The Fight for Midnight, by Dan Solomon

Alex's only friend is a crotchety old guy at an adult day care center, who delights in being read Game of Thrones (with particular attention to the beheadings).  It's all basically Alex's fault:  he's the one who let his best friend die from drugs and then got himself on the wrong end of two bullies from school.  Still, Alex wouldn't mind having a friend his own age.  So, when queen bee Cassie calls him out of the blue and begs him to come join her at a protest at the State Capitol, he figures he's gotten an opportunity and been granted a wish.  He has no idea what the protest is about and doesn't really care as long as it means spending some time with the girl of his dreams.

That's the set up that places Alex at the Texas statehouse in the summer of 2013 as the Senate debated HB2, a now largely-forgotten attempt to restrict abortion access.  The events are a matter of public record and the book sticks largely to the facts of the case (the author was a journalist covering the protests) so the plot is less important than the story, which tracks Alex's evolution from an apolitical and apathetic young man to a committed activist.  By the end of the story, his personal issues that form such a central role in his life largely fade away in comparison to his investment in the eventual outcome of Wendy Davis's historic filibuster.  Of course, a few years later the repeal of Roe v Wade would largely overtake the now seemingly small fry of that debate, so the novel is really less about any historic achievement than it is about how the events impacted Alex's life.  And that proves to be a surprisingly satisfying read.

The Secret Sisters, by Avi

In The Secret School, fourteen year-old Ida's experience teaching in her rural one-room schoolhouse brought her to the attention of Trudy, the local inspector.  In this sequel, Trudy invites Ida to move into town to attend high school.  Life in Steamboat Springs is drastically different from home and Ida has to cope with telephones, trains, and indoor plumbing amongst other modern marvels.  But it isn't just modern technology that Ida has to adjust to; there are all sorts of new modern ideas.  Steamboat Springs, like everywhere in 1925, is awash with new beliefs about culture, politics, and women's position in society.  For independent and string-willed Ida, the ideas are a revelation, but when she finds the more traditional and conservative principal of the school threatening to expel her, Ida has to decide what is more important:  her beliefs or her future?

A good historical novel for young readers that exposes readers to a variety of issues including women's enfranchisement (and the reaction against it), classism, and rural poverty.  Ida's stubbornness is touted as far more of a virtue than it probably is, but the book's allegiance to standing up for your beliefs at all costs is unequivocally clear.  A fast paced and enjoyable read.

Rosie Loves Jack, by Mel Darbon

Rose has Downs Syndrome and her boyfriend Jack suffered a brain injury that makes him now prone to violent outbursts.  Despite how often Rose's Mom assures her that she is capable and independent, no one seems to believe that they are really in love.  But Rose knows that when they are together Rose can be Rose and Jack can be Jack.  When Jack gets sent away to another facility and the two of them are separated, Rose is miserable.  And when she discovers that her parents are intercepting Jack's letters because they want to separate her and Jack, she decides that she needs to find Jack so they can be together.  

She figures out a plan and runs away from home.  At first, everything goes well, but when winter storms cancel the trains, Rose has to navigate the not-so-nice streets of London.  But she persists because she absolutely needs to get to Jack.

Told in Rose's voice, Darbon does an outstanding job of portraying a confusing and often threatening world as seen through the eyes of her young neurodivergent protagonist.  That's a real challenge and Darbon is clever in her way of depicting Rose's fine observational skills with in the bounds of her challenges at communication.  Some of the scenes in the book are downright terrifying, but the book avoids gratuitous melodrama in their depiction.  Rose herself shows inspiring fortitude and strength throughout but in a way which respects the challenges she experiences in her life.

Down Came the Rain, by Jennifer Mathieu

In the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, two Houston teens struggle with how to come to terms with the way that the storm uprooted their lives.

Eliza comes from a well-off family, but that didn't protect them from the flood waters and they have been forced to move in with other family while their house is rebuilt.  Meanwhile, the flooding of her school means that she will now be taking classes at a neighboring high school, where the students are traditionally disadvantaged. 

Eliza, who has been concerned with climate change for some time, sees Harvey are a warning that she must work harder to reverse the damage, knowing that it may be too late.  She decides to take action and puts together a club to educate her fellow students and promote more sustainable practices at school.

Javier was much luckier.  There wasn't any damage at his place, which is good since his family would never have been able to afford to rebuild, but the hurricane still has left its mark.  Whenever it rains now, Javier gets frightened and curls up into a ball.  He's falling apart but doesn't understand why.  Into his world (and his high school) comes Eliza and her club seems the perfect antidote for what is causing his fears.  It doesn't hurt that he finds Eliza inspiring and attractive.

While the club's efforts promise lots of positive changes, Eliza becomes frustrated at her inability to speed up the changes that she knows the world needs.  She loses her perspective, causing her to commit a terrible error that could well ruin both of their lives and derail their goals.

While at times preachy, the story is an entertaining and engaging young teen book about climate change anxiety.  It also takes on classism and racism, but not in any particularly new way.  For me, the most notable thing was the effort that Mathieu put in to showing adults struggling with the aftermath of the hurricane as well.  The teachers, in particular, were much more fleshed out as people than they commonly are (naturally enough, as the author is a school teacher).  This carried over to a really nice depiction of the troubled relationship between Eliza and her Dad.  It wasn't so much that the adults were the subject, but it was nice to give them a little depth and show that it wasn't only the kids who were hurt.

The Language of Cherries, by Jen Marie Hawkins

Evie has been yanked out of her home in Miami, where her friends and Abuela are, and transplanted in rural Iceland by her father.  Stuck in a world with cold summers and a night that never grows dark, she feels disconnected.  But then she discovers a near magical cherry orchid that inspires her to create the most amazing paintings and causes her to meet Oskar.

Oskar has every reason to despise Americans.  It was an American tourist who caused the accident where his family were killed.  Five years later, Oskar hasn't been able to get over the loss and it has afflicted him with a stutter that he self-medicates with marijuana.  But despite her nationality, there's something about Evie that draws him close:  her paintings.  She has somehow drawn pictures of his family and of events from his childhood that she could not possibly have known about.  He is obsessed with finding out why.

Embarrassed by his speech problems, he stays mute around her and she  in turn misinterprets this as a language barrier.  Liberated by the idea that he can't understand her, she opens up and freely confesses her innermost thoughts -- her anger at her mother, her longing for her Abuela back in Miami, and her loneliness.  The more she confides, the more Oskar realizes he can't continue to let this go on.  He needs to come clean, but worries about what will happen when she learns the truth.

An extremely slow-paced and lyrical work full of unusual eclectic elements: Evie's Cuban heritage, Oskar's exotic mix of taciturn Scandinavian and pagan Scots, and touches of magic through the cherry trees.  The blurbs describe this as magical realism, but it isn't really that grandiose.  Instead, this is more a subtle supernatural element that enlivens but doesn't distract.  The characters are all quite memorable, but it is more of a study than a story.  The plot alludes to whole slew of plot points (e.g., forgiveness, mother-daughter conflict, intergenerational understanding, and coming of age) but the book is more of a mood piece and there's very little development.

Lola at Last, by J C Peterson

Lola returns from a disastrous year in France, to where she was sent after a scandal last summer.  She's determined to regain her position as a queen bee at school.  Instead, goaded by her deletant ex-boyfriend, she nearly burns up her brother-in-law's yacht.  Threatened with arrest for her (unintentional!) act of arson, she is offered an alternative: spending the summer in a wilderness program for young women.  Lola, whose idea of roughing it would be being seen in public in drug store make-up, is horrified.  But given the alternative, she reluctantly accepts her fate.

It's very rough going.  Lola is a mean girl and a terrible snob.  Unaccustomed to having to face consequences or take responsibility for herself, she's singularly unprepared for hiking nature trails.  So, she stumbles from one bad move to another, alienating everyone around her until she has no one left.  Forced to finally owns up to her situation, she manages to navigate her redemption.  Part of that involves shedding her toxic former friends and ex-boyfriend and finding new (and healthier) relationships.  Reconciling with her twin sister is also part of the equation.

Loosely based on Pride and Prejudice, this book is lively and quick reading.  I imagine that for fans of the original, the story will be seen as amusing and clever.  For myself, I found Lola too grating, nasty, and unsympathetic to ever really engage with.  Lydia Bennet worked as a character because of the time period in which she was living, but in the contemporary world a vain young woman who delights in knocking others down really don't succeed.  That Lola wins the nice boy and learns how to make a sincere apology in the end is not enough -- modern society has much higher expectations for young women.  Were I to meet Lola IRL, I would almost certainly dislike her and I would never trust her.

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth, by Andrew Joseph White

In this depiction of alternative Victorian England, there is a Veil which separates the living from the dead and it is the duty of Speakers to guard that barrier.  The Speakers are all men and if a woman should appear with the abilities of a Speaker (signified by having violet eyes), she is persecuted and suppressed.  Silas Bell, a sixteen year-old trans boy aches to become a Speaker himself, but since society views him as a girl, it is impossible.  However, Silas is crafty and bravely impersonates a candidate for initiation.  When he is found is found out, he is sent to Braxton, an asylum and finishing school for girls who haven't learned to accept their place in society.

That's when things start getting very scary.  Silas quickly notices that the Veil is particularly thin around the school, a sign of unsettled spirits.  The Headmaster, it turns out, collects souvenir trophies of  the people he's killed and their desecration haunts the place.  But there is deeper evil afoot.  The students at the school are disappearing in particularly gruesome ways -- through medical experiments conducted in the basement.  But by the time Silas uncovers the full extent of the horror (and the widespread involvement of the men around her) it may be too late to do anything about it.

Beyond the extremely graphic depictions of eviscerations, involuntary surgeries (without anesthesia), and lots of blood, triggers in this novel include rape, molestation, bullying, and self-harm.  In other words, there's an awful lot of difficult material to digest here.  Personally, I found that I needed to take breaks (particularly in the second half of the book where the scenes become notably more intense).

So, why read it at all?  Despite being a painful story, I found it compelling because it is very well written and because much of the tortures described in the book are based on the real abuses committed by the medical profession in the period.  It is a work of fiction, but raises many uneasy questions about how we define abnormality and deviance.  Fans of Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish will be in their element.  Readers with sensitive feels should almost certainly avoid this book.

Actually Super, by Adi Alsaid

After enduring the past few years of social turmoil, high school senior Isabel despairs that the world more full of bad than good.  In response, she has withdrawn and become obsessed with a chat forum called "Actually Super" where members report sightings of real-life superheroes.  These "supers" are people with secret supernatural powers and devoted to using them for good.  The evidence is scant and no one can point definitively to one of these supers, but Isabel is hooked.  Losing herself in the search for these defenders of humanity, she drops out of school and sets off on a tour of the world to find them.  The road trip that ensues takes her from her home in Michigan to Tokyo, Southeast Asia, Argentina, and finally Mexico.  Her search  is as much spiritual as geographic, opening her mind to the true potential of humans to be both good and bad, and revealing unexpected truths about our longing for superheroes in a world of uncertainty.

Ostensibly a spectacular road trip, this fascinating spiritual work about what ultimately makes us good and bad is a strikingly original work.  I was drawn in by Isabel's grasping for meaning and value in a world that has grown so cynical and distrustful of such searches.  When I was growing up, there were a number of popular novels that combined good storytelling with philosophical exploration -- where a fantastic journey led to enlightenment (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, The World According to Garp, and Illusions amongst others) but that style of novel writing has largely fallen out of fashion.  Alsaid, whose previous work (Before Takeoff) was about the Rapture taking place at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, is a bold enough writer to dust off this old form.  

The result is a book that, while set in the current day, becomes timeless in its universal search for meaning.  It could not occur at a better time.  We know that the past few years have been particularly hard on the mental health of young people. In our age full of cynical politics, climate change, pandemic lockdowns, and short attention spans, Actually Super speaks to recapturing meaning and appreciating the small kindness that we can all do -- the ways we can all become superheroes.  A book like this calls on the reader to set aside the harmful messages and look for goodness instead in the little things that make us so similar to each other all around the world.  It's an inspiration and an unforgettable read.

Reggie and Delilah's Year of Falling, by Elise Bryant

The trope of the young couple who never quite manage to hitch up gets a turbo charged treatment in this cute, but ultimately overdrawn romance of near misses and misunderstandings.  Through the course of an entire year, Reggie and Delilah agonize over whether to get together or not.  You can agonize along with them for nearly 400 pages.  Don't get me wrong, it's delightful and charming and these two young people make for a very appealing couple.  You just wish they'd get over their anxieties and get on with it!

Reggie is a rarity -- a black kid who loves Dungeons & Dragons.  And while it's the most important thing in his life, he can't share it with his family for fear of their rejection.  Reggie's passion isn't just limited to playing, but also to social criticism.  His anonymously written essays on racial prejudice in roleplaying games has gathered quite a lot of attention -- attention that won't translate to anything because Reggie is afraid of going public.  That's all so much unlike this girl he's met named Delilah who is an amazing singer and is so bravely performing in front of big crowds at local gigs.  He knows that she would never go for a loser nerd like him.

If you asked her, Delilah would never see herself the way Reggie sees her.  She has never felt particularly talented until she helps out some friends in a garage band and steps in front of a microphone for them.  As their singer, the band's popularity takes off, but her bandmates refuse to acknowledge her contribution and won't let her provide artistic input.  Should she risk everything by standing up for herself?  Looking at Reggie and how famous he is with his writing and how confident he seems to be, Delilah feels inspired to step up.

Each of them, convinced that the other is braver than they could ever be, try to be brave and become better people.  It has a positive end, but driven by lies and wishful thinking, there is a tragic nature to all this posturing.  When all things are revealed, can they salvage enough of their relationship to stay together?

All of this makes for a good romance that generally works well.  Beyond the romance, I found their struggle with racial identity interesting as well.  It was very organic and didn't carry the heaviness of a message book but also didn't feel like a whitewash.  Their racial identity informs who they are without being the only thing in who they are and a lot of good things about that got said through their mouths.  My only complaint is the one I noted at the beginning of this review: the drama drags out way too long.  A little less of that would have made for a better book.

Out of Character, by Jenna Miller

Cass is obsessed with on-line role-playing and her home is with a group of other teen girls who are writing scenes based on the Tide Wars duology.  While Cass has struggled with online addiction for some time, having her mother move out on her recently hasn't helped matters.  

It's not that she's particularly unpopular (her boyfriend -- before she decided that she was a lesbian -- is the school's quarterback and her best friend is one of his teammates), but that roleplaying allows her to escape from her real world problems.  Over the years, she has developed close bonds with the other players and feels closer to them than to her real life friends.

In the real world, however, no one knows about these activities.  All that time online is hurting her grades, but her father just assumes that the problems at school are due to her Mom. Cass is afraid to let him know what is really happening for fear that he'll cut her off and she'll lose the only support she feels that she has.  Meanwhile, she's hidden this geekier side of herself from her friends, for fear of their judgment of her.

When Taylor, a girl at school, on whom Cass has long had a crush, asks her out, Cass jumps at the opportunity.  Things grow complicated balancing the new romance with her secret online life.  While she freely tells the girls in her group about Taylor, she can't bring herself to Taylor about them.  More awkwardly, Cass discovers that she has feelings for a girl in the group and must decide whether she would rather be with this girl or with Taylor.

Cass has some serious of character flaws that make her pretty hard to like.  While she cleans up her act by the end, the way she treats her friends (and Taylor in particular) is pretty reprehensible.  There were definitely points where I was tempted to put the book down.  The whole lying-to-your-friends thing never ends well (especially in novels) and watching this train wreck unfold over the first 250 pages is pretty painful.  So, a lot is riding on those last 100 pages!  Cass redeems herself by being strong and communicative, and her ability to own her faults and (largely) address them.

On the other hand, I really enjoyed the story and the representation of online role-play.  As someone who does a lot of RP himself, I can totally appreciate the dynamics of the activity and the way it can easily become an obsession.  The group's actual writing wasn't terribly good, but RP rarely is.  Miller largely gets the fact that while it is game and a fantasy, for those people who participate in it, you develop real friendships and invest real emotions into it.  And yes, RL (real life) is truly more complicated than RP, the dynamic of group on-line interaction can get pretty dramatic.  A late scene, for example, where one of the players quit their group was devastating in a way that felt very familiar.

Plan A, by Deb Caletti

In the summer after junior year, Ivy is planning for college, not for a pregnancy.  But when her test shows a plus sign, she has to make arrangements.  There's no doubt in her mind that she wants an abortion, but in Paris, Texas that's not a simple thing to accomplish.  Thanks to Texas's six-week limit, she can no longer have the procedure performed here, so she makes plans to go to Oregon where her grandmother lives.  She slips out of town with her boyfriend (who's not the father) and they embark on a road trip to Oregon.

At this point, the novel takes an odd turn as they take on a fairly leisurely road trip, visiting towns that are the namesakes of famous world cities (Rome, Lima, etc.).  It's a little hard to understand why they drag out the trip this way and it slows down the pace of novel considerably, but Caletti has her reasons.  Along the way, women come out and share with Ivy that they too have been in her position and that they also have had abortions.  By the time Ivy gets to Oregon, she finds that she is far from alone.

Caletti's purpose is to demystify (and de-shame) abortions but pointing out that, as uncomfortable as the public discourse is, there's plenty of private conversation going on as a large number of women have gone through the experience.  The book occasionally gets a bit preachy on the subject, but I thought it was a good talking point and allows the novel to make a constructive contribution to the issue.  

Another theme in this book are frequent violations of the fourth wall as Caletti calls out the tendency to overdramatize abortions in novels on the subject.  Ivy has some emotional turmoil, but she never wavers in her conviction that she's making the right decision.  The procedure itself is dealt with matter-of-factly and concisely with no complicated preliminaries.  There are not angry protestors, no last minute hysterics,  and no drama at all.  The only real tension is a bunch of petty harassment in her hometown (which seemed largely unnecessary and gratuitous).  Her point is that abortion is only as dramatic as we care to make it.

Summer of a Thousand Pies, by Margaret Dilloway

After Cady's father turns up at her school high on drugs, he ends up in jail and Cady is sent to live with an aunt she's never met.  Cady is sure her father will get out soon and bring her home, even though she knows that he's rarely provided much of a home so far.  Still, Cady is pretty stubborn and when she wants something, she sticks to it!

Aunt Shell runs a pie shop and it's struggling.  Cady doesn't see what the big deal is -- how hard can it be to bake a pie?  But when her first attempt fails spectacularly, she finds she has a lot to learn.  It takes a thousand pies to learn how to make the perfect one, her aunt tells her.  Cady's determined to try.  She's also convinced that if her aunt would only change her business plan, the shop could be successful.  But Aunt Shell is as stubborn as her niece and a test of wills develops between them.

This summer, it will take a lot more than a thousand pies to change Cady and Aunt Shell's world for the better.  It will take trust, a family bond, courage, and an openness to accepting a little help.

A pleasing middle reader without a huge amount of surprises.  Dilloway attempts to add some gravitas by bring in some undocumented workers to start a dialogue about immigration, but it's a half-hearted effort and doesn't add to the story.  Instead, Dilloway's message of opening your heart and being unafraid to take risks has a more lasting message for the reader.

If Tomorrow Doesn't Come, by Jen St. Jude

Avery has had a rough first semester at Eaton College. She's washed out of the soccer team, making people question how she ever got a scholarship.  And her grades, always a source of pride in the past, are slipping.  She can't make any friends and her old friends from home are slipping away.  But more than anything, she feels an overwhelming sadness and a desire to just end things.  She decides to end her life.

But as she is in the process of drowning herself in the river, her plans are interrupted by the shocking news that the world itself is ending.  An asteroid is hurtling towards Earth and will collide in nine days -- ending all human life for certain.  The result is global panic as people scramble to reunite with their loved ones and struggle to find meaning in their final days.  For Avery, it means abandoning her plans and reflecting through flashbacks upon how she got to this point.  In the process she discovers that people do love her and there is value to life.

Certainly an unusual story with its original combination of plotlines.  While it sounded intriguing, I didn't find it worked all that well.  Neither the end of the world nor clinical depression can really be addressed in a meaningful way in such a limited window and that sets the novel up to fail.  The pacing of the two stories is necessarily different. The end-of-the-world story is very immediate and very intense, while the flashbacks showing Avery's descent into despair are moody and languid.  Compounding the impossible stories is the fact that the book consists of almost entirely false starts.  It's hard to say what one could do in only nine days that would have meaning, but it really isn't clear why what these characters actually do during it amounts to a compelling read.  

Well-written but the concepts of the two stories never really pans out.

A Song Only I Can Hear, by Barry Jonsberg

Rob is painfully shy and subject to panic attacks, but when he falls in love with Destry Camberwick at first sight, he knows he needs to make her notice him.  But how?  Everyone has advice for him:  from his cantankerous grandfather, to his parents, to his best friend Andrew.  However, it's when he starts to receive mysterious anonymous text messages, that things start to change.  They lay out a series of challenges that find Rob becoming a (surprisingly good) soccer goalie, performing Shakespeare in a talent show, and standing up for a cause he believes in.  Ultimately, the changes transcend his pursuit for Destry and expand into Rob becoming fearless about revealing his true self.

The majority of the book is actually hilariously funny.  Helped along by the irreverent behavior of Rob's grandfather and Rob's own snarky observations about his school and family, this breezy read (I finished the entire 300-page book in an afternoon) is good fun.  I would have been happy to have it end like that, but the author takes it in an entirely different direction that to me felt tortured.  If you go back and re-read carefully there is some foreshadowing for the ending but it really doesn't have to be present (see below if you don't mind spoilers).  And the book's final chapter, where the fourth wall is dropped altogether, really just seemed like nonsense to me.

<Spoiler> There will be readers who will feel it is really important to the story that Rob is trans, but honestly I found no value in that reveal except to give this book a new audience and an additional agenda it didn't need.  There's very little in this story that relies upon Rob's gender identity or birth sex.  Without it, this is a good story about a boy named Rob who had a grandfather who helped him find himself.  And at the end of the day, it doesn't matter that Rob was once named Roberta.</Spoiler>

All Alone With You, by Amelia Diane Coombs

When senior Eloise discovers that she needs some community service on her transcript if she's to have a hope of getting accepted by USC, she begrudgingly signs up.  The placement (at an agency that supports seniors through phone calls and home visits) is completely outside Eloise's comfort zone.  She's an anti-social loner who hates talking with strangers, but she needs the credit and she's driven and stubborn enough that she dives in.  The results are pretty disastrous until a coworker named Austin takes her to visit Marianne Landis.

Marianne is a septuagenarian rock star who once fronted a group called the Laundromats, who had a string of hits in the 1970s and early 1980s.  And, as stubborn as Eloise is, she makes a perfect match for curmudgeonly Marianne.  Eloise, who never thought she needed anyone or their help, discovers that Marianne is a fount of wisdom.  Most pressingly so, when Eloise finds to her horror that she is falling in love with Austin.

An above average romance with a set of life lessons in it.  Eloise and Austin are fine in their roles, but the romance follows the fairly conventional storyline and won't surprise at all.  Marianne, however is an absolute hoot and I could well have enjoyed a book about her alone.  I had a mental picture the whole time of Joan Jett and it wouldn't surprise me if Ms. Jett partly inspire the character (although there are plenty of differences).  The idea of a rock star having life lessons to hand out like a rock-and-roll Master Miyagi is hilarious in itself but who doesn't enjoy a story about a youngster learning at the feet of a senior?  The book has feel good written all over it and a brisk-paced storytelling made this an enjoyable light read.

The Other Side of Infinity, by Jean F. Smith

Nick has only been a lifeguard for three weeks when he gets his first rescue.  But instead of diving in and saving the man (who turns out to be a popular teacher at his school), he panics and freezes up. It is a swimmer nearby named December who pulls the man out of the water and starts CPR. But she doesn't want to be involved and flees the scene before help arrives and everyone assumes that Nick is a hero.

December's presence (and presence of mind) was not coincidental.  Ever since she was seven years old and her mother walked out of her life, she's been able to see the future.  In this case, she knew the man was about to drown and when Nick did nothing, she intervened, saved the man, and altered the timeline.  But as she did so, she foresaw that she and Nick would fall in love and that shortly thereafter he would die.

To avert that preordained outcome, she tries to avoid him altogether, but Nick can't stay away and she doesn't want him to do so.  In fact, not only do they fall in love, but he promises to help her find her Mom -- a search which sets off a tragic chain of events, not all of which are foreseen.

In brief, it is an often confusing story with a fascinating circularity.  So many subplots and they all eventually tie up together.  This is complex and madly clever writing and a definite recommendation for people who enjoy stories about fate.  While I enjoyed the story, I was less engaged by the characters in that story, finding it hard to really like either Nick or December.  And was also disappointed that some elements of the story (like Nick's dyslexia or a school bully with sexual predatory behavior) were so underdeveloped -- a predictable problem in such a complex story.

The Paper Museum, by Kate S. Simpson

In the distant future, no one uses paper anymore and books have been consigned to the Paper Museum.  It's a sad and neglected place -- no one ever comes to visit it, but Lydia loves taking care of the old books and searching for abandoned bookmarks within them.  

Taking care of the museum has always been in the hands of Lydia's family, but since the mysterious disappearance of her parents and the subsequent departure of her beloved Uncle Lem, it's just been her and her mercurial Uncle Renald.  All these missing family members could not happen at a worse time:  technology is failing and the Mayor is convinced that it is the fault of unlawful acts of magic being practiced by Lydia's family.  Books are not only of dubious value but strongly associated with unlawful magic. The Mayor is on a mission to shut the museum down and destroy the books.  It falls on Lydia and her friends to stop him.

It's a quirky middle reader fantasy which I wanted to love for its clever observations on the magical power of books and its critique of how technology is in conflict with that magic.  It is a clever concept, but the storytelling is frustrating. In a mystery, one wants clues and at least the illusion that, if you read carefully, you could figure out what was going on before everything is revealed in the end.  But here there are no such clues.  Instead, we have to wait to the end to have things revealed to us by the author.  That's sort of the opposite of the magic that Simpson is trying to talk about.

Take, by Jennifer Bradbury

When her father disappears, Cara fears the worst. After all, it's not the first time this has happened.  He's done this before when he's gone off his meds, but usually she is able to find him within a few days.  This time, when Cara drops by his house, he's been gone for a week or more.  She finds maps, books, and (mysteriously) photographs of Japanese concentration camps pinned up on the wall.  More seriously, she finds his climbing gear missing.

When he was still healthy, Dad was a great climber and taught and Cara to be one as well. But climbing is a team effort and he's in no shape to be going it alone.  Whatever fool mission he has developed, he is in trouble.  So, with the awkward help of her ex-boyfriend, Cara searches for her Dad and tries to unravel what has made him go off the rails this time.  It's a search that will take her dep into her family's history and into a dangerous ascent.

Interspersed with a series of flashbacks of an ill-fated romance between a CCC worker and a Japanese-American farmgirl at the start of World War II, Take is an ambitious and ultimately uplifting story of love, family, and fateful choices, wrapped in a mountain climbing drama.  Bradbury does an amazing job providing a primer on climbing and the jargon of mountain climbers that guides the reader through a suspenseful journey into the mind and the madness of the sport.  And the contra positioning of mountain climbing and Japanese detention during WWII, while seemingly unrelated, comes together in a moving climax.

I'm Not Here to Make Friends, by Andrew Yang

Hotel California is the name of a obscure reality show whose special niche is that it features an all-Asian cast.  Sabine is a big fan of the show and is ecstatic when she wins the opportunity to star in the third season.  Still, she's apprehensive because she's from Moline IL and not nearly as sparkly as her co-stars who all hail from big cities.

Sparkliest of all is Yoona, who has her own demons to face.  She's trying to prove she doesn't deserve the reputation she has back home of being a mean girl by being super nice to everyone on the show.  But her sarcastic wit rubs sensitive Sabine the wrong way and the two girls are quickly at each other's throats.  

Sabine worries that house is largely allied with Yoona and wonders how she'll make it through the season, but a helpful assistant producer feeds her advice and guides her on how to take charge of the situation.  When that advice starts making things worse, Yoona gets suspicious that the producers of the show are trying to pump up (not diffuse) the drama in search of ratings.  To prevent that from happening, Sabine and Yoona will have to learn to trust each other and break from their past behaviors.

It's a silly storyline that explores classism and bullying in the light context of a reality show fantasy.  Readers will enjoy the way the story shifts perspectives, starting off by portraying Sabine sympathetically and making Yoona seem scheming but then switching the roles about half way.  That serves a nice reminder of how perceptions can be easily misled, which in turn preps us to accept that both girls need to learn to be less judgmental.  That's about as heavy as things get.  This isn't a story that one should take too seriously, but it is certainly entertaining. It's also surprisingly chaste for a story about largely unsupervised teens and only a little rough language pulls this out of a G rating.

This Is the Way the World Ends, by Jen Wilde

Waverly is an autistic scholarship student at Webber Academy and taking the first step on a career path to graduate from Yale Med and become a neurologist.  It's taken sacrifices from her family and great acts of generosity from the school to make this possible.  Waverley's grateful, but she can't help noticing the chasm that exists between her family and the families of her classmates.  

The contrast could not be starker when it comes to the school's Masquerade, where tickets cost $10,000 a piece.  Waverley could never find that sort of money so she isn't planning on going.  But then one of her classmates, Caroline gives her a ticket and loans her the fancy gown she was going to wear on the condition that Waverly pretends to be her (being a masked ball, no one will know that it's really Waverly in the gown0.  And so Waverly find herself sneaking in, under disguise.

That's when things start to go off the rails.  Waverly finds herself witness to a murder and uncovers a plot to take over the world, being led by the headmaster of the Academy.  It's a plan that that kicks off when the lights go out all over the world because of a solar flare.  With time running out, Waverly and her friends must find a way to stop the plans, all while dodging a fabulous party that is taking place around them.

The plot is absurd, but gains gravitas (and/or gets weighed down) by including lots of biting social criticism.  It's heavy-handed stuff. The leaders of the school and its supporters are connected with all the sources of wealth and power (politics, finance, technology, etc.) while Waverly and her gang of scholarship misfits are neuro-divergent, LGBT, and minorities.  It is literally the kids against the 1%.  That doesn't always work and there are several unintended humorous moments.  But occasionally, as when Waverly has her climactic showdown with the headmaster, some rather thoughtful dialog emerges and deep questions get asked.

Where the Sky Lives, by Margaret Dilloway

Tuesday Beals may only be twelve years old, but she knows a lot about Zion National Park, thanks to the fact that she's grown up there.  Her mother is the Park's staff archeologist, charged with researching old Indian sites and Mormon settlements.  Thanks to her recently-deceased uncle, she's a budding astronomer -- a pastime that is aided by Zion's legendary dark skies.

However, that darkness is about to change.  A developer has bought a ranch that abuts the Park and is planning a major housing project which will impact not only the skies around Zion but also the beauty and wildlife in the area.  Tuesday is determined to stop them.  The discovery of an endangered species on the land becomes a catalyst.  With the help of a social media influencer, she tries to bring publicity to the cause.

Tuesday is a fantastic protagonist.  She's persistent and intelligent, but in an age appropriate way that makes her very believable.  She's also super observant, intuitive, and touch averse -- traits that seem to be included to imply she may be on the Spectrum (although nothing is ever said about any of that).  The story itself is a great adventure, lovingly detailing Zion National Park and life at a ranger station.  Dilloway does a nice job of explaining some of the issues that come up in the story (land conservation, grief, changing friendships, and a few others) in a very age-appropriate way.  Younger children will appreciate the adventure and the animals.  Older ones will find inspiration in an outspoken heroine who doubts her ability -- as only a kid -- to change the world but who tries nonetheless to do so.

Brighter Than the Sun, by Daniel Aleman

By virtue of having been born in the United States and having a friend with whom to stay, Sol is able to attend high school in San Diego.  Every morning, she rises early and crosses the border and then crosses back over to Tijuana in the evening.  

With the family's restaurant business failing, her father asks her to try to find an afterschool job in San Diego.  Once she does and starts working before and after school, it is no longer feasible to go home every night so she starts staying over with her friend's family.  While this brings money home, it causes tension back in Tijuana as everyone struggles to adjust to her absence.  And for Sol, it causes internal conflict as she tries to decide if she is more at home in Tijuana or in San Diego, where the brightest future seems to lie.

This moving story of a family struggling to pool their resources to help their (equally hard working) children reach their dreams is powerful stuff.  Sol fights hard trying to earn money for her family while maintaining her academics, all under the strain of a daily border crossing.  But it is a team effort, for while her struggle is inspiring, it is equally clear that she has a number of allies along the way that make all of this possible in the first place.

The story also deals with significant contemporary issues, including racism and homophobia.  It depicts the unique and peculiar energy of the border zone where one can totally change worlds in a few steps.  It addresses the politics of immigration without depicting a single immigrant. I found it rich and populated with compelling characters that made it a pleasurable way to spend a day.

Cleaning Up, by Leanne Lieberman

Jess has plans.  She wants to finish high school, go to college, and start a landscaping business.  To do those things, she's going to have to save a lot of money.  She cleans houses and tries to keep her alcoholic and drug-addicted Dad from spending everything.  While there is a teacher at school who helps her (and turns a blind eye to the neglect she is undergoing), for the most part she is on her own.

While cleaning a new house during the summer, she discovers a diary that belongs to a girl who disappeared.  While she knows it is wrong to pry, she starts reading it and finds herself imagining a life with this mystery girl.  But the more she learns about the girl, the more she starts to lose her own sense of self.  Jess's success has always depended upon being disciplined and driven.  Now she risks losing that focus.

A nice character study of a troubled young woman who works hard against the odds.  There are definitely things about her I did not like.  I found her self-centered and stubborn, unwilling to accept help and dishonest (and never mind the whole invasion of privacy thing!).  But at the same time, she deals with great challenges, works very hard, and is surprisingly resourceful.  Lieberman writes in a sort of dumbed-down way that suggests that she's intentionally trying to pick up reluctant readers and I think that's an ideal target for this story of a girl coming from a lot of disadvantages but learning to navigate her way to success.

Borrow My Heart, by Kasie West

Wren likes her rules.  They keep her out of trouble and protect her from trusting others too much.  That's important when because she's still dealing with a mother who abandoned her family when she was ten.  But one day at her BFF's coffee shop, she meets a complete stranger and makes an split second decision that breaks those rules.  

Asher has been chatting online with a girl named Gemma whom he barely knows.  He's supposed to meet her for the first time at the coffee shop, but she's standing him up and everyone knows it, especially his friend Dale who's loudly planning his humiliation.  Wren takes pity on him and impulsively decides to present herself as Gemma.  Her intent is only to play this charade long enough to get Dale off of Asher's back, but she never finds a good time to come clean.  So, she ends up fake dating him, which naturally turns into real dating.  Needless to say, many more rules are broken.

In addition to this rather predictable love story, there's the parallel (but comparatively underdeveloped) story of Wren considering reconciling with her mother.  To me, this seemed like a very different plotline and the two mesh poorly.  It is like reading two separate books, both of which are fine in their own right, but that don't really belong together.  The storytelling moves along briskly enough, there's some lovely comedy with the animals (and with the unloved mutt Bean in particular), and the dynamics between Wren and Asher are fine, but there isn't much substance to this light summer read.

Medusa, by Jessie Burton (ill by Olivia Lomenech Gill)

Life in exile is lonely for Medusa.  Her sisters are often away and she is left in a cave on an island, tending the snakes that have replaced her hair.  One day, a boy named Perseus arrives on the island.  Both her sisters and the goddess Athena have warned Medusa that she must not allow herself to be seen, so she hides.  The boy is persistent though in his desire to meet her.  

They settle for a friendship (of sorts) speaking to each other through a wall.  Perseus relates his story of woe and Medusa reciprocates.  They find commonalities and bond, with Perseus pledging his love and Medusa fantasizing that she might be able to reveal her disfiguration and still be accepted by the boy.  However, when Perseus realizes who Medusa really is and she in turn comes to know the reason he has come to the island.

Feminist retellings of Greek myths (and the story of Medusa in particular) have been done before.  In modern eyes, Medusa's fate is a shocking tale of double standards and victim blaming, so it makes good material.  What makes this version so interesting is the presentation -- the illustrations from Olivia Lomenech Gill.  This is a beautiful book.  Gill's deceptively simple drawings add great depth to the story.  Combined with Burton's spare text, the book is truly greater than its parts.  This is really one of my favorite retellings to date.  It doesn't break new ground but is a remarkable package.

A Walk Between Raindrops, by Amalie Jahn

Elise and her little sister Wylla have avoided each other for the past year.  Ever since Elise betrayed her by getting her boyfriend arrested, Wylla has been giving Elise the silent treatment.  But a bond of sibling rivalry drives both girls to compete to win a prize which sends them, along with a series of misfits, on a two week, all-expense paid trip of some of the greatest roller coasters in the United States.  Forced to interact in the tight confines of the bus and shared motel rooms, the two sisters find the courage to confront each other and all of the raw hurt that they feel.

A solid premise (a rollicking ride through the East Coast's finest amusement parks and iconic roller coasters, combined with some hearty exploration of sibling rivalry and anxiety) largely fails to crystalize into a compelling story.  For the most part, it's the complexity of juggling so many characters and such a large number of subplots that makes this story hard to track.  And the reveals, which are introduced gradually throughout the story (leading up to a major -- but predictable -- plot twist towards the end) felt inorganic and forced. 

Unrelated to the writing (but always an unnecessary distraction), I was disappointed at the poor quality of the editing of the book.  Not only were there spelling errors and missing words, but also layout issues which suggested that no one gave the book a final review (or didn't care to fix the mistakes that are there).

The Half Life of Love, by Brianna Bourne

Flint knows he's going to die in 41 days.  Almost eight years ago, he experienced the twinge of his half-life -- the body's indicator that it has passed the mid point of existence.  This isn't intuition.  In this alt universe, it's scientific fact that, if something specific (accident, violence, etc.) doesn't get him, the body's own "kill-switch" will take him out.  Ever since he experienced his half-life moment and entered the second part of his life, he's tried to avoid emotional attachment and keep his feelings to himself to spare his friends and family.  All of that changes when he meets September.

Just a few months ago, September lost her four year-old sister (her half-life occurred when she was two).  She hasn't been able to come to terms with the injustice of losing a sibling so young, but she has a chance of changing the way it works.  She's a teen science genius and doing an internship at the Half-Life Institute, where they are searching for a way to prolong life and beat the half-life.  Motivated and distracted by her grief, she's on the verge of a breakthrough.

The two of them meet by happenstance and neither admits their  true situation, which allows them to fall in love with each other.  Flint knows that he shouldn't be doing this in the last few days of his life (especially when he learns about September's grief), but his heart thinks otherwise. Eventually, the secrets will come out and nature will take its course.

An interesting premise that struggles a bit to establish itself.  Bourne addresses some of the contradictions of the set up, but wisely doesn't go too far into explaining how a world where people know exactly how long they will live actually works.  What it provides is fascinating food for thought about how one should live one's final days.  Is it worth getting an education when you know you won't live long enough to use it?  Is it worth being friends with someone you know is about to die?  What should one actually do as your "deathday" approaches?  Even concepts like ageism take on a different flavor when a persons actual longevity is known with such certainty.  It's a thought-provoking alternate reality.

The storytelling is nothing terribly memorable.  It's functional and well-paced, but I can't say that it was particularly outstanding.  Neither Flint nor September really caught my sympathy.  There's also lots of distracting detail that don't add much to the story.  For some reason, these characters actually attend high school between dying and saving the world.  Given that nothing actually happens at school, perhaps Bourne should have just set Flint's final 41 days in the middle of the summer?  Similarly, a best friend of Flint's pops up from time to time, but has no real impact beyond stealing time away from Flint and September.

Seven Percent of Ro Devereux, by Ellen O'Clover

With help from a family friend, Ro has developed a program called MASH which predicts your future based on the answers that you give to a series of behavioral questions.  It was intended as a senior project, but when she shares it with friends it spreads and goes viral.  Before she knows it, a local incubator wants to develop it and pitch it to a VC company making Ro famous and potentially very very rich.  Her father doesn't approve: he'd prefer she focus on college.  Her co-writer warns her that this is going to bite her in the end.  But Ro has dreamed of making it as a software designer and this seems to be her dream come true.  And it's even predicted by her own app.

There's a problem:  her app also predicts that she'll end up married to Miller, her former best friend.  And to prove to the world that the app actually works, Ro's going to have to make it look like she and Miller are hopelessly in love with each other.  In truth, they detest each other, but he agrees to go along with the charade until the VC company signs on in exchange for the money he needs to pay for college.  And so, Ro and Miller launch out, pitching the app to the media and trying to develop enough chemistry to get through the next few months.  Being a YA romance, you know what happens next between them.

I found the premise of an app that predicts the future not only silly but also morally wrong.  There is no such thing as "proven science" on how people answer questions (of any sort) or profound meaning that can be attributed to it.  The idea that a person's future can be 93% determined by those answers is ridiculous.  And the silliness of the premise is about the only thing that made its morally repugnant elements of predestination tolerable.  For, as Ro discovers in the end, there is an ethical problem with forecasting people's future (or at least convincing them that you can play god).  All of which made her realization at the end seem quaint and a bit dumb.  So, I hated the story.  

I liked the writing though.  O'Clover can create a well-paced story that makes even a silly plot readable.  I liked the characters and enjoyed the book.  So, I'll keep an eye open for her next book, which hopefully will feature something less cringeworthy for a premise.

Something More, by Jackie Khalilieh

Right before starting ninth grade, Palestinian-Canadian Jessie is diagnosed as autistic.  High functioning, her condition's not been particularly obvious to others.  They just considered her a bit weird.    Jessie struggles with understanding others and often has felts as if she was wearing a mask.  To avoid social situations, which she's always found challenging, she's kept to herself and been a bit of an outcast.  She isn't particularly comfortable discussing autism with others, but having an explanation comforts her.  Armed with that knowledge she pledges to make the year different:  she'll reach out and make friends, try out for drama, and maybe meet a boy (or two).

There's not much new here:  Jessie's love for 90s popular culture, the classic love triangle (bad boy Levi and sweet quiet Griffin), and having to sneak around behind the backs of her traditional ethnic parents.  Two elements -- the fact that she is autistic and her Palestinian roots -- are both attempts to breath originality into this otherwise by-the-numbers teen romance. Neither particular stands out because the author does so little with them.  

As much as Khallilieh wants to take her own experience as an autistic Palestinian and make a unique story, she doesn't seem to know how to present it as such.  Jessie sometimes misreads her best friends' behaviors, but so do most teenagers.  Jessie doesn't recognize that Griffin likes her as more than a friend, but that's the point of the romantic triangle trope.  In her afterward, Khalilieh acknowledges as much (noting that some neurotypical women may see themselves in Jessie's character) but still insists that there are differences.  I want to respect that but there's little in this story that separates Jessie from most other YA heroines.  If Jessie is different, somewhere in the story you have to explain how that is so.

One True Wish, by Lauren Kate

Once you are in sixth grade, you aren't supposed to believe in wish-granting fairies.  But that's OK, because when Phoebe (a wish-granting fairy) crash lands in Texas, she's incredulous herself -- because she doesn't believe in children!  However, if Phoebe is going to ever return to her home on the North Star, she's going to not only start believing but get Birdie, Gem, and Van to start making some serious wishes that she can grant.

What should they wish for?  Gem is struggling with body image problems, Birdie feels that her life-long friendship with Gem is falling apart and she doesn't know why, and Van (who is non-binary) misses their home in Ireland and is growing tired of being passed back and forth between their separated parents.  With all of their lives changing around them, there's in fact never been a better time to start believing in fairies!

Despite a promising synopsis and a potential tribute to J. M. Barrie, this is a disappointingly slapdash middle reader with a plethora of tropes and few ideas of what to do with them.  It's a story with tween girls, so let's talk about bras and periods!  It's a story with a non-binary character, so let's mention puberty blockers.  It's a story that takes place in Texas, so let's acknowledge that Van's plans for their future use of those blockers are being circumscribed by the State government.  But let's not actually do anything with any of these ideas.  Instead, there's a largely incomprehensibly story about finding the kids choosing their "truest" wishes and getting the fairy to grant them.  I found it to be a hot mess and gave up on trying to understand by the end.

The Museum of Lost and Found, by Leila Sales

Twelve year-old Vanessa has a lot on her mind. She is trying to understand why her childhood friend Bailey no longer wants to be her friend.  She's missing her father who is serving overseas somewhere in eastern Africa.  And finally, she's trying to figure out a way to stop picking at the skin on her cuticles.  It hurts and people around her think it's disgusting, but she can't seem to manage to stop.

After a particularly bad day, she goes on a walk and finds herself in front of an abandoned building.  Finding a way inside, she discovers it once was a museum and it still has the old display cases and even an abandoned painting inside.  This gives her the idea that she could use the space to stage her own exhibit dedicated to her lost friendship with Bailey.  She invites other kids to visit and some of them want to stage their own exhibits.  The building is large enough, so they open the whole thing up to other kids to stage their own exhibits, creating a groundswell of interest in exhibition.

While an original premise, this is a fairly typical middle grade story about friendships and family, which wraps up most of its issues in the end.  As an adult, I was a bit twitched about depicting children running around in an abandoned building.  More problematically, I found Vanessa a rather unsympathetic character.  She's bossy and vengeful, taking particular pleasure in using her exhibit to slander her former friend.  And while she reconciles with Bailey and makes some amends in the end, her instincts don't tend to lean towards kindness.

A Gentle Tyranny, by Jess Corban

In the 23rd century, a Matriarch and a council of female senators rule over the surviving world.  Two hundred years earlier as the world seemed bent on enslaving and subjugating women, there was a "liberation." In the ensuing years, males have been pacified and are now known as Gentles, serving woman in menial tasks.  

At eighteen, every young woman chooses her "destiny" (the career path that calls to her).  For Reina, she is pretty certain that she wishes to become a member of the elite praetorian guard -- the Alexia -- that keep order throughout the land on behalf of the Matriarch.  But Reina's grandmother, the Matriarch herself, has other ideas.  She is growing too old to rule and she wants to choose a successor -- Reina.  But to become Matriarch, there is a competition and Reina must prove herself a better candidate than the other women who want to rule.

Complicating matters is the recent stirring of unrest on the border.  Legend tells that two hundred years ago "Brutes" were entirely eliminated.  But now there are rumors of strong and savage men raiding settlements near the border and committing atrocities.  Have the Brutes returned?  It is a time for strength -- does Reina have the necessary will to fight off this uprising that threatens their civilization?  Grandmother isn't so sure and she has a secret agenda.

Dystopian novels have become rather too common and it's hard to find a really good stand out example.  However, this one rises to the top.  Not so much for the premise (which is riddled with holes) but for the writing and the attention to details.  It's a busy story with lots of power politics to navigate, but Corban manages to fit in a bit of family and even a proto-romance into the mix without ever really distracting from the overall story.  And I enjoyed the politics of this story, which touch on the conflicting nature of family loyalty and power politics.

The Immeasurable Depth of You, by Maria Ingrande Mora

Brynn obsesses about death and suffers from panic attacks.  When her Mom catches wind of a post that Brynn posted that reads like a suicide note, her mother freaks out.  Her phone is taken away and Brynn finds herself shipped down to Florida to spend the summer --without her phone or Internet -- with her Dad on a houseboat.  Cut off from her friends, Brynn explores the bayou around her Dad's boat and meets a friendly girl that she's attracted to named Skylar.  But when she tries to tell her father about Skylar, he gets upset:  Skylar committed suicide five years ago.

When Brynn later confronts Skylar, this ghost girl tells another story altogether:  yes, she's dead, but she was murdered.  Skylar can't recall any of the circumstances of her death, but Brynn finally has a strong sense of purpose.  She swears that she'll get to the bottom of it and get justice on Skylar's behalf.  That passion for the cause helps Brynn overcome many of her fears, but exposes buried pain and upsets both Brynn's parents and the bereft parents of Skylar.

A surprisingly poignant story about grief with a slight supernatural note to it.  Those latter elements never become distracting and the focus of the story remains firmly on Brynn taking on responsibility for her healing.  All of the characters are strong, but I particularly liked the adults, who are both respectful and respected (although Brynn has a terrible habit of sneaking off and breaking promises).  I'm somewhat less taken by the busy storyline which features several instances of peril largely unrelated to the story and thus grows distracting.  However, the story delivers a strong pay off in the end that makes this fast read very rewarding.

Dream to Me, by Megan Paasch

Still reeling from grief and feelings of guilt related to the recent death of her father, Eva and her half-sister Rhonda pull up stakes in New York and relocate to a small town in rural Washington.  Eva's great aunt bequeathed them the family mansion, which turns out to be an old house that is falling apart in the woods.  

The local residents want nothing to do with them.  Eva's people, it transpires, have long been rumored to be witches. It doesn't help things that, shortly after their arrival, people in town start falling into mysterious comas.  Suspicions circulate that Eva is casting hexes on the victims.  But while the comas are the work of magic, it is not Eva's doing.  Rather, as Eva learns, it is her destiny to rescue these people.  In order to do that, she must uncover a hidden history series of events in which she and her family played a major role.

A suspenseful, well-paced supernatural thriller with some significant things to say about guilt and addressing guilty feelings before they (literally, in this case) eat you up.  That balance between an engrossing story and some weighty advice about coping with guilt makes this a good read.  I won't claim to have followed every bit of the story and there isn't much character development, but I enjoyed the ride.  In sum a brisk and fun weekend read for people who enjoy non-gory horror.

Belittled Women, by Amanda Sellet

Growing up, Jo and her two sisters (Meg and Bethamy) often enjoyed their Mom's Little Women obsession.  And there were worse ways to earn a living than reenacting scenes from Louisa May Alcott's classic for tourists in a review they call Little Women Live!.  But as Jo grows older, the exercise becomes burdensome and humiliating.  The productions are decidedly amateur, often ridiculous, and Jo longs to be a normal teenager.  She's sick of Little Women and wants out.

When a sophisticated travel writer and her cute son come to see what the show is all about and do a write-up in a national periodical, Jo sees an opportunity to branch out and reach for her dreams.  She gains the woman's confidence and support.  She starts planning her escape to New York City and becoming a writer.  But in the end, she learns that not all dreams are what they seem and the only true security comes from family -- not-all-that-dissimilar message than from the classic inspiration.

While paying tribute to the original, Sellet's novel excels for its depiction of the fractious relationship between the three sisters.  The constant snarky barbs and petty acts of vengeance weave a complicated story of girls whose familiarity breeds strong contempt and deep affection.  I won't pretend to understand it fully, but it felt authentic.  I also enjoyed a number of casual asides about Alcott the writer and the place of the novel in the Canon -- comments which felt informative without being stodgily educational.  A good amount of humor rounds the story out.

Flowerheart, by Catherine Bakewell

Clara has been struggling with her training to become a witch for years.  As she approaches Midsummer in her sixteenth year, the traditional time when young witches are promoted, it seems that she won't ever be accepted.  Her magic is simply unpredictable and uncontrolled.  The Council has begun to suggest that she should be simply stripped of her magic altogether in the interest of public safety.  And when she accidentally poisons her father and nearly kills him, it would seem to prove their point.

But Xavier, the youngest member of the Council and her childhood friend, speaks up on her behalf and promises to help her succeed.  She has not heard from Xavier in years and assumed from his long silence that he hated her, so his offer to help takes her by surprise. Perhaps he cares for her more than she realized?  But he reveals ulterior motives and she finds he is harboring dangerous secrets.  And while Clara initially relies upon his help to rescue her father and her own magic, he will eventually come to rely on her for much more.

A parable focusing on building self-confidence through the guise of Clara's search for mastering her magic.  Discordantly, there's also a striking subplot about a potion called "Euphoria" that bears a strong semblance to Meth and against which Clara and Xavier must find a way to neutralize.  A separate subplot about Clara's estranged mother bears all the markings of the trope of mother-child reconciliation, but is left dangling strangely unresolved. It's a busy story!

I liked the world building.  It's a colorful setting and Clara's botanical magic is vivid.  However, the pace of the storytelling is very slow and the plotting is aimless. While it seems envisioned to be YA, the language is simplified and pitched at middle readers.  It's not even entirely certain at times what we are seeking for.  

<Spoilers>Is the point of the story for Clara to master her magic?  She never quite does that.  Is it to form a romance with Xavier?  They end up friends and a hint of something more.  Is it to cure the Euphoria epidemic?  They find a treatment but never work out who is promoting the abuse of the potion.</Spoilers>  

Overall, I'm struck with a story that hangs heavily.  The elements never quite come together.  The characters change but never really grow.  

Dear Medusa, by Olivia A Cole

Alicia has given up caring what her classmates say about her.  And she's given up feeling anything for the random older men with whom she hooks up.  She's quit running and is no longer friends with her born-again BFF Sarah.  And it can all be traced back to the Colonel, her science teacher.  He's well loved and known for his welcoming open door policy, but no one else seems to know that secretly he's a "wolf" when the door closes.  And Alicia is a sheep.

Jaded by the banal commonality of inappropriately older men propositioning her and other girls, Alicia finds inspiration in the story of Medusa -- punished for sex and ultimately slain by men (with the connivance of women) for what she was turned into against her will.  Medusa was maligned (just as Alicia is) and she is determined to emerge victorious and rise above the rumors and prejudice.

Also tackling racial profiling, slut shaming, agency, and a variety of other topic, this densely-packed novel in verse is brutal reading.  I might question its bleak outlook, but it's hard to dispute that these things do happen and Cole's uncompromising writing says what needs to be said.  This is hardly the first feminist call-to-arms in verse, but it is one of the better ones.  I'll warn you that the story never reaches resolution, which one really wants simply to get relief at the end and so doesn't really prove very satisfying.  However, you'll read some beautifully written verse in this incendiary call to arms against statutory rape.