Rising Above Shepherdsville, by Ann Schoenbohm

After the death of her mother, Dulcie loses her home and loses her voice.  Sent to live with her aunt Bernie in rural Shepherdsville OH, she can't talk, but she is a good observer of people.  In addition to silently help her aunt around the house, she spends much of the summer at the local Baptist church, where Reverend Love looks out for her.  A runaway named Faith shows up and gets taken in and becomes Dulcie's companion.  Evangeline, an older woman that the reverend has hired to lead the choir (to much displeasure from the community) sets both girls to work helping her make new choir robes out of scrap fabric.  But most important of all that summer is a family of swans hidden in the rushes near the church that Dulcie sneaks away to observe, imagining them as some sort of link to her deceased mother.

A gentle period piece set in 1977 (although the story itself is timeless) which is beautifully written, but not very adventuresome.  This is the sort of uncontroversial children's book that used to be more common.  The basic coming-of-age tale in which Dulcie comes to terms with the loss of her mother, learns some life lessons about honesty and kindness, and has some nice interactions with the three adults in her life.  There's nothing particularly wrong with this book, but it isn't really anything new (and books like Because of Winn Dixie have probably done it better).

Hopepunk, by Preston Norton

It was nearly a year ago that Hope's little sister Charity outed their older sister Faith to their parents.  In such a conservative family, the news that the eldest daughter was a lesbian did not go down well and Mom quickly prepared to send Faith away for conversion therapy.  But before that could be accomplished Faith ran away.  Now, the family struggles with angry, guilt, and grieving.  Mom defensively stands her ground but aches for her daughter to return home.  Dad guiltily tries to be a peacemaker between everyone.  Charity embraces the church, ignoring the rest of the family.  And Hope channels her grief and anger into music.

It seems that the family would just muddle through in dysfunction but then things are shook up when Hope's crush at school, a boy named Danny, comes out as gay and is thrown out of the house by his family.  In an act of atonement, Hope's family takes him in and an angry dynamic develops between Hope and Danny's twin brother Dylan.  Dylan is a nasty homophobe and forms a hate band called Alt-Rite, who write songs attacking Hope and her friends.  In response, Hope forms her own a band, a group of hopeless misfits called Hope Cassidy and the Sundance Kids, who challenge Alt-Rite in their school's Battle of the Bands.  A lesbian science-fiction story runs in parallel through alternate chapters and an internet influencer plays a prominent role as well in this mixture of social commentary and satire.

Norton is a good writer and I was quickly drawn in to the family tragedy that unfolds at the beginning.  I didn't initially get (and never really warmed to) the science fiction story, but I loved the depth of the characters.  The three sisters and their parents each had distinct personalities and roles to play.  Even Danny's outing and the way the family reunited over sheltering him presaged a fascinating look at the conflict between religious intolerance and charity.  But Norton has grander intentions for the story and that's when things really started running off the rails.  From the blatant hate speech to the official tolerance of bullying to the eventual official maleficence, I found myself being pushed towards accepting greater and greater levels of implausibility.  The conclusion is so utterly over the top that I just tuned the mess out.  In the end, it seemed a shame to take what was a really nice character study and fully-formed family tragedy and turn it into something absurd and over-the-top, especially with a subject as important as homophobia and the normalization of hatred.  Profoundly disappointing.

Candidly Cline, by Kathryn Ormsbee

Cline dreams of becoming a country music star, like the women she idolizes:  Emmylou Harries, Dolly Parton, Brandi Carlile, and her namesake Patsy Cline.  However, Mom reminds that music doesn't pay the bills.  Mom should know:  she had to give up her own dreams of playing in music in order to take care of the family.  So when a co-worker of her Mom's tells Cline about a workshop for young singer-songwriters, Mom tells her no.  But Cline knows she has to go. She doesn't have the money, she doesn't have a way to get to Lexington to attend the classes, and she'll have to find a way to sneak out, but somehow she'll figure everything out.

In comparison to the rest of her problems, this is small change.  Her grandmother has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's and Cline is struggling to understand Gram's unpredictable health and behavior.  Cline also is grappling with her sexuality and why she likes girls more than boys  Also with the experience of being betrayed by her best friend when she confesses as much to her in confidence.

But for every bad surprise, there's a good one as well.  Through good planning, fortuitous moments, and a few karmic moments, Cline discovers that it takes a small kindnesses and a village to fulfill a dream.  And that when it comes to big dreams, there are more people who want you to succeed than to tear you down.  

I was slightly afraid that the book might end up tying off every problem with a cheery bow, but that's not really what happens.  While Cline benefits from some pretty good luck, there's plenty of things that don't work out, but for all those Cline comes to peace with the outcome. She makes plenty of errors in judgment (most egregiously the decision to go behind her mother's back), but she's courageous and dedicated.  Most importantly, the story shows Cline dealing with a wide variety of people of all ages, both sympathetic and not, and learning to navigate difficult social interactions with maturity.

In the end, this is a warm and positive story about working hard, taking responsibility, and owning your outcomes.  Good life lessons.

Today Tonight Tomorrow, by Rachel Lynn Solomon

In this romance set in Seattle, Rowan and Neil are the two top academic stars at their high school.  For years, they have fought each other for each of their school's honors to a degree that everyone else considers obsessive.  And while some might suspect that there was a romantic tension behind their competition, Rowan is quick to reject that.  She hates Neil.  Now nearing graduation, they are approaching the biggest one:  who will be valedictorian.

But even when that ultimate is dispensed, their competition still remains fierce.  Their high school has an annual tradition -- the senior Howl, an assassination-themed scavenger hunt.  The seniors are given a list of fifteen items to find and the name of another senior for them to "kill" (by stealing the armband that each of them must wear). The goal is to find the fifteen items first and avoid getting killed by an opponent.  Rowan intends to annihilate Neil and end her high school career on a victory.  But instead, Rowan and Neil find themselves teaming up.  At first, they are reluctant, but gradually they grow close  enough that by the end their relationship becomes more important than the game.

I loved all the city details, with its combination of well-known and obscure spots that made up the scavenger hunt (this is definitely a much more fun story if you know Seattle!).  I was less taken by the story which seem drawn out and meandering.  For kids that are supposed to be such over achievers, they seemed awfully unfocussed and were far too easily distracted.  I would have had a better time with the story if they had just aced the hunt and then turned to focusing on their relationship -- that would feel more in character.

There's an interesting digression about Rowan and Neil's experiences as the only Jews in their school and a bonding that occurs in sharing their recollections of the microaggressions they have experienced.  It serves as one of the things that brings them together and it becomes character-defining, but it's introduced awfully late and abruptly (on page 119, in a strange scene where a classmate makes an anti-Semitic remark).  Somehow, we're supposed to accept that Rowan's Jewish identity is definitive, despite the fact that she doesn't mention a word about it for the first third of the book.

The story is a love letter to romance novels.  It reminded me a bit of Before Sunrise, with its combination of city exploration and extemporaneous adventures at night, but it didn't have much to add to the genre.

Forward March, by Skye Quinlan

With her father campaigning for President of the United States, Harper is trying to be a good girl and stay out of trouble (doubly so, since her Mom is the dean at her school, Golden Oaks Academy).  So, it's something of a surprise when Margot tracks her down.  Between the fact that Margot is the daughter of the Canadian ambassador (a man whom her father can't stand) and is widely rumored to be a practicing lesbian (a lifestyle Harper's homophobic mother can't put up with), Margot is not exactly in Hunter's usual social circles.  And she comes bearing a shocking tale.

Margot has been corresponding (explicitly) on Tinder with someone purporting to be Hunter.  The great mystery is who and why?  And while that person is definitely not Hunter, Hunter is surprised to find that she soon wishes it had been.  For while not entirely sure how she feels, Hunter has to admit that Margot is kind of cute and she does sort of/maybe likes girls.  Not, of course, that she could ever let that become public because of what it would do to her father's political career and to her mother.  However, when someone lets the secret out, Hunter has to make some decisions about who she is trying to please and whose life she is really living.

While purporting to be a marching band story, I honestly found that part of the story weak and distracting.  The story is really about finding out who your true friends are.  They certainly are not the ones Hunter has collected around her.  By the end, pretty much every friend Hunter had at the beginning of the story turns out to be toxic and she's ended up with a complete new set of friends.  That's just one of the many turn-offs of this novel.  Hunter is a weak character who largely lets people walk over her and I really didn't care that much in the end what happened to her.  And the things that happened didn't seem to matter either:  (as already mentioned) the marching band setting was largely inconsequential, the political stuff likewise, the parents were not worth reconciling with, the friends were repulsive, and Hunter's self-realization never really materialized.

Lawless Spaces, by Corey Ann Haydu

Mimi has struggled with a conflicting pair of desire: to be popular and to have a private life.  She's an influencer with a popular blog but is stunned at the cruelty of her readers.  As she turns sixteen, she is growing aware of the double standards to which young women are held.  Her mother is far from sympathetic, bitterly attacking her for not posting irresponsible pictures (i.e., not following the rules  of being a "good" girl) and failing to think through the consequences of her actions.  

Her mother knows all about those double standards.  She's in the midst of the backlash from her own decision to come out and accuse a public figure of having hurt her when she was sixteen.  Under that pressure, Mom shuts Mimi off and abandons her, just as Mimi is enduring her own version of the same events.

Mimi, left alone on her own sixteenth birthday, digs through old dusty journals she finds in the attic.  They turn out to have belonged to her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother -- generations of women, who at sixteen faced the same experiences, the same painful double-standards, and the same consequences.  While powerless to change their circumstances,  each young woman (within the "lawless spaces" of their private diaries) poured out the truth.  Taking in the fact that the more things change, the more they stay the same, Mimi becomes determined to break the curse that has afflicted the women in her family (or perhaps all women?).

Reading a story of intergenerational sexual abuse (including an unwanted pregnancy and forced adoption) is perhaps not the most cheery piece of literature to be reading on the day that the Supreme Court overrode Roe v Wade, but it may in fact be appropriate.  As I am today making the mistake of reading people's Facebook feeds (and the comment streams in particular), I am reminded of the terrible tendency of human beings to oversimplify and choose witty snarks over complicated truth  This book reminded me that the world is not nearly as simply as we try to convince ourselves it is.

I went through distinct waves of emotion while reading the book.  At first, with its litanies of the wrong men do to women, I wondered what new ground could possibly be covered here.  Did we really need another story of girls being taken advantage of and having their lives destroyed?  As the sheer cruelty of Mimi's mother was revealed (and excused in the name of everything Mom was dealing with), I began to wonder if the author would ever connect the dots between the family's unhealthy psychology and its perpetual victimhood.  In developing that feeling, I wrestled with the guilt that I was blaming the victims.  I struggled with trying to explain why it was all so much more complicated.  I was already thinking about how to explain in this review that the women were not to blame for their being assaulted but were for their lack of compassion.  Then the author beat me to it and went so much farther than I had thought to.  By the last stanza, I was blown away by the beautiful and devastating way that Haydu captured the complex interactions of misogyny that make women their best friends and worst enemies simultaneously.  No matter that very little of the story is tied up at the end.  Instead, the book concludes with an understanding that acceptance does not necessarily come from neat ribbons and bows, and that that's OK.

Told in verse, this 490 page book is mostly white pages and a lightning fast read.  Poetry is useful in this case because it allow Haydu to leave things unsaid and unresolved.  It permits things to be implied and felt without having to actually spell them out.  Verse also has its weaknesses.  Within the poetry, all of the characters sound the same.  With voices from six different generations of women, there should have been nuances and differences in tone.  But while they had different values, they all sounded alike. 

Aetherbound, by E. K. Johnston

Since the collapse of the Empire, the space stations have been cut off from each other, but travel still takes place.  On the sublight spaceship Harland, travel between stops takes decades and the ship is run by a  single family, breeding the crew that they need.  It is not a big happy family, but they get the job done.

Pendt, judged to be a waste of food and oxygen, is kept alive until her eighteenth birthday so she can then be sold off.  But just a few weeks before the sale, the ship makes a rare docking and Pendt takes the opportunity to run.  Doing so, she finds a new life, with a loving new family, but there are unintended consequences.  Her birth family returns with demands that threaten not only Pendt, but the entire universe as well.

While there is some fantastic universe building in this tale, the storytelling is rough and the pacing uneven.  Given the setting's complexity, the story is initially buried in historical background which, while interesting, bogs down the pace.  To make up for that slow start, we jump forward through events quickly, which allows only the sketchiest of development.  This leaves the general feeling of an unfinished story.  Aside from Pendt herself, just about everyone is an unfinished portrayal, motivations are largely declared with little demonstration, and the climax, while based on all that backstory, comes up quite abruptly and feels rushed. It's not a question of length -- given the book's short length (241 pages), this easily could have been filled out.  It's more an issue of manuscript not ready to publish.

Hani and Ishu's Guide to Fake Dating, by Adiba Jaigirdar

Hani's friends don't believe that she's bi-sexual. They think it's just a phase and that she'll come round eventually to dating one of the guys they set her up with.  Their doubts annoy Hani but she doesn't want to rock the boat with her A-list friends.  In desperation, she lies and claims that she's already seeing a girl and that it's Ishu -- the class overachiever and the only other Bengali girl in their school.  The problem is that Ishu doesn't even like Hani!  Somehow, Hani needs to convince her to go along with this charade or risk public ridicule.

Ishu has bigger problems.  Her older sister is dropping out of school to get married and her parents are scandalized.  To distract them, Ishu wants to get elected Head Girl at school.  But only popular girls get elected and Ishu's never considered making friends to be priority.  However, when Hani comes to her with an unusual request and needs a big favor, Ishu sees an opportunity.  A deal is hatched:  Ishu will pretend to be Hani's girlfriend and, in exchange, Hani will help ingratiate Ishu into her social circles and build up some social capital so that Ishu can win the election.

In true rom-com fashion, this rather tortured premise blooms in unexpected ways and in the end Hani and Ishu find that their relationship may be more real than either intended.  The result is a sweet and funny LGBT story of high school romance between two Irish-Bengali girls (checking off quite a few diversity checkboxes in the process).  I loved the ethnic flavoring and the attention to the family life that plays such a big role in Ishu and Hani's lives.  I also enjoyed reading an Irish YA story for the chance to visit a slightly different milieu.  Good characters (with realistic flaws and insecurities to offset their strengths) and excellent pacing make this an enjoyable read.

Between the Lighthouse and You, by Michelle Lee

Alice doesn't believe that her mother is dead.  There was a boating accident, but the body was never found.  And as she researches the circumstances of the accident, she discovers something else:  the Aviles Islands (where the accident occurred) are a magical place.  The inhabitants believe that once a year they receive messages from their departed relatives, which appear washed up on the shore.  These "tidings" are the responsibility of the lighthouse keeper to collect and distribute to the intended recipients.  When she disappeared, Alice's mother was in the process of investigating the myth.

Now Alice wants to return to the islands and interview the family that runs the lighthouse to see if she could somehow receive messages from her Mom.  While her family is unsupportive, her father does in the end agree to go down to the islands for a visit.

Leo is just the eldest son in the crazy large family that lives at the lighthouse, but he bears a heavy responsibility.  While the whole family claims to love the Tidings, Leo feels like he's the only one who appreciates their true meaning.  When he receives a special message on a cassette tape from his dead grandfather, addressed only to him, he must find a way to listen to it (this involves a bit of an adventure in finding a player).  When he eventually gets to listen to the message, he is surprised to find it is addressed not only to him but to Alice's family as well.

With subtle and unobtrusive magic elements, this middle grade novel is really about grief and recovery.  Both protagonists are learning how to adapt to a world where their beloved family member is gone.  In doing so, they find their relationships changing with the adults and siblings around them.  I found the siblings overly obnoxious, but portraying them as such allows for a clearer lesson that one must love the family one has in order to honor the memory of those who are no longer with us.

The Memory of Cotton, by Ann K. Howley

Shelby has felt lost since the death of her little brother.  She's quick to grow angry and prone to being mean to her family.  While she recognizes that she's in trouble, she feels helpless to change.  The only real anchors she has are her best friend Darrin and her grandmother.

One day, going through one of her grandmother's boxes with Darrin, they discover a Ku Klux Klan robe.  When they ask grandma about it, she is initially reluctant to explain, but a short while later, she changes her mind.  She announces that she'll explain everything but she needs to revisit her hometown in North Carolina and she needs Shelby and Darrin to drive here there.  Shelby has never been there.  The homecoming goes on to uncover several family secrets and along the way explore the foundations of discrimination and hatred.

A mixed bag.  I found the characters interesting and the story compelling  but I had a hard time getting into the story.  The storytelling is sketchy and needed to be fleshed out.  The overall theme of where hatred comes from is powerful, but the pieces of it (the contemporary town bully, the KKK membership, a murder, and even familial rejection) are left lying about.  Distractedly, Shelby's reconciliation with her brother's death sort of hangs as an outside theme, never quite adhering to the rest of the story.  Seen as an early draft, this is a knock-out story, but it really felt unfinished.

[Disclosure:  I received a free copy of the book from the publisher in exchange for an unbiased opinion.]

Extasia, by Claire Legrand

After the war which ended the world, Haven became the lost outpost of humanity.  Protected by God's grace and the piety of its all-male elders, it seeks to protect itself by vigilantly guarding itself from sin .  To atone for their central rolein the downfall of civilization, the women of Haven pay a continual price -- in servitude and suffering.  Fifteen year-old Amity, despite being the daughter of a fallen women, has just been anointed as one of Haven's "saints" -- a vaunted position with the horrifying responsibility to cleanse the sins of the village through enduring brutal ritualized beatings.

But as proud as Amity is in this perverse honor, she is aware that there are forces on the outside that are bringing change to Haven, whether its people embrace them or not.  A coven of witches are encircling the town and plotting the downfall of its patriarchal regime.  Men are being murdered.  

Amity is stuck between two warring camps.  Through magic that she is just beginning to understand, she stands as a catalyst of change for her world. While Amity longs for an end to the suffering of her sisters, she also wants to protect her community and she is torn between those two desires.

A brutal and horrific setting featuring systematic physical and sexual abuse of young women.  While not  particularly explicit, this is a gory tale full of unpleasantries including child abuse, rape, and even a brief episode of cannibalism.  This is plenty of blood!  

Legrand is shooting for a grand statement about overcoming institutional misogyny through empowerment and reconciliation, but it never quite comes together.  The problem is that the book is so good at showing the cruelties and atrocities, that there is little space for forgiveness. It is hard to not agree with Vengeance (one of the witches with whom Amity allies) who would just as soon kill every man and every female ally who aided them.  Amity (or Rage, the name to which she changes her name mid-novel is not a convincing leader for a kumbaya moment.  The story, while excellent at wallowing in horrors, never really grapples with what drives misogynistic impulses and so the story lacks the depth to reach for solutions.  It works for a horror/fantasy novel, but lacks gravitas.

A Thousand Steps Into Night, by Traci Chee

Set in a world full of demons, spirits, demi-gods, and gods, Chee's latest novel is a story of a young woman named Miuko.  Clumsy, awkward, and shy, Miuko is the last person one would expect of being capable of an adventure, but she finds herself cursed by a demon.  As a result, she is thrown out of her village and forced to make her own way.  Her primary objective becomes trying to undo the curse, which  is slowly turning her into a demon.  Achieving this goal forces her into greater and challenges involving a wide variety of magical beings.  Whenever she seems about to overcome a malevolent spirit or a trickster, another greater threat comes along.  In the end, Miuko's quest becomes a pivotal moment for her entire realm.

While infused with a feminist message and a gender inclusive world, this is not a terribly message-heavy story.  Rather, it was more of a traditional hack-and-slash fantasy novel, albeit with a dizzying array of characters.  The first forty pages or so are stuffed with footnotes, which while a bit distracting, are largely indispensable for understanding the rest of the story.  Despite that copious background development, I had largely lost track of the characters and the importance of various villains by the end.  I would strongly suggest keeping notes on who is who as you go as characters reappear and earlier events have a habit of becoming important later.  That is all a sign of good construction but I still found it a bit too much!  Too much work to be enjoyable.

Prepped, by Bethany Mangle

Becca has spent her whole life learning the skills she will need to survive the end of the world.  Her parents are preppers, devoting all of their energies and resources toward creating a well-defended compound.  She has learned a wide variety of survival techniques through continuous drills that their community has devised to maintain their skills.  However, after seventeen years of having to swim in icy water and run nighttime defensive maneuvers, she's had enough.  The fact that her mother has insisted that she marry boy-next-door Roy, a sweet but convinced prepper himself, is just more reason for her to run.  

She's earned a scholarship for college and plans to leave after graduation.  But when a terrible accident occurs, the compound's belief in end times hits a higher intensity and Becca has to decide what she is willing to sacrifice to have her freedom and her dreams of a future not weighted down by fear.

A well-paced survival story that never really generated much interest in its characters.  They are largely two-dimensional, especially Becca's abusive mother.  I took Becca's love for her little sister at face value, because I never saw any real evidence of it.  And the romance between Becca and Roy largely fell flat.  It won't give you much insight into preppers but the setting at least allowed for an entertaining adventure.

Loveless, by Alice Oseman

Georgia has never been too worried about her lack of romantic experience until the day she realizes that everyone else has had some.  She's never even kissed a boy, let alone dated one.  And now that she's started her first year at university, its seems like dating and sex are pretty much at the center of everyone's lives...except hers.  

It's not like she hasn't thought about it, but whenever she tries to think of someone she'd like to date, it doesn't seem right.  And kissing?  Eww!  And no, she's not gay either -- girls hold no more interest for her than boys.  Friends and family try to reassure her that she'll get there eventually.  Someday, she'll meet her "special someone." But she doesn't believe it.

So, what does that mean?  If she never feels a sexual attraction or a romantic desire, is she destined to end up alone and lonely? Will her friends drift away as they marry off and start families, leaving her to live by herself?  Is there such a thing as love without romance?  Is there life without love?

Oseman's groundbreaking novel of an aro/ace young woman explores the sexual orientations that aren't -- asexuality and aromantic (that's the tail end of the LGBTQIA+ acronym, by the way) .  I have only passing familiarity with the concept (if knowing two ace people in real life counts) so this was all a big education for me.  My jury's still out about my personal feelings about asexuality as an identity, but the fact that Georgia identifies with it is enough for me to be interested in learning more.  This is a fairly painless way to do so.

However, I found the novel a bit of a chore.  Written in a fanfic style that rambles on and on, Loveless is a long soap opera of the first year of college, with lots of bed hopping, too much alcohol, and very little studying.  It comes off like a non-hetero British version of Felicity and can be just as grating.  The writing is in desperate need of an editor and a lot of trimming.  The protagonists break character frequently, when they are not repeating themselves.

The Gilded Ones, by Namina Forna

Deka has always been treated as an outsider by the village.  Her mother came from the southern provinces and Deka's dark skin stands out against the pale faces of the north.  But now, in her fifteenth year, Deka is about to undergo the Ritual of Purity.  She'll be cut by the priests and, as long as her blood is red, she'll be judged pure and she'll be accepted.  However, when she ends up bleeding gold, her worst fears are realized.  She is imprisoned and sentenced to death.

From the prison where she is being held, a stranger rescues her.  The stranger won't give her name, but Deka takes to calling her "White Hands" and the name sticks.  Deka is taken to a training camp where she meets other "impure" girls.  They are called the alaki and are condemned as abominations and demons by men.  But they are also super strong and incapable of easily being killed and so feared as well.  This combination of revulsion and fear permeates the rest of the novel as Deka and her sisterhood of aleki are trained by White Hands and other women to help rid their lands of even more fearsome demons called "deathshrieks."

The training and preparations for a final battle of men and the despised (and indispensable) aleki against their shared foe becomes complicated as Deka starts to develop strange powers.  As she learns to master these powers, she becomes simultaneously more knowledgeable of the deathshrieks.  In the end, she comes to understand that she is fighting for the wrong cause.

This rich tale of female empowerment has a surprisingly upbeat ending, but the story doesn't start out that way.  It's a pretty grisly tale full of gore and violence.  Female endangerment features prominently throughout the story.  I would hesitate to accuse it of being gratuitous since the violence itself is integral to the story, but the sheer mass of it may turn some readers off.  It's that brutality that has probably earned Forna the moniker of being "the Toni Morrison of fantasy YA." The drama itself, covering the damage of patriarchal misogyny and the damage it has wrought is hardly new material, but her treatment of PTSD in its victims is a a rarity.

I actually had a different issue with the book.  Forna does a poor job of allowing her story to unfold.  Instead, major plot developments appear out of thin air as important details are simply dropped into the story, unconnected to anything that occurred prior.  Much of the drama of the story relies on the late introductions.  Still, despite its flaw, the novel is an immersive and easy read.

If you want more, the novel's sequel, The Merciless Ones will be released on Tuesday.

Da Vinci's Cat, by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

A boy from 16th century Rome and a girl from 21st century New Jersey discover a time machine and accidentally set off a chain of events which could rewrite the history of the Italian Renaissance.  

Young Federico, kept hostage by the Pope, is on friendly terms with the artist Raphael and familiar with the far grumpier Michelangelo.  They are fine artists but he doesn't understand the intense interest in them from strangers wearing strange clothes who appear out of a closet in the Palace.  These strangers are desperate to acquire cast offs from Raphael and Michelangelo.  Even rough sketches excite them (especially if they are signed)!  And in return, they bring Federico the most delicious sweets, made from something called "chocolate." Federico has never tasted anything better in his life and sees no harm in absconding with a drawing or two in exchange for more of it.  But when Bee shows up, history is changed and only the cat seems to understand it all, and she doesn't say much.

An amusing time travel story with some educational value from the attention it gives to the artistry of Raphael and Michelangelo and to its many lovely details about everyday life in 16th century Italy.  The story doesn't always pace well and some parts get confusing (as is true with many time-travel stories!), but it is entertaining.  Absolutely lovely sketches of the cat Juno throughout the novel are a high point.

That Thing About Bollywood, by Supriya Kelkar

Sonali is upset that her parents are separating.  While it's a bit of a relief since they are always fighting when they are together, she wishes she could talk with someone about it.  Her father, however, doesn't believe that anyone should talk about their problems outside of the family.  And while even Sonali's mother thinks Sonali should be able to tell whoever she wishes, Sonali obeys her father.  Unable to say the things she needs to say, she cuts herself off from her friends, which makes things worse.

The pressure drives her so crazy that an unexpected thing happens:  her life becomes a Bollywood film!  Now, when things get bas, she breaks out into lavish song and dance numbers.  Colors become brighter.  A musical soundtrack starts up.  The people around her become a chorus and background dancers.  In her songs, Sonali finally expresses her real feelings.  She calls it "Bollywooditis," where music, dancing, and a larger-than-life world becomes the only place Sonali can be heard.  But she knows that it is not real and as much as she loves it, she wants things to be normal again.

This magical Disney-esque conceit serves as a loving tribute to Bollywood and all of its camp.  While the story itself is fairly basic and carries no particular surprises, it becomes a vehicle for Kelkar to bring up all of her beloved tropes of  "filmi magic." For a Westerner with limited exposure to Bollywood (I once shared an apartment with a group of Indian students who watched nothing else all summer), I could recognize and appreciate only some of the references, but for true fans there is a lot to enjoy.  Kelkar pulls out all the classic ingredients and creates a story that puts American middle school drama into the Bollyverse.  I enjoyed the novelty of the concept and the sweet way that it was implemented.  Perhaps I should watch a filmi again?

How Not to Fall in Love, by Jacqueline Firkins

From working in her mother's bridal shop, Harper has seen the very worst of romance.  The whole wedding thing, with its impossible pressure to create The Perfect Moment, brings out people's worst natures.  The various Bridezillas (described in glorious anecdotes)  that permeate this story have jaded Harper's perspective.  Love is a fiction.

But her best friend, boy-next-door Theo, is in complete disagreement.  For him, there is nothing greater than love and he proves it by falling in love every week!  And overtures are spurned, the objects of his affection flee, and his heart inevitably crushed, he picks up the pieces and finds another girl to chase. Theo's hobby (LARPing) with it's drama and romance feeds his obsession and his perpetual optimism.  He loves the whole idea of the grand gesture.

Theo despairs that he'll never be fully happy.  Harper thinks he should stop trying so hard.  She promises him that if he would just relax and stop making such a big deal out of love, he could be happy.  He argues that she is in no position to judge because she's never been in love.  A challenge is hatched:  they will prove each other wrong.  And, of course, since this is a rom-com, it will all go completely off-plan, surprising the two of them when they find each other in the end.

Based on the classic trope of the girl dating the wrong guy in order to find the right one, we have all the basic ingredients in place:  the long suffering (and coincidentally, cute!) neighbor boy, the studly (and wrong) initial love interest, and the supportive BFF who selflessly supports Harper.  Fabulous bridal shop anecdotes provide humor (a function also provided by some brief LARPing).  A very supportive mother helps Harper sort through her adolescent angst.  Some pretty hot sex scenes spice things up.  At the end of it all, a completely over-the-top public confession adds the cherry on the top of this caloric romantic confection.

True Letters from a Fictional Life, by Kenneth Logan

James lives an awkward double existence.  To his friends, he's a great athlete, a decent student, and boy that is too shy to express his thoughts or ever reciprocate his friend Teresa's affections.  But when he is alone, he has lots of private feelings, which he spills into letters.  He tells his teammates how they drive him nuts, apologizes to the poor gay kid who he and his teammates bully, and tries to explain to Teresa why he doesn't want to date her ever.  And he writes love letters to guys.  But none of these letters ever get sent out.  They live in his locked desk drawer.

For all of his life, James has struggled with these thoughts:  finding the courage to say what he really feels.  He wonders if any of it is worth saying.  He questions what he really wants.  When he meets a gay boy named Topher, it motivates him to step out.  He's afraid of what will happen but taking things slow is OK and seem to be going well.  But then someone breaks into his desk drawer and steals his letters.  And they start showing up in people's mailboxes.

I found this story disorganized and unfocused.  The pace is uneven and aimless.  I never really got a sense about what James saw in Topher and about why he was willing to come out because of him.  The great letter fiasco proved to be anti-climactic.  And Teresa, who could have been all sorts of things to this story about coming out, just came off as selfish and annoying, with little indication of where her appeal to him ever lay.  So, while I was sympathetic to James, he didn't seem to have interesting friends or an interesting life.  I never engaged with the story.

A Place to Hang the Moon, by Kate Albus

To say that Grandmother took care of William, Edmund, and Anna would be an overstatement because in truth she wanted nothing to do with them.  Officially, she was their guardian after the death of their parents, but it was the housekeeper who did what little passed for parenting for the three children.  Still, things could be much worse and when the Grandmother passes away, the children are faced with the awkward question of who will take care of them?  The last thing they want is to be separated, but with a war with Germany on the horizon, there seems little possibility of an appropriate foster home being found for them.  And at the same time, great discretion is advised as the three children are wealthy and could easily be exploited by some unscrupulous person.

It is their solicitor who lands on the idea of having the children join in the evacuation of London, pretend to leave their parents behind, and settle with a host family in the countryside.  Preposterous as it might sound, perhaps they will uncover a suitable foster home?  A place where, as the children put it, they might find someone who thinks that they "hang the moon."

Reality is much harder of course and the children find themselves shuttled from one unsuitable place to another.  Faced with different types of abuse and neglect, the one bright spot in their lives is a kindly librarian, Mrs. Müller.  The children adore her and she reciprocates, but she cannot host them.  She has been judged an unsuitable guardian due to the questionable loyalty of her husband, a German national who left her and disappeared at the outbreak of the War.

The orphan genre is truly a golden part of children's literature and this one pays homage to the greats.  It's a predictable formula but one that is very effective.  It combines adventure as the children face peril and yet emerge happily in the end in the arms of a loving family.  The emotional pay off is strong.  In this particular case, period detail about the evacuation of children into the countryside gives us some meaty subject matter as well.  The result is an enjoyable and memorable read.  Recommended.