What Comes After, by Katie Bayerl

When Mari dies, she finds herself in Paradise Gate, a way station where one decides if your next stop will be the Afterlife or the Eternal Abyss of 3am.  She has ninety days to redeem herself, earning points by focusing on positive emotions, practicing "youga," and eating lots of kale.  But it's a hard path.  Her mother, who died a few days before her and thus has little time remaining, is in danger of flunking her exams and ending up in the Abyss.  Mari could soon follow.

As Mari struggles to sort her life out (beginning with a big question of why she died), she comes to understand that something is wrong at Paradise Gate.  People do not necessary pass on and Mari discovers evidence that the leaders are corrupt and the system is crumbling.  When she steps forward and joins a plot to expose the corruption, surprising things happen.

Billed as a farce, the story does start off as strong satire.  Life after death, it seems, is basically set up like a high school with meaningless classes, social cliques, exam pressure, and lots of sneaking about.  Once the gimmicks of this world are defined however, Bayerl gets lost.  The novel is stuck in a literary dead end.  To dig out, we get the strange drama of a conspiracy, an underground, and a revolution.  But the revolution doesn't really work either, so the ending becomes a jumpy montage of third party accounts which avoid the need to really tell Mari's story anymore.  Every thing wraps up nicely in the end, but the story withers away.  Cute concept, but never really reached its potential.

The Uncertainty Principle, by Joshua Davis and Kal Kini-Davis

Mia, her little brother, and her parents are adrift on an old boat in the Caribbean and it is all Mia's fault.  When she had a breakdown at school, throwing food against the walls of the cafeteria, they decided it was time for a change of scene.  But Mia is not the only problem here.  Her mother is a germophobe and won't let them socialize with others so they stick to sparsely populated islands.  Mia spends her days perfecting a homegrown solar cell to power her equally homegrown satellite transmitter.  One day, she hopes to use it to call her best friend back at school to explain why she flew off the rails.

The uneasy status quo in Mia's family gets disrupted when they meet two unusual families, each of whom have a child about Mia's age who force her to make decisions that will change her life.

A quirky novel with an unusual father-and-son writing team.  From the acknowledgements, it would seem that the story is mostly from Kal (the son) while his father supervised and edited.  Regardless of who wrote what, I was suitably impressed by the depth that they gave Mia -- a young woman with a believable mix of insight and immaturity to make her truly interesting.  The supporting characters never get to do much but I didn't mind that as everything is really about Mia and her growth. 

Old School, by Gordon Korman

For the past six years, Dexter has been raised by his grandmother and the other residents of The Pines, a retirement community.  Being the youngest permanent resident, he's been doted over by the old people.  School?  He is getting all the schooling he needs from the various talents residing here.  But when a truant officer shows up, Dexter is told that he'll have to go to a real school, with kids his own age.

He hasn't socialized with anyone like that in ages and his first days of middle school are rough. He is singled out and bullied for his old-people clothes and his old-fashioned way of speaking.  But slowly he reveals his own particular contributions and makes friends.  Then, an unfortunate incident leads to his suspension and suddenly he and his classmates realize just how much Dexter actually does belong in school.

A cute story that suffers from the author's peculiar perception that the residents of The Pines are a lot older than would be normally plausible.  He hasn't populated it with a twelve year-old's grandparents but with the author's own grandparents.  Sorry, but old people don't listen to Benny Goodman and talk about the Great War anymore.  They listen to Jefferson Airplane and talk about Vietnam.  They are not the Greatest Generation, they are Baby Boomers.  It's cute having the old people teaching the kids to play bingo and shuffleboard, but its a dated stereotype.

Spoon, by Stephanie Peters

Junior Macy is supposed to be the star on her volley ball team this year, but the arrival of a sharp new girl named Alliyah shakes things up.  Alliyah's skills threaten to eclipse Macy's rising star, but there's a bigger problem:  Alliyah has a manipulative side.  After nearly getting Macy in serious trouble, she uses that secret between them to blackmail Macy.  Macy doesn't know what to do to defend herself without disrupting the team as a whole and threatening their winning streak.  Everyone will think she's just trying to get rid of the better player who threatens her spot.

Meanwhile, Alliyah has introduced a game called Spoon in which everyone carries around a plastic spoon and then people try to steal them off of each other.  What starts as fun becomes disruptive and puts Macy in hot water with her employer, parents, and the coach.  When it becomes apparent that Alliyah will stop at nothing, including breaking the rules, to get what she wants, Macy has to make a choice that will be right for herself and for the team.

More of a novella than a full-length novel (149 pages of large type) and published by a small press, I didn't have high expectations for this book, but Peters has definite talent.  It takes major skill to write a sports story.  Too much detail and people who don't play the game get bored.  Too little or getting a detail wrong and real players throw up their hands and toss the book.  I know hardly anything about volleyball, but I found following the sports action easy and exciting.  Secondly, although the story could almost certainly be fleshed out, it didn't feel rushed.  And finally, while there was a boy in the picture, the story was all about the girls and their team.  I admired the decision to keep the focus on Macy's love of the game and her teammates.

A lovely story about the importance of loyalty and teamwork, and knowing how to tell who really are your friends.

Camila Núñez's Year of Disasters, by Miriam Zoila Perez

Camila suffers from anxieties.  Her best friend's idea to do a tarot card reading to predict the upcoming year hasn't helped any!  The cards that were laid out spelled suffering and loss, putting poor Camila on alert.  The cards prove both predictive and directive, but the year is not a loss as Camila learns to love and lose and come back again from it all.  She makes some terrible errors, but she is held accountable and takes responsibility and fixes what she can. As in life, things get messy and not everything is resolvable. Her character is refreshingly realistic.

But while the story is excellent, the writing itself feels clunky.  Written like it was Camila's diary, much of the prose is broken sentences and awkward tenses.  That gives the story telling some authenticity but it  isn't an engaging presentation. Her life as a gender queer Cuban American is well-depicted but pedantic and distracting. The strengths of the novel are more traditional features: an interesting protagonist who experiences growth and learns life's lessons.

Bye Forever, I Guess, by Jodi Meadows

Ingrid has a secret passion: curating a data feed dedicated to wrong number texts.  People seem to always be sending texts to the wrong numbers and the examples that people send to her can be hilarious.

Then one day she receives one of her own.  The sender is charming and she starts chatting with him.  When she learns that he likes to do on-line roleplaying, she invites him to join her game.  Soon enough, they are falling for each other.

What they don't initially realize (although he figures it out before she does) is that they are actually classmates.  And so a series of set ups occur where the two of them have near misses.  In the end of course all is revealed and a number of other loose ends including vanquishing a bully ensue.

It's cute and fast-paced, but it's hard to accept that Ingrid could overlook all of the clues regarding her online friend's identity.  There is also a mismatch between the characters' ages and the way they behave.  While there's a token effort to portray Ingrid's adolescent insecurity, she does a remarkable job of dispatching her tormenting ex-friend.  Her feelings for the mystery boy are strikingly level-headed (and his reciprocal feelings are equally grown up).  They simply don't sound like middle schoolers.

While We're Young, by K. L. Walther

Grace, Isa, and Everett are a three-some who have fallen apart.  But Grace hopes to bring them back together with a carefully crafted skip day in Philadelphia. Faking illness, she also manages to get Isa and Everett to join her and the three of them tour through the landmarks of the City of Brotherly Love -- climbing the Museum steps, eating South Philly cheesesteaks, hanging in Rittenhouse Square, and the sheer "joy" of driving and parking around the city.  Grace's plans get complicated by an unknown-to-her romance between Isa and Grace's brother, and the attraction of Everett to Grace.

A loving homage to Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Walther has moved the action to Philadelphia and given the main characters a gender swap, but she's also done a lot more.  I never cared for the movie as I found Bueller selfish and careless.  Grace in contrast is much more sympathetic character.  And the novel overall is a kinder story than the film.  The cost of this is the loss of the cruel humor of the original.  This is a more angsty retelling and the characters straighter.  So, while the inspiration of the novel is clear enough, it does not follow that fans of the movie will find the same things to like here.

Overall, I give this a mixed review.  I enjoyed their tour of Philadelphia.  As I said above, Grace was a kinder and more sympathetic protagonist than Ferris.  But overall, the romances were limp and lacked any spark.  For a lot of professions of love, I didn't see much at all.  And the misunderstandings that caused the kids to become divided and fed the drama were unclear and poorly explained.  I'm not really sure what all the fuss was about.

True Life in Uncanny Valley, by Deb Caletti

Eleanor is obsessed with tech titan Hugo Harrison, founder of an app that allows you to rate people and the developer of Frame, an AI program.  But she's not a tech geek.  She's the illegitimate offspring of the man.  Her Mom had a relationship with Harrison years ago and Eleanor and her older sister Ros were the result.  But Harrison no longer talks to them and Mom refuses to allow Eleanor to contact him.  So, Eleanor hatches her own plan.

With a little planning and a lot of luck, she gets herself employed as a nanny in the household, taking care of her half-brother Arlo.  It's tricky to juggle stories so that neither Harrison nor her mother find out who she is and where she is working, but she mostly works that out.  But her plan to simply get to know her father better gets complicated  when she discovers that Arlo is being exploited and abused by his father.

Being a Deb Caletti novel, there's much more to the story than that.  A short list of subplots would include: an homage to Golden Age comics, a diatribe against William Moulton Marston and Aldous Huxley, a fair smattering of childcare advice, extemporizations on German etymology, an extremely toxic family, a love interest (including one botched sex scene), and a screed against social media, robotics, and artificial intelligence.  Caletti's novels are never boring!  The overall point of all of this is the attack on artificial intelligence and the way it borrows/steals its material from artists. But I found the  repulsive mother and evil elder sister (drawn straight out of Cinderella) far more compelling.  The ending is a hot mess but it's an entertaining read.

The Song of Us, by Kate Fussner

Olivia and Eden fall in love at first sight in their middle school's poetry club.  But it's not smooth sailing.  Olivia has already come out to her parents and has a supporting family.  Eden is still struggling with her identity and has a homophobic father and sick mother.  Olivia wants to announce their relationship to the entire school, but Eden insists that it be kept a secret.

At a party, Eden tries spinning the bottle and kissing boys and when Olivia finds out, cruel recriminations ensue.  But then Olivia has regrets and tries to win Eden back. But Eden is trying to fix herself by learning how to fit in with a popular clique.  Back and forth they go, sorting out their feelings about relationships and about each other through verse and song.  And while Olivia tries to win Eden back with a grand gesture, in the end the reality is that at their age important decisions will be made by others.

A beautiful and bittersweet verse novel about first love and the sorts of mistakes we make in middle school.  I didn't see the intended retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice that the blurb promised, but I didn't need to. What I found was a very sweet romance and two girls willing to fight for it.  Ofttimes creative verse is an added benefit.  Delightful!

Say A Little Prayer, by Jenna Voris

Riley and her sister Hannah were raised in the Pleasant Hills Baptist Church, where she's always found comfort in Pastor Young.  But after she comes out as bisexual, the hostile reaction of the congregation and Pastor Young drives her away.  And when Hannah is expelled from the church for having an abortion, the entire family decides that they have had enough of Pastor Young.  Still, it's a small town and almost everyone she knows is affiliated with the church.  Even Riley's best friend Julia is the pastor's daughter, although they have an agreement  to never mention Julia's father.

Riley gets into a fight defending her sister at school and the principal lays out an ultimatum:  if she wants to avoid getting suspended she'll have to prove her intent to reform by attending Pleasant Hills's upcoming bible camp, led by none other than Pastor Young.  Getting suspended is not an option, so Riley buckles down and goes to camp, spending a week with her old friends and enemies.  She decides from the onset to cope with the week by subtly undermining the program, but as the week progresses she finds that harder to do.

My initial inclination was to cast this book off as the usual dig against Evangelical Christianity.  And the depiction of Pastor Young breaks no new ground.  He's your typical two-dimensional hypocrite/bad guy that YA novels like to truck out.  But the novel surprised me for its more nuanced views of the teenagers' faith and beliefs. That background, combined with a well-paced story that added humor and a small touch of platonic romance, provided a very readable story about young people hewing their own path through religion.

The City of Lost Cats, by Tanya Lloyd Kyi

Left with a neglectful aunt who would rather rush off every evening to work at Municipal Hall, twelve year-old Fiona wants to do something more exciting this summer than the dance class she's been signed up for.  And when she stumbles across an abandoned old mansion full of feral cats, she thinks she's found it.  The mansion, referred to as 'The City" by its feline inhabitants has provided a community for strays and abandoned cats.  Fiona, abandoned by the adults around her is sympathetic to their plight and helps care for them.  

When she discovers that a dastardly developer (who also happens to be her aunt's boyfriend) has tricked Municipal Hall into giving him the permits to tear down the mansion and put up luxury apartments, Fiona and the cats leap into action to save the city of last cats. And while it would seem a child and a bunch of abandoned cats would not have the resources, they manage to save the day with the help of their local library and some sympathetic city workers.

An amusing light-hearted adventure of brave girls, adventuresome kitties, helpful librarians, a pair of workmen who love to demolish things, and two lost parakeets that speak in verse.  All of them come together in a ridiculously overlapping series of coincidences that lead to everything turning out perfectly in the end. While lacking much seriousness, the story does celebrate community activism in an easy going way that will appeal to cat-loving middle school readers.

All the Stars Align, by Gretchen Schreiber

Within Piper's family, the women have always known their true love at first sight.  This quasi-magical trait, referred to as the Blessing, is a tradition that has ensured many happily-ever-afters for Piper's aunts and grandmother. So, it's something of a scandal that Piper's parents have divorced.  Is the Blessing's power fading?  The aunts and Piper are determined to keep the tradition alive.  This comes in two ways:  trying to get her parents to reconcile and also to make sure that she only falls for the right boy.

To most people, that would be Leo, Piper's best friend.  They've been together since they were little.  But Piper has never really felt any strong feeling for Leo.  Certainly not in the way that the Blessing should make her feel.  And instead, Piper discovers that another boy -- Forrest -- is the one.  She can literally feel it viscerally, the telltale symptoms of the Blessing.  But somehow, it doesn't quite feel right.  So, instead of happily ever after, Piper finds that fate is overrated and that even when true love is right in front of you, it may not be what you really need.

While an interesting premise, the novel was disappointing.  For a romance, the story and the characters are surprisingly lackluster.  Neither Leo nor Forrest really had much of a spark.  We get very little background on Leo, which is surprising as they allegedly have all of this history together.  And Forrest is something of a wimp.  You know it's a bad sign when the almost-kisses are more compelling than the kisses.  This is romance without passion and it all seemed bothersome.  Furthermore, Leo's attempts to sabotage Piper and Forrest came off as creepy and possessive, really turning me off to him.

In general, the storytelling is muddy, with the point of certain scenes (like the weekend at the camp) lost amidst the details.  Or the way that seemingly interesting details are introduced (e.g., Piper's disability, her father's culinary skills, Diana's costuming skills, etc.), but never fill any meaningful purpose in the story.  The details are lovely an flesh things out, but still need to come together to some meaningful effect.

Adventures of Mary Jane, by Hope Jahren

Based on a briefly mentioned character in Huckleberry Finn, Jahren has crafted the story of Mary Jane, who bravely travels down the Mississippi Rover in adventures worthy of Mark Twain's protagonist.  The story begins when Mary Jane, living with her Ma and her grandfather in fur-trapping country up north, gets summoned to help her aunt and uncle down river.  When she arrives, she finds her uncle incapacitated and the family starving.  And when the aunt and uncle die from fever, she ends up caring for her two cousins.  They are sent yet deeper south, where she encounters the sin of slavery first hand and has to use her wits to protect herself and her cousins.  All of this serves as background that fleshes out the mysterious girl that stole Huck's heart.

While stuffed to the gills with historical details that make the book feel a bit like a history lesson (and definitely like book report material), the adventures are rousing enough to make this 400-page novel an enticing read.  Some of the details at the end get confusing, but the story is enjoyable and Mary Jane is an adventuresome good-hearted heroine.

Birds on the Brain, by Uma Krishnaswami

In this charming sequel to Book Uncle and Me, Yasmin's best friend Reeni is setting out on a campaign of her own:  to get the people of her town to participate in Bird Count India.  It's not just about her town.  The bird count is world wide!  But people don't seem to care and worse, some of them don't even like birds!

While Reeni is trying to stir up interest in birds, she learns that in matters concerning the environment there can be competing priorities:  a neighborhood ironing woman who is losing her livelihood because her coal-powered iron has being outlawed, a bird's nesting site that is threatened by plans to put solar panels on the roofs.  And even between friends, Reeni and Yasmin find that their respective causes (birds and literacy) are in seeming conflict.  But as they did before, the children summon some inner courage and enlist their parents, neighbors, and teachers to take the cause to the government and make their city a better place.

Still very full of cultural and political details that show a snippet of everyday life and local politics from an Indian perspective, Krishnaswami's books show children how, wherever they live, that they can make a difference.  The sequel follows pretty close to the formula devised in the first book and so lacks the originality that made the story so remarkable, but it is no less delightful to read.

Everything I Promised You, by Katy Upperman

Lia and Beck lived a pre-ordained life.  Lia's mother, back when she was a teenager, had a fortune read to her that foretold how she would have a daughter (Lia) and her best friend a son (Beck) and the two kids would fall in love and live happily ever after.  It was a silly lark, but with the way it came true, everyone in both families grew to believe it.  

And then Beck died.

With Beck gone and the prophecy broken, Lia is cast adrift.  Despite her parents' assurances that there are no expectations, she feels compelled to hold on to her past promises, even enrolling at the college that she and Beck were going to attend together.  And when she finds herself attracted to a new boy, Lia can't acknowledge that her heart is moving on.

Good writing and an unusual family life (both Lia and Beck are army brats and spent their years growing up in various military bases) made the otherwise tired story interesting.  But it only takes things so far. For not only do we have the dead boyfriend, but the new love interest is your typical mysterious and moody boy from the wrong side of the tracks.  There's not enough new stuff here to really make for a memorable read.

13 Ways to Say Goodbye, by Kate Fussner

Much to her older sister's annoyance, Nina always wanted to tag along.  In Nina's eyes, her sister was so brave, always trying out new things and forcing herself to move forward.  Nina could only follow after.  But when her sister died, there was no longer anything to follow and Nina became even more reclusive and even less brave.

Right before her thirteenth birthday, Nina is sent to Paris to spend the summer with her aunt and study art. The most important thing she takes with her is the checklist her sister created years ago when she was in Paris.  Nina intends to follow one last time in her sister's steps and complete the checklist for herself (including the items that her sister never did).  In doing so that summer, Nina surprises herself by going much further and finally striking out on her own.

Written in verse, the story relates Nina's emergence as an individual, the flowering of her artistic creativity, and a sweet first romance (in Paris!).  Great material.  Unfortunately, the writing is merely functional and adds little to a well-trod milieu.  In the thin air of a verse novel, the characters feel undeveloped.

One Step Forward, by Marcie Flinchum Atkins

Teen-aged Matilda, growing up in a radical family in Washington DC, finds inspiration supporting and eventually protesting for the Suffragists.  Told in verse, the novel traces her involvement (including her presence at the "Night of Terror") to the eventual ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.  Rooted in well-documented history, Atkins gives herself license to explore the mind of the youngest radical suffragist.

There's no faulting the retelling of historical facts, many of which may be only hazily known by readers and the idea of focusing on a teen makes the novel inspirational for young readers.  However, for a story rich with people and events, the verse format provides too sketchy of a treatment.  And while the poetry is definitely above average, it can prove distracting and distancing to the storytelling.  That frustrates attempts to understand the events of the story.  Reading a more traditional historical account alongside this novel would prove beneficial and in fact be a useful complement.

The Enemy's Daughter, by Anne Blankman

At the onset of the Great War, twelve year-old Marta and her father are caught overseas in America and must undertake a dangerous trip under false papers to return home to Germany.  Unfortunately, they choose to cross the Atlantic aboard the Lusitania and when that boat is sunk by the German Navy they narrowly survive.  On land, her father is arrested as a suspected spy and Marta flees.  Alone but sharp-witted, Marta finds her way to York where she befriends an Irish girl whose family gives her a home.  But with all Germans considered to be dangerous enemies, Marta must conceal her identity.

Torn between her love for her country and the undeniable cruelty of the German navy in sinking a civilian ship, Marta still believes that Germany is in the right.  But living amongst the English for several months, she begins to wonder if it all isn't a bit more complicated than she's learned in school.  Her Irish friend hates Germans as fervently as she hates the English, yet the two girls have nonetheless become best friends.

A lovely adventure, but with a glacial pace and the repetitive storytelling.  Its two themes ("there are no sides" and all people can be good or bad) are well-established and then driven home in again and again.  Those are fine messages but become boring in their repetition.  Some of that is of course the story's limitations.  The premise is interesting, but there isn't very much that can be done with the character.  There's only so much adventure that one can plausibly subject a twelve year-old to in a middle reader.

Aisle Nine, by Ian X. Cho

The day that multiple portals to hell opened up around the world, spewing out blood thirsty demons, everything changed.  While retail had always been hell, the opening of a gateway to Hades in Aisle Nine (homewares) of the Here For You discount store made working there even more challenging.  But some well-placed coupons and a detachment of soldiers with flame throwers kept footfall at acceptable levels.  For while there are a couple of "doomers" who have given up and live in constant despair, most people go about their business, shopping, and trying to collect points by passing a roadblock or witnessing a demon slaying.  After all, most people have their lives to live.

Jasper works at the Here For You.  Try as he might, he has no real memories of the past for Hell on Earth arrived.  There are people who seem to know him (like a trainee security guard named Kyle) and he discovered his job when he happened to walk into the store and got cornered by his manager.  However, he has the same recurring nightmare in which the world comes to an end.  And it's coming soon -- on Black Friday.  With some help from Kyle and a friendly pet demon, he plans to stop all of that, dodging crazy shoppers and bloodthirsty monsters (same thing?) and save the world.

Initially, the book is an absolutely hilarious and original farce that imagines what would happen if the end of the world came and no one cared so long as they could keep shopping.  The story loses its fun as the farce peters out about half way through and the plot turns serious (or as serious as it can, given the premise).  But while I loved the premise, I just couldn't get into the largely nonsensical story and weak characters.

Twenty-Four Seconds from Now...: A Love Story, by Jason Reynolds

At this exact moment, Neon is in the bathroom.  In his girlfriend's bedroom, she's waiting for him to return so they can have sex for the first time.  Flash back twenty-four seconds before that and he's considering what is coming up.  Flash back twenty-four minutes and he's getting to her house.  Flash back twenty-four hours....and so on.

Each chapter takes us back in time as Neon relives the moments that led to this big one.  Despite being billed as a "love story," this is not a romance so much as a story of how Neon was taught the values that go on to inform his conduct.  His parents and his sister have talked to him about sex.  His grandfather also shaped those values.  And while the story is told in reverse, it all makes sense in the end.

It's Christopher Nolan's Momento meets Judy Blume's Forever, with a Black American perspective. Lots of potential and a big gimmick, but it doesn't really pan out for me.  There are moments that shine (I particularly liked the minister's eulogy at grandfather's funeral) but much of the story is simply not that interesting.  And the reverse timeline is a difficult thing to pull off in a genre that relies so much on building on top of what we already know.  For example, it's really hard to feel much for the couple's meet cute when it happens near the end of the book.  So many of the details are known long before they happen that the usual emotional build up doesn't occur.