Anna Tschetter
A delightful queer rom-com with the cutest found family ever. This is a little sadder than Red, White, and Royal Blue and that's OK. A great read and sort of made me want to go to New York which is sort of difficult because there's so many people in NY and I'm generally not interested!
This is such a beautiful and visceral book! It's of course so sad about Zauner's mother's passing but I felt like I got to know her a little bit which was lovely. It's also a book that will make you very hungry and one that kept me looking up pictures of all the dishes she talks about.
A great book for anyone who loves their mom and food.
This was great! I loved the way that Lukoff presented Bug's journey through the lens of a haunting and a feeling of wrongness. So many tears in this one - both happy and sad!
Beautifully written. Jarrar reads the audiobook and she is great at it, too!
Probably not for people who don't like to read about sex (and kink) or who have trouble reading about abuse.
I liked this! I think the voice was a little muddled to me, sometimes reading as a 13 year old and sometimes older but not always fitting together.
But, I still think it's a good story about a girl standing up to racism and learning about the ways in which adults can fail kids. I do think Sister Elizabeth got off a little bit easy for the awful things she said....
I really enjoyed this! I don't read much - or any? - noir so it was a fun change. The setting was one that I didn't know anything about so it was interesting and sad to learn about the Hawks, the CIA, and the “Dirty War” in Mexico.
Another win for Stacey Lee! She makes the best characters and I loved all of Valora's schemes and the side details about the up and coming designer and the view of the different classes on the ship.
A mystery that's less a whodunnit and more of a meditation on grief and trauma. I do feel like this increased my vocabulary!!
I enjoyed this! I don't read a lot of adult crime/mystery novels but I thought I'd branch out.
I liked the setting and learning a little more about modern day Nigeria. I'd heard of the college cults/confraternities before but not of “necklace” killings which are awful. I'd read a series of Philip and Chika driving around Nigeria solving mysteries!
A perfect book about fat phobia and bullying. I wanted to SCREAM at Ellie's awful mother and hug her dad and Catalina and friends. At the end with Gigi and the cake!?!? I thought I might lose it but I, so proud of Ellie for being brave and strong and not sinking to the mean girls' level.
Finally can Ellie's therapist be my therapist? I think having lightsaber battles would help me too!
Another amazing book by Lawson about mental (and physical) health, weird arguments, and the embarrassing things we all do. Hilarious and moving at the same time.
I liked this a lot! I knew as soon as Rue got to Ghizon and she and her father were the only Black people that something was up but the reveal was great! Elle does a great job of folding in contemporary themes - Black Lives Matter, the drug war, colonialism - into the fantasy setting. That's what great fantasy does!
I loved it! This was a sweet way to explore gender identity and the ways society forces expectations of gender on teens. The art was great, too, with the People of the Grass and the weird little candy babies!
Also, Junebug was my favorite. She has big Ripley from Lumberjanes and Maps Mizoguchi from Gotham Academy energy.
I had very little expectations going into this book and I still didn't see most of the events in here coming. A fascinating, upsetting, and sometimes triggering story of a very strange childhood and young adulthood.
(Somewhat of a spoiler: Don't worry about Tigger! Tigger is OK!)
Vo is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. Her writing is so beautiful and dangerous. I loved the world of this old Hollywood tale with all of the mysteries and deals and dark magic. If your is someone who likes to have everything explained - do people actually become stars? do they get their names back? Are the studio heads legit demons?! - then this might not be for you. But if you want a gorgeous atmospheric tale, then pick this up!!
I read Graceling in 2015 and really liked it but didn't love it. After seeing Kristin Cashore and Elizabeth Lim give fascinating talks about fantasy at the Boston Book Festival, Renata suggested I pick back up with the series with Winterkeep.
Correctly, she thought I would love it. AND I DID. I love character-driven stories and fantasy and political intrigue so this was right up my alley. Plus, blue telepathic foxes! I love them. I would love to have a telepathic fox companion - I promise not to reveal the secrets of foxkind!!
Anyway, this book is great, I'm looking forward to Seasparrow, and always listen to Renata!
This was beautifully written and researched. I knew a little bit about the case but not the whole details or the numerous trials. Definitely a new classic of civil rights literature.
Like many teens, I had a Poe phase in high school and especially loved the Cask of Amontillado. This retelling mixes in more Poe stories - The Masque of the Red Death, The Fall of the House of Usher - that made it more fun to try to recall them all. This definitely ends on a cliffhanger and I'm interested to see where it goes from here.
This mix of a contemporary tale and historical fiction in verse is EXTREMELY MY JAM surprising no one.
I appreciated the look at the ripple effects of sexual assault through an entire family and the guilt and pain that Em feels after Nor's rapist serves no time. Em's discovery and then obsession with Marguerite de Bressiueax is fascinating and I was also pretty bummed to find out she is maybe just a legend. But I chose to believe she's real and found Nor's speech to Em about her really amazing. .
If you liked Blood Water Paint or think women should have fucking swords, this is for you.