In the Orbit of You, by Ashley Schumacher

When they were little, Nova and Sam were inseparable playmates.  They played with snails in the backyard and styled themselves as the King and Queen of Snailopolis.  They planned to be friends forever, but Sam's father was hurting him and Sam got taken away.  And then Nova and her Mom moved away as well.

Moving is a big constant in Nova's life.  Thanks to her Mom's job as a consultant, they have to pull up stakes every few months.  When she was younger, Nova liked the excitement of going to a new place and having a new beginning, but as she grows older it has begun to wear on her.  Not only has she been unable to form any lasting friendships, but also she has struggled to develop any sense of herself and who she wants to become.

The latest move seems like all the others until she stumbles upon Sam at school.  At first, he doesn't recognize her, but thanks to a gimmicky personality test the students take, he is drawn to her when they are matched as "99% compatible" (much to the chagrin of Sam's girlfriend Abigail).  After the initial shock of the reunion, they agree that they will just be friends.  Nova will be moving on in two months.  Sam has a good thing going with Abigail.  They agree it is better to stay "on course." But of course that isn't what ends up happening.

While the idea of destiny and fate can seem very romantic, there is the hanging dread of eventual discovery as Nova and Sam start fooling around that weighs heavily on any of the fun.  And with Abigail portrayed as unusually nice and understanding, their betrayal seems cruel and selfish.  In the end, Abigail herself rightly calls them on their immaturity and I was left without much sympathy (and even less empathy) for Nova and Sam's angst.  It doesn't help that the story gets dragged out far longer than it needs to be.  The subplots about Nova and Sam's individual struggles with their futures would have been far more interesting with less of the secret forbidden romance (maybe without any of it).

The Wilderness of Girls, by Madeline Claire Franklin

With her father arrested and her stepmother on the lam, Rhi is left trying to find her footing living with her uncle, a forest ranger.  Hiking in the woods one day, she comes upon a pack of four feral girls dressed in furs and animal skins, guarded by two wolves.  

From where did they come and how did they survive for so many years?  The girls believe that they are enchanted princesses, who have been raised by a man named Mother, in an old collapsed tree that they call a "castle." Mother's magic protected them, helped them find food, and healed them when they grew sick.  It was Mother who explained to them that they were four of five and when they met the fifth princess they would be ready to fight to free the people of a kingdom in another dimension.  Through all their hardships, the girls believed in Mother.  But when he died, the magic went away and the girls sought out help.

Who was Mother?  Was he magical or some sort of psychopath who kidnapped the girls.  Are the girls princesses or victims? Finding the answer to that question will tell the girls as much about themselves as it will explain about the man.  Now thrust into the modern world, they are pressured by the authorities, the media, and the people who are caring for them to define themselves so they can be properly categorized.

For Rhi, their struggle to understand and explain themselves feels like her own and it soon becomes apparent that she might share their destiny.  But what is the fate for young women raised in the woods and totally unprepared for the brutal wilderness of the larger world?  Their instincts are to fight for their survival and they are unversed in the subtleties and duplicities now around them.  They don't understand the behaviors that are expected of them as young women and, while they desire to integrate into society and uncertain that they can compromise themselves to do so.

This complex and multi-layered novel explores female friendship and companionship.  While Franklin brings in some pretty horrific abuse and violence (including a brief scene of cannibalism), the story is less about pointing out the brutality of the world for women and more about the way women connect and communicate in the face of such abuse and violence.  This can occasionally grow preachy for the benefit of young readers who may struggle with the nuanced reading of feminine negotiations with patriarchy that Franklin employs, but this is all good Feminism 101 stuff.

Written in more of the style of a legend or an extended parable, as if Franklin is recounting an epic journey, there's not a lot of depth to the characters or examinations of their personal feelings.  Instead, the girls are largely symbolic from their backstories (which are a catalog of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse).  Even their names (Verity, Sunder, Oblivienne, Grace, and Eden)`suggest meaning.  

Overall, the writing is gorgeous, the thoughts profound, and the story memorable.  Definitely one of the best YA books of 2024. 

Flyboy, by Kasey LeBlanc

In his daily life as a senior, Asher can't find the courage to tell people he's a boy.  All that anyone sees is him wearing the stupid plaid skirt that the girls have to wear.  But in his dreams, Asher is an acrobat in the Midnight Circus, a magical place where everyone sees him for who he actually is -- a boy.  And for months, that is how it is:  daytime spent dealing with controlling prejudiced grandparents and a largely absent mother, nightime sailing through the air. The two worlds never meet, until the day Asher discovers that his trapeeze partner walking the halls of his school.

The discovery corresponds with troubles befalling both worlds and Asher must take drastic measures to save the Circus.  These steps will involve coming clear in the daytime world about who he is and accepting what that will cost him.

The novel is a peculiar mix of a realistic coming out story with a fantasy element.  It's clever and allows for a steady comparison of the brave hopes that Asher has in his dreams conflicting with the reality of the way fear paralyzes him.  But while Asher has some nice depth, the other characters seemed more like caricatures (especially, the odious grandparents).  And the story, which  builds towards a nice climax with Asher finding strength in his fantasies to take action in the real world, gets sidetracked with an ending that pulls out lots of unnecessary drama involving his mother's unrelated backstory and a similarly out-of-the-blue disaster.

These Bodies Between Us, by Sarah Van Name

What starts off as a typical summer beach story, transforms with the help of a little magic, into an extended metaphor about how we see ourselves and other.  

Callie and her friends Talia and Cleo have always spent the summer in a small town on the North Carolina beach.  This summer, Cleo has brought a friend -- quiet, haunted Polly -- along with her.  And she's also brought a grand idea:  she wants to spend the summer making herself invisible.  She's been reading secret webpages and YouTube videos about the process and she's convinced it will work.

Callie and Talia aren't so certain, but it's an annual tradition that the girls have a summmer project to work on together and this one is as good as any.  Callie knows it won't work, but what is the harm in playing along?  To her surprise, though, it does work.  The girls gain the ability to make themselves disappear at will, and it opens up a whole new world for them.  When things get tough because of nagging parents, a scary guy, a violent boyfriend, or just the stress of being an adolescent girl, who wouldn't enjoy the ability to simply disappear?  But as the girls grow accustomed to using their new superpower, they discover its addictive nature and some scary side effects.  Eventually the danger of continuing to make themselves invisible becomes too great.  They need to reverse the process and give up their power -- but can they?

An original, albeit heavy-handed, exploration of the struggle of young women becoming comfortable in their bodies.  The girls are interesting and uniquely distinct, but thinly drawn and I found myself frustrated by how little we explored their motivations for disappearing.  The overall idea and its exploration of both the male and the parental gaze was interesting and thought-provoking though, and that mae it a worthy read.  Definitely, one of the more memorable books I have read.

The Worst Perfect Moment, by Shivaun Plozza

Tegan is dead, killed while riding her bike.  But heaven isn't anything like she expected it. Instead of clouds and pearly gates, she'd found herself at the Marybelle Motor Lodge in New Jersey.  The motel is hardly a happy memory -- this was the place where her father took her and her young sister after their mother walked out on them.  It was the place where he promptly had a four-day breakdown and Tegan had to take care of her sister.  It is not any sort of afterlife that Tegan ever imagined.

But that's exactly what it is, explains Zelda, a smart aleck girl Tegan's age who appears at the motel's front office.  She's Tegan's angel (she even has the wings to prove it!) and she's reconstructed the Marybelle in all its run-down glory because she's convinced that the absolute happiest moment of Tegan's life was during the time she spent here.  And that being so, it is the place where Tegan will now be spending all of eternity.  Tegan is flabbergasted and horrified, insisting that this is in fact the worst moment of her life and that Zelda has made a mistake.

The two girls tussle over this matter until Tegan learns that she can appeal her angel's decision and sets in motion a process of review.  Within the next month, Zelda must convince Tegan that the Marybelle was actually Tegan's moment of "peak happiness" or the forces of heaven will accept that a mistake was made, with grave and dire consequences for both tegan and Zelda.

The end result is a sort of YA This Is Your Life as Zelda takes Tegan traveling through time to highlight particularly pivotal moments in her sixteen years that gradually unravel the mystery of why Zelda believes that Tegan needs the Marybelle.  Along the way a very unusual romance develops between Tegan and Zelda and the notion of "perfect happiness" takes a bit of a beating.  

YA books about the afterlife are always a curious genre (Zevin's Elsewhere is my personal favorite) as they doesn't seem like they have an obvious go-to topic.  What teen really frets about dying or wants to read about what happens after death?  But nonetheless, some of the most creative work is done in books like this.  Plozza's vision of the afterlife is a bit dark and malevolent for my tastes, but largely she makes it out to be like an alternative high school, complete with a really cool guidance counselor, a cranky office secretary, and various hapless assistant principals. She posits that a successful life in heaven consists of being at peace with the mistakes and regrets of your prior life (but then allows Tegan to challenge those ideas).  The conclusion that heaven itself is flawed will give theologians headaches.  Regardless, the book's weightier themes are refreshing.

Thirsty, by Jas Hammonds

For the last couple of years, Blake, her BFF Annetta, and her girlfriend Ella have had the same dream:  get accepted at Jameswell College and pledge the Serena Society.  For Annetta and Ella, joining the Serena Society means following in their mothers' footsteps.  For Blake, whose parents did not go to college, Serena a gateway to a new world.  The Serena Society is a sorority for women of color, populated with some of the most influential women in the country.  Membership means a lifetime of networking and support, and an opportunity to enter a world of power and privilege that Blake can only dream of.  But she knows that, unlike her friends, she doesn't really belong there, so she does everything she can to fit in and be liked.

And for Blake, being liked has come easiest when she's drinking and  acting the life of the party.  The fact that she blacks out and does irresponsible and dangerous things when she drinks doesn't initially bother her because everyone occasionally drinks to excess, don't they?  And anyway, Ella assures her that it's fine.  But as Blake's behavior starts to hurt her friendship with Annetta and strain relations with her own family, Blake starts to wonder if she's gone too far.  With the future of her candidacy at Serena on the line, Blake must make choices between her friends, her family, and her dreams.

Tackling racism, classism, transphobia, alcoholism, suicidal ideation, and many other triggering subjects, this is one very busy story!  Blake, in a word, has issues: mostly, problems with confidence but tinged by family tensions and her discomfort with being mixed race.  That lack of confidence makes her easy pickings for the toxic affection of her abusive girlfriend.  The whole business of pledging Serena just pours gasoline on this smoldering mess.  Of it all, alcohol dependency is actually the least of her issues.  Her real "thirst" is for self-respect and she's not good at finding a potable supply.

I think this was a really good book and I was very impressed with how it dealt with its many issues.  It's one of the few books on racism that I've read that didn't feel like it was lecturing me (even though I was most certainly learning).  It's a bit of a spoiler, but the fact that Serena does not end the book at an AA meeting took me by surprise.  And the relationship between Blake and Ella ends with a lot more nuance than I was expecting.  I haven't read Hammonds first novel, We Deserve Monuments, but I'm now very intrigued and may well go back and do so.  Original and profound, with a strong uncompromising voice.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie

Yeah, I know, it's not exactly a new book.  In fact, it's been over seventeen years since it came out.  So, sue me.  I'd claim that it just slipped through the cracks, but I think at the time I thought the book was overhyped and just couldn't get into it.  Plus, it was about a boy and I read very very few of those books.  It's not so much that I hate male protagonists, but I always find the profanity-heavy, gross-out humor, and violence inherent in books about adolescent boys to be either off-putting or too close to home.  In any case, I have never gotten around to reading it until now, when my wife picked it up in our local Free Library, brought it home and read it, and slipped it into my "to read" pile.

Junior is a typical Indian kid living on the rez in western Washington.  And in case we don't know what that means, Junior spends a good part of the book explaining his life.  The humor, dry and full of homoerotic violence, works surprisingly well at explaining some pretty hard truths about reservation life -- poverty, alcoholism, and general dispair -- while keeping the story from getting overwhelmed by the miserable conditions.

Junior's a smart kid but the reservation school can't offer him many opportunities.  Kids on the reservation don't go to college.  So, a concerned teacher encourages him to transfer to a white high school off the reservation to give him a chance.  Doing so, he faces overt racism from his new classmates and the ir community, but over time he wins over the people there.  Back home, things don't go so well as his tribe sees his decision as a betrayal of the tribe.  In the end, Junior finds a balance between his ambition to succeed and his respect for the traditions from which he comes.

The great strength of the book is its complete unwillingness to romanticize Indian life.  Some of this is done with the humor, but never too far from the surface is a strong caution that there is nothing particularly glorious or redeeming about the reservation.  And that the problems that Indians face are particularly complex and rooted in both external and internal forces.

The Someday Daughter, by Ellen O'Clover

Seven years before she was born, Audrey was already famous.  Her mother made her career from the blockbuster self-help book Letters to My Someday Daughter and so, once Audrey was born, everyone wanted to know what it was like to be the "someday daughter."

It sucks.  As a result of being constantly in the spotlight of nosy suburban mothers, every major event in Audrey's life became a media event.  Audrey, herself, is simply a prop for her Mom to bring out and talk about.  And like so many therapists, Audrey's Mom is particularly dreadful at caring for others in her private life.  Audrey is alternatingly humiliated and ignored.

Audrey nonetheless has been a success.  She is going to Johns Hopkins pre-med in the fall and the summer is supposed to be spent in an intensive program at Penn to get ready for her high-flying career plans.  But Audrey's Mom hijacks the plan, cancelling the Penn study so that Audrey can spend the summer with her instead, crossing the country for an anniversary book tour -- mother and someday daughter.  Audrey is livid but caves in (as she so often has done in the past) and goes on the trip.  To her immense surprise, the trip changes her life so that, by the end, she no longer sees either her mother or the future in the same way.

A brisk and engrossing read.  Good writing, a compelling cast of characters (the mother-daughter dynamic is spot-on and an emotional road accident you can't stop gawking at), and a briskly-paced story kept me flipping pages.  Only towards the end did it begin to drag for me, but some of that has to do with a brutal surprise plot twist that resets much of the story (although is surprisingly effective).  The romantic triangle is a bit limp, so don't hold out high expectations there, but I didn't care as long as there was Mommy Dearest to keep things burning along.

Painting the Game, by Patricia MacLachlan

Lucy has watched her father, a minor league pitcher with dreams of the Majors, practicing every day and she tries to copy him in her own pitching at the games she plays with the neighbors.  In her mother's words, a pitcher "paints the game" and Lucy dreams of doing that herself.  But pitching itself terrifies her and, while she loves doing it, she's scared to get on the mound in an actual game.  But she'll have to find the courage if she's going to realize her dream.

Unbeknownst to her father, she's even been practicing her Dad's knuckleball.  A knuckleball, for the uninitiated, is a particular type of throw which causes the ball to twitch and turn in an unpredictable fashion.  Difficult to throw, it is almost impossible to hit.  For Lucy, throwing out the perfect knuckleball would be a the ultimate dream, but she doesn't want to let her father know that she's learning it so she practices in secret.  In the end, she gets a unique and dramatic opportunity to reveal her secret.

A throwback to a much more innocent type of children's book, Patricia MacLachlan's final novel (published posthumously) is brief and spare.  And while it has the rough feel of something she hadn't quite finished (and perhaps never meant to), it a lovely self-contained gem.  MacLachlan's style, while ostensibly prose, has always had the feel of good free-verse poetry.  Her ability to establish themes -- courage, perfection, magic -- and spin them throughout her story through repetition and variation is a rare talent.  Here she brings together the dreams of all of her characters and, in the space of only 134 pages, brings them all to fruition.

This short love letter to baseball and fathers is a fitting swansong for one of the best authors of children's literature.

The Wrong Way Home, by Kate O'Shaughnessy

Life on the Ranch, a remote community in upstate New York, is simple but predictable.  Living off the grid, eating only natural foods, and shunning contact with the outside world has giving Fern a stable life, but one that has left her ignorant.  And having spent over half her life there, the Ranch is pretty much all she knows.  So, when her mother hustles her out of the compound in the middle of the night and takes her across the country to the California coast, Fern is traumatized.  She loves her mother, but she loves the Ranch (and its leader Dr Ben) just as much.  And while Mom tries to acclimate her to the new life, Fern desparately wants to go back "home."

While Fern figures out how she is going to get back to the Ranch, she still has to get by.  Mom enrolls her in school, where she's exposed to a lot of new ideas and to children who have never lived by the ideals that Fern has accepted without question.  The exposure to others start to open her world and, while she is still committed to going back, she begins to question her loyalties.  The quirky people of the seaside village they are living in help her on that path.

A pleasant, well-written, and well-paced story that uses breaking free of a cult as a metaphor of the passage to adulthood.  This is a gentle middle-school variant of the theme and while some bad things (kidnapping, murder, and rape) are implied, nothing explicit is mentioned.  The result is a safe, mildly suspenseful story. Unremarkable, but enjoyable.

Kyra, Just for Today, by Sara Zarr

Things used to be really bad back when Kyra's mother was still drinking.  But five years ago, her Mom sobered up and started attending AA meetings.  Kyra too started going to her own meetings for kids with family members who have addiction issues.  And through group, Kyra got to know Lu, another girl at her school with a father who drinks.  They became best friends and confidants, which made coping a lot easier.

But as seventh grade begins, things are changing.  Lu is making new friends and doesn't seem to want to hang out as much.  She doesn't even always show up at group anymore.  It's as if Lu is embarassed by the whole thing and doesn't want her new friends to find out.  It could not happen at a worse time.  Kyra thinks her Mom has started drinking again and she really wishes she could talk with Lu about it, but Lu is avoiding her.

As things get worse, Kyra struggles to keep things together.  She knows that she can't solve her Mom's addiction, but when Mom is the only thing she has, she has to do something!  When a crisis occurs and Kyra finds herself truly on her own, she has to make a decision about whether she's going to let her mother hold her down or whether she's going to look out for herself and make a call for help that may get her mother in trouble.

Told with great sensitivity and insight (and obviously based on real-life experience), Kyra's struggles create a compelling story about love and the challenge of preserving familial love when it is being torn apart by the impact of addiction.  Written in a way that remains authentic, while being entirely age appropriate for middle school readers, Zarr has crafted a story that will resonate with children coming from similar situations.  One hopes that such a young reader will feel validated by this story.  However, I would offer a far more important wish that they have a good friend or two who will read this book and be better able to help their struggling friend through a deeper understanding.

The Atlas of Us, by Kristin Dwyer

When Atlas's father dies, he leaves behind a list of to-do's, one of which was to reopen a trail in the western Sierras and hav ethe two of them hike it together.  Atlas can't ever do that hike with her Dad, but she gets a job on the team that is rehabilitating the trail during the summer.  

It's hard and dangerous work, but the project gives Atlas some focus and takes her mind away from her grief.  Best of all, there's a policy that everyone uses aliases (Atlas renames herself "Maps") and no one is allowed to tallk about their pasts or where they came from.  The anonymity suits her fine.  But when she finds herself falling in love with King, the guy in charge of their team, she's in far over her head.

Featuring a diverse and distinct cast of characters, each of which are drawn out in fine detail, Dwyer's novel explores the slow reopening of Atlas's heart, her healing from loss, and her struggles with grief and depression.  The material is not new and Dwyer doesn't produce any fresh revelations, but the pacing is excellent and the storytelling compelling.  Dwyer knows how to feed the romantic flames gradually, never overloading the fire with excess fuel, and the result is a steady burn of a romance that relies as much on what is not said as what is.  The development of Atlas and King's relationship feels rough and raw and entirely authentic.  Combined with the aforementioned strong supporting roles played by the other young people on the team produces a surprisingly warm story of bonding in the woods.

Simon Sort of Says, by Erin Bow

If you're going to write a book about school shootings for middle school-aged readers, there's something to be said for making it deliriously funny.  Throwing in radio telescopes, a mortuary, sackbuts, a quirky small town in western Nebraska, crazed emus, birthing goats, the Jesus Squirrel, and an amourous peacock is just the sort of thing to take the reader's mind off of a grimmer story of PTSD and survivor guilt.

Simon is the sole survivor of a classroom shooting two years ago.  To escape the media attention, his family relocated to the small town of Grin and Bear It, Nebraska.  GNB, as the locals call it, isn't just in the middle of nowhere, it's the home of a series of radio telescopes and thus ruled a National Quiet Zone, where wireless transmissions and the internet are banned.  The prohibition is intended to maintain the quiet that the radio astronomers need to conduct their work, but it also provides cover for Simon and his family -- atown that lives off the net.

In the remote quiet of GNB, Simon is able to make new friends and start a new life -- which in his case involves a seriously sophisticated plan to prank the astronomers.  However, keeping his origins a secret is nearly impossible (especially when a missing corpse brings unwanted attention to GNB) and when the cover is blown, Simon has the come to terms with what he is hiding from.  With the help of the emus and Pretty Stabby the peacock, he manages to do so.

Uproariously funny and full of absurd non-sequitors that come together in the end, the author reveals a great wit that doesn't triffle over the details (like when she confuses the beginning of the movies Contact and Armageddon). It's a shame to limit this to tween readers as I was laughing with every page and adults will enjoy the chaos and lighthearted nature of the storytelling.  That it is ultimately about somethimg super serious makes the book that much more remarkable.  You'll laugh, but you probably won't cry (unless you're the Jesus Squirrel, in which case things might not go so well for you!).

Borderless, by Jennifer De Leon

Maya may live in a poor section of Guatemala City, but she has big dreams.  She's a scholarship student at a school for fashion and she's making a big impact with her designs.  She's even secured a spot in a fashion show which boasts a large cash prize and a chance to sell her clothing.  Her dreams may be big, but she's making it there slowly but surely.  

However, around her the gangs are taking over the streets in her neighborhood and it's becoming harder and harder to avoid the violence they bring in with them.  When Maya make a series of bad decisions, she finds her life and the life of her mother endangered.  Suddenly, her future in fashion is discarded.  Instead, they must flee north and Maya finds herself on the run and hoping to make it to the United States to request asylum.

The point of the story, of course, is to put a human face on the news stories about refugees at the southern border.  But the novel succeeds by actually spending fairly little time on that subject, concentrating instead on Maya's life in Guatemala.  That she becomes a homeless refugee works better dramatically when we've grown accustomed to her life before.  It also proves frustratingly because so many parts of her life and the story simply get dropped aside.  Her best friend, the contest, her fashion designs, and her boyfriend are ripped away from here and abruptly disappear from her story.  The break between before and after is actually the crux of the story, so while it violates a directive of dramatic narrative, it's effective literary choice here.

There were times when I didn't particularly care for Maya, especially when she endangers herself and her family, but I found her story engrossing nonetheless.  The novel itself won't settle any argument in the immigration debate, but for a young reader trying to understand why people would feel compelled to risk their lives to seek asylum elsewhere, it its educational in a good way.

Once There Was, by Kiyash Monsef

Ever since her father was mysteriously killed, Marjan has been trying to keep the family's veterinary clinic going.  The staff do the actual animal care.  She simply tries to sort out the bills and hold things together.  But quickly Marjan becomes aware that her father had a secret sideline when a stranger arrives and demands that Marjan fly to England to care for a mysterious patient.  For reasons she cannot explain, she feels compelled to go and discovers the truly unusual nature of the charge:  her patient is a dying gryphon.

When Marjan was little, her farther delighted in telling her old Persian fairy tales.  Each one beginning with "once was, once wasn't," they told stories about magical creatures (faeries, manticores, djinns, dragons, unicorns, and even gryphons) and mankind's fateful dealings with them.  Now, Marjan is coming to understand that the stories contained elements of truth and that her father (and in fact the entire family line) has a special calling to care for these magical creatures.

Care is desperately needed.  Secret forces are at work to wrest control over the magical realm and the conflict threatens all of humankind.  But at the same time, the conflict is also personal.  Somehow, her father's death is tied in to all of this and Marjan needs to figure out how.  With time running out and desperately searching for answers, Marjan must bravely face any number of fearful situations, all the time dealing with nagging doubts about herself and her family's role in all of this.

A beautifully-written fantasy with a byzantine power struggle, interspersed by stunning retellings of Persian folk tales.  I especially liked the tale of the manticore, a morality tale about the cost of vengeance, but each of the stories within the story carry the dual purpose of furthering the story while being sold self-standing tales within the novel.  While this could have easily become a cutesy fantasy about a girl getting to take care of cuddly animals (and there is no denying that the story will appeal to young readrs who like animal books), Monsef has higher ambitions: calling into question human intervention in the animal world and the ethics thereof.  

The overall story has some rough patches, but the final fifty pages deliver one of the best bittersweet endings of recent memory and tie up all of the loose ends in a beautifully messy fashion.  An instant best seller that deserves all of its acclaim.

Tash Hearts Tolstoy, by Kathryn Ormsbee

Tash and her best friend Jack have been producing a homespun web-based serial of Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina called "Unhappy Families."  It's just something she and a bunch of her friends put together and they get a few dozen hits.  But suddenly one day, the show picks up a mention from an influencer and it blows up.  Tens of thousands of followers later, fan sites have sprung up and the show has been shortlisted for an award.  Rather than bring happiness, the fame drives wedges between Tash and Jack, and resurfaces issues from the past.

The novel breaks some ground by making Tash asexual and addressing the problems that this causes her.  This would have been more interesting if it had featured more prominently throughout the novel, but it really only rises up in the last thrid of the book.  In a similar way, other subplots (like Jack's father's cancer and Tash's relationship with her sister) get rather sketchy treatment and feel like afterthoughts.  Many of the subplots are of course riffs on Tolstoy, but readers without the reference point are largely left in the dark and the result is a novel that doesn't stand up well on its own.

Breathing Underwater, by Abbey Lee Nash

Tess is well on her way to a swimming scholarship, dominance in the nationals, and even perhaps a slot on the Olympic team when she is slapped with a diagnosis of epilepsy.  It's a serious set back -- having a seizure while swimming could literally kill her.  Her Mom wants her to quit swimming altogether and it seems the sane thing to do, especially since her condition makes the type of intense training she is  undergoing particularly dangerous.  But competitive swimming has been her dream for years and finding a new dream seems impossible.

Billed as a romance because of a subplot involving an aimless boy who takes her lifeguarding job when she can no longer do it, this story is really about Tess's struggle to rejig her plans and salvage the vital parts of her dream that are attainable.  But it's hard to see the struggle and the focus necessary to succeed when Tess keeps screwing around.  Tess frankly lacks discipline.  I lost my faith in her by the third time she snuck out of the house and broke all of the warnings of her doctors (and -- surprise! -- got very sick).  If you face a protagonist up against an insurmountable disease, you need to give the woman some spunk, some fortitude, and some will. But screwing up and then wallowing in self-pity got plain old and that seemed to be all Tess had to offer.  I don't have the patience that her parents (or apparently her coaches) had.  On a bleak positive note, I appreciated that at the end of the novel we don't see Tess getting rewarded with the happy fulfillment all of her dreams.  A realistic bittersweet ending was the least the author could offer us.

The Lightning Circle, by Vikki Vansickle (ill by Laura K. Watson)

With a broken heart from an unrequited love and a strong desire to be alone and lick her wounds, Nora is reluctant to be stuck at summer camp, taking care of a cabin of thirteen year-old girls.  But it's what she signed up for and so she goes.  It's hard to find the space to do her own grieving and there's no time for it. From the moment the campers start arriving, she gets thrown into the thick of her charge's own dramas.  

It doesn't help that it's her first summer and she's never been a camper herself.  Being a camp "virgin," every ritual is a surprise for her and she approaches the experience like it is a foreign land.  But with good instincts and a little help, she manages to survive the summer and learns a great deal, growing to love the place and its people.

A beautiful piece of nostalgia for the summer camp experience, this novel in verse is illustrated with sketches of camp miscellania (a bunk, a horse, a pencil, fellow campers, etc.) that beautifully evoke the innocence of the experience.  It is a very gentle story with no particularly severe traumas but instead chock full of authentic memories lovingly retold by the author.  While fictional, you can't make stuff like this up, so it is clearly drawn from Vansickle's own childhood at camp (in the afterward, she admits as much).

For anyone who was lucky enough to go to camp, reading this book will send you down memory lane.  For others, the book and its exploration of friendships formed and social skills learned in a summer will explain the appeal of this rite of passage.  Definitely a children's book much better appreciated by adults!

The Boy You Always Wanted, by Michelle Quach

Francine's grandfather is dying and he carries one major regret:  he has no male heir to carry on the family name and tend to the family's graves.  For a Chinese Vietnamese, this is a big deal and a thing that Francine can do little to help.  But when she learns that there is a tradition where families could adopt an unrelated young man to serve as the heir, she thinks she may have a solution and a way to make her grandfather's final days happy.  She just needs to find someone to become her grandfather's honorary heir.  They don't even have to carry through on it, just promise to do so until grandfather passes away.

Francine is a good student and extremely conscientious, but none of that has made her popular at school.  The only male acquaintance she can think of would be Ollie and they are hardly friends.  Ollie for his part is always a bit amused by Francine, but doesn't think of her as a friend either.  And he certainly has no interest in participating in what Francine has taken to calling "The Plan." But when Ollie turns out to need Francine's help, the two of them devise a transactional arrangement and Ollie finds himself sucked into Francine's family's drama.  It's actually a welcome change for Ollie because his family couldn't be any more distant from each other.  And while the entire set-up is based on deceit, a true attachment arises that proves to be surprisingly genuine.

The creepy premise of the story initially put me off the story, but it ends well and the truth is surprisingly liberating.  Largely a story about family and about learning to accept change, everyone gets a chance to learn a thing or two.  While there are a few rough spots and a subplot about a scheming best friend that never quite connects with the main story nor becomes the humor relief it is intended to serve, I enjoyed the cultural details and the nuanced characters.

Playing for Keeps, by Jennifer Dugan

June is baseball prodigy.  When the expectation was that she'd graduate over to softball, she stuck with the boys and has become one of the best pitchers in the league instead.  She and her father (who himself was once a rising star in the Minors) aim for her to go all the way, get a scholarship, and eventually play in the pros.  

Ivy gave up playing when she was young, but she never lost her love of sport; she just found a new way to express it -- by officiating games.  Just as June has laser focused on her pitching skills, Ivy has dedicated herself to the dream of one day becoming one of the few women to ever ref for the NFL.  Now, if she could get her parents on board with the dream!  But they want her to go to college and study something practical.

Girls with dreams of making it big, but who fall in love with each other instead.  For Ivy, this is disastrous as referees can't date players, so they have to keep everything hush hush.  For June, things are worse as she not only has the relationship to keep secret, she also is having physical problems with her throwing arm that are getting harder and harder to hide.

With all that going on, there is plenty of action to move this story, but the real high drama comes from the fiery romance itself.  Neither June nor Ivy are particularly emotionally mature and theirs is a romance that is more often off than on.  That provides plenty of opportunity for fights and counsel with BFFs (whom neither girl pays much attention to).  But I found them hard to digest and relate to (and even hard to differentiate from each other).  I liked the story well enough, but the characters simply didn't interest me.  That made the novel a slow read.