I Miss You, I Hate This, by Sara Saedi

During the Covid Pandemic, I wondered what YA literature set during the period would look like.  This novel, while taking great artistic license, does a great job of exploring some of the key themes, but is ultimately knee-capped by that license.  In order to create a story that fits within a single academic year and has greater relevance to young people, Saedi creates a whole new pandemic called "Adema," with slightly different symptoms.  Adema is more virulent for the young than the old (thus forcing young people to quarantine and the elderly to be largely immune).  That switch allows our teen protagonists to truly be the center of the universe and to explore issues of isolation that during Covid were felt more intensely by older people.  

Parisa and Gabriela are two high school seniors who are best friends despite their differences.  Parisa is from a wealthy Iranian-American family and on her way to becoming valedictorian.  Despite this privilege, she suffers from panic attacks that the pandemic lockdown aggravates.  In contrast, Gabriela's two Moms struggle to make ends meet and when the pandemic destroys their catering business, Gabriela has to put her life on the line and get a job to help the family pay the rent.

Throughout the lockdown period (which for this disease runs during 2022-2023 school year), Parisa and Gabriela stay in touch through texting and work through a variety of issues including Parisa's crush on her sister's boyfriend and Gabriela's search to reunite with her estranged family.  When a sudden terrible mistake destroys their deep friendship, it takes an even deeper tragedy to bring them back together.

It's a fine story that really does take on a lot of familiar pandemic-era issues including the psychological trauma of isolation, the economic impact of the stay-at-home orders and the way "essential workers" were treated, and the uncertainty of the future.  It's therefore really distracting that in this parallel world, Covid never happened and instead this Adema ravages the country in a similar-but-different way.  I understand why Saedi went with a different disease but it's off-putting to have very real and salient recent events being fictionalized.

Sweet and Sour, by Debbi Michiko Florence

Up until two years ago, Mai and her family has spent every summer with Zach and his family.  That was the year that Zach's family moved to Japan.  It was also the summer that Zach betrayed Mai, hurting her deeply and causing her to swear lifelong enmity for her former best friend.  Now, Zach is back and Mai has to spend another summer with him.  She's sworn to get revenge for his unforgivable cruelty.  However, she finds him changed and her anger and desire for vengeance wavers.  Can she stay the course or will she choose the much harder path of forgiveness?

A sweet middle grade book about friendship and forgiveness, with all of the messy subjects of acknowledging hurt and learning how to let go of negative feelings.  In a vast universe of books about friendships and how to cultivate them, this story has some valuable life lessons to offer and the work that is involved in being a good friend.  I found Mai's stubborn attachment to vengeance a bit arrogant and it made it hard to like her, but she's certainly a good educational example.  The lessons come on a bit too heavy and elements of the story will age poorly, but the kids in the story are relatable and there's a sweet romance and an overall innocence to a story that is hard to find nowadays.

Each Night Was Illuminated, by Jodi Lynn Anderson

When Cassie and Elias were young children, they witnessed a horrific train accident together. Cassie lost her faith in God that day, unable to conceive how such horrible suffering could have occurred.  And shortly after that, Elias moved away.  In the ensuing years, they corresponded and stayed in touch.  Elias returns when they are now in High School, with an obsession with finding ghosts and he enlists Cassie to help him contact the victims of the train accident.

When he is not searching for ghosts, he plots elaborate pranks against Father James -- a mean-spirited blowhard priest who dominates their parish.  Cassie, who has never liked Father James, finds it amusing but it is very dangerous.  And when Elias gets caught, Father James turns the community against him and he and his family are forced to move away again.  Lonely without her friend, Cassie is determined to continue her search for the ghosts.  Her search comes to an end with a cataclysmic flood.  

An ambitious novel that is loosely based on the life of Saint Eia of the Celts which explores Cassie's search for God and contains a heavy ecological theme.  As a straight story, the plot is a mess, taking significant shifts at several points and drifting between ideas.  That said, the writing is lovely and deep and there are profound moments scattered throughout the book.  It's artistic, but it's a strange read.

The Falling Girls, by Hayley Krischer

Shade and Jadis have always been there for each other.  United in their distaste for the popular kids and things like Homecoming and Prom, they have enjoyed being outsiders.  But Shade is changing.  She thinks she might like to belong to a group after all.  She misses the gymnastics she excelled at when she was young and regrets never having made it on the cheerleading team.  So, she decides to try out.

She is surprised to find that she is actually warmly received.  Even the "three Chloes" (queen Chloe Orbach, insecure Chloe Schmidt, and pleaser Chloe Clarke) who rule the cheer team accept her as a team member.  Jadis is shocked though and feels betrayed.  She warns Shade that she's being exploited but Shade doesn't care.  And to everyone's surprise, Shade and Chloe Orbach grow surprisingly close, upsetting the prevailing social hierarchy.

Then, at the Homecoming dance, while the girls are experimenting with Ecstasy, Chloe Orbach collapses and dies.  Suspicion falls on Jadis (who supplied the drugs) and Shade (who connected them).  But would Jadis really try to kill her perceived competition?  All signs seem to indicate so, but Shade isn't sure she believes it  Jadis meanwhile tries to warn Shade that the remaining Chloes are out to frame them.

A taut psychological thriller about adolescent insecurity and the depths that girls will go to in order to preserve their friendships and their place in the social hierarchy.  Less exploitative than other novels in the genre, I was taken by the complex relationships between the girls.  I also liked the way the adults were portrayed, with greater-than-usual multi-dimensionality.

Big Rig, by Louise Hawes

Hazel (or as she likes to call herself, “Hazmat”) and her father are creatures of the road, making a living as long haul truckers.  While only eleven, Hazmat already knows how to keep travel logs and manage the business.  She knows all about loading and unloading cargo.  She even understands the theory of how to operate a truck (although she’ll have to be 18 before she can apply for her CDL).  She loves everything about the job and the lifestyle.

But things are changing and she worries that automation will end the use of human operators and there may not be jobs for her in the future.  That may be far-fetched worry, but she also knows that her Dad wants to find them a stable home now that she’s about to become a teenager.  The trouble is that she doesn’t want to ever settle down to a house in the burbs with a frilly bed in a pink bedroom.  She’s rather live free on the road.

A bit thin on an overall plot, the book consists mostly of vignettes (some of them quite outlandish) that fill the pages but don’t really advance the story.  I liked the characters, but when we’re adopting cats who survive plane crashes and rescuing a group of special needs children from flood waters, I have to start questioning the realism of the story.  It's a fast entertaining read that taught me a bit about the trucking lifestyle and the basics of the business, but didn’t have a compelling dramatic arc to carry it through. 

The Grace of Wild Things, by Heather Fawcett

Grace's wild imagination and her conviction that she is skilled at magic hasn't exactly endeared the young orphan to any adoption prospects.  So she decides to run away from the orphanage and present herself to the local witch.  At worst, the witch might try to roast her in her oven (which she in fact does), but it would be better than having her wild imagination suppressed.  

Grace manages to convince the witch to give her a trial -- to cast the 100 (and a half) spells that are in the witch's grimoire.  If Grace can do this before next spring, the witch will take her on as her apprentice.  If not, then the witch will take away any talent Grace has for magic.  It's a challenge that seems insurmountable, but Grace is as determined as she is melodramatic and with the help of a few friends, she works through the task.

Some elements of the story will feel quite familiar.  Inspired by the classic Anne of Green Gables, many of Grace's adventures (from smashing the school bully with her slate to accidentally intoxicating her best friend) are taken from Anne Shirley's mishaps.  The setting on Prince Edward Island is also the same.  But Grace, while prone to Anne's loquaciousness and inspired imagination, is an aspiring witch and this story is magic fantasy with faeries, ghosts, and spirits.  That Fawcett manages to also work in the themes of imagination and found homes is a marker of the cleverness of this novel and a testament to the universality of the inspiration.

The Talent Thief, by Mike Thayer

After her grandmother passes away, Tiffany knows she has been cursed.  How else could you explain the string of embarrassing incidents that plague her middle school existence?  Or what about the fact that her Dad is about to lose the planetarium that he has devoted so much effort to keeping afloat?  It will take a miracle to flip things around.

When two meteors collide one night in the skies above her, Tiffany feels like something significant has changed in her life.  Inexplicably, she finds herself gifted with talents that she never imagined possessing.  She gains the ability to sing like queen bee Candace, the talent to sink three-point shots like smoldering Brady, and even the ability to do card tricks like her grandmother's old friend in the nursing home.  But the magic comes with two caveats:  it is temporary and it requires that Tiffany steal it away (the person who had the talent becomes normal while Tiffany possesses it).  

With such magic, Tiffany could really fix things and make everything right.  But the ethics of the power vex her.  Very quickly she realizes how much harm she can cause to others.  And while there are instances when hurting others might feel justified (stealing Candace's voice before a performance so she flubs it), it is never nice.  And moreover, what does it say that you can only get ahead by stealing from others?  In the end, Tiffany comes to realize that being successful comes as much from self-confidence and the support of others as it comes from any talent.

A fine fantasy novel that approaches the morality of playing fair.  I was put off by the character of Tiffany who never really felt authentic to me and by the setting (planetarium? really?).  I also found the characters rather thin.  But I appreciated the nice age-appropriate development of a theme that allowed Tiffany to explore the pitfalls of her incredible power.

Rare Birds, by Jeff Miller

Graham's mother is waiting for a heart transplant.  Over the past years, they've traveled from one hospital to another and finally ended up back home in Florida.  While Mom's in the hospital, Graham stays with his uncle and his cousin Nick.  While it's great to reconnect and learn a bit about what Mom was like when she was younger, the situation is not ideal.  Nick has his own issues with his mother and takes out his frustrations bullying Graham, but Graham's been through so much that he doesn't really care anymore.

While waiting at the hospital, Graham meets Lou who coincidentally is also waiting with her family for a donor heart to come.  With their shared situation, Lou and Graham bond easily and they discover a shared love for birding.  Going through Graham's mother's old things back home, they find Mom's birding journal and learn that she had been on a quest for a rare bird called a Snail Kite that she never found.  Determined to complete his Mom's quest in her honor as she waits for a donor, he and Lou set out on an adventure to find the Kite.

A lively middle grade adventure story that manages to cover two separate topics (organ transplants and ornithology) with a good mix of information and entertainment.  While the two main subjects are unrelated, I thought the birding helped to lighten the otherwise heavy nature of the medical stuff (especially given the story's rather heavy ending).  I was a bit annoyed at how passive Graham was and it soured me a bit on his character.  And I would have preferred if Nick had gotten some sort of comeuppance for his meanness.  However, the birding stuff was great and may encourage a few young people to pick up a pair of binoculars.

Whispering Alaska, by Brendan Jones

In the aftermath of their mother's death from COVID, Nicky and her twin sister Josie have ceased communicating with each other.  To help heal the rift and the family, their father decides to move them from Pennsylvania to join his family in southern Alaska.  But the peace that the family was trying to find is shattered by a conflict that has split the community: whether to clear cut the forest to bring in revenue.  Times are tough from the pandemic.  Tourists have stopped coming and bringing their spending money and so the search is on for alternative sources of revenue.  Without the infusion of cash that the lumber could bring in, people won't be able to make a living and the community will break up.  But at the same time, these are thousand year-old spruce trees that folks are talking about cutting up.  The damage will be long lasting.  While the girls are new to Alaska, they have been enchanted by the Tongass forest.  United by a calling to save the trees, the twins find a point of connect and a way to heal their grief.

A sweet and actually pretty fresh story that mostly defies its genre.  We have the dead mother, but don't dwell on her.  There's the pandemic, but that's mostly background.  There's a mild supernatural element, but it is largely ignored.  And the eco theme, while central to the story, is toned down.  The ultimate solution is a compromise (i.e., responsible stewardship of resources) and while overly optimistic, does portray the types of win-win solutions that generally have underlaid real life conservation success stories.  I might in fact criticize the story for not really pursuing any of these themes in any major way, but that decision leaves the book more digestible and less didactic.  What results is sufficiently educational with a light touch and has little bits of stuff (emotions, interpersonal relationships, magic, and adventure) to excite the reader.

The Roof Over Our Heads, by Nicole Kronzer

Finn's family are all about the theatre.  They even live in a Golden Age mansion owned by the region's major theatre Beauregard.  But appearances can be deceiving on the stage:  the mansion is falling apart and, while Finn's mothers and siblings are all successes, Finn is always flubbing his lines.  The truth is that Finn is really much more successful in the kitchen than on stage.

Family is family and the one thing that has kept Finn's family together is this old mansion.  So, when the new artistic director for Beauregard announces that they can no longer afford to maintain the property and need to sell it, the family comes together with a plan to save it.  It is a family dream to stage a historical murder mystery about the original inhabitants of the mansion -- the Jorgensens -- in the house itself.  But with the dire need for funds, the plan is now extended to host a special dinner for VIPs at $1000 a plate as part of an exclusive televised performance.  That's all well and good until things start going wrong.

Mix into all of this a complex web of subplots worthy of Downton Abbey and you get the whirlwind of this novel.  There's romance and intrigue, coming to terms with the past, and a main protagonist who sorts his entire life out in 340 action-packed pages.  With a huge cast of characters it can be hard to keep up with everything that is going on, but the story is forgiving and coaches you so you don't get completely lost.  There are many things to like about this book.  I particularly enjoyed the mash-up of manor home posing with modern sensibilities as the cast (largely made up of high school drama kids) are forced to live in character as upstairs and downstairs inhabitants of the play.  Great fun!

Then Everything Happens at Once, by M-E Girard

Baylee has never been in a relationship.  And given her size, she figures she'd be lucky if anyone ever noticed her.  She remains oblivious to the friendliness of her neighbor Freddie, on whom she actually has a crush.  When she starts texting with Alex, a stranger she's met online however, she realizes that things could change.  But it's all very awkward as Baylee isn't used to navigating romantic relationships.  Suddenly, she goes from famine to feast when Freddie reveals his interest.  Instinctually, Baylee returns the affection, putting her in the awkward place of juggling two relationships where once there were none.

And things are about to get a lot more complicated because this is March 2020 and news stories about a virus sweeping the world are just starting to pick up.  With Baylee's complicated love life, she doesn't have much time to pay attention to any of that (although having school get cancelled helps give her time to focus on sorting things out).  Even as lockdown is declared, Baylee can't really conceptualize the weight of the matter, despite repeated entreaties from her Mom and the authorities.

During the early days of the Pandemic, I had wondered what sort of YA stories would come from it.  This sort of dazed-and-confused romance makes a certain amount of sense.   Baylee's an interesting protagonist.  Aside from cheating on Alex, she's actually very candid.  While she's articulate, her mind is truly confused by all of the novel things that are occurring to her:  first love, first kiss, and first sexual experience.  Putting it all in the context of lockdown raises the stakes a bit and Baylee proves largely (and realistically) incapable of adapting to the restrictions.  As an adult, it's hard for me to be sympathetic to her selfishness and to the degree she puts her family (and her vulnerable little sister in particular) at risk by her quarantine violations.  However, it felt authentic and even if it made me dislike her, I recognized that as a sign of my degree of investment in the story.

That's Debatable, by Jen Doll

Millie is an excellent debater and, on the Lincoln-Douglas debate circuit, she's practically unbeatable.  Despite having to wrestle with constant sexual harassment from other students, their coaches, and even the judges, she repeatedly wins her debates,  She has won the Alabama state championships for three years in a row.  Now in her senior year, she stands to set a record by winning all four years.  This coincidentally also carries with it a scholarship that could help pay for college, which she will otherwise have a hard time affording.

Tag doesn't have to worry about paying for college.  His family is wealthy enough that scholarships are not a major consideration.  But doing well in debate is the sort of extracurricular asterixis he needs to impress admissions committees.  It's certainly what is driving the other students on his school team to do well.  The problem is that he doesn't care.  He isn't even sure he wants to go to college.  And the debates have become just as meaningless to him.  In debates you have to argue the side that you are given, but Tag is done with that.  He wants to argue the position that he believes in, the position that is right.  Even if it means his team loses.

When a crisis and some quick thinking throws Millie and Tag together into an unusual situation, two opposites find that they share a love for the same things.  And while debate will always be important to them, they find that maybe the feelings they have for each other are just as important.

A lovely romance with a lot to say about taking a stand for what you believe in and a really great introduction to the arcane world of Lincoln-Douglas Debates -- a subject that I knew absolutely nothing about before I read this book.  I enjoyed that education, I was caught up in the (occasionally over-the-top) drama, and I loved the message.

This is How I Roll, by Debbi Michiko Florence

Sana loves cooking and dreams of becoming a famous sushi chef like her father.  She'd love to spend the summer getting pointers from Dad and cooking with him, but he refuses to teach her and just finds excuses to go in to work instead.  Sana suspects that he doesn't believe that women should make sushi.

One day she meets Koji, a boy who is helping landscape her Dad's restaurant.  He seems nice but her best friend warns her that he has a reputation.  Rather than dissuading her, the news simply makes her curious (and then cautious about telling her friend anything more about him).  She and Koji become friends and he takes her to meet his Mom who turns out to be an amazing cook.  She offers to teach Sana what she knows about Japanese cuisine.  Soon, Sana is sneaking over to Koji's house in order to take lessons from Koji's Mom (and to see Koji as well!) and he even helps her put together YouTube tutorials about kawaii sushi. All of this Sana has to keep secret from her parents, even though she knows that all this sneaking around will lead to nothing but trouble!

A predictable and formulaic middle reader with a determined heroine and an unusual hobby.  While Sana makes a number of ostensibly dangerous choices, the entire environment of this book feels very safe secure.  Yes, Sana is hanging out with strangers without her parents' knowledge, but this is terribly tame stuff by children's book standards.  Predictably, she gets caught and (similarly predictably) she gets off pretty lightly.  Even the romance is safe and chaste (some hand holding and one furtive kiss).  The ending is saccharine and very tidy.  Nothing remarkable, but pleasant enough to read and appropriate for tweens.

Lolo's Light, by Liz Garton Scanlon

At the age of twelve, Millie gets her first experience of babysitting for their neighbor's four month-old baby, Lolo.  The evening goes fine and Millie is so happy that she's managed so well as a child carer.  But the next morning, there is terrible news:  sometime in the night after Millie went home, baby Lolo died.  Attributed to SIDS, Lolo's death is not Millie's fault, but that's not how Millie sees it.  

Suddenly, nothing feels safe or secure.  Withdrawn into grief, Lolo cuts herself off from her friends and it struck with panic attacks at school.  She becomes convinced that the spirit of Lolo still lives and imagines she can see the light of that spirit shining from her neighbor's windows when she walks by.

A poorly timed science project in which the class incubates and hatches chickens stirs up the worst of her fears and anxieties.  Millie becomes obsessed with taking care of the eggs and their incubation and grows inconsolable when some of the eggs fail.  Her parents, the science teachers, and a counselor all attempt to help, offering different perspectives on life/death and reconciling to it.

Stories about grief don't generally allow much room for maneuver in the plot. It's pretty much a given that you'll work through the stages of grief and come out at the end of the story in a state of acceptance, prepared to move forward.  It's an inward journey and can get really dull, unless it is particularly well-written.  In this case, the challenges are compounded by the author's decision to tell the story in third person voice.  Millie is sad.  Millie is angry.  Millie won't tell people how she's feeling.  It's an incredibly passive way to experience her emotional state and one that is very hard with which to connect. I couldn't get invested in her story.

Remember Me Gone, by Stacy Stokes

Tumble Tree is such a remote small town that there is no cell service.  All it has going for it is the mine where half of the town is employed and Memory House.  Memory House is the outfit that Lucy's father runs:  a place where people go to forget their troubles.  Dad is a unique skill:  he's able to erase people's bad memories, leaving them free to go on with their lives unburdened by what they want to forget.

But something is not quite right.  Lucy keeps having flashes of memories that don't make sense and periods of time for which she can't account.  People are giving her vague answers and tell her things that can't be true.  Someone's hiding something and going to great pain to do so, and it's almost as if someone like her father has been wiping her memories.  However, Lucy knows that her Dad would never practice on an unwilling person.  It all seems to center around the mines and the mayor.  Lucy and the mayor's nephew, Marco feel that they are tantalizingly close to uncovering the mystery, but plagued by the sense that they may have been in this same place before.

A wonderful edge-of-the-seat thriller that mixes just the right amount of suspense and paranoia to keep you hooked.  Lucy and Marco have great chemistry (even though the novel never slows down enough to give them space for romance) and a series of creepy antagonists keep readers on their toes.  Things get a bit strained towards the end as Stokes tries to wrap everything up and some of the explanations didn't make much sense, but the adventure is so much fun along the way that you want to just let it go so you can enjoy the ride.  Great read!

I Was Born for This, by Alice Oseman

Angel lives for The Ark, a boy band she's been following since they were posting amateur videos on YouTube.  She's a obsessive fan for a band that has one of the hardest core fandoms in the world.  Hardly an hour goes by without her monitoring Twitter for the latest information about The Ark.  She loves them sooooooooooo much!

She's finally saved up enough money to travel to London to see them perform and spend a week hanging out with Juliet, another fangirl.  She's sure that it will be amazing and she's going to have a great time because every time she's hanging out with The Ark, she feels all the love the band gives out.

After five years, life as a member of the band in The Ark is wearing Jimmy down.  Secretly suffering with anxiety and panic attacks (which his PR people keep under wraps), he struggles to get through  days of pointless interviews and photo-ops.  He longs for the days when he could just go out on the street and not get accosted by some vapid fangirl who allegedly "loves" him.  How can they when they know nothing about him?  With the record company pressuring them to sign a more restrictive contract, he feels more and more pressure to just step away.  And as they return to London to finish up their latest tour, the band is falling apart.

In the week that follows, nothing turns out quite like either Angel or Jimmy planned.  Being in a band or being a fan of the band isn't what they imagined.  And as their plans come apart, both of them are forced to confront the fact that they aren't loving the one person they need to love -- themselves.  

With a ethnically and gender-diverse cast that is Oseman's signature, she explores fame and the people who put people there, the fans.  Despite such an unoriginal topic, Oseman has a surprisingly large amount of original things to say about it.  And a cast of characters who are not only diverse but original, vivid, and (at times) outrageously funny makes this a great read.

Justine, by Forsyth Harmon

An unusual illustrated novel tells a familiar story, presented in an entirely original way, about a teenager growing up on Long Island in the late 1990s.  Aimless and lonely, Ali picks up a job at the local convenience store where she meets Justine and falls into a deep obsession.  Ali's been experimenting with boys and finding nothing there for her and so falling head over heels for tall enigmatic Justine makes a certain sense.  

Justine is not a terribly good role model.  She teaches Ali how to memorize produce codes and bag groceries, but also how to purge to stay thin and how to shoplift from stores.  Apathetic and bored with her own life, Ali doggedly follows Justine's example in every way.  It ends badly and on a tragic note.

This is a very short story (135 pages, nearly half of which are illustrations) and a quick read.  It's not really a story per se, but more a series of journal entries, with ink line drawings of common everyday objects (a Coke can, a bag of potato chips, a gas station sign. etc.).  The banality of the drawings and the story itself is part of its charm.  Ali's life isn't particularly big or important to the world, but it is a complex swirl of emotions and feelings for Ali herself, most of which she is unable to process or contextualize.  It's a tragedy, but not one that Ali really cares much about.

Girls at the Edge of the World, by Laura Brooke Robson

In the kingdom of Kostrova, The Captain's Log has foretold a series of ten storms that will bring on a great global flood in its conclusion.  It's not supposed to come for many more years, but as the storms start occurring as they have been described, people start to panic.  There are no preparations and not nearly enough boats for everyone.  It readily becomes apparent that people will do anything to find a place on one of them.  Natasha, the leader of the elite Royal Flyers (a group of young women who perform acrobatic ballet on silk ribbons, has her eyes on the attentions of King Nikolai who is searching for a wife.  

For the elite Royal Flyers themselves, their chances are slightly better than average. So, when a vacancy appears, many apply.  For most of the applicants, getting a foot in the door would improve their chances of survival.  For Ella, she knows she is doomed regardless and she doesn't care.  She's joining the Royal Flyers for an entirely different reason:  to exact revenge by killing King Nikolai.

As the storms progress, and the prophecy unfolds as it was foretold, social unrest breaks out and palace intrigues start to emerge.  There is tug of war between Nikolai and the faith's leader, mass poisonings, and acts of arson.  However, in the end, everyone's plans get thrown off and things take their own course.

I loved the immersive world building.  While I found it a little distracting, I even enjoyed the faint Russian and Finnish references in the novel.  However, the ending is a rushed mess in which so much of what is built up in the story gets tossed aside.  It keeps us on our toes but so little of what happens in the end is actually built during the story.  The storms, the revenge, the struggle over the crown, competition for the king's hand, and even the planned murder weapon become irrelevant for how the story wraps up.  And a romance that is barely hinted at during the bulk of the story becomes determinant in the end.

Afterlove, by Tanya Byrne

Ash and Poppy meet on a school trip and embark on a whirlwind romance that quickly turns serious. For Ash, this comes as a surprise because she's never had much luck in her previous relationships.  The two girls are from drastically different socioeconomic situations.  In spite of that, her doubts are swept away as she becomes convinced that Poppy is the one whom (in the words of Death Cab for Cutie) she'll "follow into the dark." Poppy is a keeper and Ash is starting to consider how to introduce Poppy to her conservative family.

But then Ash is suddenly struck down in a hit-and-run and dies on New Year's Eve.  As the last teenager to die in the year, she is assigned the role of "reaper" to help guide the recently deceased to the beach and to Charon's waiting boat to take them to the afterlife.  Life as a reaper, while ostensibly similar to Ash's life before, has its own set of rules.  Key amongst them is that, while people can see you, you don't look like you did before.  Only those who are about to die can see the real you.  She is also warned away from visiting friends, family, and (especially) Poppy.  But Ash can't resist the temptation and when she goes anyway she is hit with a rude shock when Poppy can actually see her!

An interesting paranormal romance with a split personality.  The first half plays out as a typical teen lesbian romance, with a lot of struggling over whether to come out to their families.  There's some lovely character building here between mother and daughter, and we get a real strong sense of the tension between Ash's intense feelings for Poppy and her loyalties to her family.  It's thus a big shock in the second half where the focus is entirely on Ash's superficial relationships with her fellow reapers and the doomed romance with Poppy.  The family is barely mentioned and her mother is forgotten.  Moreover, the second half is not even that interesting.  The potential drama of finding out that your girlfriend is about to die is not really developed.  Another potential flash point with a head reaper Deborah (and a really easy potential replacement for Mom) remains a cypher -- an utterly wasted character.  The story disappoints.

I did love the not-safe-for-Florida cover art though!

Wishing Upon the Same Stars, by Jacquetta Nammar Feldman

The move from Detroit to San Antonio is a big change for Yasmeen.  She's used to her predominantly Arab community and San Antonio is so different.  She just hopes that she'll fit in and that people will like her.  What she finds is a bit more complicated.  She is surprised to find that stories of Texan hospitality really are true.  Her neighbor Waverly warmly welcomes her.  The neighbors, while a bit taken aback by Yasmeen's family, are largely friendly.  But there are others who see her differences as something to hate, from the mean man at the restaurant who threatens her father to the bully at school who accuses Yasmeen of being a terrorist.  But the most complicated relationship of all is with Ayelet, a girl who is also from the Middle East, but who's Israeli.  In principle, the girls have a lot in common as immigrants, but the shadow of the conflict in their homeland hangs over them.  Can they forge a friendship against so much pressure to hate?

As is typical in a middle reader, there's plenty going on in this book:  Yasmeen has to learn how to dance, Yasmeen's sister goes to the National Spelling Bee, grandmother comes to live with them, and so on. With fairly simple age-appropriate explanations of the intifada, a faint hint of a romantic interest (but not even a kiss), and a story of largely well-behaved young people, this novel has little to object to.

The key message is about forging true friendships based on loyalty and kindness.  Through determination and a fair amount of bravery, Yasmeen stands up for what she wants:  to have the friends she wants to have, to be so the things she wants to do, and to be the person she wants to be.  And while everything comes together a bit too neatly and the book's ending stops just short of solving the Mideast Crisis, it's a charming story of young people trying to break free of their parents' prejudices.