May Books

Our Year of Maybe by Rachel Lynn Solomon

Sophie and Nick have been best friends since they were toddlers, next door neighbors playing in the mud and blending the artistic talents as dancer and piano-player respectively to create “Terrible Twosome” performances. They know each other better than anyone, love each other and respect each other like no one else. And senior year, Sophie helps to save Nick’s life by giving her kidney, giving the chronically ill Nick a new sort of future. No more homeschool, no more dialysis. There’s a few limitations but basically, he’s free.

Sophie’s sure that this will change things forever. Not only will Nick be free but maybe he will finally feel the irrevocable connection she knows they have. She has loved him for nearly three years and she’s sure he will see how deeply she cares for him. After all, he would have done the same, Sophie is sure. He just wasn’t given the chance like she was to prove her love.

Buuuuut. . . with new freedom, Nick has new chances. He’s joining a band, he gets to go to regular school and doesn’t share any classes with Sophie. In fact, it starts to feel they are splitting apart and their friendship turns into a codependent pining that they need to settle before it irrevocably breaks them.

Solomon’s debut novel was deft in handling chronic illness and complicated relationships and this novel is no different as the reader can see how unhealthy and limiting the friendship is for both. Sophie has denied herself opportunities and socializing because she believes the only time that matters is the time spent with Nick, he makes her feel like her best self. She nearly becomes a martyr for her love because she always concedes to his wants because he’s sick, he’s good, he’s Nick and she loves him. Yet she resents it too, he always gets what he wants. All she wants is his love.

But does that mean he owes her? No, it doesn’t. That would be wrong. Which is why Nick is so hesitant to hear or accept Sophie’s love because he is so grateful that she gave him her kidney, but he doesn’t want to confude gratitude and lifelong friendship for love. He doesn’t want it to end badly and she regrets the decision (though considering the situation, we know there’s gonna be regret). Besides, he has right to experience life and not be chained to Sophie’s side now that he has a chance to explore his own interests outside of the home and not confined by his health. He gets to experience first love and not be known as the sick kid which is nice.

But he also has to confront that he has been pretty sheltered, even spoiled as a sick kid and that maybe he has taken more out of this friendship than he has given and maybe held Sophie as a guarentee in his life without reflection of her wants.

Just a really moving story about friendship, and love and the co-dependency of both that is rarely explored in YA.

We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This by Rachel Lynn Solomon

Quinn Berkowitz doesn’t really believe in love. It’s a side-effect of helping out at her parents’ wedding planning business as all-around employee and harpist. She has seen firsthand how the bigger, grander weddings don’t guarentee happily ever after. Even in her home, she is still reeling from the six month separation her parents had when she was 8, and how they got back together like nothing happened for the sake of their business. It all seems like an artificial performance.

That’s why she shouldn’t be falling for her close friend, Tarek Mansour. The son of the caterers her family works with. Because he is all about the grand romantic gesture, the perfect moments on instagram, a die hard romantic that she would laugh at. But that’s what she does when she puts all her feelings on the line by email-confessing her feelings when he goes to college. And he doesn’t reply.

At. All.

Now it’s the summer before college and Quinn is dreading her future that is tied to the family business she is no longer interested in, and Tarek is back cooking for his parents.

Once again, Solomon weaves important topics such as family strife and mental health in a delicate conjunction with the sweet romance. Quinn is relatable in how she doesn’t know what to do with her life compounding her struggle to tell her family how she really feels about staying in the business. She feels pressured that she won’t have anything in common with them and that she has no back-up plan to justify leaving this ready-made job for her.

Her anxiety is also a big part of her arc as it deftly tied into her distrust of the relationship potential. She doesn’t want to get her or hurt Tarek but by denying her feelings and in stringing him along, she is doing exactly that. It’s like a mindfuck.

Not that Tarek is always perfect as he is so stuck on his grand romantic gestures = true love, he is feeding into Quinn’s ideas that this romance is more performative than based on true feelings.

I’ll admit it dragged on a bit as Quinn could be a bit unlikable in her stubbornness that borders on self-sabotoging like she wants to prove herself right rather than improve but it is part of her arc so I forgive it. I just wish there had been more insights from Tarek’s POV. Perhaps I’ve been spoiled by her previous novels that split between the couple POV but I felt it would have been stronger as we could see more of Tarek’s mindset, his own mental health struggles with depression and why he feels like his love story has to follow the epicness of his parents. They both have a lot to work on and the point of the story is that this is less romance or more a coming of age journey for Quinn, but I needed mre from him. It might have balanced out Quinn’s whininess.

Maybe others would find it thought-provoking and romantic (I’ll admit the boat scene was hot. Plus her main characters from TTT cameo), I don’t think it’s up to her other stuff.

The New David Espinoza by Fred Aceves

David Espinoza is the skinny beanpole kid that jocks automatically target as a nerd just like in the movies. The locker room is particularly brutal but when a video goes viral of David being taken down by a slap, David decides he’s had enough. He’s going to bulk up before his senior year that way Rick and anyone else won’t dare try to mess with him.

But lifting weights and carting carbs every day isn’t getting David the results he wants. He won’t ever reach his goal in time so when his newfound gym buddy, Alpha offers him an easier way through steroids David takes him up on it.

David knows steroids are bad, Alpha agrees. That’s why they have to do it in cycles, bulking up while keeping up their training regime to stay fit until enough time has passed that it’s okay to inject steroids again. But like any drug, David can’t stand how he quickly loses weight when he is off the steroids and so he continues to inject them, forming unnatural body phyisque, ‘roid rage and completely losing control of his life.

Aceves did an excellent job in portraying the less talked about issue of male body dysmorphia. With the first person POV, you can see how toxic David’s mental health is as he can’t stop comparing his body to everyone else, before and after the steroids. One particularly poignant part was that when he is bulked up like he wants, he starts to think he’s the man and thus more deserving of praise abd such simply based on looks.

Part of it is the enviroment as David’s self-esteem is down in the dumps but is easily dismissed by his father and girlfriend. Although they tell him that they love him the way he is, he can’t see that due to the physical bullying he deals with at school. His father even tells him to man up and popular culture depicts manhood as the most fit, bulky guy ever so that’s what David does.

You can also learn more about the whole body-building culture that pushes these gym types to the limits (outside and interally with the steroid abuse) while also mocking them for their unnatural body types, further isolating them from any help.

While I liked the raw and engaging characters, I felt the recovery was abupt. Glossed over even compared to the steroid/body dysmorphia part. I felt like it would have added some depth to see how David’s mindset changes and becomes less toxic after his rehab and therapy.

Across So Many Seas by Ruth Behar

This middle grade book is perfect for Jewish heritage month as Behar delves into the lesser-known Sephardic Jews and their diasphoric history through four generations. Starting in 1492 with the Spanish Inquisition of Jews and Moors. Benvenida is 12 year old girl grappling with the immense changed in her life as the monarchs of Spain decree all Jews must convert, leave or die. Benvenidas friends chose to convert, spitting and shunning her. Her aunt and uncle choose to convert too but practice in secret. But her father makes the difficult decision to immigrate as he doesn’t want to hide his religion like his siblings are doing and live in fear. Can’t say much about this part of the book as Behar does a good job of depicting the tumult of emotions like fear of being killed, fear of the future and simply the feeling of loss as Benvenida is uprooting from everything she’s known.

Flashforward to 1923: Turkey is turning into a republic causing dissent among the new and old generations especially Reina whose friendship with a kind, Muslim boy Sadik prompts her father to send her away to Cuba for an arranged marriage. This was an emotional chapter illustrating the loss of home again combined with loss of family and fear of the future as Reina is instructed to be a good wife that she has to focus on her husband and never play music again. This was also interesting as it is here where Behar imparts more of the Sephardic music traditions and the cultural assimilation Reina’s family has undergone to fit in yet they don’t truly fit in.

Then we meet Reina’s daughter, Alegria, in 1961 who inspired with the rise of Fidel Castro, goes to the countryside to become a brigadistas. They are the eager youth who are instructed to teach the country folk how to read and be good Communist followers. This is a new generational gap as Alegria learns more about her mother’s past and argues with her father about the threat of Communism. She’s inspired but he has been informed by the trauma of before and how quicklyt he tide can turn against those who aren’t practicing Catholics. This was cool as so often I seem to read novels of Cubans after they escape to America, disillusioned by Castro so it was interesting to see one who was so in favor of him grow disillusioned.

The final part ties everything together in 2003 in Miami as Paloma, Alegria’s daughter is excited to take a trip to Spain to learn more about her Sephardic/Ladino heritage and comes to admire the heritage. This was a lovely way to highlight the tangled history of the diasphora and how those stories that seem lost can be brought to light again, and that despite the heartache there is still so much joy and pride in their history.

I like the full circleness of the book and how Behar weaves her historical research with own bits of her family history to create lyrical prose that offers hope even in dark moments in history.

Sincerely by Courtney Sheinmel, A Beginning, a Middle and an End and Sophie’s War by Avi, Our Year of Maybe and We Got to Stop Meeting Like This by Rachel Lynn Solomon, Reflection/The First Mission by Elizabeth Lim, My Dear Hamilton by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie, Totally Tyler and Always Anthony by Terri Libenson, This Book Won’t Burn by Samira Ahmed, Mr. Terupt quartet by Rob Buyea, homebody, the sun and her flowers, milk and honey by Rupi Kaur, Real Friends trilogy by Shannon Hale, Rogue Wave by Jennifer Donnelly, Hamilton and Peggy by L.M. Elliot, Patriot Hearts by Barbara Hambley, Pillow Talk by Stephanie Cooke, Angus and Sadie by Cynthia Voight, TMT: Danger in the Darkest Hour by Mary Pope Osborne, The Archie Encyclopedia, Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman, Hamilton: An American Musical by Jeremy McCarter and Lin Manuel Miranda, Book of Goddesses by Kris Waldherr, Legendary Ladies by Ann Shen, Women of Myth by Genn McMenemy and Jenny Williamson, Mother-Daughter Tales and Father-Daughter Tales by Josephine Evetts-Secker, The Tiny Angel, The Silver Slippers, The Good Luck Pony and the Cat Next Door by Elizabeth Coda-Callan, Madeline, Madeline’s Rescue, Madeline and the Bad Hat, Madeline and the Gypsies, Madeline in London and Madeline’s Christmas by Ludwig Bemelmans, Serendipity, Sassafrass, Ming Ling, Zippity Zoom, Rhubarb, Butterwings, Memily and Minikin by Stephen Young, Princess Stories by Fiona Waters, Stories from Around the World retold by Heather Amery, Fairy Bible by Theresa Mooray

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