Thank you to Wednesday Books for sharing a copy in exchange for my honest review.
A queer YA #MeToo reimagining of Thelma & Louise with the aesthetic of Riverdale, for fans of Mindy McGinnis, Courtney Summers, and Rory Power. When Trixie picks up her best friend Lux for their weekend getaway, she’s looking to escape for a little while, to forget the despair of being trapped in their dead-end Rust Belt town and the daunting responsibility of caring for her ailing mother. The girls are packing light: a supply of Diet Coke for Lux and her ‘89 Canon to help her frame the world in a sunnier light; half a pack of cigarettes for Trixie that she doesn’t really smoke, and a knife—one she’s just hanging on to for a friend—that she’s never used before. But a single night of violence derails their trip and will forever change the course of the girls’ lives, as they go from ordinary high schoolers to wanted fugitives. Trying to stay ahead of the cops and a hellscape of media attention, the girls grapple with an unforgiving landscape, rapidly diminishing supplies, and disastrous decisions at every turn. As they are transformed by the media into the face of a #MeToo movement they didn’t ask to lead and the road before them begins to run out, Trixie and Lux realize that they can only rely on each other, and that the love they find together is the one thing that truly makes them free. Queer Thelma & Louise! Road trip! Fighting the patriarchy! There were so many things about this novel that I wanted to work for me, which absolutely sold me concept-wise. I think this book had such potential to be incredible. Unfortunately, aspects of the execution fell flat and I didn't love the assembly of all those intriguing individual elements. The story felt more surface level than I wanted. I was reading a collection of scenes, which related to one another plot-wise, but didn’t really connect me to any deeper emotions. Some of the themes Trouble Girls means to tap into are female rage, queer joy, and the desperation of a best friendship in front of a tragic background. One thing I did appreciate--Trixie and Lux seemed like real life teens. They acted their age 100% of the time. All their rash decisions, poor money management, and mistrust of any offered help (sometimes justified, other times unfortunate) led to fantastic characterization as two teen girls from less-than-perfect home lives, looking to find their way out of a mess. Trixie's longing for her home life deepens over the course of the story, even as we see how imperfect her past has been. To me, that was the emotional height of the story. Life grew so complicated around her, and Trixie wished to go back to the simplicity of the life she knew in her mother's house, with her old job and best friend. Speaking of whom, I need to talk about Lux. My biggest issue is that Trixie treated Lux like a manic pixie dream girl. I’m pretty sure this was meant to be a queer reimagining of this trope, but it fell flat for me because subverting the concept requires a bit more than “hey! they’re sapphic!” for me. Trixie’s narration therefore doesn’t allow Lux much agency outside of how Trixie sees her, which irritated me throughout the novel. I would have felt much more connected to the story with dual narrators who could counter this effect of over-writing Lux’s story with Trixie’s perspective. I don't think this characterization did the novel a great service, as you can't really have Thelma and Louise and only narrate for Thelma. Their brief romance also fell victim to this unequal characterization. Lux and Trixie supposedly carry on this whirlwhind romance, but between Lux's naïveté at the beginning of the story and Trixie's yearning, there wasn't much chemistry between them for me. Nor does a life on the run seem conducive to starting a relationship, or giving it page time to develop. Ultimately, I think most aspects of the novel fell flat for me. I don't think I'd have a different experience on a second or third read, but I'm glad I finished the story and committed to learning the ending. I always say my issues with books are mine, and you should make your own reading choices, so I bet Trouble Girls will resonate with some of you. It's worth checking out from the library, especially if you're interested in stories about female agency and sexual assault. I'm giving Trouble Girls 3/5 stars.
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I'm back!! You may have noticed my rather long unannounced hiatus since this spring. In the past when I've taken breaks, I've always explained my reasons and built up a back catalog of posts for the time elapsed. I won't be taking that approach from here on out. Blogging is supposed to be fun for me, it's supposed to be an outlet. I don't always have time for the daily posts I've done in the past, and I know I started 2021 with so many wonderful features (the 2021 Release Radar comes to mind) which I couldn't fulfill until the end of the year. I'm sorry about that. This year has been marked with so many wonderful new novels to read, and I know 2022 is as well. I'm trying to find a balance between my love for promoting new novels and my own outside life. That's it for today! I've got some reviews scheduled for the upcoming week--currently working off a backload of unread ARCs that deserve some attention--so that's something to look forward to. Thanks for your patience and I hope you enjoy my new style!
Thank you to Wednesday Books for sharing a copy in exchange for my honest review.
Seventeen-year-old Julie has her future all planned out—move out of her small town with her boyfriend Sam, attend college in the city, spend a summer in Japan. But then Sam dies. And everything changes. Heartbroken, Julie skips his funeral, throws out his things, and tries everything to forget him and the tragic way he died. But a message Sam left behind in her yearbook forces back memories. Desperate to hear his voice one more time, Julie calls Sam’s cellphone just to listen to his voicemail. And Sam picks up the phone. In a miraculous turn of events, Julie’s been given a second chance at goodbye. The connection is temporary. But hearing Sam’s voice makes her fall for him all over again, and with each call it becomes harder to let him go. However, keeping her otherworldly calls with Sam a secret isn’t easy, especially when Julie witnesses the suffering Sam’s family is going through. Unable to stand by the sidelines and watch their shared loved ones in pain, Julie is torn between spilling the truth about her calls with Sam and risking their connection and losing him forever. I was really looking forward to this one! Contemporary fiction with a touch of whimsy, to aid Julie in grieving Sam. Unfortunately, it didn't work for me as well as I'd hoped. Although I finished the novel, a couple key aspects just bothered me until the end. First of all, the novel takes place entirely after Sam's death, so we only see his character from Julie's point of view. We didn’t have very many “before” scenes, and some of them were from a perspective where Sam was already gone. I just couldn’t bring myself to care about their relationship, beyond a basic sense of sadness. It was hard to imagine Julie and Sam moving out together, planning a future, when the timeline of their relationship was completely relegated to before the book even starts. I wasn't emotionally invested in Julie's grief for Sam, and even his phone calls didn't give me a real appreciation for his character. The premise of being able to talk to your loved one after their passing is interesting, but the rules seemed quite arbitrary and changed to suit the story. I can kind of understand the reasoning behind the nebulous representation of grief, but I didn't like how that was set up for Julie to just use at her convenience, sometimes contradicting theories she had about the calls in the text directly. This relates to my dislike of the ending of the novel. No spoilers, but it involves a specific inconsistency that I felt was just thrown in to give the story a neat wrap-up, and lacks justification in line with previous plot points. The thing is, Dustin Thao’s prose is so lovely. Even when I was skeptical of the premise, or I wasn’t quite sympathizing with Julie, I just couldn’t stop reading. Julie can be a grating character, to put it mildly, but Thao turned her storyline into a beautiful grief arc as she learns how to keep Sam's memory alive after he'd passed. The narration of a character some would call unlikeable does her justice in a way that feels so true to the core of the story. You've Reached Sam really knows what it's about in the best of ways. For this, I'm rating the novel 3/5 stars. I think this is a case of the novel reaching the wrong audience. I would recommend giving it a try if you're interested in the premise and ready to do a bit of soul-searching. Hi all! Jessica Vitalis, author of The Wolf's Curse (out Sept. 21 from Greenwillow/HarperCollins) here with a guest post on writing about grief for a middle grade audience. Welcome, Jessica! --Shreya Reinventing the Grim Reaper–Why Children Need Books about Death and GriefMy family went camping recently; it was our first big outing in nearly a year and we were in high spirits as we left the house. A few hours later, we were cruising down a back road with the music blasting when the traffic in front of us slowed and then came to a standstill. Eventually, we inched forward and discovered the source of the slowdown: an accident. A car was wrapped around a utility pole, but that’s not what caught our attention––it was the man frantically administering CPR to a body next to the car. In a second, the mood in our car shifted, and we were all made aware of our own mortality.
We were reminded of this again later in the trip when we discovered a rattlesnake near our campsite. While the odds of a deadly encounter with this reptile were slim, we were once again faced with an uncomfortable reminder of how fast things can change. You might be wondering why I’m sharing all of this with you––allow me to explain. My debut novel, The Wolf’s Curse, releases in September. It’s a middle grade twist on our traditional Grim Reaper mythology, and one of the questions I get asked most frequently is why I chose to tackle such a heavy subject for middle grade readers. My answer is this: no matter how much we want to protect children from pain and suffering, the reality is that we live in a world where that’s impossible. Even if we weren’t at what I hope will be the tail end of a global pandemic, children still live with the reality of school shootings, and the traumas of drugs, hunger, and violence are all too real for far too many kids. Even if they never experience these traumas directly, they’re exposed to them indirectly––through classmates, through the news, through social media, while on camping trips with their family. And all of them will one day face loss in some form or another. We have a responsibility to acknowledge that the world can sometimes be a frightening place and offer youth the tools they need to process the world around them. For the youngest of children, books such as You’ll Find Me by Amanda Rawson Hill and Big Cat, Little Cat by Elisha Cooper can help. Older readers can explore these topics in realistic stories such as Glitter Gets Everywhere by Yvette Clark, The Line Tender by Kate Allen, and The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise by Dan Gemeinhart. My own book, The Wolf’s Curse, tackles death head on, but it’s within the context of a fantastical setting and an adventure that will make these topics both accessible and entertaining for even the most reluctant of readers. Death and grief will never be easy, but through stories we can help prepare kids to for the difficulties they are likely to one day face––to make sure their first encounters aren’t traumatic, to show them they aren’t alone, and hopefully infuse to them with the sense that no matter how sad or difficult the circumstances in which they might find themselves, there is always room for hope and healing. Thank you to Wednesday Books for sharing a copy in exchange for my honest review.
Raised by conservative parents, 18-year-old Meg Hennessey just found out her entire childhood was a lie. Instead of taking a gap year before college to find herself, she ends up traveling north to meet what’s left of the family she never knew existed. While there, she meets Micah Allen, a former pastor’s kid whose dad ended up in prison, leaving Micah with his own complicated relationship about the church. The clock is ticking on Pastor Allen’s probation hearing and Micah, now 19, feels the pressure to forgive - even when he can’t possibly forget. As Meg and Micah grow closer, they are confronted with the heavy flutterings of first love and all the complications it brings. Together, they must navigate the sometimes-painful process of cutting ties with childhood beliefs as they build toward something truer and straight from the heart. In Erin Hahn’s Never Saw You Coming, sometimes it takes a leap of faith to find yourself. Never Saw You Coming is an earnest and heartfelt recounting of Meg's journey to finding faith in herself and keeping her beliefs through a challenging time of transition. I haven't read a lot of novels where religion and the church are major themes, and I feel there's a slight bias against books that have religious characters. I appreciated Hahn's deconstruction of purity culture and how Meg was exposed to new people and environments that led her to challenge the beliefs she'd grown up with. I'm not Christian. I feel like I should throw that out there. However I love reading books about characters from different backgrounds and as a reader, I have the ability to empathize with them and understand that an author isn't moralizing at me just because their characters have beliefs that I don't share. Some people are of different opinions. I've seen a few critiques of NSYC that discuss how Meg's faith in God and Jesus made them feel, and that's totally valid! If you don't think this is your thing, please pass. However, I'd encourage you to take a chance on this book. Hahn offers a well-rounded discussion on the Church, and it's a great novel to read if you'd like to challenge your perspective. The romance was sweet--Meg and Micah clearly had chemistry, and they worked hard to be together in ways that felt comfortable to them, especially given each of their different perspectives on what a relationship should look like. Their relationship is so considerate and communicative, and I was totally swooning by the end. Hahn isn't afraid to jump into difficult discussions, like the Church's treatment of queer individuals and body-shaming young women, and the narrative is very streamlined throughout. Never Saw You Coming is an inherently readable novel--I didn't want to put it down for a second. Overall, I'm giving Never Saw You Coming 4/5 stars, and I think it's set up to be one of the fall season's most acclaimed novels. I'd highly encourage you to preorder your copy or to reserve at a local library! Thank you to Wednesday Books for sharing a copy in exchange for my honest review.
In Perfect on Paper, Leah on the Offbeat meets To All the Boys I've Loved Before: a bisexual girl who gives anonymous love advice to her classmates is hired by the hot guy to help him get his ex back Her advice, spot on. Her love life, way off. Darcy Phillips: • Can give you the solution to any of your relationship woes―for a fee. • Uses her power for good. Most of the time. • Really cannot stand Alexander Brougham. • Has maybe not the best judgement when it comes to her best friend, Brooke…who is in love with someone else. • Does not appreciate being blackmailed. However, when Brougham catches her in the act of collecting letters from locker 89―out of which she’s been running her questionably legal, anonymous relationship advice service―that’s exactly what happens. In exchange for keeping her secret, Darcy begrudgingly agrees to become his personal dating coach―at a generous hourly rate, at least. The goal? To help him win his ex-girlfriend back. Darcy has a good reason to keep her identity secret. If word gets out that she’s behind the locker, some things she's not proud of will come to light, and there’s a good chance Brooke will never speak to her again. Okay, so all she has to do is help an entitled, bratty, (annoyingly hot) guy win over a girl who’s already fallen for him once? What could go wrong? The tagline pretty much says it all: "Her advice, spot on. Her love life, way off." I enjoyed Perfect on Paper's fresh rom-com energy. Darcy operates as an under-the-radar Agony Aunt at her school, which lands her in hot water when the Brougham catches her emptying the locker. She makes some tough choices, does quite a few things wrong, but always wants to help her classmates and support her friends. I really can't fault her for that. Gonzales does a great job at creating empathy for her characters throughout the novel. There's room for readers to disapprove of or question their actions, but still have heart to love them and want to see the ends of their stories through. Some moments felt overly moralistic, as though the novel was trying very hard to be inoffensive and model "good behavior" for readers, but for the most part I truly enjoyed the realism of each character. We get to see Darcy's flaws and mistakes, even while she's being kind or funny or supportive one chapter later. And that's something we get so rarely in queer characters--the ability to have flaws and be imperfect, maybe not a role model for "ideal citizen." Even though it's true. Queer people aren't exempt from being human--we can be petty and precocious and anxious all at the same time as fun, reactive, and empathetic, just as Darcy is. My favorite topic addressed in the novel is biphobia--Darcy is bi, and encounters erasure of her identity, and the idea that bi people aren't queer if they're in an m/f relationship. That harmful misconception is addressed in the novel, and this discussion will be so validating for bi readers. If you're out there, reading this, please know that I'm happy to talk or find more books with bi characters for you! It's a hard knock life out there in terms of queer rep in media, so this is me saying you're not on this path alone. Look no further than Perfect on Paper for a nuanced contemporary rom-com that offers discussion of queer issues, honesty & trust in friendship, and how to step back and learn from mistakes. Darcy and her crew will make their way into your hearts in a snap. 4/5 stars. I'm BACK for Terminal Tours with another amazing blog tour, this time for You & Me at the End of the World by Brianna Bourne! Follow along with the tour schedule here, and be sure to check out reviews and creative posts by our amazing bloggers. This dystopian novel will be released by Scholastic on July 20th, so make sure to check it out at your local indie! The Book and its AuthorThis is no ordinary apocalypse… Hannah Ashton wakes up to silence. The entire city around her is empty, except for one other person: Leo Sterling. Leo might be hottest boy ever (and not just because he’s the only one left), but he’s also too charming, too selfish, and too devastating for his own good, let alone Hannah’s. Stuck with only each other, they explore a world with no parents, no friends, and no school and realize that they can be themselves instead of playing the parts everyone expects of them. Hannah doesn’t have to be just an overachieving, music-box-perfect ballerina, and Leo can be more than a slacker, 80s-glam-metal-obsessed guitarist. Leo is a burst of honesty and fun that draws Hannah out, and Hannah’s got Leo thinking about someone other than himself for the first time. Together, they search for answers amid crushing isolation, but while their empty world may appear harmless . . . it’s not. Because nothing is quite as it seems, and if Hannah and Leo don’t figure out what’s going on, they might just be torn apart forever. When she’s not writing, Brianna Bourne works as a stage manager for ballet companies around the world. Originally from Texas, she grew up in Indonesia and Egypt and now lives in England with her husband and their two daughters. Woo! Hi friends! Happy Pride, if you celebrate! I’ve been gone. I feel like I say this so much and perhaps I should stop explaining myself because you all know by now that my life IRL is complicated and makes continuous blogging hard sometimes, but here we go one last time. So ever since March, I’ve been in a rut. I’ve finished one single book since April 5th, and that’s absolutely killing me. I can’t remember the last time I was in such a reading slump. Of course, that’s been accompanied by a lack of blog posts, mostly because I have nothing to talk about!
One might call this an issue of compounded anxiety--every post I skip just makes writing the next one harder. Now, I don’t want you thinking there’s something totally wrong with me. I’ve been having so much fun in my offline life! The weather in my area has been gorgeous, and I love spending time outside with my friends and exploring local walking/biking paths. I’ve even taken a road trip or two, along with seeing so many movies and tv shows. But I’ve been feeling off balance lately without my loyal readers to return to. So here I am! Explaining my absence again, hopefully for the last time. From now on, if I leave, you can just assume my real life has gotten busy and I’ll be back soon. Onto bookish news! My first order of business in June will be to read--I’m looking forward to diving into new queer releases to celebrate Pride month, but mostly I have a backlog of ARCs to review. I say let me at it! I have time to kill and so many amazing reads waiting for me. My priority here is book reviews for that reason, but I’m also going to round out the month with some lists and of course resume my 2021 Release Radar feature. My spreadsheets are looking a little bare, and I can’t wait to fill them in. Hi all! I'm here briefly with a blog tour post for Off the Record by Camryn Garrett, which came out May 18th. See below for my review as well as a moodboard I made for the novel! Check out the tour schedule here, and thank you to TBR and Beyond for including me on this tour. The Book and its AuthorThe behind-the-scenes access of Almost Famous meets the searing revelations of #metoo in this story of a teen journalist who uncovers the scandal of the decade. Ever since seventeen-year-old Josie Wright can remember, writing has been her identity, the thing that grounds her when everything else is a garbage fire. So when she wins a contest to write a celebrity profile for Deep Focus magazine, she’s equal parts excited and scared, but also ready. She’s got this. Soon Josie is jetting off on a multi-city tour, rubbing elbows with sparkly celebrities, frenetic handlers, stone-faced producers, and eccentric stylists. She even finds herself catching feelings for the subject of her profile, dazzling young newcomer Marius Canet. Josie’s world is expanding so rapidly, she doesn’t know whether she’s flying or falling. But when a young actress lets her in on a terrible secret, the answer is clear: she’s in over her head. One woman’s account leads to another and another. Josie wants to expose the man responsible, but she’s reluctant to speak up, unsure if this is her story to tell. What if she lets down the women who have entrusted her with their stories? What if this ends her writing career before it even begins? There are so many reasons not to go ahead, but if Josie doesn’t step up, who will? From the author of Full Disclosure, this is a moving testament to the #MeToo movement, and all the ways women stand up for each other. Camryn Garrett was born and raised in New York. In 2019, she was named one ofTeen Vogue’s 21Under 21 and a Glamour College Woman of the Year. Her first novel, Full Disclosure, received ravereviews from outlets such asEntertainment Weekly, the Today Show, andThe Guardian, whichcalled a “warm, funny and thoughtfully sex-positive, an impressive debut from a writer still in herteens.” Her second novel, Off the Record, will be released May 18, 2021. Camryn is also interested infilm and is a student at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. ReviewOff the Record is a sensitive, well-written book that covers some heavy subjects like mental health (anxiety) and sexual harassment. Camryn Garrett approaches everything with a seriousness grounded in Josie's character. I think coverage of these topics are so important, and I loved the journalism angle. Josie is an aspiring writer, and when she wins a contest to write a profile of Marius (who is just so sweet!) she finds herself in the deep end of a #MeToo story regarding an influential industry figure. Josie is such a compelling character for how real she seems. I was truly invested in all her storylines, and I know readers everywhere are just going to fall in love with her too. Off the Record has so much representation for readers as well--Josie is a fat, queer, Black girl, and she kicks major butt in her story. There's amazing discussion on body image, race, and queer representation that flows so well with the plot. I also loved the semi-epistolary format! Each chapter kicks off with Josie's tweets. As someone who is also very much dependent on Twitter, I enjoyed these small additions to the chapters and the chance Garrett took to be extra-creative. Such a bouncy, youthful way to format the novel. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Off the Record--I find it so pressing and relevant, and I think it will be well-liked by any reader! 4/5 stars. MoodboardThank you to Wednesday Books for sharing a copy in exchange for my honest review.
Lara's had eyes for exactly one person throughout her three years of high school: Chase Harding. He's tall, strong, sweet, a football star, and frankly, stupid hot. Oh, and he's talking to her now. On purpose and everything. Maybe...flirting, even? No, wait, he's definitely flirting, which is pretty much the sum of everything Lara's wanted out of life. Except she’s haunted by a memory. A memory of a confusing, romantic, strangely perfect summer spent with a girl named Jasmine. A memory that becomes a confusing, disorienting present when Jasmine herself walks through the front doors of the school to see Lara and Chase chatting it up in front of the lockers. Lara has everything she ever wanted: a tight-knit group of friends, a job that borders on cool, and Chase, the boy of her literal dreams. But if she's finally got the guy, why can't she stop thinking about the girl? This adorable queer romance has been on my most anticipated list for a long while now, and I'm so so excited that I got to read an ARC! Cool for the Summer follows Lara's senior year romance(s?) while she tries to figure out if the boy she's always wanted might be falling out of favor for the girl she just met. I enjoyed the storytelling--alternating timelines between Lara's current year in New York and her summer in Outer Banks allow us to see the buildup of Lara and Jasmine's relationship. Their friendship turns into something more during the summer, and this extra description was central to getting me to root for their relationship to begin again in the present timeline. My favorite chapter was their weekend with Jasmine's mother--Adler's account of their dinner made me feel absolutely starving! CFTS is also kind of a Grease retelling, which I enjoyed. There's a lot of mutual pining in the best of ways. Miscommunication tropes are so over, but CFTS genuinely has us in Lara's headspace while she's deciding how to be true to her heart. Good narration cannot be under-appreciated, so this point is just to say that I liked reading in Lara's voice. She reads like a real high schooler--there's a fair bit of friend drama, but she's got real heart underneath it all. This is tiny ( I kind of want to get into the habit of injecting doses of non-book-media-appreciation into my reviews) but Cool for the Summer also tuned me into its namesake Demi Lovato song, which I've listened to about 50 times since finishing the book. Definitely a bi anthem, and you should listen to it while you read a particular scene in the novel (you'll know it when you read it) I think this book will resonate with a lot of queer readers--it's so heartfelt and written with the best impact. This might sound weird, but it's just a really safe book. Cool for the Summer is a short but comforting read. Weirdly, reading it actually started a reading and reviewing slump for me. I've hardly turned a page or written a word since I finished. I'm just that stuck thinking about Lara, Jasmine, and the rest of their adventures. 5/5 stars for a beautiful novel that I can't wait to see out in the world. |
The BaronessHey, I'm Shreya! I love to read, write, travel, and drink tea. Disclosure: I am an affiliate of bookshop.org and I will earn a small commission if you click the above link and make a purchase.
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