Winter Books

Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams

Someone said that this was like a modern Bridget Jones Diary but I’d say this was a bit deeper than that.

Yes, the titular Queenie does have a bonkers love life and sometimes she doesn’t know how to put the oven on and her personal and business life cna get messy but it’s also has the hard edges of a dysfunctional family, microaggresive work collegues and a clear drinking problem.

Living as a black woman anywhere is tough and highlights that portraying Queenie’s stress and sometimes feelings of paranoia that no one else will support her or just get that she isn’t acting out or out of control, she’s hurting. Some of this comes from her immigrant background that is peeled back layer by layer, granting more insight to Queenie’s issues which. . .

Well that would be a spoiler so I just say, this isn’t your average chick fic. You can still sip a glass of wine but you’ll also appreciate the nuance and complexitiy woven into this tale.

Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey

Now this is the book I wanted to read during Halloween. Vera’s home is haunted by monsters but Bailey keeps things off-kilter as readers will wonder if this monster is a beast or a human or some freightening possession of the two concocted by the house.

You see, Vera’s old home was the resting places for the many victims her beloved father killed. Her father may be gone but the secrets linger as a new parasitic man enters the house only adding to its sinister atmosphere. And it’s up to Vera to tackle its secrets although Vera may not be so pure herself.

I was kept guessing the whole time and if you love those gothic horrors that combine gore with domestic abuse as an echo of real life horror that vampires cannot give, then you’ll enjoy this old haunted house of a novel.

Ariadne and Elektra by Jennifer Saint

Since I so enjoyed Miller’s take on Achilles and Circe’s mythologies, I immediately jumped to another classicist turned author, Jennifer Saint. Here she brings the women’s roles in mythology to the light and revels in the sorrow and horrow of mortals living among gods and monsters. And sometimes you don’t know which is which.

Ariadne would be better titled Ariadne and Phaedra as this is a story about sisters. I believe most know the myth of the minotaur but you may have missed that Theseus’ story did not end there. He may have taken Ariadne away from Minos but he did not wed her. Rather he abandoned her on a island where she would have rotted to death if not for Dionysus. Yes, Theseus is one of the most monsterous of Posidon’s children (Guess which author I’m quoting there!)

Not only does Saint explore Ariadne’s feelings of abandonment as well as how swept she was when she initially meets Theseus but expands on the entire minos family. There’s Queen Paispha in a rare depiction of her as a grieving lost mother than evil witch. Ariadne dispairs of her mother’s weak grasp on reality and her father’s cruelty, finding solance and comfort with her younger sister, Phaedra who is the only one who understands their life in a loveless palace. But Phaendra falls for Theseus too and she’s the one to wed him when he returns to Minos, telling her that Ariadne is dead. Yep, a man splits the sisters a part but not in the usual tropy way. Both feel guilty as Ariadne believes this is punishment for leaving her sister and Phaedra feels guilty for ever wishing Ariadne gone so she may have the prince.

I won’t spoil how things get resolved between them but men as monsters is a reoccurring theme in this book and the next. For as Ariadne finds solace and healing from the god of revelry, the most human of the Olympians as a demigod, she also finds that the vulnerabilities that attracted her to him in the first place have their limits as he grows into his godly power and his madness (bonus that she depicts the Dionysian rites!). Once more she wonders if she will ever find a home again.

There were a few things that threw me off. But perhaps it can be filed under artistic license so maybe these are nitpicks but for some reason she has Dionysus’ former lover, Amphelos be a mortal boy instead of a mortal satyr. Don’t know why she made that change exactly as the result would be the same for he and Ariadne to have a conversation about godly views on mortality. Also I understand her choice to make Paispha more sympathetic as the view of her as a heinous witch could be Ancient Greek mysigny (They are the ones who give Hera a bad rep after all even though she was well beloved by the female population), it also felt like it was weakening her since she made no mention of her powers and relation to the equally powerful Circe.

As for Elektra, once again, it’s more than Elektra’s story. It’s the story of three women in the midst of the Trojan War. Clytmnestra, Cassandra and Elektra. Clytmnestra is the wife of Agamon one of the great victors of the Greeks and Elektra is their daughter. Cassandra is the doomed oracle of Troy who fortells their destruction but is unable to convince anyone of her prophacy. Honestly, Clytmnestra is the protagonist of this piece but I suppose everyone knows Elektra better for the whole Elektra complex. Don’t worry, Saint does show harrowing scenes of rape, murder and sacrifice but she doesn’t go so far as incest. Well maybe some light imaginings. But Elektra is more of a Daddy’s girl than a Daddy’s lover here as she has been kept in the dark of her father’s more monsterous deeds and fully believe in the propoganda of his glory.

Clytmnestra knows better as she comes in close contact with the curse of Agamom’s family line. A curse that hurts her more directly than Agamom when he kills her daughter. A women scorned. . . No a mother losing her child is the worst sort of enemy as Agamom is about to find out. Meanwhile Cassandra’s POV is heartbreaking as you know how her story will end with the destruction of her city and her family so it’s harrowing to see her repeated attempts to save the world she knows.

Like Miller, Saint does a grand job in creating a scale of epicness befitting the source material, expounding on themes such as mortality, pride, glory and familial legacy as Greeks had contextualized through the world. The gods are appropriately human yet unknowable. The women are fully realized as not props to their husbands but women trying to survive in a man’s world and coming to terms with the monsters that surround and betray them at every term.

I don’t have many nitpicky thoughts here, probably because my knowledge of Elektra, Clytmnestra and Cassandra mythology is so poor but I did wonder why Saint chose to portray Cassandra’s curse as something that she misconstrued as a gift from Apollo when in the original myth he cursed when she had refused his advances. I thought it would fit right in with the whole men are monsters theme that she has been working through.

I’m eager to see what Saint’s next book on the myth of Atlanta. That’s one is rarely retold for adults nor from Atlanta’s POV so I can’t wait.

Apartment 1986 by Lisa Papademetriou

This middle grade novel explores the dynamics of family estrangement and coming on your own. Callie is normally a good girl but others underestimate her. Her parents because she’s just a tween. Her teachers because she needs extra help. The kids at schools because she’s new.

But her parents are having big fiance problems with her dad laid off so she can’t fit in like others do with cool concert tickets. She does lie about having them though. And thats just the beginning of her slipper descent when she decides to skip school completely after she oversleeps. Soon one day turns into a whole week.

But she does learn a lot from touring local museums and making a new friend, Cassius who provides an objective sounding board to her suddenly uncertain life. It’s while she’s with Cassius that she stumbles upon a family secret that reveals the particulars of her dad’s estrangement with her grandparents.

Now that may sound like a lot of disparate threads but Papademetriou brings them together with lightness and sensitivity, showing how observant tweens can help settle some of the most emotional matters. It also opens Callie’s eyes too to how complex the world is and everyone is more dimensional you’d think, even the cool kids.

Once Upon a Toad by Heather Vogel Fredrick

This fun middle grade novel takes on the little-known fairytale, Diamonds and Toads and creates a memorable story about sisterhood. Catriona Starr is not happy to stay with her dad’s family during her mom’s mission to space. Okay, she does love her dad, her stepmom is cool and her half-brother is utterly adorable but her stepsister is the worst. Prissy, boy-crazy Olivia makes it very clear that she wants Catriona to go back and humilates her at school too so she’s desperate to go home. Unfortunately her pleas to her mom to fix things brings her Great Aunt Abyssinia to the fray.

Come Monday morning, Cat is spilling out toads every time she talks and Olivia spills out flowers and diamonds. While Cat is horrified and not a little annoyed that Olivia gets a good thing with the precious gems, things go from bad to worse when Olivia’s “ailemt” becomes national news and Geoffry is kidnapped as collateral.

Just like her Mother-Daughter Book Club series, Fredrick deftly understands the middle school psyche by portraying Cat at turns compassionate, sometimes self-pitying, wickedly funny and has a few flaws to resolve too in her sisterly war with Olivia. But the common ground of their curse/blessings brings them together in a satisfying way. The way she presents the diamonds and toads has a touch of fairytale as well as a touch of magical realism and I found all the characters to be well-done and entertaining, I’m glad I read.

Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzgerald

Another classic done. I can see why this one made waves as Fitzgerald pulls no punches in how nasty kids can be and she doesn’t try to sanitize those rough edges. Harriet can be kind of a brat, throwing tantrums, running away and all the mean things she writes about people. But she is a kid whose clearly been coddled a bit by her neglectful parents as she always writes about the suffocating silence of when they leave. Plus the kids are nasty right back when they find her private journal. However, it’s an worthwhile book for its distinctness and how it sticks to its gun in not delivering any moral or sweetness, but just a day in the life of a precocious “spy” who writes exactly what kids must think about the confusing world and the stupid adults and kids who populate it. She has the audacity to put truth to paper.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’engle

I have finally finished my childhood classics list with E’ngle’s genre defying A Wrinkle in Time. And I’m not kidding with this statement. I can see why publishers had a hard time figuring out where to put this as E’ngle combines philosphy, physics and some Christian spirituality I think. I don’t know how to name it.

But Meg is quite a strong protagonist, feeling like an outcast among a family of outliers. Her mother is exceptionally pretty, her father and little brother Charles Allen are exceptionally smart and her little twin brothers are exceptionally normal. She’s in an awkward stage with frizzy hair and braces, a temper, and difficulty paying attention to English and the humanities while easily calculating mathmatic equations.

Those flaws she wishes she could fix end up being a huge asset when she, Charles Allen and cute, telepathic tagalong, Calvin are sucked into the fourth dimension by three time-witches, Ms. Which, Ms. Who, and Ms. What (I know they’re not time witches but that’s what I’m referring to him as).

E’ngle’s imagination is perfectly scribed with her pen as she manages to convey the epicness and surrealist scale of the planets in the fourth dimension, the 2-dimension and the transformations of the witch sisters. It’s truly out there yet grounds itself with its scientific concepts (that I cannot begin to understand) and communist allegories of Com.

While I’ll admit some of it went over my head so I won’t be rereading it soon but I was still able to enjoy the heart of the matter in its themes of family bonds and the power of love and embracing self above all.

Ancestor Approved: Intertribal Stories for Kids by Cynthia Leitich Smith, Kim Rogers, Monique Grey Smith, Tim Tingle, David A. Robertson, Rebecca Roanhorse, Traci Sorell, Art Coulson, Eric Gansworth, Brian Young, Dawn Quigley, Christine Day, Erika T. Wurth, Andrea L. Rogers, Joseph Bruchac, and Carole Lindstrom

Just as it says on the title, this a nice middle-grade anathology celebrating Native American culture by various authors of descent. Centering around the powwow celebration that serves as a place to connect with their heritage, meet old friends and family members, make some new ones and showcase their art, literature, dance and so much more. It’s the perfect way to dip your toe in if you’re new or to feel closer if you’ve been on the powwow trail before. The stories are standalone and interconnected with some characters interacting with each other and some not which makes it very real to me, I think. Plus as it is intertribal, it focuses on various tribes from Canada and the US so there’s a wider spread of community to read about.

Plus there are plenty of stories to tickle anyone’s fancy like Wurth’s adolescent mystery as Tokala tries to solve the mystery of the missing regalia. Then there’s the potential supernatural sightings in Bruchac’s Bad Dog where Wendell learns some wise lessons from an elder and Coulson’s Wendigos Don’t Dance which is exactly as it says on the title. . . or is it? You’ll have to decide for yourself, like Jeff, if wendigos actially exist. Young does double work with Squash Blossom Bracelet: Kevin’s Story and Senecavajo: Alan’s Story which features an unlikely friendship as a young boy learns to embrace both sides of his heritage and another tries to work up the courage to find his crush.

Ones I particularly enjoyed were Roanhorse’s Rez Dog Rules which is entirely from the perspective of said rez dog wandering the powwow; Tingle’s Warriors of Forgiveness serves to invert the cowboy Western stories of harsh justice by redefining the meaning of “warrior” and a new kind of leadership model for indigenous kids; Gansworth focuses on cultural appropriation in Indian Prince and the conflicting goals of disrespectful commercialization with genuine interest; Fancy Dancer by Monique Grey features a Cree boy going to his first powwow and connecting with his heritage after years of abuse and shaming from his white father, though he still feels some insecurity of whether or not he belongs there. Finally there’s What We Know About Glaciers by Christine Day that focuses on the sisterly relationship that is drifting apart after a year away in college and overdue talk about self-care and independence that results from it.

And that’s only just a few of the offerings in the anathology. Plus it features a glossery of Cree, Cherokee, Choctaw, Ojibwe, Haudenosaunee, Abenaki, Navajo words used within the story.

YA

The Problem with the Other Side by Kwame Ivery

This book started out interesting as the premise focuses on the surprising romance of Uly and Sallie. You’d be remiss to realize that interracial romance may not be against the law but it is still considered unusual and makes people pause though the couple are determined not to let it bother them.

However, they soon become embroiled in the competitive student election races where their respective older sisters are running against each other. Uly’s sister is campaigning on a liberal, Black Lives Matter stance and Sallie’s sister on a more conservative, let’s send out the kids program.

So yes, it is very interesting and it’s ambitious to bring these sort of conversations into the mix but then it becomes out of control. The sisters that started as realistic become exaggerated plot devices for their values which is upped in intensity by a third candidate that represents toxic white male section of the population, Confederate statues are defaced, racist cartoons are shown, becomes a hot bed for every event that has been played out in politics.

The author noted in his Author’s Note that this was intentional. Each student would represent a microcosm of America. Again, admirable but created such a dissonance from the realistic beginning. Maybe it’s because it hit too close to real life but without some of nuance that the end left a sour taste in my mouth.

Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen by Isaac Blum

Hoodie Rosen is a traitor. Well his father is a traitor to the Hasdic community when he moves his family out of ways and puts the kids in public school. There, he betrays his faith in a big way when he begins to interact with Marina O’Reyes. A gentile girl. Worse, the daughter of the subtly anti-semite mayor trying to drive the Hasidic community out of the neighborhood.

While it does sound like a Romeo and Juliet story, the romance is not as much the focus as Hoodie beginning to open his eyes to the community beyond Hasidism and contending with his own faith. Addditionally, it covers a lot about the subtle and overt acts of anti-semitism that is prevalent in society up from defacing graves to the violent acts threatening them for existing.

Unpregnant by Jenni Hendriks and Ted Caplan

Veronica Clark is a good girl. A good girl who always obeys the rules including the unofficial ones that society dictates you be a good girlfriend by doing what your boyfriend asks which directly contradicts her pastor father’s rule that good Catholic girls don’t get pregnant.

So Veronica has no choice but to ask her ex-best friend, Bailey Butler to drive her to the nearest abortion center which is a few state lines over. It’s bound to be awkward but she’s desperate to get it done and can’t let her actual friends know.

Well it’s more than a little awkward. It’s downright dangerous from her boyfriend racing Veronica across state lines to stop her from aborting to pro-lifers posing as lesbian strippers to car breakdowns and emotional breakdowns. Veronica contends with the double standards regarding female behavior and pregnancy and religion while also finding her friendship with Bailey again. Bailey who is probably the most real friend she has and is dealing with her own messed up shit.

Sure, sometimes it’s unrealistic but I enjoy the Thelma and Louise-esque friendship road trip of a lifetime fun.

Watch Us Rise by Renee Watson and Ellen Hagan

Jasmine and Chelsea are tired of having their voices ignored even in their suposedly progressive school so they create the feminist blog to share their feelings and creative works. What they never expect that their blog turns into a movement, sparking more students to speak out for and backlash against them.

This kind of reminded me of Does My Body Offend You in that it contends with intersectional feminist issues such as Jasmine fighting against microaggressions and typecasting with her acting director that focuses primarily on her sassy acting instead of the emotional roles she wants. Chelsea conteds with her complex feelings for James who’s quite frankly a jerk but sometimes the heart wants what it wants, an unfeminist jerkw ho’ll string you along. Totally against her morals which sends her in a tale-spin as she worries she’s emulating her more moderate mother that doesn’t encourage her activism.

I really enjoyed the poems, pictures and blog posts strewn throughout that provide food for thought and show how creativity can free yourself in the most fufilling way and can be just as political as holding a sign at a rally because when you voice your experiences, you become powerful.

What Kind of Girl by Alyssa Sheinmel

This multi-POV book explores the school reaction when a girl accuses the golden boy of abuse. AS one can imagine there’s support as well as backlash as everyone asks what kind of girl allows herself to be abused? What kind of girl accuses the school darling of such thing? What kind of girl is she to provoke him? It gets ugly but what makes ‘s narrative particularly interesting is how she leans in on biased narrators with several switches that remind readers of the three dimensionality and secrets people hide.

This is How We Fly by Anna Meriano

It had an interesting concept in focusing on people inspired by the mega sensation that is Harry Potter who play Quidditch in real life. Like any sport, it is place for to find friends, be part of a bigger team, release her frustation and more. And I was rather interested in seeing how they make a magical sport come to life and the bigger competitions created across the country in honor of the sport.

However I was less interested in Ellen herself. I get she had a lot going on with her mother, grief over her spiraling friendships, worry over her future in college, and just the general adjustment period of all the changes crashing into her life. She’s alaso very aware of the many social issues and inequalities rife in the world and often feels helpless as she realizes she’s one teenager who can’t fix everything. But I found her abrasive in how she spoke to her stepmom, rarely considering her point of view and berating all the time for not caring about the same issues with the same intensity as she does.

It’s also a very very long book, a majority of it taken up by describing the quidditch practices that don’t move the plot along and lots of internal monologues that echo the messy confusion of Ellen’s inner self. There’s so much it is trying to tackle which is admirable but also gets bogged down by all the issues it is trying to muse on.

Happily Ever Afters by Elise Bryant

I really really really enjoyed Tessa’s character, a daydreaming romantic trying her best to follow her writerly dreams. The focus on writer’s block, inspiration and fear that she hasn’t lived enough or had enough experiences to be a good writer. So she and her friend come up with a plan for Tessa to live out her romantic dreams so she can get a kiss and get some inspiration.

However, I found the list and the romantic escapades to be not the interesting part of the book. One, it’s cliche as she falls for the obviously wrong guy first who’s a jerk with mean friends but Tessa still chases him because he checks all the boxes. Meanwhile the real love interest, the quiet, interested new guy who she has been a forming a genuine friendship with is the “the one” all along!

Two, because Tessa is so focused on fufilling her romantic dreams, that the writing part that I was genuinely interested falls to the wayside. Of course it all works out in the end but for those reasons it fell short for me.

Tash Hearts Tolstoy by Kathryn Ormsbee

Clearly inspired by those webseries like The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Ormsbee’s protagonist Tash creates, writes and films her own webseries, Unhappy Families based on Anna Karenina which quickly goes viral.

Not only does she have fame but the pressure to keep the series at its top form, she is invited to the Golden Tube Awards where she has a chance to meet the cute vlogger that she’s been chatting with and confront the trolls that have been tearing down her big works.

It’s a cute story and I enjoyed the requisite plot of Tash losing sight of what is truly important when she rides her friends too hard and neglects their needs in her vision t make Unhappy Families a winner. But what was more interesting was Ormsbee exploration of Tash navigating her asexuality and “coming out” to her friends and love interest while grappling her own stigma around it.

Both Sides Now by Peyton Thomas

Finch is one of the best debaters on his high school team, complete with awards, potential scholarships and frenemy on the circut. But debates are easy for him, he can argue, rationalize, find facts to back his point even though he’s starting to feel the burnout from it. But that’s not the point, just another year and he can get a full scholarship to his top university and then go to Congress as the first trans Congressmen.

Now, feelings aren’t so easy especially his feelings for his very-taken debate partner, Jonah which makes Finch now question his sexuality ontop of everything else.

But a bigger issue comes up when the trans bathroom debate becomes the next topic and Finch is struck with the injustice of having to debate the right for trans people to exist. And he has to debate the opposing side.

Thomas does a sensitive job navigating this touchy issue, displaying not only Finch’s confusion of sexuality but other supporting characters coming to grasp with the sliding scale of gender and sexuality as well. He also bolsters it with the other concerns in Finch’s life like financial troubles and considerations and the grind of always trying to be the best as a mode of proving yourself when love is unconditional, you just have to find the right people.

If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say by Leila Sales

This could have been an interesting exploration on “cancel culture” that has become more prevelant in the last decade. Here, Winter, spelling bee champion, future Ivy scholar, all around academic golden girl puts herself into the fray of the internet with a poorly worded rant after she loses her latest spelling competition. Branded a racist, her scholarship is revoked, her friends ditch her, the internet dogpiles her and her parents ship her off to Revibe, a hippie-touchy-feely program that is puts her with several other awful beings to learn to be better.

On one hand, Winter looks a lot better in comparison to her fellow program-mates what with one being a cat-killer, another as a real racist, and so on. Her poorly worded remark did not have the same malicious intent as the others so that’s pretty good. However, instead of self-reflecting or trying to understand the tensions around race and why her comments could be construed as hurtful, she whines the poor-me self pity parade for most of the book. It gets even worse when she writes her apology letter without any genuine apology, she just writes what she thinks the other wants to hear and then does the same for everyone else’s apology letters.

Sure, she eventually learns a little bit thanks to a romance with another guy who is a much better person than her and I appreciate what the book is trying to explore in discussing public shaming, and how cyber bullying doesn’t help the perpetrator learn anything rather it feeds their victim mentality. But I found Winter’s self absorbed personality and slowness to understand to be irritating for the most part.

The Downstairs Girl and Luck of the Titanic by Stacy Lee

Jo Kuan has little choice in life when she is forced to become a maid. After all, she’s a single woman in the nineteenth century Gilded Age. So she takes this low-role serving the oblivious rich. Nonetheless, Jo is a scrappy girl who takes charge of her life by secretly writing a gender-race aware column, “Dear Miss Sweetie,” for the local paper. While she brings up important issues regarding the societal ills, it draws intense backlash and soon starts up a hunt to find out the writer behind the column.

I enjoyed Lee’s choice to reveal this little known information of the historical South that after the slave trade, Chinese immigrants were shipped over to replace the labor, drawing a hidden connection between both communities and the larger problems.

As above, Lee spotlights the eight unfortunate Chinese passengers on the Titanic. Five survived its sinking but due to the racism of the day, they were seen as cowardly survivors and the originators of the “men dsguising as women to get into the lifeboats” myth. Worse off, after all the other Titanic survivors returned to NY with fanfare and curiousity, the Chinese survivors were sent to Cuba and otherwheres because of the Chinese Exclusion Act.

So with such an interesting bit to explore, Lee combines the hidden gems and the eccentric characters on board the Titanic (including one circus promoter) and the emotional resonance of the protagonist, Valora trying to find her brother, one of the workers, so hey can finally reunite for a new, better life. I won’t spoil it but it’s the freaking Titanic, things don’t end happily.

None of the Above by I.W. Gregorio

Kristin Lattimer is your average teen girl, well average popular teenage girl as track champion and homecoming queen with a loving boyfriend. However, her average life turns upside down when she has sex. No, she’s not pregnant but it is unnatural painful so when she talks with her doctor about it she finds out she’s not a girl as she thought. Well she has, she has all the traits but she also has very small testes. She has the androgen insensitivity syndrome, more collequial known-she’s intersex.

As one can imagine, dedspite Kristin’s attempts to keep it on the down-low, the news gets out and she must deal with harrasment and bullying in her small town while she struggles with her own identity as she questions herself, gender and sexual constructs.

It’s a bit by the numbers with requisite subplots on friendship, romance, coming of age and homecoming but I think it’s good for dipping the toe and learning more about the wider LGTBQI community.

Seoulmates by Susan Lee

I’ll admit I don’t know much about the K-pop or K-drama trends beyond the books I read about them. In that way, I am in the same boat as Hannah who isn’t interested in the new K-drama, Heart and Seoul nor does she have a bias. What she doesn’t expect is for her boyfriend, Nate to dump her because they don’t have common viewing interests anymore. So now she has to dive into the world of K-dramas and why the hell everyone’s obssessed with this new bandwagon especially after the childhood teasing she endured of being the few Korean kids in the community. Now everyone wants an Oppa.

What better guide than Jacob. The rising star in Heart and Seoul and her ex best friend whom she hasn’t talked to in three years since he moved to Korea. Sure, it’s sort of blackmail as he will only help if she will drive him around San Diego so he can complete his “Normal” Life summer bucket list while he’s on vacation from his stressful life controlled by publicists, executives and a false love affair with his co-star.

Just as Hannah gets emotionally invested in the K-drama, Lee gets readers invested in Hannah and Jacob reconnection. They just go so well with each other as two deeply independent people who feel like they have to be the strong ones in their families as the world goes out of control. Plus all the twists, scheming K-drama executives, break up, shutting down, and family backstory makes it all so dramatic. Which is the point. However, like any good soul mate, they are just drawn together again and again. Even the threat of their potential love ending with the summer can’t turn them away, their learn to be brave and follow their hearts.

A Match Made in Mehendi by Nandini Bajpai

Simi comes from three, possibly more, generations of vicholas. That’s the Punjab word for “middle man.” This can refer to business brokering, finance etc. But Simi’s family specializes in matchmaking. Simi has no interest in the family business, she just wants to follow her artistic inclinations. But after her mother and Masi have ascertained that Simi has the gift when she match-makes her cousin, they insist that she can’t let their family legacy die out. Her best friend, Noah offers her an idea, they make a match-making app for their school. That way she can figure out if she really doesn’t want to go into the matchmaking business while also giving them a boost of popularity.

Bajpai or I should say Simi’s family seems to know what they’re talking about as they have gathered tips in the heirloom Matchmaking Book. Such queries to ascertain whether values and priorities align for the potential romance to bloom (though Simi, Noah and her brother Navdeep put into a high school setting) pushes couples that make lasting connections to others they wouldn’t have met outside of their clique. Matched! is a resounding success except for a few complications. One territorial mean girl, Amanda Taylor who cannot believe her ex was not matched up with her, and Simi’s own burgeoning love life as she finds her feelings being pulled by two different guys. One that says she has a 84.1% chance and one that she’s unwilling to figure out.

Bajpai does an excellent job in showing the satisfaction and heartwarming romance one gets from delving into matchmaking and you can easily see why Simi starts considering her family’s business as a viable option when she previously dismissed it as outdated traditionalism. There’s also a minor generation gap here too as Simi and Navdeep try to use their app’s success to convince their mother to update the company’s in-person interviewing and paper file process. Modernize it basically but she finds it too impersonal. Really after seeing the process through Simi’s eyes, and the tradition and the real effort put behind it, I almost want to go to a matchmaker.

But I digress. The whole story was engaging and Simi was an excellent protagonist Relatable with a clumsiness that didn’t feel like forced quirkiness. She’s been previously shy, a wallflower but as Noah and Simi decide this is their year to be their new selves, she stands by her convictions and won’t let bullying or heartbreak get in the way of what’s right. I admire her strength and ethical-ness especially when something like a dating app can get really messy. She’s also one of the few Shikh (possibly only) protagonists I’ve ever read about. So that’s a nice bonus because even though it’s not touched upon much, it does give clear root for her determination to stand for what’s right.

Not that she is some powerful defender of the innocent. She can be judgemental and insecure and absolutely hates anything STEM related (I can relate to that!) as anyone and the book helps her grow to going beyond her comfort zone. Really even though it’s a book about romance, Simi’s romance didn’t overpower the book. It felt more of Simi’s story than anything else with elements of family, friendship and romance thrown in. I also love her artistic creativity in highlighting the beauty of mehendi details and drawing.

It’s a heartwarming book and though it makes an excellent standalone, I wouldn’t mind returning to Simi’s world to see what happens next with Preet and Jolly’s wedding. Either way, I can’t wait for Bajpai’s next English offering. I’ll just end with a quote I love from the family’s Matchmaking Guide: The root of family is love. All of love is rooted on friendship.”

Beach Blondes by Katherine Applegate

This collection gathers the first three stories of Applegate’s Summer series, aptly titled June, July, August. And if you’re like me, you may recognize Applegate’s name for her surprisingly grim, scifi, adventure Animorphs series. Here, she takes a more relaxed yet dramatic approch to Summer Smith’s time in Crab Claw, Florida. Invited by her famous romance novelist aunt, Summer is eager to get away from dull and cold Michigan to go to Florida. She’ll have the sun, the surf, maybe even meet a cute boy or two. Actually make that three according to a tarot reader Summer sits next to on the plane. Apparently she’ll meet three boys, one good, one bad and one mysterious. While she doesn’t believe in that superstitious nonsense, she soon meets and surprisingly kisses a boy first thing she lands! And that’s just the tip of the ice burg as to what Summer will deal with.

Summer refers to her time at Crab Claw as The Tan and the Clueless, and it’s a very apt description because it’s like a soap opera here. Not just with Summer’s love triangle between sweet, down to earth Seth (whose clingy ex girlfriend, Lianna won’t let him go) and rich, senator son, Adam Merrick. But there’s Diana, Summer’s surly cousin who intially makes her life miserable but soon lets down her walls and her wounds caused by her ex boyfriend, Adam when his brother Ross tried to rape her and he didn’t stand up to her defense.

But wait, there’s more. Summer’s new friend, Marquez may say she’s not getting entangled in drama but her ex boyfriend, J.T. may just be Summer’s long lost brother, kidnapped before she was born!!! Plus there’s Diver, a mysterious boy who resides at Summer’s bungalow, delivering philosphical advice despite saying girls disturb his wa.

So yeah, it’s quite a ecceltric cast of soap opera-esque characters but that’s what makes it fun especially as Applegate takes pain to give them each some depth. Well primarily the girls but still from Diana’s surprisingly realistic trauma response with her overwhelming depression and her suicidal-idealation asher ex continuously reminds her that the Merricks will go after her if she reports what Ross attempted to do. Marquez’s worldview is colored by her parents’ fleeing Cuba which makes her determined to make something of herself and not get dragged into the unweildy emotions of others, trying to present herself as cold and rational but love has a way of piercing those rationalities even though J.T. drives her crazy.

Summer can be a bit dull compared to the more fiesty characters around her but she’s eager, relatable and her rambling thoughts on the universe, love and loss (colored by her parents’ grief over their lost son) make her endearing.

Plus Adam, the arguable villain of the first summer gets some depth as he’s clearly torn between his family loyalty and how he hurt Diana, which is why it’s kinda a shame that he fades out after book 2 when. . . well I can’t spoil that.

So if you’re in for a beach read this is a perfect one with waitressing blunders, cave ins, long lost siblings and some prophetic dreams that fit any soap operetic escape.

Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts) by Lev Rosen

Jack is pretty much the studliest school slut around according to the wild rumors. Not that Jack minds much. He gets a bit of a kick to see what wild and raunchy things people think he has gotten up to. But he’s frank, he enjoys sex, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s not like he’s going to stop just because some prudes and homophobes talk about him. So his best friend, Jenna convinces to use infamy to create and answer a sex column which Jack excels at.

What can get him to stop are the pink letters appearing in his locker. Letters that grow increasingly creepy and deranged as the stalker clearly seeks to control Jack’s conquests and make him only “theirs” whether it be sending him photos of his mom at work, or cutting up his jacket, Jack’s secret admirer is watching and he’s not going to be happy until Jack is his.

Maybe it’s just me but I find stalkers far more creepier than any serial killer. They watch you and seem to know everything about you and you don’t even know who they are. It’s insane and Rosen does a great job in showing how the situation takes its toll on Jack, draining his energy and joy as he falls into line to Pinky’s demands (because the stalker always use pink notes or font). Rosen also hits on important points that Jack’s attempts to get authority help backfires as his principle only tells him that he should blend in more, making him reject any idea of contacting the police because they’ll also think he’s a slutty gay who wants attention or is “leading on” the stalker.

Rosen does a great job combining these nuanced issues around teens, LGTBQ and sexuality from fear and fetishization and doubel standards regarding all those topics. Plus Rosen has great skill in creating believable world of school and friends and a surprisngly heartwarming mother-son relationship. Plus he stays committed to Jack’s free sexuality delivering great advice while not falling into the predictable trap of gifting Jack with a stable relationship at the end of it. Jack’s not into that right now and that’s okay. To rephrase Casablanca: “Sometimes sex is just sex.”

Jasmine Zumideh Needs a Win by Susan Azim Boyer

This debut YA by Boyer takes readers back to the 70s, 1979 in fact where Jasmine is applying to her dream school NYU where she hopes to persue professional journalism. However, in her fervor to get in, she writes that she is senior class president of 1980. Surely, she’ll be able to get the election in the bag by the time she gets accepted.

But she’s facing stick up his ass, hall moniter, candidate Gerald Thomas who wants to be the “law and order” canditate by reinstating the pledge of alligence and dress code. Unpopular choices, sure. But he has some sympathy with his Vietnam vet brother and his all-American heritage. A total contrast to Jasmine’s brother, Ali who is loud and proud about his ideas of American interferance in Iran. Then the hostage crisis happens. .

The personal gets political here and Boyer has a lot of fun weaving the real life political events within this school election such as Jasmine’s campaign team encouraging her to take on Nixon-like tactics of stealing Gerald’s campaign journal and the like so she can get an edge and win. Such tactics that she dismsses at first because hello, Nixon got impeached and its part of the journalistic code to be able to investigate with integrity. Her integrity gets compromised quite a bit as the hostage crises ensues from hiding her clearly Iranian last name and avoiding her brother to spreading rumors about Gerald and such. I’m telling you, things get into Deep Throat territory but Jasmine keeps telling herself that this isn’t really her, it’s just for the election.

I enjoyed Boyer’s layer by layer sinking of Jasmine’s integrity as things get more complicated and more dirty as politics are wont to become. Not only in the election, displaying how racism and xenaphobia have long been controversial issues, but in Jasmine’s personal life as well when she hides secrets from her friends so not to distact from helping her campaign and the trouble closer to home that is her terrified grandmother still in Iran.

As well-done as it is in its introspection and weaving many important events, it also felt a bit busy but perhaps that is fitting considering the tumult of the era. Nonetheless, other plot threads like Jasmine’s parents’ divorce felt like it went by the wayside and I was a bit disappointed with Jasmine’s choices at the end as it felt like too harsh of a penance even if she felt like it was the right thing to do.

Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass by Meg Medina

This book gets realistic when tackling the subject of physical bully as interwoven with themes of identity and bravery. You see, Piddy Sanchez has only been at school for a few weeks when a classmate warns her that Yaqui Delgado wants to kick her ass. What? Piddy doesn’t even know who Yaqui is or what she looks like, much less why she is the target for this girl’s hatred. Apparently her ass swishes and she’s stuck up in Yaqui’s opinion but that warning only signals the start of Piddy’s troubles. As she tries to avoid and hide the threat of Yaqui’s incoming beatdown, she withdraws from life, changing her walk, dropping her grades, even dropping from school once it’s clear that Yaqui won’t leave her alone. This bullying leaves literal and mental scars on her that Medina demonstrates it won’t go away with empathy or a good talking to.

Piddy’s misery is compounded by her mother’s own derision for Piddy’s growing body, that she looks like chusma accompained by all sorts of warnings about those types of girls. The two don’t see eye to eye especially as who her mother wants her to be differs from what she wants to be, a vet, and a tight control over Piddy’s past where she won’t tell her about her father that leaves them yelling and frustrated most of the time.

Medina also hints at classism and differences between the “ghetto” kids and those in richer schools as Piddy begins to feel like she no longer fits into her old world now that she goes to Daniel James High School with its parole officers and bars on windows compared to the rich uniforms and copious sports. Yaqui is lost from her parentage, to her home to everything. She doesn’t know who to be and I was emotionally sucked in to see how Piddy’s life and her decisions spiral when she’s caught in this web of bullying and hate with no where to turn.

Forever by Judy Blume

Checking off another book in the childhood classics I never read but people say I should, I have finally met the infamous “Ralph.” Anyway, I can see why it has endeared across the generations despite the obvious datedness where Kath emphasizing the generation gap between the baby boomers and the “wild child” 70s teens. Blume writes with real feeling, showing how big and important these first loves are at the moment. Kath and Michael are sure they’re love is forever even when the adults caution them that they’re still young. Even though it’s easy to roll eyes at how naieve Kath and Michael sound, it’s sweet because its so genuine. Blume really knows how to write what it is like to be a teenager/young adult.