Ollie in Between, by Jess Callans

When Ollie is assigned a paper in her sex-ed class on the topic of what it means to be a woman, she figures that she'll just ask a few adults and get the answers.  What she finds is that every woman she talks to has different answers or no answer at all.  In fact, the only common denominator seems to be that everyone thinks it must have been easier for everyone else!

Ollie herself certainly is having trouble.  Her friends say she needs to start wearing a bra and being more girly.  The boys on her hockey team won't let her play anymore.  And there are the unavoidable physical changes.  Her older sister is telling her she needs to start shaving.  When her period comes, she doesn't want to deal with it.  

Everywhere she looks, she is being told what she must do to be a girl and what she must not do because she is not a boy.  None of it feels right for her.  There's a trans girl at her school, but Ollie doesn't think she is trans herself.  She might be non-binary, but she hasn't really decided.  All she knows for certain is that she's not sure what she wants to be.  If only someone could answer the question of what a woman is so she could figure out whether it is what she wants.

Beautifully and sensitively capturing the transition from childhood to adult, Ollie is an updated Margaret (as in Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret) for the gender diverse world.  A supportive family and largely permissive school gives Ollie the chance to really lay out her feelings about puberty and the growing social expectations she is facing.  And thoughts she has!  Ollie has her small panic attacks and immature moments, but she's wonderfully level headed and well-spoken.  And it was fascinating to simply listen to her thoughts and concerns, many of which will resonate with grownups as well as children.  As for the story itself, I really appreciated the fact (spoiler alert!) that she doesn't manage in the space of this novel to figure everything out!

Try Your Worst, by Chatham Greenfield

Sadie and Cleo have been locked in competition with each other literally from birth, when their mothers tried to produce the first birth of the year (Cleo won that competition, but Sadie was the last baby born in the previous year).  Growing up, both girls competed for awards and grades.  Now, they vie for salutatorian and valedictorian.  At times, the competition grew intense and the girls lost perspective.

However, their senior year seems to be out of control.  Lockers are getting vandalized, tires slashed, and precious belongings stolen.  Their principal calls them in to warn both girls that they need to tone it down or he will expel them, putting an end to the competition for good.  However, neither Cleo nor Sadie are actually doing these things.  In fact, it seems that someone is actually trying to get them in trouble.  That's not hard to do as their homophobic school principal does seem to have an axe to grind with them.  

The question is who is doing this and can the girls expose that person before they succeed in getting them thrown out of school?  Complicating the investigation is the nagging suspicion that each of them have that the culprit is really the other person.  Sadie suffers from clinical depression and her unpredictable behavior makes her especially suspect and vulnerable.  Predictably, the shared adversity of having a secret enemy brings the girls together into an unexpected romance. That makes things yet messier as their trust in each other is serious tested throughout.  A bittersweet ending eschews easy solutions and felt right, even if it was also terribly unfair to the protagonists.

The competing storylines (mysterious malefactor, coping with depression, and romance) leads to a confusing story that I eventually lost track of.  The depression story, in particular, didn't work for me and seemed largely unnecessary.  That said, I enjoyed the characters and their struggle and rooted for them.

The Secret Language of Birds, by Lynne Kelly

Nina loves watching and learning about bird, although her passion goes largely unnoticed within her family.  When she gets invited by her aunt to come spend time together while her aunt sets up her summer camp, Nina grudgingly agrees to come. It's a good place to observe nature and Nina focuses on the birds and more or less ignores the other girls at the camp.

But one night, some of her fellow campers convince her to sneak out at night for a prank.  While they are out, Nina catches a glimpse of a large white bird in the woods that looks remarkably like a Whooping Crane.  That would be rare enough, as Whoopers haven't been seen around the camp in a century or more, but this sighting might actually be one of the first in Texas in a while!

Following her instincts. her existing knowledge of birds, and some help from the other girls. Nina is able to prove that it is a Whooping Crane.  Things get even more exciting when another bird appears and they seem to be a breeding air with a nest and eggs!  At this point, some adult supervision is called in and the rest of the story becomes a learning experience in wildlife conservation.

A mystery that helps Nina learn to get along with her peer and find her place. it is combined with academic material about cranes, their current conservation status, and interesting details about breeding, and calls.  The mixture provides a wonderful excuse to bring some focus on these majestic birds.  While the girls get to pursue their passion for animals, responsible adults provide valuable guidance about dealing with wild animals and how to be a good conservator.  A winning combination of heartwarming story and useful knowledge.

The Mystwick School of Musicraft, by Jessica Khoury

Amelia has always dreamed of attending the Mystwick School, her mother's alma mater.  Mom was once a great maestro who casted beautiful spells with her music.  But musicraft (the mixture of music and magic) was also what killed her mother.  Amelia's grandmother doesn't want Amelia to have anything to do with it. But Amelia nonetheless persists on apply and auditioning for a place at the school.

It does not go well.  A series of mishaps and bad luck derails her audition and it is pretty obvious that she won't be accepted and her hopes of becoming a musicrafter are ended.  But to her surprise, she is accepted!  It is not until she arrives that the mystery is solved:  a bureaucratic mishap has delivered her a place that was supposed to go to another girl.  However, fixing the mistake is complicated and the faculty make a deal:  if she can prove herself in the next two months, she can stay.

That is a tall order.  She plays well enough, but no way to the professional level of the other students.  And to make things even more challenging, she has lots of enemies: classmates who want to see her fail, teachers who distrust her, and -- something far more dangerous -- a vengeful ghost.  But with some sleuthing, a new friend, and perseverance, she will not only succeed but become a heroine of her class.

A Harry Potter-like fantasy about a seventh grade flautist who has to find herself to save her school.  The story lacks originality and has a pretty transparent target audience, but I enjoyed the combination of music and magic.  It danced a fine line between fantasy and metaphor -- making music into something that not only touches the heart but can manifest physical and material changes in the world.  Seventh graders who play flute (or any musical instrument) will appreciate the musical references and the story of a brave and hard-working girl who saves the day has broad appeal for anyone who wishes they could change the world with a song

Another First Chance, by Robbie Couch

The billboard mocks River.  Everyday, he has to drive by the picture of his late best friend Dylan, adorning a PSA urging teens not to text and drive.  River hates that his dead friend has been reduced to a safety lesson and will only be remembered for his fatal error.  River was so much more than that to Dylan.  So, one day he vandalizes the billboard.

Meanwhile, a company called Affinity has come to town promoting a new study they are doing into how relationships are formed.  They are soliciting River and his classmates to be participants.  And for some reasons, his friends and even the guidance counselor is pressuring him to sign up.  Initially, he has no interest but one of his classmates with knowledge of River's recent vandalism blackmails River into joining the study.

The study involves locking away twenty student in isolation for a week and conducting group therapy and meditation practices, which all seems pretty harmless.  But strange things start happening. People  experience particularly vivid dreams, River is accused of doing things he can't recall, and River himself meets a stranger who reminds him so very much of his dead friend Dylan.

A story dealing with loss and moving on, placed in a rather thin thriller about mind experiments.  Cue the gaslights.  At first, this seemed like a useful vehicle for getting River and his friends together to address their relationship with the late Dylan.  But as the story unfolds and the experiment itself grows more and more outlandish, I found it distracting to the far more interesting emotional growth that River was going through.  I think the story would have benefitted by being more rooted in reality.  As it was, the silly parts detracted from the story.

The Misunderstandings of Charity Brown, by Elizabeth Laird

Having spent several months in the hospital recovering from polio, Charity is having trouble adjusting to life back home.  Her schoolmates are still leery of her for being sick, but Charity has always struggled to make friends.  She cannot quite understand why they dislike her attempts to save their souls for Christ.  Shouldn't everyone want to be saved?  She could not imagine life without the comfort of her religion!

Through a burst of good fortune, the family inherits an old house and all of the possessions within it. As strict Christians, they are reluctant to accept so rich a gift but Charity's father decides that the family will dedicate the large house towards providing rest and rehabilitation of needy souls.  This leads to a variety of colorful guests coming to stay with them in their exciting new home.  Along with a number of other major family events, all of these changes open Charity's eyes to the wide diversity of life.  The certainties that she learned from her faith are challenged as she discovers that the real world is a complicated place.

A lovely period piece.  The plot is scattershot, jumping from one crisis to another up to the amusing climax, but the overall story of Charity's opening up to the world is touching.  Watching her go from childish blind faith to the realization that goodness (and evil) comes in many forms is inspiring and beautiful.

The Loss of the Burying Ground, by J Anderson Coats

Dura and Ariminthia have been at war for ages, each side convinced that they are right and neither prepared for peace.  But despite strong factions who want the war to continue and a hefty propaganda effort to promote the war, a fragile peace treaty has been drafted.  To sign it, the two sides agree to sail out into neutral waters on a ship called the Burial Ground with the entire leadership of both states on board. When the ship is destroyed in a freak storm and nearly everyone is lost, the chance of peace is put in jeopardy.

Two survivors -- Cora from Dura and a Ariminthian servant named Vivienne -- are washed ashore on a desert island.  After a lifetime of indoctrination, there is little trust between them.  But when pirates come ashore and threaten them, the two girls learn to cooperate for survival.  That buys them some time, but bigger challenges await these uneasy allies as they discover that the true nature of the conflict is far more complicated than they have been raised to understand.

A fascinating novel that explores the role of violence in politics and the impact of propaganda.  There's a lot to chew on here.  Perhaps a bit too much.  Things get rushed at the end and while we're being set up for a sequel or two, the care that was taken through the story to explain the competing interests gets muddied and rushed as events unfurl.

There's a human story as well about the two girls learning to see beyond their prejudices. Sadly, those human elements get lost in the end as Coats tries to tie up far too many loose ends.

The Cost of Bliss, by Kelsey Conkling

Jane has a pretty decent life.  Her family lives in a nice suburb and has enough money for her to enjoy nice clothes and the things she wants.  When she sees people like Preston, who gets on at her bus stop but lives in the poorer subdivision next door, she is thankful she's not like him.

But then her family suddenly loses their home and is forced to move in with her great grandmother.  She's been blissfully unaware that her family wealth was an illusion and that her parents were living beyond their means.  They are poor and in deep debt.  Now Jane has to face her old friends with the truth that she isn't who she thought she was.  And with her parents overwhelmed by their change of fortunes, Jane finds she can't even count on them.  But there is one person she finds she can count on -- Preston.

A briskly paced story that tackles class and poverty for middle schoolers.  Jane's quick turn of fortune grabs your attention and provides a relatable protagonist in an unfamiliar setting.  At the same time, I found the parents really selfish and horrible and over-the-top.  It is only because Preston and his mother save the day that it is bearable.

The story ends on a positive and hopeful note that encourages readers to think about, that no matter how bad things are, there's always someone out there who needs help more than you.  Sweet.

After the Wallpaper Music, by Jean Mills

Flora and her three friends are the Arden String Quartet, a talented group of middle schoolers.  They are always getting asked to perform at school functions (parents nights, etc.) -- the veritable "wallpaper music" group.  So, when the school announces a Battle of the Bands, the Quartet will of course play a piece.  But they struggle to decide what they should play.  Flora wants to play a traditional classical quartet while the other want to play music from a video game.  They settle that dispute amicably, but when Flora gets asked by a new boy to play in his band as well, jealousies appear and Flora is faced with conflicting loyalties that are harder to resolve.

Alongside that drama, Flora's aunt who lives with them has a health scare and Flora has to face the fact that people get older and people get sick.  From this she learns the healing power of music in giving people a means to come together and enjoy each other in the face of adversity.

A mixture of themes that ultimately tackles the topic of loss and grief rather more successfully than the interpersonal conflicts that Flora must contend with.  I liked the various different ways that music is brought up in the story, ranging from its role in cultural identity to the effects of fame for those who make it big.  In the face of all the different ideas brought up in the story, the lack of a nice neat ending felt right.

Skipshock, by Caroline O'Donoghue

Traveling alone on the train from Cork to Dublin, Margo nearly passes out and suddenly finds herself in another world.  In danger from the very start, a trader named Moon rescues her and smuggles her off the train at their next stop. Margo learns that she has been transported from Ireland to a universe where multiple worlds exist, each one with a different length of day.  The most desirable southern worlds have 24-hour days and the least (and northernmost) have days as short as two hours.  Travel on the trains (the only remaining way to get between worlds) is strictly controlled and northerners are largely cut off altogether.  Unrest is everywhere.

Margo and Moon learn that her arrival is not entirely coincidence.  Margo is carrying an antique watch that once belonged to her late father.  In ways that they do not fully understand, Margo and the watch have the power to disrupt travel -- a power that the south desperately wants to have.  Chased between worlds, the two of them must unlock the mystery while evading capture.  All around them the old order is disintegrating and inter-world revolution is brewing.

A feisty adventure fantasy with a dash of romance.  I liked the role of day length as a world-builder and there's some thought given to how shorter days (and shorter lifespans would affect a world).  The author does great exposition, but the pace is so fast that things get destroyed as fast as they get introduced.   At the same time, there's a fairly large number of characters and a high body count. Hopefully, the planned sequel will explore some of the unfinished business instead of creating more stuff.  The pace flags at times as characters get involved in lengthy conversations. This is not a story that benefits from chit chat.

Gay the Pray Away, by Natalie Naudus

For most of her life, Valerie's family has been part of a conservative Christian religious community.  And to keep her away from rival ideas, she's been homeschooled and strictly segregated from outside influences.  No television.  Supervised internet access.  Parental review of her reading and friendships.  She notes the way all the rules seem to favor her brother and she sometimes doubts whether she really believes that Jesus wants her to do little more than raise babies, but she's accepted that these are just the way things are.

And then a new girl named Riley and her mother joins the congregation. Riley is free spirited, outspoken, and amazingly beautiful.  Valerie has only ever known homosexuality as a vile sin.  The idea that she might like a girl is confusing.  And when she finds out Riley likes her, it is a revelation.  Suddenly, the world that Valerie has known seems too limited and too restrictive.  She wants more and she may have to abandon everything to get it.

Drawing on her own personal experiences with growing up in a Fundamentalist family, there's a didactic mission in the storytelling.  I didn't mind the agenda as much as the way Valerie herself is portrayed.  For a young woman indoctrinated for so many years, she seemed awfully articulate about her ideology.  There's some attempt to explain this by having Valerie spending time in the public library sneaking in lots of reading.  However, few adolescents are this well-spoken and her voice sounded informed for a few extra years on the outside.  That makes Naudus's point for her easier, but by depriving Valerie of authenticity.  

The story dwells on all the things that are wrong with this isolated community, but misses chances to explain why it works for the people trapped within it.  I'm fascinated by Valerie's Taiwanese mother and we are teased at points by Valerie's observations of why being a believer serves her mother's needs, but so much more could have been done with it.  Valerie's brother and her best friend Hannah are also interesting cases in alternative paths tread that could have been expanded to fill out Valerie's journey.  All opportunities lost for a slow and largely repetitive list of the community's faults.

The Otherwhere Post, by Emily J Taylor

Maeve has been hiding her true identity for the past seven years.  Her father, a scriptomancer, brought infamy on her family by causing the destruction of the world of Inverly.  That he and his wife died in the process, leaving Maeve an orphan, did not matter.  So great was the anger at his memory that Maeve quickly found that hiding who she was was necessary to stay alive.  But then one day she receives an anonymous letter that states that her father may have been innocent.

To find the author of the letter and the evidence that could exculpate her father, she must find a way into the school where scriptomancers are trained.  At great risk, she poses as an apprentice under a stolen identity and uncovers a series of mysteries that not only tell the truth of what actually happened seven years ago, but also point to a way of rebuilding the lost world of Inverly.  Within a richly drawn world of magic and steeped with intrigue, Maeve and her young cohorts must force secrets into the open to rehabilitate her family name.

There's lots of creativity behind the world that Taylor has created for this story and Maeve makes a compelling protagonist.  For the most part, this is an immersive and addictive read.  Unfortunately, the story gets severely compressed at the end with a series of convenient losses of consciousness and subsequent digested recaps.  Whether this is because Taylor struggles with writing climactic scenes or she simply ran out of pages, it steals a lot of the dramatic build up of the story to cram several months' worth of developments into a ten page summary.

The Complex Art of Being Maisie Clark, by Sabrina Kleckner

Maisie, at eighteen, has absorbed everything she can learn about painting portraits from her parents, but she longs to develop a style that is her own.  All of her work looks more or less the same as her father's.  So, she decides to leave New York and study art in London, focusing on every medium except painting in a conscious effort to stretch herself.

The new school year starts off inauspiciously as she nearly gets thrown out of photography class and then accidentally almost maims a fellow student.  But all of these things lead to adventures, some hilarious, some poignant as her term promises new adventures and even a possible romance.

Then an emergency sends her back home to help her parents and she finds that she's grown far more in her time in London than she realized.  And, in fact, her art and her life overall has begun to bloom in its own ways after all.

A lively NA novel whose first half is much better than its second.  The cause of that is that the book is in fact a sequel, albeit an unusual one.  Maisie was first introduced to readers in Kleckner's Art of Running Away in which Maisie is only twelve and dealing with a difficult older brother.  And while the first half of this current novel introduces new characters, the second half leans heavily upon details from the earlier novel from six years earlier.  Without that background, elements of the current story are hard to follow and it fails to stand up on its own.

This Book Might Be About Zinnia, by Brittney Morris

In the present day, Zinnia is working on her admission essay for Harvard but it isn't coming together.  Zinnia's decided to write about being adopted, but it isn't enough and a reader has advised her that it needs something to give it a stronger impact.  Zinnia struggles with what to do until she starts to read the latest book from her favorite author.  In that novel, the protagonist is given up by her mother and has a distinctive heart-shaped birthmark on her forehead.  So does Zinnia.  There are other similarities and Zinnia begins to wonder if the author is also her birth mother.

Eighteen years early, Tuesday was a pregnant teenager who made the agonizing decision to put her baby up for adoption.  During the pregnancy she was largely abandoned by her family and she poured her heart into a journal.  In the aftermath of the adoption, the journal was lost.  In two parallel storylines. the truth about what happened comes to light, impacting far more than Zinnia and her search.

The adoption story is interesting and beautifully told, but there's an awful mess of subplots that distract this story.  Everything from the nature of the author of the novel to Tuesday's family's mysterious connection to the mob.   There's arson at the adoption agency, an accidental drowning, and an implied murder.  Never mind the mess of an ending with an implausible manhunt and a bizarre hallucinatory episode.  The promise of a surprise ending that is never revealed and the introduction of characters in the final pages that play no part in the story left me confused and frustrated.  I want to like this story but it needed an editor with the will to trim this train wreck down!

Top Heavy, by Rhonda DeChambeau

For Esme, the single greatest obstacle in her life is her own body.  She loves to dance, truly coming alive when her body is in motion, but her breasts get in the way.  She can no longer do ballet and when she does interpretative dance, she is always conscious of them.  The other girls in her class make fun of her, so she works extra hard to be an even better dancer to draw attention away.

And it isn't just in dance.  On the street, men leer at her, women look at her like she's a slut.  She crouches over, trying to make herself look small.  She even looked into breast reduction surgery.

But the solution isn't surgical. It is about building self-esteem.  With help from her family and he friends, Esme comes to love herself and to stand up straight and tall. In the face of bullying and a brief sexual assault, she learns to allow herself to be proud and angry.  To use space.  Ultimately, she learns to accept her body and herself.

While this verse novel starts off slow and repeats itself a lot, the pace gradually builds up and as Esme builds self-confidence, the verses become more moving.  Clever typography on some of the better poems captures the dancing movement that brings Esme join adding a delightful dimension to the story.  In the end, an inspirational story for anyone struggling with a body that doesn't look or perform as we wish it did.

A Field Guide to Broken Promises, by Leah Stecher

For years, Evie's family has moved every year or so as her mother got promoted to better and better jobs.  But now, Mom says that she's finally landed the perfect position and with luck they won't ever have to move again.  Entering junior high this year, Evie is excited about making friends that she can hold on to.  Because of the constant relocations, her only real friend is Dara, a girl at Jewish summer camp.  With all the potential in front of her, Evie is excited to start school.

When Evie shows up on the first day, she is surprised to see her friend Dara in the first class!  What are the odds that the school that Evie would move to would be the same one that Dara attends? But to her surprise, Dara isn't happy to see her and immediately starts spreading stories that they barely know each other.  Worse, she says that Evie is a stalker and moved here solely to follow Dara.  Hurt by the rejection and the bullying campaign that Dara organizes, Dara becomes convinced that something bad has happened to Dara and Evie starts digging to find out why her best friend has rejected her.

While the story primarily focuses on Evie's desire to fix everything around her and the bad choices she makes to try to achieve this, there's also some room in here for family separation, siblings, and religion.  The story itself is a gentle fast-paced middle reader intended for "reluctant readers" but it isn't dumbed down.  In fact, it takes a pretty sophisticated take on the way that complicated grown-up relationships mess up children (Evie's Dad and Dara'a Mom are definite pieces of work!).  Unfortunately, the grown ups come in at the end and fix almost everything, so only a little bit of the story is about Dara learning some life lessons.

Nav's Foolproof Guide to Falling In Love, by Jessica Lewis

Nav and Hallie are best friends.  And while Nav is a lesbian and Hallie is bisexual, friends are all that they have ever been.  It's probably just as well because Nav is ARO and Hallie is a hopeless romantic.  But while Nav doesn't want a girlfriend, she can't imagine being apart from Hallie.  When she finds out that Hallie is going to be away this summer attending an academic program, Nav is obsessed with figuring out a way to join her despite her own lack of academic prowess.  

The solution to the problem turns out to be complicated.  Nav finds out that a bright but socially awkward girl named Gia is obsessed with dating Hallie.  Gia will do anything for Nav's help with Hallie. And so a trade is engineered:  Gia (who is attending the same summer program as Hallie) will give Nav her place in the program in exchange for help getting a date with Hallie.  But before that date can happen, Gia needs lots of help.  Nav may not believe in love, but she knows a few things about Hallie.  Through some training and "romance practice" Nav will teach Gia how to woo Hallie.  Everyone wins!

But of course it doesn't work out that way.  The more work that Nav does with Gia, the more they start falling in love with each other.  And in the end, Nav has to admit that she is not as ARO as she thought.  Along the way, all three girls deal with the changes in their lives and personalities, coming to acknowledge that change can be good after all.

The story was fine, but I really disliked the main protagonist.  Nav's irresponsible with absolutely no accountability (as well as no sense of how to charge her phone!).  She treats both her father and Hallie abominably.  She drinks to excess, uses her sexual partners, and skips out on work.  She's judgmental of others while constantly running away from her own faults.  Frankly, Hallie and Gia both deserve better and they probably have some work to do on their own senses of self-esteem.

Nothing Bad Happens Here, by Rachel Ekstrom Courage

After the traumatic death of Lucia's best friend, her mother decides that Lucia needs to get away from Pittsburgh for a while.  Mom's been on-line dating a real estate broker who lives on Nantucket and he's invited the two of them to come out for the summer.  It seems like just the thing:  A quiet peaceful place where nothing bad ever happens.  Lucia could be almost bored.

That plan is swept away when Lucia discovers the body of a dead girl on the shore.  She's an unknown -- no one identifies her, no one knows her, but somehow she ended up dead.  Obsessed with not one but two close encounters with death, Lucia starts to sleuth around.  The uber rich kid Tristan seems suspicious. When Lucia finds clues that the girl had been on Tristan's yacht on the night she died, Lucia knows that Tristan is covering up a secret.  Could he have murdered the girl?

The police have lost interest and everyone tries to encourage Lucia to forget about the whole thing.  Everyone, that is, except for three mysterious beautiful girls that Lucia has befriended.  They seem to have a way with men and a kleptomania habit that somehow falls below everyone else's radars.  Who are they?  And why do they want to help Lucia find out who killed the girl?

A lovely amalgam of beach romance, murder mystery, and a little dash of fantasy.  And, of course, a killer reveal of the killer themself.  You'll guess some of the plot twists that come along, but the final one is a total surprise and well worth waiting for.  Many individual parts of the story were weak (Lucia's traumatic backstory is underdeveloped and underutilized, sparring with Tristan and his girlfriend is surprisingly unrewarding, and so on).  It's a long story but thinly told, and editing the story to raise the pace and the tension would have made for a better read.  But nonetheless I enjoyed this story of summer beach fun with corpses!

Summer Girls, by Jennifer Dugan

Birdie is an obsessed social media influencer who ignominiously crashed her boyfriend's car on a live broadcast (it was justified -- she'd just caught him cheating on her).  As the daughter of a real estate mogul who is gentrifying their summer community -- a quaint small beach town -- she's hardly a popular figure locally.

Cass is the local who long ago swore off having anything to do with "summer girls" (the ones who come to the beach only during the season and then flip you off when they return to their real homes in August.  And as the daughter of the man running a non-profit that fights the aforementioned gentrification, she has every reason to distrust Birdie and her family.

But as a consequence of the car crash, Birdie is forced to give up her socials and Cass is hired to watch over and babysit her.  The two girls initially despise each other but soon enough become good friends and lovers.  That doesn't remove the class-based tensions between them.

With a predictable format and setting, it takes above-average characters to redeem this beach read.  The girls and their class awareness have enough depth to make them interesting to watch.  Unfortunately, the story stumbles at key points as it tries to explain changes that, while necessary for the conclusion, are sudden and implausible.  Having done such a good job of showing why Bridie and Cass should not be able to make peace, the fact that they do needs to be better justified and explained.  The final coming together and Grand Speech is pure Hollywood and felt forced, robbing the story of the emotional punch it called for.

Love Points to You, by Alice Lin

When Lynda's father gets remarried and Lynda gains a stepsister, it seems like it is Lynda who always has to make the sacrifices.  While Lynda is always having to forego things, the same rules don't seem to apply to her stepsister Josie.  Josie gets a practice room to work on her violin, a private tutor to help her get ready for recitals, and the support of the family to help get her into an elite music program after high school.  While Lynda's Buncleaver series is a minor commercial success already, Linda doesn't get private spaces or private trainers.  And when Lynda brings up wanting to attend RISD, her father demurs that it's too expensive.  So, Lynda realizes that if she's going to succeed, she's going to have to do it all on her own, and in spite of her family.

Good fortune falls into her lap.  Angela, a classmate, is working on an otome game and offers to hire Lynda to draw the characters.  She'll even pay Lynda for the work.  With the hope of gaining exposure (as well as the money), Lynda jumps on board.  She's always been a fan of otome (a choose-your-own-adventure romance video game) and is excited to play a role in creating one.  As the girls develop the game, they also develop a romantic interest in each other.  However, Lynda's ambitions (combined with the resentments she carries from her family) threaten to derail the project and the relationship.

Lynda definitely has a difficult life, but it's one in which she does herself very few favors.  I found it hard to sympathize with her.  She's prickly and quick to jump to negative conclusions, prone to lashing out, and very self-centered.  Flawed characters can be instructive and interesting, especially if they grow over the course of the novel, but Lynda's growth comes late and while I sympathized with her sense of being unfairly treated, her treatment of others was equally horrid.

(I had never heard of otome before reading this story.  No real surprise there as I'm far removed from the target audience.  I enjoyed getting exposed to the phenomenon.)