A Totally Awkward Love Story, by Tom Ellen and Lucy Ivison

Hannah believes that lobsters mate for life and she wonders when she'll meet her "lobster." She really starts to think she has done so when she stumbles across Sam at a party.  Awkwardly, they meet in a bathroom and therefore her friends nickname him "Toilet Boy." But sadly, fate works against them and Sam mistakenly believes that Hannah has a boyfriend and isn't interested in him.

What follows is a summer of missed opportunities and miscommunications that cause Hannah and Sam to keep not getting together.  Toilet Boy may in fact truly be Hannah's "lobster" but through the haze of young people clubbing and hooking up, the two of them never seem to be able to catch a break. 

It's a convoluted comedy of errors that shows much more about British dating customs and binge drinking than anything else.  The striking characteristic of the story is how protagonists are so terribly shallow (admittedly, they are also terribly 18!) so there's not much to bond with here.  Hannah has little self-esteem and blindly assumes that even the slightest hesitation from Sam is lack of interest.  Meanwhile, she lies and sends mixed signals purposely sabotaging the relationship. Sam is only marginally more sympathetic, lashing out easily and he doesn't show much fidelity or common sense.

The story, co-written by two former sweethearts who met when they were 18, is "inspired" by their own relationship but it does the authors no kindness.  Perhaps the story is meant to be funny, but it is as "awkward" as its title promises it to be.  The appeal of the story is its realism, but real is neither heroic nor interesting and that makes this novel a hard sell.  In sum, two immature young people who probably are not ready for a serious relationship try to have one.  Extra bonus final chapter gives us a TMI account of the consummation of the relationship.

When Elephants Fly, by Nancy Richardson Fischer

Lily is haunted by her family's history of mental illness.  When she was seven, her mother's schizophrenia drove her to nearly kill her daughter and to eventually kill herself.  Schizophrenia runs in families and.  Ever since then, Lily has been obsessed with the idea that schizophrenia usually manifests itself between the ages of 18 and 30.  She has worked out a "twelve year plan" with her best friend Sawyer.  All she has to do, she believes, is get through those twelve years without stress or trauma and she will be clear. 

Her eighteenth year has been going well so far.  She has an internship at the local newspaper.  Her assignment covering the birth of a baby elephant in captivity at the local zoo seems harmless enough. But when Lily witnesses the mother elephant turning hostile and attacking the baby, Lily is reminded of her own trauma. Rather than drive her away, the experience makes her resolute about defending the baby.  Lily gets drawn into a legal struggle to rescue the baby elephant that eventually sends her on a desperate flight to save it and definitely does not fit in her twelve year plan!

An ambitious and mostly successful coming of age story.  A number of great ideas (like Lily's constant questioning of her sanity, potential romantic sparks with Sawyer and co-conspirator Otis, and finally her reconciliation with her father)  never quite go anywhere, but the story is really about the baby elephant and Lily's bond with it.  The writer has an obsession with gross bodily fluids, but that serves to impart a lot of information about what it takes to keep an abandoned infant elephants alive in captivity.  And Fischer takes both zoos and circuses to task for their treatment of wild animals.  In sum, the adventure is satisfyingly dramatic and keeps you engaged.  It is a decent read, but falls short of living up to its ambitions of being a multithreaded psychological drama.

Amal Unbound, by Aisha Saeed

Twelve year-old Amal has big dreams for a schoolgirl in rural Pakistan:  she wants to become a school teacher.  But fate seems to have other plans.  First, as the eldest daughter, she has to spend considerable time at home helping out.  And while her mother is recovering from a difficult childbirth, she is unable to attend school at all.  

Then a much bigger tragedy strikes.  For the crime of talking back to the local landlord and refusing to let him have her pomegranate, she is taken from her family and forced to become then man's indentured servant, effectively ending any of Amal's dreams.  But as desperate as Amal's situation seems, she is determined to fight back.

A simply-written but powerful story of one girl's fight for freedom and respect is both full of joyous local color and insightful in explaining how injustices like the one described can occur.  As middle grade reading is concerned, this one packs considerable punch.  The plain writing in no way takes away from its powerful message which simultaneously attacks misogyny, economic injustice, and slavery.

Dragon Slippers, by Jessica Day George

As everyone knows, knights like to rescue maidens from nasty dragons.  And when you're an orphan and your aunt is desperate to get rid of you (and perhaps marry you off to an adventuresome knight in the process), becoming dragon bait is something of a career decision.  But Creel is no ordinary maiden and the dragon (whose name is Theodorus) is no ordinary dragon.  Theodorus would honestly rather not be bothered by pesky knights and has little use for maids.  And, no, unlike all the dragons you've heard spoken of, he doesn't horde gold -- his passion is shoes!

And nowhere else have you ever seen the collection of shoes that this dragon has!  Creel is astounded and quickly reasons that a nice pair of shoes might be the capital she needs to make it on her own in the world.  If she can't be rescued by a prince then maybe relocating to the capital and starting up a dressmaking business would be more practical.  With some negotiation she convinces Theodorus that, given a nice pair of shoes of her choice, she would be happy to leave him in peace.  He agrees but regrets the deal when he sees which pair she has chosen.

And thus a series of events are triggered that will lead to two kingdoms coming to war, the revisiting and settling of ancient scores between humans and dragons, and a young woman finding her place in the world.

The first of a beloved series, this entertaining and well-written middle grade fantasy novel combines a resourceful heroine, some good friends, a love and respect for animals, and just the right amount of action to create a great page-turner.  There are no great moral lessons, beyond the basic lesson that sometimes one has to make brave and bold choices to make one's dreams come true.  It's a fun way to spend a Saturday!

Mañanaland, by Pam Muñoz Ryan

Max loves fairy tales and the stories that Buelo tells about a dragon and the abandoned tower near their village are his favorite.  Max loves soccer and, along with his friends, hopes to be picked by a trainer and get to attend a clinic, leading to a professional career.  But most of all, Max wonders why his mother left and where she went.  Neither Papa nor Buelo will tell him anything about it.  But they know something!  Max can tell that there are secrets in his family.

Then one night a priest comes to their home with a request and Max suddenly knows what he must do.  Embarking on a dangerous mission he realizes he's been preparing for his entire short life, he finally comes to understand his family's secret and his family's debt to society.  Along the way, he also realizes that there are things far more important than soccer and far more fantastic than fairy tales.

A sweet novel that continues Ryan's amazing track record for producing culturally rich and authentic Hispanic novels.  Mixing a bit of magic, a lot of local flavor, and appealing characters, the book is a rewarding read.  This one bites off a bit more than Ryan's previous books, introducing the mature themes of political asylum-seeking and immigration in a gentle age-appropriate way.  This never becomes preachy but instead addresses the way political unrest and involuntary migration have affected Central American communities as much as fútbol.  The beautiful simple writing, cultural depth, and ultimate message about doing good turns for each other makes this short novel a winner!

The Girl Who Drank the Moon, by Kelly Barnhill

Fear of the evil witch in the woods who would destroy them, drives the inhabitants of the Protectorate to sacrifice a baby each year.  The parents grieve their loss, but no one questions and no one resists.  That is, until the year that the mother refuses to cooperate and is thrown into the tower as a prisoner and goes mad.  But this seems only a minor hiccup in the process of law and order as, like all the other children, her daughter is left in the woods to be devoured by the witch.

But Xan, who lives peacefully in the woods with a verse-loving bog monster named Glerk and a tiny dragon with a big heart named Fyrian, doesn't eat the abandoned babies.  Instead, she rescues them and carries through through the woods to cities on the other side, finding suitable homes for the children.  This time, however, Xan accidentally feeds the baby girl moonlight, imbuing her with magic.  Such a baby can't be handed over to mere mortals and must remain with Xan, who names her Luna.

Luna, a magicked baby with omnipotent powers is a danger to herself and others.  When Xan finds that she cannot control Luna and keep her safe, she makes a fateful decision to suppress Luna's powers until her thirteenth birthday when everything must burst forth of its own accord and Luna will discover her full potential.  That potentially heavy handed way to approach puberty and coming of age is handled in a restrained fashion, in a story which has much more to say about the power of kindness and love and its ability to overcome grief and sadness.

For the real story here is about the Protectorate and its reliance upon fear and the importance it puts on the oppressive ritual of annual sacrifice.  About how a community that willingly submits to such rituals, reinforced by myths that are never questioned, creates a false sense of security and ossifies a power structure.  While Luna, her development to adulthood, and her magic have a role to play in this story, it is really the people of her home (and in particular the mothers who have sacrificed their children) that ultimately become the tipping point that changes the status quo and literally destroys the barriers that have fogged people's views.

The politics implicit in this less subtle and more important message are tragically likely to have timeless appeal.  The complexity of the story probably won't turn this into a classic anytime soon, but it did win the 2017 Newberry which will guarantee it some longevity on public library bookshelves.  It's entertaining and heartfelt, but restrained when it might be exuberant.  Whether its Luna's apprehension of adolescence, playing down the antics of Glerk and Flyrian (who would in any Disney adaptation become comic sidekicks), or having a male protagonist who turns out to be neither romantic interest nor hero, Barnhill surprises not by what she brings to the story, but what she doesn't do with it.  Instead, her focus lies on the less commented parts of a fairy tale (the power of helpers, the regrets of the elderly, and the cowardice of power) that make her story unique and memorable.

Again Again, by e. Lockhart

Adelaide is spending the summer walking dogs and trying to finish a set design project to fulfill an incomplete.  Otherwise, she stands to fail out of Alabaster, the private school which she attends.  When she transferred in she found the work much harder than at her old school, but the real reason she failed most of her classes was that she didn't do any of the work, choosing instead to spend her time with Mikey Double L, her boyfriend (who has now -- at the start of the summer -- dumped her).  But it quickly becomes apparent that there are deeper issues at play than teen romance.

Adelaide's brother Toby is an addict, stealing from his family and hurting them.  His failed stints in rehab have largely bankrupted them and is the reason that Adelaide changed schools.  Adelaide, unable to admit that Toby's struggle affects her, hides away in a world of what ifs, which is what the novel becomes.

What if you could play out every action and choose amongst them based on the different outcomes?  In a way, that is what this novel does by taking us through a "multiverse" where periodically the narrative splits into two or three parallel stories.  We walk through a scene of a page or two and then back up and do the scene all over again with a different outcome, and then once more.  Each time, Lockhart then picks one of them and moves forward.  The gimmick, combined with a less intuitive habit of switching into verse at random moments, makes for a tricky read.  It's an interesting writer's exercise (creating a scene and then rewriting it with a different outcome) and the sort of thing that writers do in their work.  The difference is that writers usually pick one and throw out the others.  The intention of including the different variants in the novel is supposed to give us more insight in the characters.  It does this, but it forces you to stop and re-read passages and compare variants, disrupting the pace of the story.  

As with her more recent novels, I found the characters uninteresting, elitist, distant, and painfully self-absorbed.  There's only superficial interaction between characters and no interest in exploring the world around them. Other readers compare this book with her more recent novels We Were Liars and The Disreputable History of Frankie-Banks (both of which I despised for pretty much the same reason of having unbearable characters) but the closest relative of this book is really Mister Posterior and the Genius Child, written under Lockhart's real name (Emily Jenkins) in 2002 and as suspiciously autobiographical as this one is.  Both are written in the same stilted passive narration and both describe a privileged community, seemingly in a vacuum from popular culture or modern technology.

Coo, by Kaela Noel

Raised from birth by pigeons, Coo is only indirectly aware of humans and how they live.  They don't live in dovecotes and they don't scavenge for food like her flock does, they don't fly, and they talk strangely.  Aside from a curiosity about humans and that pesky lack of ability to fly, Coo is perfectly happy living with her flock.  But when a retired postal worker named Tully notices that there is a girl living with the birds, Coo's life starts to change.

Tully rescues Coo and takes Coo back to her apartment.  There are certainly advantages like running water, heat, and a plentiful supply of food, but for Coo, the ways of humans are strange and scary. There are many strange things like money, police, and rules that prevent Coo from staying with Tully forever.  Most scary of all, someone in the city is trying to poison the pigeons. Coo is determined to use her position as both a human and a member of a flock to save the birds.

A curious middle reader. Noel struggles a lot to explain away the more implausible parts of the story (like how a child could survive for years being cared for by birds) and that can grow distracting.  But setting skepticism aside, there is an enjoyable story here about Coo's discovery of how she fits within a community (whether it is pigeon or human).  Coo wants to be independent and struggles against restrictions on her independence, but gradually she learns to accept help from others and to understand that even if people and pigeons seem largely selfish, there is an instinct to look out for each other to solve our shared challenges.

Every Moment After, by Joseph Moldover

Eleven years ago, a shooter came to school and left seventeen first graders and their principal dead.  Now, it's time for the survivors to graduate and for the town to say their final goodbyes.  Many families have moved on but enough of the living remain to turn this graduation ceremony into a memorial.  The news will pick up this grim milestone as just another story, but for the survivors there is no real moving on.

This novel picks up at that commencement exercise and traces two young men who survived the incident and how they spend the summer after school:  Cole (who became a poster child, with the picture of the police chief carrying his body out of the school as the primary image of the tragedy) and Matt (who survived by luck, being home sick that day).  For them, this final summer is also their goodbye and time to actually move on.  It finds them revisiting things that they have dwelled on for the past eleven years, but now finally have to let go.

I liked the idea of doing a survivor story like this.  Few books on the subject have taken such a long-term view and it is a meaty subject in need of a proper treatment.  The school at which I spent my freshman year (Simon's Rock) went through a shooting incident itself, so I know something firsthand about the subject.  On that basis, I felt that Moldover handled the combination of guilt, fear, and anger particularly well.  And he explores the subject from so many different angles:  local townspeople, first responders, civic leaders, as well as the children and their families.  This is done so seamlessly that you never really become aware of how thorough Moldover's sociological exercise is until you put down the book and reflect back on what you've learned.

I also liked the novelty of an authentic boy's YA book.  The vast majority of YA is written for girls and the few writers attempt a straight masculine perspective.  When you do find a book about boys, it usually wallows in gross-out and horn-dog stereotypes.  Deep, introspective novels about adolescent males are very very rare.  Thus, it is rewarding to find that Cole and Matt are emotionally complicated and authentic male protagonists.  I related to them in a way that I rarely relate to YA characters.

With all that said, it may surprise that I don't actually recommend the book.  I found the story a hard slog and the ending mystifying and frustrating.  There are amazing moment of brilliance in here, with much of it coming from the adult supporting characters, but the boys themselves never seem to pull themselves up or grow in the way I needed them to do.  That made the ending ultimately unfulfilling.

Finding Mr. Better-Than-You, by Shani Petroff

Camryn gets a rude shock at the start of her senior year when her guidance counselor informs her that her lack of extracurriculars is probably going to doom her chances of getting into Columbia.  This is followed by a very public dumping by her boyfriend Marc at a local hangout.  All of which leads to a lot of re-examination of priorities as Cam realizes that she has defined much of her life by trying to be there for Marc, instead of for herself.  While this reflection has some positive effect and sends her out to try trying new things, including joining yearbook, writing for the school paper, and becoming a school mascot, too much of the old ways persist.

Cam is a fan of rom-coms and believes that there is a "Mr. Right" out there for her.  At first, she's convinced that it's still Marc and so she tries dating friends of his to make him jealous.  When that doesn't work she tries finding a new boyfriend on her own, and eventually her friends try to set her up.  None of it really works and she eventually figures out that she is just trying too hard.  Through it all, her friends are loyally there for her and by the end of the novel she finds that Mr. Right actually isn't anywhere nearby, but since this is high school anyway, maybe it's just fine to stick to having friends.

Why this takes her an entire novel to come to terms with is anyone's guess.  She's pretty bright and intelligent and keeps on reminding herself that she has great friends, but her stubborn determination to find a boyfriend at least gives us a story to track, even if it doesn't always make much sense.  None of it is particularly dramatic and the story really doesn't have much of a point to make beyond the fact that high school dating pool is pretty shallow,.  The book is readable and mostly enjoyable, like the rom-coms that Camryn enjoys so much.

Girl Gone Viral, by Arvin Ahmadi

Opal Hopper is a senior at an elite computer science-centered high school in Palo Alto.  But her life, like that of most young people, centers around WAVE, a world-wide virtual reality platform, created by Palo Alto Labs (which also happens to bankroll her school).  Her presence in VR takes on a new meaning when she and her friends hack into PAL's data stream and start crunching through users' biometric monitoring (data that PAL has taken from users on WAVE).  Realizing how much power resides in such personal data, they turn that data around back on the users.  The epiphany that this unleashes on WAVE causes Opal and her channel to go viral, launching them into an elite world with millions of followers.  It also brings them to the attention of the greedy and the powerful, from the wealth of venture capitalists to the subversive political wrath of the emerging Luddites.

Opal, however, is not interested in influence and power.  She wants answers.  Seven years ago, her father, a brilliant computer scientist, went missing.  And no one will tell her the truth about his disappearance.  But one of the last people to see him was Howie Mendelsohn, the founder of PAL.  Mendelsohn is a hermit and won't meet with just anyone, but if Opal becomes the biggest thing on WAVE, there is no way that she'll be refused an audience.

Original and innovative, the book is tricky and tedious to read but rewards the effort with striking observations about technology.  I found myself alternately annoyed by the technological gibberish that fills Ahmadi's prose and astounded by his insights on tech.  With the reactionary "Luddites" serving as a surrogate from Trumpism, Ahmadi sends us into a deep exploration of how tech brings us both a better society and simultaneously weakens us for a populist backlash.  For Opal and her peers, there is no reasonable alternative than to move forward into a world of virtual reality, but her elders (and many readers) will achingly find themselves hanging on to some elements of the Luddite manifesto.  It's very subversive and the ideas raised will stick with you a long long time.

Good ideas do not however an excellent novel make.  Ahmadi is trying to be clever and he's also trying to describe a world that does not have a physical existence and which does not behave in the way we expect it to.  And, while it is easy to get swept away by the magic, he also has a human story (the final human touch, as he'll put it later, that must always be in charge) to tell.  That's a lot to bite off and it makes the book hard to create and (wherever he falls down) hard to digest.  There are numerous places where the story doesn't track, where action scenes and/or dialog make no sense, and where the logic of the story simply collapses.  In many ways, that is part of the experience, but for readers like me that search for human connections and human truths (and are more than a bit Luddite!) this isn't a story we enjoy.  The end result is a mediocre novel with terribly important things to say about the future.

The Silence Between Us, by Alison Gervais

Moving to Colorado poses challenges for Maya and her little brother.  Maya has been deaf since a case of meningitis a few years ago, but she's felt protected by being in a school for the deaf.  With the move to Colorado, she's forced to attend regular school, using an interpreter in her classes.  It's hard work lip reading and following her interpreter's signing, and it's painful to be an object of stares and gossip from her peers.  But what gets at Maya the most is the judgment that she senses that the hearing folks have about her condition.  They seem only capable of pity and she sees that they assume that she is miserable being deaf.  But nothing could be further from the truth:  she likes being who she is.

Her year presents other challenges:  her little brother is sick, she faces discrimination from peers/teachers/employers, and fights pressure from various sources that want her to get a cochineal implant so she won't have to "endure" being deaf.  Meanwhile, she surprises herself by falling in love with Beau.  Beau is a bright and intelligent boy who teaches himself sign language so he can talk with her and has plans to go to Yale, but has dreams of his own that he doesn't dare reveal.

It's a very busy little story, full of ideas, but Gervais really struggles to tie them together and resolve them.  The strength of the book is its glimpse inside of the character of a deaf teenager.  Gervais works hard to show what communicating with a mix of lip reading, signing, and speech is like.  The novel also touches on a variety of important issues for deaf people ranging from the history of disability rights to discrimination, and pays special attention to the debate over children getting implants.  But as a story, nothing really comes together and I felt very little emotional connection with the characters or sensed much of one between them.  Gervais has an episodic format, focusing on her challenges, but that doesn't give us much room to develop a character and doesn't create an organic flow.  A major casualty is the underdeveloped romance with Beau.  Subplots (like Beau's conflict with his father or Maya's brother's health issues) are just left to lay there.

It's My Life, by Stacie Ramey

Jenna's always been a fighter.  Born with cerebral palsy, she's been through countless treatments and surgeries, and endured the challenges of crutches and wheelchairs.  She's worked hard because she's felt that her condition was simply bad luck.  When she uncovers the fact that she was the subject of a medical malpractice suit against her obstetrician, she comes to realize that it was her doctor's fault that made her this way.  Angry at not ever being told the truth, she gives up on her studying and starts to demand a voice in her own treatment.  And when her parents refuse to consent to the latter, she sues them for medical emancipation.

At the same time, Julian, a boy that Jenna once knew from years ago, has moved back into the area.  He's lost much of his confidence but none of his charm, and Jenna reaches out to him, rekindling memories.  But afraid of being rejected, she sends him anonymous.  These develop into mutual affection.  But now Jenna is afraid that if she reveals herself to him as the correspondent that he'll reject her because she is crippled.  Eventually, of course, all must be revealed.

Great characters, including a surprisingly strong finish from Jenna's parents, coupled with a lot of growth from Jenna makes this a moving story.  But I still found it a hard slog because of the uneven pacing and storytelling.  Important details are easy to miss in a story that frequently seems to drift.  Key plot points are poorly explained, leaving mysteries that the reader has to work hard to figure out.  It doesn't help that the two separate stories don't overlap and never come together.

Me, Him, Them, and It, by Caela Carter

Evelyn ("me") is pretty surprised when she finds herself pregnant.  She'd only let Todd ("him") have unprotected sex a couple of times! She was getting a prescription for the Pill when they found out it was too late.  Telling her estranged parents ("them") about it is incredibly difficult, but she'e eventually going to have to find a way to do so.  In the end the baby ("it") is coming, whether she's ready for it or not.  And for the most part, she's definitely not ready!

Evelyn is a very difficult character to get into.  Reviewers have compared her to Juno (from the eponymous indie film), but I think of her as more like Cher (from Clueless -- or Emma, Cher's model).  She's lost and confused but also maddeningly stubborn and difficult to like.  She sees everything negatively.  She hates everyone (including herself).  Her best trait is her steadfast refusal to make decisions.

Some of these flaws are understandable.  She has emotionally cold parents and no role-model for empathy, but she's intelligent and insightful.  So her inability to overcome those barriers (and yes, she never overcomes them) is off-putting.  It's also understandable that the decisions she needs to make would be hard for any adolescent, but plenty of them do make the decisions, so Evelyn's refusal to even try is hard to sympathize with.  But it's realistic.

So, I'm left with a conundrum:  the novel's well written with a complex protagonist, well-drawn supporting characters, and (with the exception of some minor rushing of the story at the end) decent storytelling, but it's not a fun read.  I didn't like Evelyn but I found her authentic enough to care about her and that's a strong mark in this book's favor.  Ultimately, I didn't find it a redeeming story, but I learned things from it.  I think few authors have done as good of a job at getting inside the head of a pregnant adolescent girl before and Carter does an amazing job.  In Evelyn's case, it's not a pleasant place to visit.

Lucky Caller, by Emma Mills

When Nina signs up for an elective in radio broadcasting in her senior year, she finds herself stuck with a bunch of misfits and an old friend, Jamie.  She and Jamie haven't talked much since an unfortunate kissing dare back in middle school, despite the fact that they live in the same apartment building.  But now that they are working together, the opportunity arises for a lot of old baggage and forgotten feelings to  reemerge.

At the same time, the radio show causes Nina to reconnect with her estranged father.  A local celebrity when he was a DJ in the area (before moving out West and becoming a major star), Nina talks him into appearing on their radio show as an attempt to boost their ratings and improve their grade.  But when a rumor starts up that the upcoming "surprise guest" on their show is actually an underground musical recluse named Tyler Blight, the event blows up into a major event.  Faced with disappointment from rabid fans who are planning to attend the broadcast of the interview, Nina and her team have to figure out a way to manage the event.  But when Nina's Dad bails out and fails to show, an unexpected angel saves the day.

A bit of a messy plot (including a romance that never really clicks and a family reunion that peters out), Lucky Caller is rescued by an ending which is as heart warming as it is completely ridiculous.  Surprisingly, none of the loose ends really start to bother you until you have finished the book.  It's a feel good story with lots of good ideas, most of which never quite gel or come together, but it remains enjoyable throughout.

Orpheus Girl, by Brynne Rebele-Henry

Living in her small conservative town is dangerous for sixteen year-old Raya and her lover Sarah.  They've seen how the town deals with other kids who come out as homosexuals, but they feel powerless to avoid the certain outcome.  While they try to keep their relationship a secret, they are eventually found out and sent away to a remote conversion camp:  to be made un-gay.

The rest of this short book outlines the horrifying torture that Raya, Sarah, and other teens undergo in misguided attempts to "cure" their sexual orientation.  The author tries to give the story some weight by drawing analogies to Grecian myths, but these are fairly subtle and likely to be overlooked.  The storytelling is anything but and comes with a content warning, but compared to similar YA novels, I wouldn't consider this story particularly triggering, even if it is certainly not a pleasant read.

More fundamentally, the story is thin.  Raya and her background as a closet lesbian in her small town is an interesting story.  Similarly interesting is Char, a "cured" lesbian who now works at the camp administering electroshock therapy.  But neither they nor the other characters are all that well developed.  The book has shock value, but without much character development this is largely senseless.  More character study could have added gravitas to what is just pretty words about ugly things.  For a better treatment of the same subject matter, see The Miseducation of Cameron Post.

Three Things I Know Are True, by Betty Culley

Clay and Liv always enjoyed playing Three Things down by the river.  The rules are simple:  one person provides the subject and other has to respond with three facts about that subject.  The only restriction is that all three of those things have to be true.

Truth used to be easy, but it's grown considerably harder since Liv's brother Jonah was injured while Jonah and Clay were fooling around with a gun that belonged to Clay's father.  Now Jonah lies comatose, hooked up to numerous machines (his new "friends" thinks Liv and she gives them all names) and tended by home nurses around the clock.  While it was Jonah who basically shot himself, the gun was left out unattended and Liv's mother is thus suing Clay's father for Jonah's care.  For Liv who misses having Clay around and for Clay who misses his best friend, it is hard to know where loyalties should lay.  Culley's verse novel explores these ambiguities and how one moves on from such a tragedy.

Novels in verse, as I always warn, can be very good, but they are frequently bad.  This one does not stand out.  The poetry is rarely interesting in and of itself, neither in structure nor in content.  Culley simply doesn't have much to say about the tragic set-up that she's created.  There's some attempts at speaking about the river that flows by their home.  The Three Things game comes up as a repeating motif.  But no great drama comes brings the story to a climax and in the end the characters peter out in their own ways, none of them learning much in the process.  The verse in the end mostly serves as a way to take a fairly thin story and stretch it out into over 400 pages.

The Girl Who Speaks Bear, by Sophie Anderson

Discovered in the woods when she was a baby, Yanka has never quite felt like she fit in her village.  For one thing, she's so much stronger than the other children.  Her Mamochka watches her closely and seems overly protective, keeping Yanka as far away from the forest as she can.

One day, after she's turned twelve, Yanka wakes to find that her legs have turned into those of a bear.  Afraid of what the villagers will think of her transformation, she flees into the woods.  As she does so, she is reminded of a story that a woodsman named Anatoly told her about a girl whose family were cursed with living their lives as bears.  In fact, as she ventures in deeper, she begins to realize that a whole series of fairy tales she has heard over the years address her current predicament.  Anatoly the woodsman wasn't just telling her stories, he was trying to tell her about her own life.

The stories, which are delightful in their own right, are interspersed throughout Yanka's quest -- a trek that will include defeating a dragon, saving a magic tree, and eventually risking everything to save her village from a raging forest fire.  Each fairy tale, while a digression, serve as an oracle of what is to come,  in an ambitious attempt to demonstrate the role of fairy tale and myth in culture.

While this novel is more ambitious, I found Anderson's first novel (The House with Chicken Feet) more whimsical and fun.  Both books borrow creatively from Russian folk tale, but this second time around there is a lot more ground to cover and a plot which is more complicated and oft times confusing.  The endless feats that Yanka must confront and overcome become exhausting and one wonders if Anderson could have trimmed it down.  It certainly feels, in all that complexity, that the magical simplicity of a fairy tale is basically lost.

The Mozart Girl, by Barbara Nickel

Nannerl Mozart is talented and creative, but when your little brother is the toast of Europe, you will find yourself in the shadows!  And not so much for the talent that he obviously possessed, but for being the boy.  For no matter how skilled and hard-working Nannerl is, she'll never be allowed to become a professional musician.  Her efforts will always be treated as a fancy and considered a gimmick.  Nonetheless, she is determined that none of that will stop her from her dreams.  And this Christmas, when she and her brother are performing in Versailles for the King and Queen of France, Nannerl intends to unveil nothing less than a full symphony that she's written!

A modest and enjoyable middle grade historical novel about a little known piece of musical and women's history.  Some of the adventures may strike the reader as implausible, but Nickel does a remarkable job of avoiding anachronistic thoughts and feelings, while still making Nannerl instantly relatable (especially for anyone who's experienced sibling jealousy).  The result is a heroine who is charming and inspirational, as she seizes the day and pursues her dreams.  The book ends with historical notes, a chronology, and a selected bibliography that will fulfill any wishes for readers who want to learn more about Wolfgang's older sister.

Don't Read the Comments, by Eric Smith

Divya is a hot online gaming sensation.  Her live feeds are followed by thousands, playing a game called Reclaim the Sun.  She has fans and endorsements and she makes a modest income from her playing which she uses to help pay for her mother's continuing education.  But she's also picked up some enemies, particularly among the gamer bro community who see her as an unwelcome trespasser. Some of them are your usual trolls (posting their bile whenever they can, but largely all talk and no action).  Divya has her strategy for dealing with their misogynist and racist comments:  she simply doesn't read what they have to say.  That's all fine and good until a group appears on her gaming session and attacks her and her friends.  The group, which calls itself Vox Populi then goes much further, turning to physical attacks in the real world.

The other half of the story is Aaron, who writes scripts for games and is part of a team that is on the verge of their first release.  He dreams of making it big and getting rich, but he can't even get the person running the project to pay him.  His mother, suspicious that he's being taken advantage of, discourages from spending his time writing.  Aaron, to escape from it all, plays on Reclaim the Sun, where he happens to stumble across Divya.  And in the midst of their two troubles, they find a common bond in their gaming.

Smith has a lot of knowledge about online gaming, using the jargon and understanding the dynamics of multi-player games in a way that shows that he's a fan.  I'm an outsider, so I'll defer to someone else about how authentic the story is, but nothing glaring shouts out.

I can speak more confidently about the storytelling.  Of the two main plot lines, Divya's is really the more interesting and meaningful.  Aaron, who struggles with standing up for himself and winning the respect of his parents is in familiar (and boring) YA territory.  Any spark of romance between Aaron and Divya is undeveloped and not terribly interesting, so we can nix the romantic angle.  That leaves us with Divya facing off against the misogyny in the gaming community, which I found interesting,having heard a little about this in the news.  The rest felt distracting.

We certainly could have used less distraction, because as entertaining as this book is, so much of the story never really gels.  Consider the long list of ideas that get introduced and just sit out there like unexplored worlds:  Divya's fan club, her relationship with her BFF Rebekah, Rebekah's own troubles with men, Divya's relationship with her mother (and that doesn't even get us near any of Aaron's more numerous loose ends).  It is a sloppy story, but that won't distract you from enjoying it, because even a poorly plotted story can be successful with some pretty things to watch and a lot of well-paced action -- sort of like playing a couple rounds of games.