing unfamiliar dangers (including other crows, hostile birds, cats, and humans), Little Bird spreads her wings on a life-changing odyssey.  Crows are clever and intelligent birds and Voigt tries to capture the mixture of wisdom and bafflement with which Little Bird explores the world.

The quirky premise attracted me to this book, but its overall tone and approach of the story seemed inappropriate for its target audience.  This is a dark story that is full of animal imperilment and features a number of complex issues.  In other words, this is not a sweet animal story, but rather something fairly mature.  It isn't so much that I think it will traumatize young readers, I just can't see them really enjoying its somber mood and complicated themes.  As for myself, it just didn't have much charm.  Dana Lorentz's Of a Feather is a much better bird story and does a better job of explaining bird behavior than the rather superficial look at crows that this novel provides.

A Cuban Girl's Guide to Tea and Tomorrow, by Laura Taylor Namey

After Lila suffers the trifecta of losing her beloved grandmother, being abandoned by her best friend, and being dumped by her boyfriend, she's lost.  Yes, she'll always have Miami in her heart and Cuba in her soul (as well as her abuela's love of the kitchen), but none of it makes any sense.  Her family, panicked at her existential crisis, take desperate measures and send her to spend the summer with family friends in Winchester, England.

With its cold gray weather and its complete lack of Cuban culture, Lila hates England and feels even more out of place.  But she slowly rediscovers herself by introducing the people there to the fine art of Cuban cooking.  A cute boy from a local tea shop and his troubled little sister also help as well.  By the end of the summer, Lila realizes that she has the potential to be much more than she ever knew before.

Cute romance that pushes most of the right buttons, but gets fussy at points and thus misses the mark for me.  Like most books centering around food, it struggles with how to convey the glory of its cuisine.  Namey's choice is to mostly have characters gushing about how wonderful everything is.  That only goes so far before it becomes repetitive and boring.  I get the point (everything this girl bakes is amazing) but I didn't believe it.  

There are problems with the central character as well:  for all of her troubles, Lila definitely does not suffer from low self-esteem.  You know with that set up that she'll get humbled a little and do some growing from the experience, but it doesn't really happen to any serious extent.  She's just arrogant and obnoxious throughout.  

Finally, there just isn't much going on here.  There ought to be some drama (for example, in having to choose between Miami and England) but nothing really develops.  In a super happy ending, everyone else ends up accommodating for Lila.  Sure, she's calmed down a bit but she's still living the same charmed existence that she started out with.

Gussy, by Jimmy Cajoleas

Gussy has been training to be a village protector for as long as she has lived with Grandpa Widow.  It's an important but tedious job as every ritual and rite must be performed with absolute precision in order to prevent the Great Doom from reaching them.

She's still learning the practices, but she's confident she can manage to keep things together for a few weeks when Grandpa is called away.  But on the first night, Gussy allows a refugee to enter the village, opening up the gates that must never be opened at night in order to do so.  She knows it's a mistake, but the refugee is a harmless little girl and poses no threat.

After that, things start to go bad.  Objects become possessed with evil and then a force starts taking over humans as well.  The Great Doom has breached their walls and defied all of the wards and spells that protect the community.  Gussy exhausts her knowledge of magic and protection rites, but the darkness are still descending upon them. If only Grandpa would come back, but there's no sign of him and Gussy knows that she'll have to figure out a way to defeat this evil that she may of unwittingly brought upon the village.

Excellent world-building and a strong and clever heroine with a lot of mojo gives us a decent (albeit fairly predictable) fantasy novel.  The storytelling drags at points and overall it may be a bit too cerebral for its targeted middle school audience, but the tale checks off all of the right boxes.  There are some good messages about the power of good teamwork and the importance of not holding on to grudges tossed in as well.

A Girl in Three Parts, by Suzanne Daniel

Allegra feels like she is torn into three parts.  Simultaneously being raised by her two grandmothers and her Dad, she has to tread carefully because, while they all love her, they cannot stand each other.  

Her grandmothers couldn't be any more different as people.  Joy is fiercely independent "woman's libber" who helps shelter women fleeing abusive husbands.  Matilde is no less fierce, but rejects all of those notions, focusing instead on hard work, perseverance, and tradition.  Meanwhile, her Dad is a beach bum and largely out of the picture.  

Allegra tries to find balance between them and wishes they would all get along.  There's some sort of historical reason why they hate each other so much but no one will share it with her.  But in the end, the three of them all surprise Allegra when she needs them most.

A period piece set in Australia in the 1970s that explores family and the different ways that people express love and loyalty.  The burgeoning of the second wave of feminism is the backdrop, but told through Allegra's twelve year-old perspective, this is a much more intimate story about growing up.

It has a less-than-stellar opening and a rushed ending, but the bulk of the novel is actually quite good.  The slow start can be blamed partly on culture shock and the lingo, but the real problem is the lack of proper exposition.  There's really no explanation for why Allegra is floating between her grandmothers' apartments and no indication of the period (until we are nearly half way through the book).  Aussie YA tends to be a bit thick, but this is even more so than normal.  Once we got through that, I really appreciated the vivid characters.

Breathless, by Jennifer Niven

Claude is looking forward to her last summer before college, spending time with her best friend before they go their separate ways and maybe hooking up with a guy and having sex for the first time.  Those plans get thrown askew when her mother announces that she and Dad are separating.  She's taking Claude with her for a summer away at the family's ancestral home on a remote island off the coast of Georgia.  

Shell-shocked by the revelation that her parents are breaking up and that her father is abandoning them, Claude's thoughts once they have relocated are far far away from sex and romance.  That is, until she meets steamy enigmatic (and conveniently available) Jeremiah, who's working with an Outward Bound group on the island.  Miah is the perfect anecdote for Claude's broken heart, guiding her back to trust and love.  And while they will have to leave each other at the end of summer, she can't help but fall madly in love with him.

Yeah yeah, it's a formulaic romance, but a beautifully written one. An exotic setting, some steamy sex scenes, and characters with some actual meat on them.  Claude is no shrinking violet, but a fiercely independent and articulate young woman who is confident about what she wants and why she wants it.  As if to prove she's a teen, she makes a few mistakes along the way, but it's hard to not be impressed by how together she really is in the end.  Whether it is in her relationship with her separating parents, her loyalty to her friend, or her no-nonsense assertiveness with boys, she is an inspirational model of conduct.  There's no deep thought or message here, but characters to love and a story with which to fall in love -- a great New Adult romance and coming-of-age story for older readers.

Someone I Used to Know, by Patty Blount

Two years ago, Ashley was a victim of rape.  Targeted by the school's quarterback, she was simply a goal in a "scavenger hunt" organized by the school's football team.  But almost worse than the trauma of the attack or the way that her community turned against her in the aftermath was the fact that her older brother Derek, as a member of the team, participated in the scavenger hunt.

An unflinching look at rape culture, this won't be a book that anyone will particularly enjoy reading, but that is not really the point.  It's a story intended to start a discussion and a dialogue about why sexual violence is so prevalent in our society.  If that's all it was, it wouldn't honestly be all that interesting of a book, but where this novel stands out is in its broader ambitions -- looking at the impact of Ashley's assault on her family.

There's the pain and incomprehension of Ashley's parents and her oldest brother's decision to come home and try to knit the family back together.  However, it's her complicated relationship with her football-playing brother Derek that takes center stage.  Derek didn't just play along with the "game" that got his sister raped, he was an active participant.  And during the trial of the rapist, he made some unfortunate statements that hurt the case.  For rather complicated reasons, Ashley is convinced that he sabotaged the trial on purpose.  But the truth runs deeper:  the two of them have a history of buried antagonisms that the assault brings to light in the worst of ways.

Harrowing stuff!  Originally published in 2018, this was timed to take advantage of the attention on  the #MeToo movement, but the fact that it is still topical (and probably will remain so for many years to come, if not forever) is comment enough.

Don't Touch, by Rachel M. Wilson

Caddie goes to great lengths to develop ways to help her cope with events seemingly out of her control.  When her father moves out of the house, she tells herself that as long as she can manage to not touch or be touched by someone, he'll eventually come home.  But he doesn't and this story she tells herself turns into an obsession and an uncontrollable fear of touch.  She wears gloves to school and goes to great pains to avoid having physical contact with her friends.  It is a hard act to maintain but the tension also lands her a star spot as Ophelia in her school's production of Hamlet.  Ophelia's struggle with maintaining her sanity comes too close to Caddie's own fight as she falls in love with the boy playing Hamlet.

Ophelia is a popular choice to probe the subject of adolescent mental illness and a story about a high school Shakespeare production where life mirrors art is not particularly new.  But Wilson does a good job with this familiar territory by providing a complex and sympathetic depiction of obsessive compulsion.  Caddie is bright and intelligent, well aware of her problems, but often overly optimistic about her chances of overcoming them. I was less taken with her alleged friends who, with the exception of the love interest, seemed cruel or indifferent.  While it undoubtedly adds drama to the story, the overall lack of respect for personal space and consent was disturbing.  Even for a person who did not mind physical contact, there was behavior depicted in the story that I found troubling.

Overall, this story of self-discovery and struggle with mental illness doesn't cover much new ground, but  features a sympathetic and intelligent heroine who finds peace with her problems on her own terms in a rewarding way.

Everything I Know About You, by Barbara Dee

For their class trip to Washington DC, the teachers have decided to assign roommates.  It means that Tally won't be able to be with her best friend Sonnet, let only her friend Spider, a boy who she has taken under her wing to protect him from being teased and bullied.  But it gets worse: Tally's forced to share a room with Ava, the queen bee of the "clone girls." Tally and Ava can't stand each other.  Ava is always putting down Tally's refusal to follow convention.

Tally's proud of being a free spirit and considers her stalwart loyalty to Spider to be one of her most redeeming qualities.  However, the trip forces her to confront certain uncomfortable truths about herself as her friends start making new friends.  When Spider starts branching out and befriends a former tormentor, Tally's concern becomes possessive and smothering.  And her free spiritedness comes with a judgmental thread (which comes out when she finds Sonnet starts befriending some of the "clone girls").  Harder still is Ava, who turns out to have a nice side and reveals to Tally that she has an eating disorder.  Tally finds herself in a bind between being loyal to Ava and obeying her conscience which is leading her to tell an adult about the situation.

Barbara Dee writes really nice middle grade books.  The topic here is pretty standard Afterschool Special material, but that doesn't make the story any less enjoyable.  The kids are pitch perfect and the sermon (about getting a grown-up involved when someone's in real trouble) is kept low-key.  The stand out part is Tally herself -- a wonderfully rebellious free thinker in the classic footsteps of Anne Shirley.  How can you go wrong?

How We Ricochet, by Faith Gardner

Life changed forever for Betty, her sister Joy, and her mother when an angry young man opened fire at the store where they were shopping in the mall.  None of them were physically injured, but Joy was nearby the shooter as he turned his gun on himself.

Driven by anger, Mom throws herself into activism, proving to be a charismatic and articulate advocate for the gun control movement.   As she gains attention, she drifts away from her family.  Joy, on the other hand, withdraws into her room, becoming a substance-abusing agoraphobe.  In between, Betty tries to hold the family together.  

Trying to make sense of the whole thing, Betty becomes drawn to the shooter's younger brother, Michael (she vaguely knows him from school as they shared a class or two, but they were never friends).  Without letting on that her family were victims of his brother, she befriends Michael and (this being YA) the friendship starts to become romantic.  But becoming close with the shooter's family simply complicates the narrative she trying to form.  There are no explanations, just regrets and lost lives.

A sometimes dreary but ultimately positive story about making the most of what we have and letting go of the past.  The characters are all lessons:  parents who abandon the things that matter, a sister who destroys herself by refusing to let go of the past, and the child who achieves redemption by finding the good in the present and using it to build a better future.  The novel is well-written but it's not particularly inspiring except as a series of cautionary tales about how not to deal with problems.

The Sea Knows My Name, by Laura Brooke Robson

Thea was named by her mother Clementine after the goddess of reason.  Her hope was that Thea would avoid all of her mother's mistakes and set out to conquer the world on her own terms.  Clementine had once been a brilliant scientist, but when she predicted the volcanic eruption that destroyed their civilization, no one believed her until it was too late.  After all, she was only a woman and what would a woman know about science?  In the aftermath, men of violence took over and women quickly became nothing more than "commodities of reproduction." Angry at how patriarchy essentially had destroyed their world, Clementine made a pact to exact revenge.  She turned to piracy, sent Thea to a boy's school to get the only education worth having, and determined that Thea would be part of her plan.

But Thea doesn't carry her mother's skills or her anger.  She's soft, afraid to fight, quick to flee, and the opposite of her fiery mother.  She wants to be as strong of a person and earn her mother's respect, but her mother's ways are not her own.  And when she attempts to stand up to her mother, a tragedy strikes that causes her to question her self-worth altogether.  Between her fears, the certain knowledge that she's a disappointment, and her anxious desire to prove that she can be her own person, she sets out on one last voyage to fix everything that has gone wrong.

A beautifully written fantasy novel that is more of a metaphor for the adolescent search for identity.  Not every teenage girl will have a pirate queen for a mother or will fight off boys with guns and swords, but Thea's struggle with her Mom over her future and her frustrations with being objectified and marginalized by men will resonate with many young readers.  This is an unusual fantasy novel.  It's a very dark story with a slow pace and it won't appeal much to people who want action and adventure. Much of the story is really about Thea's physical survival and her ruminations about how she got to this point  However, as a coming of age story, this is really an extraordinary read with a lot to say about growing up female.  Highly recommended.

Not a Unicorn, by Dana Middleton

Jewel has a long pointy unicorn horn on her forehead.  She wasn't born with it.  It just grew out as she got older.  And while most of the kids at school have grown accustomed to it, she still gets teased about it and she tries to keep her head down (literally).  So when her French teacher wants to put her forth for a regional speech competition, Jewel isn't sure that she's up for appearing in front of hundreds of strangers staring at her horn.  But there's one thing that might make her willing to compete.

After years of searching, she may have found a doctor who can remove the horn.  And while her mother is skeptical and worried about Jewel having surgery, Jewel convinces her to let the doctor try.  While the procedure is initially dubbed a success, it turns out to have surprising consequences and Jewel has to make some decisions about what is really important in her life.

A middle grade reader with a mixture of realism and magic that grows steadily more convoluted by the end.  I liked the symbolic nature of the horn and the way it opened discussions about self-image, self-acceptance, and public perception.  I was less taken by the author's attempts to explain its existence.  Also, the book bites off a whole lot of peripheral topics (bullying, broken families) that didn't really add much to its base message.  And then there is the invisible unicorn familiar and a magical graphic novel series that also plays a part (you'll have to read the book yourself to figure that out!).  Never mind the whole French competition! A lovely idea with a strange and very busy story around it.

Message Not Found, by Dante Medema

Bailey shows promise as a programmer and has a deep interest in artificial intelligence (inspired in no small part by her mom's professional interests).  Fatefully, this proves useful when her best friend Vanessa dies in a car crash.  Grieving the loss, Bailey is bothered by one thing:  what was her friend doing on that road in the first place?  She realizes that AI might be able to give her the answer.  

Her Mom has been developing a bot that simulates human intelligence.  Bailey steals the program and feeds it with every piece of data she can find about Vanessa, hoping the bot will be able to assume enough of Vanessa's personality to answer her questions.  At first, the results are not promising but as Bailey starts uploading not only her own data but things she's stolen from their friends' private accounts and phone records, the answers Baily is seeking start to materialize.  But at what price?  And is knowing the truth necessarily what you really want in the end?

An interesting premise (using AI as a means to speak with the dead) that hooked me in early, combined with good characterization.  The pacing can be slow and the ending is WAY too drawn out, but the story mostly held up for me.  On its face, this is a typical YA-tragic story with its stages of grieving spelled out along the way.  However, the story is really more of a mystery and the unfolding of the truth has a good number of twists and turns to keep the tale interesting.  In the end, I really appreciated the originality of the story and all of the details in the storytelling.

Dear Friends, by Lisa Greenwald

Leni has always defined herself through her friendships.  Whether it's Sylvie (her BFF from birth) or Maddy (her best friend at summer camp) or Brenna (her best friend from Hebrew school), she always has a best friend.  But the summer's gone poorly.  For reasons that Leni doesn't understand, she and Maddy drifted apart and barely spent anytime together at camp.  And she's returned home to find that Maddy is more interested in her new friends.  The final straw comes at the party to celebrate the beginning of sixth grade, where Leni discovers she's not even invited to Sylvie's sleepover.

At a loss to explain what is happening, Leni starts a "Friendship Fact-Finding Mission" (FFFM) to uncover why all of friendships have become friENDships.  What she finds is a variety of life lessons ranging from the fact that people change to the realization that she is not always a good friend herself.   She learns to let go of the notion that one must have a "best" friend and instead to embrace having a variety of relationships to enrich her life. Finally, while she can repair some of her past relationships, some of them have to be let go.

This is, in other words, the ultimate middle grade friendship book (a subject that is almost unfailingly coded as a "girls' book" since only girls apparently have friendships) in all of its ugly drama. It is exclusively focused on who is friends with whom, who is getting invited to whose parties, who wants to sit with whom, and what others are saying.  Greenwald has a great ear for the age group and the book will be quite relatable to young people.  The book really shines though for two reasons.

The first reason is having a really brave and articulate young heroine.  While Leni's worries can be excruciatingly excessive, but she is also capable of taking action to fix things, showing initiative and displaying proactive interpersonal skills (certainly outshining her disturbingly codependent mother!).  By the book's end, she not only identifies her issues, but also tackles them as well, reaching out to former friends and bravely initiating honest and painful conversations with them about where things went wrong.

The second reason I liked this book was the excellent advice unobtrusively delivered in the context of the story and helpfully summarized at the end of the book. There are plenty of non-fiction books for tween girls about friendships that parents can foist on them but it's much more fun to learn this from a fictional character who feels like she might go to your school.  I know grownups will look on a book like this book with a combination of revulsion and condescension (who would ever want to relive the hell that was sixth grade?) but there's decent advice in here for adults too.  So, maybe some child will pick up this book and suggest it to her/his mother to read and make a difference in both of their lives?  You're never too old to learn some ways to make better friends.

Haven Jacobs Saves the Planet, by Barbara Dee

Haven worries about the future of the planet.  A lot.  So much so that she can't sleep at night and can't focus on her classes.  She keeps reading things melting ice caps and dying penguins and polar bears and how all the animals will die!  Even her friends don't want to be around her because all she does is talk about it and get angry.  But to Haven, it seems like no one wants to do anything about climate change and that if they don't there probably won't be a planet to live on by the time Haven grows up.  She's do something herself, but what can a twelve year-old possibly do?

Her science class is studying the local river -- a project undertaken every year by the science class -- and they start to notice things are different this year.  The usual resident bugs and insects are missing, the water's pH levels have grown noticeably more acidic since last year, and (most glaringly, in a waterway that was always teeming with amphibians) there are no longer any frogs!  Something is poisoning the river!  Haven suspects the new glass factory that moved in during the last year, but without proof, she can't start making accusations.  Still, Haven feels that she has to do something.  So, she organizes a community protest that brings attention to the problem.

A nice middle reader for young people who find all the grown-up discussion of climate change overwhelming.  I did not realize that "eco-anxiety" was an actual condition, but apparently it is, and I think Dee has done a nice job of providing a great role model for children who suffer from it.  It helps that Haven has lots of other middle school problems (changing friendships, changing gender relationships, self-confidence issues) that Dee slips into the narrative, to which readers will relate.  In the process of organizing her protest, she learns lots of valuable lessons.  While her anxiety is quite debilitating, her family and school are portrayed as supportive and nurturing and Haven deals with her issues proactively.  We never quite get to the root of her issue, but she starts to develop insights into the causes of it which will help her learn to cope in the end.

A Venom Dark and Sweet, by Judy I. Lin

This is the sequel to A Magic Steeped in Poison, which I reviewed two months ago.  At the conclusion of the first book, the tea competition was swept aside by a power struggle over who was going to rule after the death of the emperor.  The emperor had been slain, General Li had seized power, and Chancellor Zhou had been revealed as the power behind the coup.  Both our heroine Ning and Princess Zhen were on the run.  

This book picks up right where we left off and traces Ning and Zhen's search to find allies and uncover what actually just happened at the palace.  What becomes clear quite quickly is that this isn't just some  normal palace coup d'état.  General Li and Chancellor Zhou may have plotted to claim the throne, but behind them lurk far more powerful demonic forces with aims much deeper than simply claiming the throne.  To defeat such evil, ancient relics and magic will be necessary.

In a clear break from the first book, the story is now broken into two points of view:  Ning's continuing narration and the general's son Kang's story.  Given his rather confusing role in the first book as both Ning's love interest and as a turncoat that betrays her, he ought to be the most interesting character, but Kang is largely relegated to reporting what is happening amidst the bad guys.

The first book focused on a tea competition and captivated me with its innovative use of Traditional Chinese Medicine in the story.  In combining elements that (while exotic) were based on real practices with magic that was more fantastic, we were treated to what I would consider a true Western fantasy novel with Chinese characteristics.  The sequel loses much of that charm and instead embraces a far more traditional story of swords and sorcerers.  It's a well-told story with a lot of color and non-stop action, but nothing that really makes it stand out.  

In any case, note that this is not a book that you can just pick up without having read the first book. There's no recap and no re-introduction of characters.  If you don't remember book one, you'll be largely lost for much of book two.  Since the first book is the superior installment, that's no great sacrifice.

Some Mistakes Were Made, by Kristin Dwyer

Ellis has refused to speak with Easton ever since Easton's mother Sandry sent her away to California.  Now, a year later, Ellis isn't sure that she wants to return.  But they have a long and complicated history (that takes the rest of the novel to fully explain), but in summary:  Ellis's parents largely abandoned her (her father was a repeat offender -- going in and out of jail -- while her mother routinely disappeared for weeks at a time, burning through child welfare payment on drinking binges).  Sandry, an old friend of the family, picked up Ellis and brought her home and raised her as a daughter.  Sandry provided a stable home and her family became Ellis's family (much to the anger and resentment from Ellis's people).  However, a codependent relationship between Ellis and Easton develops that while not really incestuous, proves to be wildly dysfunctional.

With a great attention to detail, Dwyer takes this tragic situation and untangles all of the complicated interactions that develop from it:  Ellis's troubled relationships with her parents, the maternal attachment of Sandry with Ellis, the class resentments between Ellis's extended family and Easton's well-to-do family, and of course between Ellis and Easton.  It's difficult reading because there are so many layers of pain and so much history in this situation.

The result is definitely a tear-jerker with some majorly poignant moments, with some beautiful character studies.  Dwyer definitely has a skill with showing how personalities play off of each other.  However, the story really failed for me for two reasons.  First of all, Dwyer's strategic decision to not explain the important elements of the situation (most notably why Ellis was sent away in the first place) until 3/4 of the way through the book might build up the drama but it leaves a huge gap in the story.  We know that people are upset and we know that Ellis did something horrible that got her kicked out, but without knowing even in broad terms what happened, it's frustrating to just see people blowing their tops all of the time with no real explanation.  

All of which takes me to the second (and more critical) complaint: the shrill and melodramatic nature of the characters.  This is a classic depiction of codependency, with characters who blame each other for all of their woes and lack the ability to look inwardly.  It gets old and tired.  In the beginning, I was hoping for a breakthrough where someone would simply say, "You know what?  I need to start fixing myself!" But that doesn't happen.  Instead, we get endless drag down screaming matches where the characters relentlessly rehash gripes and grievances.  I get that everyone is hurting but with no one making an attempt to grow, I just stopped caring.  I feel bad about Ellis having shitty parents (heaven knows that I despise YA books about children trying to survive neglect!) but she's not doing anything to be an inspiration and I don't really see the point in reading a story about people who repeat their parents' mistakes.

Good writing, complex and insightful story, but with characters who did nothing to make me care about them.

Full Flight, by Ashley Schumacher

Marching band members Anna and Weston share a duet and fall in love in the heart of football-loving Texas.  Anna is the good girl with a spotless reputation, while Weston is the rogue loner who is misunderstood and shunned by the community for his alleged past involvement in an act of vandalism.  While essentially opposites, it turns out that Anna is harboring a passion for living on the wild side and Weston needs security in the midst of dealing with his broken family.  They click and become inseparable from first sight, despite the disapproval of just about everyone. 

There's more, which you can read in the book's blurb, if you like spoilers, but otherwise simply know that this is more than some sweet story of teen-aged, star-crossed love.  What it is remains a mystery to me.  It's not a love story as Anna and Weston never really develop much beyond adolescent obsession for each other.  It's not about two misfits finding each other in a insular small town as that idea is barely explored.  And it's certainly not about the shocking ending that comes out of nowhere on page 257 of a 309-page story.

There's lovely writing here and two great characters who are sweet in a painfully naïve way.  Lots of detail and a panache for capturing the marching band subculture.  Sidekicks who are fleshed out and actually get to play roles in the story are a major plus.  The parents don't completely suck.  However, there really isn't much of a story and there definitely isn't a point to it.  And I'd just skip those final fifty pages as they add nothing of interest to the story.

I Shall Awaken, by Katerina Sardicka

Twelve years ago, four children disappeared from their kindergarten.  Now, three of them have returned, with no memory of what happened to them or of what became of the fourth child.  The villagers in their small rural town are superstitious and the whole thing smells of witchcraft.  Mysterious animal deaths in the forest, combined with two suicides in the town start to direct people's eyes towards the returning children.  But underneath the accusations lie a twisted set of buried truths and secrets.

Translated from Czech, the story is rooted in Slavic mythology and has a strong Central European flavor to it.  The setting is timeless and, if it were not for a small number of modern references, it would be easy to imagine the story taking place in medieval (or at least pre-industrial) days.  It is in sum a Fairy Tale, in the Grimm's tradition with all the blood, gore, and brutality of which the original tales are full.  Characters (or even motivations) don't really matter as much as the jostling for power and control, and the long arm of fate directing everything.

It's not really the type of story I am drawn to, but if you like dark and primitive horror, this unique and well-styled book makes a good read.

Practice Girl, by Estelle Laure

Jo's not had very much luck in love.  She's dated a couple of boys (mostly on the wrestling team that she manages) but they always seem to lose interest in her.  Then she overhears the boys talking about how they consider her a "practice girl" -- a person you use for learning how to make your moves.  Horrified to discover that the guys she thought were her friends have just been exploiting her for sex, she quits the team and shuts them out.  But a realization dawns on her:  acting ashamed means letting them get away with it and Jo decides that she refuses to be a victim.  So, she turns up at the coach's office and announces that she wants to be on the team as a wrestler instead of managing.  And through tremendous effort (and practice) she proves to everyone that she is more than something to be used and discarded.

But this story is more than some satisfying girl-power call to fight back against adolescent toxic masculinity.  Jo has issues of her own with which to deal. Her propensity for falling in love easily and the tendency to classify every relationship with boys as romantic.  Alongside the unrealistic romanticism, there is her rather ugly  misogyny that sees girls as competition and enemy.  If she's really going to outgrow her reputation, she has to do more than simply change other people's perceptions.  She has to change herself.

After the "practice girl" revelation, Jo swears off of boys (and wrestlers in particular) but it is a hard promise to keep.  First, there is Sam, her long-time best friend, with whom the relationship has always been a bit complicated (friends with benefits, they lost their virginities with each other in what they ironically called "practice" at the time).  But the greater challenge comes when Dax, a wrestler from another team, starts paying her attention.  As much as she has grown in her understanding of her bad habits, the old muscle memory drives her towards to same old bad moves.  But what if this time it's the real thing?  Has Jo grown enough to tell the difference?  Can she trust her instincts?

If teen romantic drama is not your thing, then this novel isn't for you, but I really enjoyed this book for a variety of reasons.

First of all, for the amazing character of Jo herself -- growing in deeper levels of self-understanding with every chapter.  She's a very flawed person (selfish, unable to trust others, quick to anger) but these flaws make her eminently relatable as her flaws are common to the rest of us.  Her ability to recognize her failings, dissect what she can fix and what she needs to let go, and do the difficult work is inspirational.  She's a work in progress, but its a progress that we can enjoy watching unfold.

I loved the grownups in this book.  As you know if you've been reading my reviews, I love strong realistic adult characters.  I understand that teen readers might feel more comfortable having the adults be stupid, nasty, or clueless, but that isn't real.  Real adults don't bring superhuman powers to the table, but they do bring a wealth of experience and occasionally letting them do their thing can be helpful.  In this case, both of her parents get the opportunity to impart some real advice (both about relationships in general and about their relationship with each other) that show that Jo's journey is far from novel yet no less difficult and challenging for being shared by all.  Giving the grownups a moment to say a few wise words about relationships doesn't do anything to detract from the fact that this is Jo's story and she is ultimately responsible for her incredible emotional journey.  And it demonstrates that parents don't have to be a barrier to overcome.

Finally, I was swept away by the sheer depth and complexity of the two male characters in Jo's life, without whom the drama in her life would have no foil to play against.  It's rare for male characters is a "girl" book to have much depth behind them.  In this case, though, it's critical for telling Jo's own story.  Sam and Dax both develop alongside her as the three of them begin to see the ways that their behavioral problems interrelate and grow to understand that love is an interaction not something that develops in isolation.  It's a love triangle, full of all the usual hurt and tears, but one that defies the usual conventions by having everyone evolving.

In sum, a surprisingly complex story of a young woman and her friends moving beyond selfish, self-regarding love to something deeper and less fairy tale-ish.  A hard read that may not be what you enjoy for casual fun reading, but ultimately as rewarding as the love itself.

Every Word You Never Said, by Jordon Greene

Skyler suffers from two issues: mutism (an inability to speak that has been with him for the past ten years or more) and anxiety (caused from the trauma of being a foster child).  Now settled in North Carolina with very open-minded foster parents, he faces two new major challenges:  getting the school to accept his desire to wear dresses in school and his first boyfriend, Jacob.  While Skyler's foster parents are supportive of his choices, Jacob's father is leading a crusade to keep boys in pants and keeps gays out of the schools (that the two things are unrelated but keep getting classed together is  a consistent source of confusion for the characters and the book).  

Of course, young love is not smooth sailing. The two boys struggle to form a romantic attachment amidst the chaos of their battle with the school board over the dress code and with Skyler's fears of abandonment.

It's a fun read, but I was bugged by its flaws.

As a romance, the novel follows the typical drama cycle (boy loses boy, boy forgives boy) and can be quite endearing.  However, it gets bogged down in Skyler's insecurities.  And while those are understandable, Skyler comes off poorly and one can't help but feel bad for Jacob (who certainly has a harder family situation with which to deal).

The romance also sucks some life out of the crusade to overturn the dress code, but that part of the story is in trouble from the start.   The conflict is rather lame, the bad guys are drawn paper thin, and the arguments on both side are repetitive and poorly articulated.  I know that this is a book in which we are supposed to root for our boys, but there's no real drama to the story.  The role of homophobia in the debate is largely ignored, leaving the whole thing to rhetoric.  Given how poorly positions are presented, we have no plausible reason to accept that Jacob's father would convince anyone to follow him.  

And then there is all the stuff that was left on the table.  The mutism, while important in the beginning,  never gets used in any particularly important way (largely getting in the way by the end).  It was a cute idea, but I would have saved it for another book where it could be part of the story.  And despite all of the attempts to explain that being gay and wearing dresses are not the same thing, Greene's decision to make his character gay and a cross dresser creates a grey sexual area that could well have been explored.

Remember Me, by Estelle Laure

Blue finds a note that tells her to be on a certain bus at 7:45 on her birthday.  She might have ignored it, but she has a nagging feeling that it's important and something she should do.  She's been having lots of those strange feelings recently and a larger sense that she somehow is missing some big part of her life.  People around her are acting strange, talking about things behind her back (as well as insisting that she keep drinking orange juice!).

Riding on the bus, she is approached by a young man named Adam who explains that he's her boyfriend and has known her for years.  A far as Blue is concerns, she's never seen him before in her life.  However,  something about him does feels familiar.  He tries to explain what has happened:  she's undergone a procedure to "cancel" parts of her past, erasing all memories of certain key events and people (including him).  

While she doesn't know what these presumably horrible things in her past are, she can't help feeling that this was a huge mistake.  Who would choose to forget one's past and the people who make it up?  That search for an explanation for the decision that she apparently made leads her to the doctor who performed the procedure.  It also causes her to cross paths with another doctor who is willing to undo the erasure of Blue's memories.  With that doctor's help, those memories are restored with traumatic results.

An interesting concept that is poorly developed.  Blue weak will and inability to cope with her emotions do not make a very compelling character.  But it is the disjointed nature of the novel that really caused me to lose interest.  The story itself is broken into two sections.  The first section provides the meatier stuff (the search for what happened, investigating the clues for an idea of why she made the decision, and the reaction of her friends and family to her attempts to uncover the truth).  It transitions abruptly into the second part where her memories are restored piecemeal through a series of flashback vignettes.  This is such an abrupt shift that Laure has to essentially write out all of the characters we've met in part one:  leaving Blue reliving her memories in a series of vignettes.  This piecemeal reconstruction is intended to add up to a tragic and ironic conclusion, but there isn't really much pathos there (with the possible exception of Blue's mother's behavior).  So, the inevitable conclusion (she gets her memories back and has to go on living her life with the "cancellation") doesn't deliver a pay off.

Fire Becomes Her, by Rosiee Thor

An alt-historical political thriller in which a young woman helps change the way that magic is distributed.  

Power is defined by who has flare -- a liquid that, when consumed, brings pleasure and gives the imbiber the ability to burn things.  A few people have more flare than they know what to do with and they flaunt it by consuming it in cocktails and using it to design fancy clothes.  For the vast majority, however, there isn't enough flare to heat their homes or provide for their basic needs.  Flare (or the lack of it) separates the rich and the poor.

Ingrid's father was sent to jail for stealing flare to feed his family and Ingrid was raised in an orphanage.  But a stroke of luck saw her granted a scholarship at a prestigious private school  And from there, she has ambitions of entering politics as an intern for presidential candidate Senator Holt.  At the same time, she also has ambitions on Linden, the Senator's son.  The Senator will never consent for lower class Ingrid to marry his son, but Linden is convinced that they can change his mind.  For all that plotting, it is fairly obvious that Linden can't manage to stand up to his Dad and Ingrid is condemned to sitting in the background, ignored and wasted on the Senator's staff.  

To make things harder, Ingrid cannot deny that Senator Holt's platform focus on law and order and enforcing the status quo does not align with her own beliefs.  It is his opponent, Gwendolyn Meyers -- running a campaign on flare equity and redistributing flare -- to whom Ingrid has personal reasons to be drawn.  In order to win Holt's approval, Ingrid volunteers to go undercover as a spy in the Meyers campaign, but she has conflicted loyalties from the beginning.  

By all rights, Meyers ought to be the popular favorite, but a group of terrorists is committing acts of violence designed to sabotage the election and Holt's focus on security undermines Meyers's promotion of equity. Stuck in the middle, Ingrid can't help but marvel at how convenient the terrorist activity seems to be and she suspects Holt is behind it, but the majority of the victims are Holt's people. 

A busy and compelling thriller which is marred by the looseness of its defining conceit -- flare.  Flare is a commodity in high demand.  It is both a basic necessity for life and also something that is wasted and misused by the wealthy (thus a stand-in for wealth itself).  It is a weapon used to destroy people but it can also somehow be used for defense.  It is used to vote (with some sort of weighting of ballots defined by the quantity of flare behind them).  It is incapable of being made by common people (until it is homebrewed later in the story).  It has addictive qualities (like opioids).  And it is some form of magic.  You get the idea. Flare is all sorts of things and never really clearly defined.  That looseness allows it to be used as a proxy for inequality, class, moral decline, and corruption; as well as a nifty weapon for action scenes.  It's a murky concept and almost everything touched by flare becomes similarly muddy.  So, while I liked Ingrid and I loved the complicated plotting and counter-plotting of the story, flare didn't really work for me.

Improbable Magic for Cynical Witches, by Kate Scelsa

Eleanor has never quite understood the fascination with witchcraft in Salem.  To her, it's always seemed like a stupid way to get rich off of the tourists and she's treated her part-time job in a witch-themed gift shop with distaste.  However, it pays the bills which is an important thing when your Mom is largely immobilized at home suffering from long-term Lyme disease.  And the job also distracts her from the shame of what happened last year after her way-too-public breakup with her girlfriend -- a humiliation that she tries otherwise to deal with by self-medicating with lots of marijuana.

So, when she receives a strange homemade guide to tarot cards, she's pretty much ready to chuck it in the trash until the most beautiful girl she has ever seen walks in the store and starts talking tarot and witchcraft with her.  And suddenly Eleanor finds herself willing to embrace magic, witchcraft, or whatever else this girl Pixie wants. 

Tarot cards never offer a definitive path or advice, but instead encourage a fair consideration of choices and alternatives.  Through an extended reading of most of the deck, Eleanor's full story unfolds (both what happened a year ago and the way that the current state mirrors and deviates from it).  And while the title promises some magic, this is more a story of healing, hope, and the faith to reopen a heart that has given up on love.

It's a charming story which cleverly uses tarot cards in a positive way to drive forward the plot.  Tarot cards (like Ouija boards) tend to get a bum rap as dramatic sources of evil, but Scelsa captures a more positive purpose as Eleanor comes to realize that her sufferings are really life lessons and her life is not pre-ordained but instead made up of forks in the road and a limitless opportunity for change.  The end result is a rewarding story of hope.  

Note: The rather heavy use of drugs in the novel may disturb some adults, but it is an essential to the story, is not glamorized, and is ultimately resolved in a positive manner.

Beguiled, by Cyla Panin

With her parents gone, young Ella must depend upon her skills at weaving to survive.  With great effort, she tries to produce the most beautiful fabrics in order to entice wealthy women to buy them.  She dreams of one day making enough money from a sale in order to open a shop, but for now she simply must make enough to feed herself and buy materials for her next project.  It is a hard life and despite all of her efforts Ella is slipping deeper and deeper into poverty.  When her shuttle breaks, Ella realizes that she has reached the end:  she can't afford the repairs and she can't live without a working loom.

There is one last alternative, although she shudders to consider it.  The spirit of an old washerwoman lives by the river.  Called the Bean-Nighe, she can grant great wishes but they come with terrible prices.  With misgivings, Ella goes to her for help and is surprised by the mildness of the spirit's price:  just a drop of blood sacrificed to the loom from time to time.  In exchange, Ella receives ample raw materials and begins to get noticed for her amazing and beguiling products.  But any deal with the spirits is never so simple and Ella finds that it is she herself who has been beguiled.

A rich atmospheric tale of magic, based loosely on Celtic mythology, but infused with some righteous feminism and radical egalitarianism. Ella is a very practical protagonist with a pragmatic understanding of her economic situation and great entrepreneurial spirit.  More importantly, I truly enjoyed Panin's riff on the role of fashion as literal magic.  Her overall message that is a world rules by powerful men, a woman has to flaunt whatever talents they possess may strike some readers as cynical, but it makes for a compelling character.  The other real problem that nagged at me was how naïve Ella is for thinking she can trick enough people to get what she wants.  For such a practical young woman, her hubris seems out of character.