Category: Books

Picture Books

All the Way to the Top: How One Girl’s Fight For Americans with Disabilities Changed Everything
Annette Bay Pimentel and Nabigal-Nayagam Haider Ali
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Another Jennifer, changing the world. This Jennifer climbed to the top of the capital steps to advocate for passage of the ADA.

The note from Jennifer Keelan-Chaffins about how lack of access made schooling difficult added to the story.

¡Vamos! Let’s Go Eat
Raúl the Third & Elaine Bay
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Little Lobo must supply food to el Toro and a bunch of other hungry wrestlers. So we get to visit a variety of food carts and a tour of a lot of different kinds of food.

A Place Inside of Me
Zetta Elliott and Noa Denmon
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As the subtitle says, this is a poem to heal the heart. Great illustrations.

Magnificent Homespun Brown: A Celebration
Samara Cole Doyon & Kaylani Juanita
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Gorgeous prose and winning illustrations combine into a homage to all the brown colors.

We Are Little Feminists: On-the-Go
Little Feminist
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A board book about getting from here to there that shows a variety of people and body types.

Welcoming Elijah: A Passover Tale with a Tail
Lesléa Newman and Susan Gal
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For everyone who waits with excited anticipation to see if Elijah appears.

Danbi Leads the School Parade
Anna Kim
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Kim’s illustrations are calibrated at just my level of swoopy. Delightful!

The Catman of Aleppo
Irene Latham, Karim Shamsi-Basha, and Yuko Shimizu
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When you need a bit of insight into a war and abandoned cats, you have this book to turn to.

Middle Grade

Get a Grip, Vivy Cohen
Sarah Capit
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Vivy Cohen shares her initials with knuckleball pitcher VJ Capello and like him she excels at the knuckleball. Unlike him, she doesn’t play for a team.

Told via correspondence between the two VJCs we see Vivy’s first season playing for a baseball team and watch her navigate her parents’ worries about combining a neurotypical kid with a baseball team. She also has to deal with a bully on the team.

This does a great job capturing the sneaky othering of middle school and the frustrating feelings when parents take over.

The Total Eclipse of Nestor Lopez
Adrianna Cuevas
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This story of a boy who feels adrift due to his family’s constant moves because his father is in the army. But when he and his mother go to live with his grandmother while his father is deployed, some weird things happen.

This book had just the right amount of magical realism.

Lupe Wong Won’t Dance
Donna Barba Higuera
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Let’s talk about what this book does well: it captures the sneaky mean and aggressive acts that middle schoolers carry out right under grownup noses.

I also feel for girls who love to play baseball and dream of being in the majors. Maybe their granddaughters will have a shot, but there’s no way in hell MLB is letting women in any time soon.

Now let’s talk about what had me sighing in annoyance and crowning this the worst book of my 2021 reading year so far.

I’m a square dancer and one of the things that square dancers think is the worst recruiting tool is to make middle school kids square dance. They hate it, they think it’s dumb, most of the time it’s not taught by a competent caller and so they think they’ve been square dancing, but they haven’t. (Though I loved the short square dancing unit we did in fourth grade. I wished there would have been another one in junior high school.)

Because I’m a square dancer, I can tell you that the hardest part of square dancing is having even multiples of eight. It’s rare to have everyone in the room dancing, and most of the time there are a handful of people sitting out because there weren’t enough people to make a full square.

Not in this book! Every single square dancing day there the exact nearly correct number of students were there. No one got sick, or had an orthodontist appointment or transferred to a different school, or showed up mid-unit having transferred from a different school. It was always the exact number to leave the squares one person short so Lupe had to dance alone. Every. Single. Time.

It’s not realistic. And this book was littered with unrealistic things happening just to stretch the story. “Since 1938 middle school students have learned to square dance in sixth grade.” No they haven’t. Because there weren’t middle schools in 1938. “The boys must ask the girls and once you choose your partner you can’t trade.” “We always dance to Cotten Eye’d Joe.” Given that the PE teacher had experienced her own trauma during her middle school square dancing unit, there’s no way she wouldn’t have mixed things up. Teachers run their classrooms how they see fit. There’s no square dancing overlord who dictates how things must be.

There are plenty of opportunities to make amusing conundrums from square dancing. But when it’s not grounded in any sort of reality the book isn’t funny, it’s just not very well written.

Granted, this book is written for kids, not adults, so a lot of these details will fly by the intended audience. But I think that shows a certain level of disrespect for the reader. Because you know who’s harder on books that don’t get things right than adults? Kids.

A Wish in the Dark
Christina Soontornvat
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Soontornvat builds an interesting world in this story that opens with two orphan children living in a prison. They were born there and must remain in the prison until they are thirteen.

This is an adventure with a lot of (slightly heavy handed) conundrums.

The Midwife’s Apprentice
Karen Cushman

I appreciate Cushman’s commitment to all the characters being horrible to Alyce. She’s also great at weaving in period details without devolving into lecture.

Young Adult

Furia
Yamile Saied Menez
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Camila has been sneaking around playing soccer for a team in her barrio. She’s balancing her life as a student, an athlete, and the sister of a professional footballer. She’s also the daughter of an abusive father and a mother who is trying to get by.

I loved the layers of this book, and Furia was an amazing character!

Catherine Called Birdy
Karen Cushman

This Newbery honor from the 90s is packed with everyday details about a fourteen-year-old girl living in 1200s-era England. It’s amusing and gives a full picture of her life. It’s also been optioned for a film, so read it now while you still have the chance to make your own images in your head.

We Are Not From Here
Jenny Torrest Sanchez
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A tense story of three teenagers attempting to get to the US from Guatemala where they all face death due to gangs and abusive relationships. Recommended reading for people who have strong feelings about asylum seekers.

Dancing at the Pity Party
Tyler Feder
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This graphic novel about the death of the author’s mother when she was nineteen is engaging and delightful. It’s a sad situation, and the sadness resonates, but it’s also an incredibly fun read. My favorite page was the Dos and Don’ts list of things to do when interacting with someone who has lost their mother.

One Way or Another
Kara McDowell

I was irritable through the first half of this book. This was partly because indecisive people drive me batty and partly because I was rooting for neither guy. But things shaped up once the extent of Paige’s anxiety disorder came into focus and the guys rounded out.

The Code for Love and Heartbreak
Jillian Cantor

A serviceable retelling of Emma, with a high school coding club as the setting.

While I don’t mind reading retellings of Jane Austin books, I also don’t feel the need to spend a lot of time thinking about what to say when reviewing them. We know the story.

Displacement
Kiku Hughes
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Through an inventive device that handily sums up generational trauma, a modern-day Seattle teenager experiences the Japanese internment that her grandmother also experienced.

Grown
Tiffany D. Jackson

This is the third novel I’ve read by Jackson and I love how her stories make me feel uncomfortable and angry throughout my reading experience, yet I cannot put the book down.

Enchanted’s love of singing leads her on a fraught and dangerous path.

Aside from a crackling bit of fiction, this book also has an incredible cover and a great author note.

Felix Ever After
Kacen Callender
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Callender has written a roller coaster of emotion that takes place during Felix’s summer school session.

Though Felix’s world was very different than mine, I related to his confusing feelings about love. I also appreciate his calling me out during this passage:

“He kind of reminds me of a golden retriever, with his floppy blond hair and blue eyes. The first time I saw him in acrylics class, I kind of immediately hated the guy. He’s the sort of person the world adores, just based on the way he looks, a little like the way people obsess over men like Chris Hemsworth and Chris Evans and Chris Pine and all the other famous Chrises, plus Ryan Gosling, claiming that they’re liberal and that they’re feminists, but not really thinking about why they’re so obsessed with white men, and why they don’t love any people of color the same way.”

Throwaway Girls
Andrea Contos

A good little adventure/suspense/thriller that was bogged down with an alternate viewpoint that confused me every single time I encountered it. There was also a switch up at the end I didn’t find successful. Overall, the book was enjoyable but flawed.

Grownup Fiction

Majesty
Katharine McGee

The continuing saga of Beatrice, Nina, Samantha, and Daphne as Queen Beatrice negotiates her first months as a ruler. McGee is great at balancing so many characters and, unlike the first book, this one comes to an end, while still leaving room for a sequel.

That Daphne!

Young Nonfiction

Sharuko: Peruvian Archeologist Julio C. Tello
Monica Brown and Elisa Chavarri
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Who is studying which cultures? Peru was lucky to have Julio C. Tello, and you can learn about him in this bilingual picture book.

Grownup Nonfiction

An Architectural Guidebook to Portland
Bart King

Bart King is funny and loves architecture. I’m on board with both of these things. Take a gander at his eco-roof definition:

Any roof that you could grow salad greens on qualifies. An eco-roof insulates the building, limits water run-off, and lasts twice as long as a conventional roof. But without a caretaker and/or good drainage, an eco-roof can turn into a dead weedroof, which isn’t as impressive.

Young Adult

This is My Brain in Love
I.W. Gregorio
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This book gets all up in the emotions of its two protagonists. It’s also a solid love story with realistic complications. Win!

Just Patty
Jean Webster

Given that for my first 21 years, I was called Patty, I grabbed this Little Free Library find for the title. I found a delightful collection of stories about three friends attending St. Ursula’s, a progressive girls boarding school.

The book was published in 1911, and my copy was from 1911, so I got to delight in typography that has gone out of fashion (so many spaces!) and also thick paper and illustrations. I wonder if Maud Hart Lovelace was inspired by this book when she wrote her Betsy-Tacy series?

Given its age, there are surprisingly few moments to wince at. A chapter about the Irish-American family next door with oodles of children and a father that drinks too much was firmly ensconced in stereotype. And there’s another chapter where the girls dress as “gypsies” and are very mysterious. But other than that, it was teenagers being teenagers, back before they called them teenagers.

I’ll see if I can track down the other book Jean Webster wrote featuring Patty.

All the Days Past, All the Days to Come
Mildred D. Taylor
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Just as long as its title suggests, this meander of a story is not a young adult book. The main character is finished with college, for gosh sakes, and the book covers her 20s and 30s.

This is a (kinda) character-driven novel, but mostly it takes many asides so the author can explain who a historical figure is or give us details about a historical event. There was no reason for it to end when it did or to go on for as long as it did.

I gather that this continues the story of a character or characters in books I haven’t read. Perhaps it would have been a more satisfying read from that standpoint. As it was, this was a long slog.

Everything Sad is Untrue
Daniel Nayeri
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A YA book* destined to be shelved in the wrong area and never found by the readers who need it the most, Nayeri’s tale of life in America and Iran dazzles with matter-of-fact recounting.

*Just because the narrator is twelve doesn’t mean it belongs in the middle grade section! The themes are too mature for middle grade readers! This means that most kids who do find this book won’t be old enough for it, and older teenagers will pass it by.

They Went Left
Monica Hesse
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We know many stories of the people imprisoned in concentration camps during World War II, but what happened after?

Zophia’s quest to find her brother sheds light on one story.

If These Wings Could Fly
Kyrie McCauley
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As a resident of a town where crows have flocked, I loved how McCauley wove the birds’ appearance with the escalating abusive situation in this novel. I found the magical realism to be less successful.

It was nice to see toxic masculinity defeated by something other than toxic masculinity.

Never Look Back
Lilliam Rivera
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Duel narrator retelling of a myth I’m not overly familiar with Great magical realism elements.

Legendborn
Tracy Deonn
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When a fantasy novel can capture this reluctant fantasy reader, you know it was written by a gifted author. Bree’s discovery of odd things afoot at her Early College program is just the beginning of a wild ride. I’m looking forward to a big long series about her journey.

There’s a small Twilight callout that had me chuckling.

Young Nonfiction

Box: Henry Brown Mails Himself to Freedom.
Carole Boston Weatherford & Michele Wood
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Poetry and pictures bio of the enslaved man who mailed himself to freedom.

How We Got to the Moon
John Rocco
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Having lived in the long, long shadow of the baby boomers for more than four decades, I felt I had absorbed more than enough about the moon landing. But then: this book.

John Rocco looks at the cornucopia of problems the US needed to solve to get to the moon and he lays out a solution for each problem. His big picture viewpoint highlights many people behind the scenes including the seamstresses who made the parachutes that deployed after the astronauts reentered earth’s atmosphere.

Rocco uses illustrations rather than photographs, and I thought this was a brilliant decision. The illustrations convey the many small details about the bits and bobs of the infrastructure that was part of the US Space Program. Highly recommended.

The Cat I Never Named
Anna Sabic-el-Rayes with Laura L. Sullivan
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Like most of the rest of the world, I didn’t pay much attention to the war happening in what we used to call the former Yugoslavia. Even though I knew two people from the area. So it is a gift to have Anna’s story of her time in the Bosnian town of Bihać during the war.

The horrors of the war are not glossed over, but they aren’t so explicit that a reader will check out. The humanity of everyone involved is shown again and again.

Catherine’s War
Julia Billet & Claire Fowel
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A graphic novel about one of the many Jewish children hidden in plain sight in Vichy France.

Itzak: A Boy Who Loved the Violin
Tracy Newman & Abigail Halpin
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Picture book that caused me to wonder if this is the only picture book I’ve seen depicting a child with polio.

I liked the colors.

Picture Books

I am Every Good Thing
Derrick Barnes
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Lyrical and beautifully illustrated.

All He Knew
Helen Frost
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Novel in verse with very evocative poems about Henry, a deaf boy who was sent to live at a home for feebleminded children.

I spent the first segment of the book hating it, due to how the children were treated by the attendants. If you are feeling the same do persist as the book takes a turn. It also has me curious to read Down in my Heart, William Stafford’s memoir about his time as a conscientious objector during World War II.

Middle Grade

Some Places More Than Others
Renée Watson

Watson is so great at emotion! Plus, often her books are set or partially set in Portland.

Amara gets intergenerational insights to her family’s relationships when she takes a trip to New York City with her father. Includes a list of things to see in Portland and in NYC, as well as prompts for readers to ask family members about their stories.

(I got this from a Little Free Library and am excited to pass it along to another reader.)

Young Adult

The Whitsun Girls
Carrie Mesrobian

The writing! So good! But this is a hard book to get into. There are two plots–one back in the day maybe mid-1800s? and one modern. The first chapter has five members of an extended family, plus another guy, plus an ex-boyfriend, plus a dead mother, plus a mention of a different guy, plus a reference to a different family, plus a dog named Rusty.

By the end of the first chapter, I had a rough sketch of all the people, but it was touch and go there for a bit. At any rate, Mesrobian, besides being a lyrical writer, is so good at portraying emerging female sexuality. I’d say it’s worth wading through.

The Truth Commission
Susan Juby

A family who revolves around the whims of one of their children. In this case, it’s a talented daughter who draws unflattering portrayals of her mother, father and younger sister, publishes them in graphic novel form and has become famous for them. But the same situation applies to families with a child who has a substance abuse problem, or one with a terminally ill child.

Juby is great at observation and also funny. Plus, there are footnotes.

Charming as a Verb
Ben Philippe

Henri has crafted a way to move through the word as a Black kid on scholarship at his New York City high school. He’s got his sights set on Columbia, runs a dog walking business, and nothing much fazes him until a fellow student and upstairs neighbor calls him out for not being what he seems.

Aside from amazing title, this book was fun on so many levels. At this point, I’m ready to pledge to read all of Ben Philippe’s novels. The first two have been so good!

Another Kind of Cowboy
Susan Juby

Alternating narrator novel about a boy who loves horses (specifically dressage) and a wealthy girl who like plastic horses more than the real thing.

Cemetery Boys
Aiden Thomas
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There are parts of this book that scream FIRST NOVEL! Sometimes the writing was such that characters in the room seemed to disappear and reappear when needed, rather than staying present for the entire scene. Other times I wasn’t sure what was going on.

However! This story is an interesting insight into brujx culture (I had to google) and also has a trans Latino character. I’m all for representation, so have a look.

Before the Ever After
Jacqueline Woodson
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Woodson is the queen of novels in verse and I suspect her mastery of language inspires a lot of other writers to try their hand at the format, with varying results.

This is a portrait of a family affected by chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

Grownup Fiction

Passing
Nella Larson

Interesting story from 1929 (that I came by because of Jan Wilson’s Goodreads feed) about a Black woman who runs into a childhood friend who is passing for white.

I was reading this the same week I watched Bessie and a week before Ma Rainy’s Black Bottom was released on Netflix. These three things together were a great combo.

Also, read the introduction last to avoid spoilers.

The Golden State
Lydia Kiesling

The minutia of raising a toddler rendered in sparkly prose the likes of which made for enchanting reading.

My library copy was annotated by a previous reader who carefully crossed out both instances of “bring” and wrote “take” in a neat script. This amused me greatly as Kiesling’s style eschews series commas and dialog conventions. Apparently the incorrect usage bring/take was a step too far off the literary fiction grammar path.

Girl Gone Viral
Alisha Rai

Katrina is fine with lusting after her bodyguard while living a pleasant, secluded life she’s built. But then an innocent encounter in a café is turned into a viral series of inaccurate tweets and she escapes with the lusty bodyguard to his family peach farm.

I enjoyed these characters and also felt overall this was a book without a lot of obstacles, which made for pleasant reading.

Picture Books

Hike
Pete Oswald
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I’m so-so on hiking, but Pete Oswald’s drawings of a parent and child hiking compel me to find some landscapes for a day in the woods.

Middle Grade

When Stars are Scattered
Omar Mohamed & Victoria Jamieson
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Spend years in a refugee camp with Omar and his brother.

This story completely drives home life as a refugee and includes a wonderful author’s note at the end.

A Gathering of Days
Joan W. Bos

As a Newbery and National Book Award winner in 1980, I was surprised to find I hadn’t read this as a child as I enjoyed diary formats and “olden days” material.

I loved the detail in this book and that the old-timey people were full of humor.

Trowbridge Road
Marcella Pixley
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On the one hand, the writing in this is gorgeous. On the other hand, the drama is turned up so high I found myself sighing when it was time to read. There’s a lot of crying in this book. Like crying done by the characters. They cry all the time. It makes sense for what’s going on, but after a point it felt like a crutch. Plus there’s child abuse, plus mental illness, plus ramifications of a fatal illness.

Young Adult

Smash It
Francina Simone

Liv is not the outgoing one in her trio of friends. When she decides to change things up she makes a list. That list leads to many new experiences for Liv.

I loved how this book explored fluctuations in friendship and navigating crushes and milestone experiences. Liv was a great character and she for sure goes on a journey.

Stay Gold
Tobley McSmith
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Ninety percent of this book was a solid story of Pony’s life at a new high school and Georgia’s questioning her cheerleader lifestyle/image.

The last 10% is a poorly written conclusion to the story. It begins at an After-School-Special level and goes downhill from there. Hopefully, future novels from McSmith will be stellar throughout.

King and the Dragonflies
Kacen Callender
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Set in swampy, steamy, Louisiana, King and the Dragonflies is King’s story of a time of mourning and transition. He’s coming to terms with his older brother’s sudden death while also negotiating friendships and parent expectations.

Another Brooklyn
Jacqueline Woodson

The dedication: “For Bushwick (1970–1990) In memory.” And this is a great example of Woodson’s economy with language. We know that the place that was during that time is gone, but that we are going to get to experience it.

Woodson’s novel about four friends in Brooklyn is a picture of a neighborhood and a time. As usual with Woodson, the language is beautiful.

Dragon Hoops
Gene Luen Yang
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Like Gene Luen Yang at the start of this book, I don’t care about basketball. Unlike Gene Luen Yang, by the time the book ended I still didn’t care about basketball. I really enjoyed the bits of basketball history (Invented by a Canadian! First woman to dunk!) but I found the notes more interesting than the story itself.

Young Nonfiction

Lifting as We Climb
Evette Dionne
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An easy-to-digest history of the work Black women did to get the vote. There are many examples of how they kept working even as they were being thwarted by white women. (And all men.)

This is Your Brain on Stereotypes
Tanay Lloyd Kyi & Drew Shannon
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An excellent intro into science and unconscious bias with illustrations that strike the right balance of serious and fun. The use of the phrase “write a test” rather than “take a test” on page 42 had me checking the author bios to discover that this is a Canadian book. I think that phrasing will confuse children from the USA, but other than that potential wrinkle, this was a great book.

Grownup Nonfiction

Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression and the Unexpected Solutions
Johann Hari

Thanks to Goodreads, I get to keep an eye on my friend Jan’s reading habits, even though she moved away years ago. This was a recent read by her that caught my eye and I’m glad I found my way to it.

Johann Hari experienced depression throughout his life and treated it for years with antidepressants. After 13 years, he started looking into the conventional wisdom that brain chemistry is the cause of depression. Turns out, not so much.

Hari outlines nine lost connections and seven ways to reconnect that might help people grappling with depression or the blues.

Grownup Fiction

The Lager Queen of Minnesota
J. Ryan Stradal

Not the LARGER Queen of Minnesota, as I kept reading the title, but LAGER. As in beer. Edith is an amazing character and I loved this series of interlocking stories about Edith, her sister, and her granddaughter.

If we were a country of Ediths, we’d all be better for it.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
V.E. Schwab

Yeesh. This book went on for much too long. I mean sure, Addie has been alive for 300+ years, but the pacing is such that we seem to be experiencing each year. When I finally sloshed to the end, I found an unsatisfying conclusion. And thanks to the e-reader, I know that’s eight hours of my life I won’t get back.

Ghost Wall
Sarah Moss

I found this novel to be unpleasant because of the subject matter, but do appreciate the author’s use of words in an economical way. Abusive fathers can be a third rail for me, but the language in this book managed to overcome.

The Life and Death of Sophie Stark
Anna North

This manages to be a book I liked quite a bit while also intensely disliking the title character. Possibly it was the interview format that hooked me. At any rate, I loved how real these characters felt and it was great to get a glimpse of a memorable time in their lives.

Picture Books

Baloney and Friends
Greg Pizzoli
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Three short tales for young readers about Baloney and friends. Plus three comics, plus instructions of how to draw Baloney and his friends.

Exquisite: The Poetry and Life of Gwendolyn Brooks
Suzanne Slade

A picture book about Gwendolyn Brooks’ early life and her career as a poet. The words and illustrations combine to convey how her neighborhood shaped her poetry. I read this on a tiny screen, and lost some detail, alas.

Up on Bob
Mary Sullivan

Bob, a dachshund has a job. It’s hard work, but he’s happy to do it.

I laughed and laughed, as will anyone with pets who like to arrange their surroundings just so.

Middle Grade

Brave Like That
Lindsay Stoddard
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Let’s deal with the not-great first. There was a glaring date typo (In 1789 there were no banks to rob in Northfield Minnesota as the town was founded in 1855) plus everything in town was within walking distance. I’ve lived in a town smaller than Northfield and while things were close by, not everything was that close.

But one of the weirdest thing about this story was the reaction to the woman who joined the fire station. One of the firefighters could not wrap his head around the thought of a woman fire fighter so much so that I wondered if this book was set in the 1970s. It was not. While I understand that there is probably still pushback to women serving as firefighters, in 2020 the idea that there are women firefighters is not a foreign one.

Aside from those things, I really liked this novel. It’s great at depicting the churning emotions on tap when a child doesn’t love the thing a parent loves. There was a ton of nuanced and complicated emotion in this novel.

Fighting Words
Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
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Amazing main character alert! Della is plainspoken and funny and will pull you right into her story of life in the foster care system Which so far is better than life before foster care.

I loved her foster mother who embodied that matter-of-fact caretaking vibe. There were also some really great post-trauma sequences.

Young Adult

Not Your #Lovestory
Sonia Hartel

Great setup. An aspiring YouTuber who deconstructs romantic comedies finds herself unwittingly cast onto a viral social media romance that didn’t happen. Solid stakes and great depiction of life lived on the edge of poverty.

Up to this Pointe
Jennifer Longo

What do ballet and Antarctica have in common? In this case, the two have Harper in common. She’s one of three teenagers picked to spend the winter in Antarctica after her ballet career—the one thing she’s been working towards for years—never gets off the ground.

Alternating timelines tell the tale of now and then.

This is My America
Kim Johnson
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Amazing, and a great example of why we need diverse books. The whole time I was reading I wondering how many amazing stories we’d missed all that time because of #publishingsowhite. (It still is, but books like these are finally starting to be published regularly.)

This is a mystery, a chronicle of the family of an innocent man on death row, plus it deals with police brutality and knowing your rights. There’s also a love triangle and a crackerjack plot!

Flamer
Mike Curato
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Flamer is a graphic novel about summer camp that is full of adolescent boy things in a way that drives home how hard it is to be an adolescent boy. The color scheme captures that camp and campfire feel.

It also brought back memories of the racist chorus of Boom Chick a Boom we used to say (sing?) at Girl Scouts in elementary school. I’m glad that that one didn’t resurface. We totally did the Valley Girl one, though. I’m glad to see it’s still around.

The Beauty that Remains
Ashley Woodfolk

This was an ambitious first book. Three main characters, each mourning the death of a friend, sister or ex-boyfriend. All three characters have friends who are tangentially connected, and it was a lot of people to keep track of.

If you are up for the challenge, there’s great stuff about loss and also music.

All Our Worst Ideas
Vickey Skinner

This would have been a serviceable YA romance, except for the lack of attention to a legion of details. As they piled up, my annoyance increased.

A record shop in Kansas City that is open until 11pm on weeknights and does enough business to employ three people all the way until closing? A rear ending that causes the driver to break his arm, but only does a little damage to the bumper? A character who never attended homecoming, even though she had a boyfriend during at least one homecoming? Just how big is this stockroom and why is there so much to do back there that it can fill a full shift? Someone can get a zero on a test and still make valedictorian?

Not to mention that one of the characters is a total asshat whose activities never seem to be fully reckoned with.

This was a shoddy effort that left me feeling angry.

Today Tonight Tomorrow
Rachel Lynn Solomon
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This was the second book in a row where the main character MUST be the valedictorian.

I liked this treasure hunt/adventure story, and enjoyed that it was pro romance novel. It was predictable from the first page and I also found the acrimony of the two leads to be off putting for the first part of the book. That part was a bit of a slog.

But this is a very fun Seattle book and would pair nicely with I am Princess X by Cherie Priest.

(A fun thing! I couldn’t remember the Princess X book title, so I googled “ya book seattle comics mystery missing friend” and the book was the second search result! I love when the search engines work!)

Blood Moon
Lucy Cuthew

2020, the year when books about menstruation really started flowing through the publishing pipeline.

This novel in verse covers a friendship hitting a rocky point plus that thing that half the population experiences, but is not often talked about. There’s also internet harassment!

While the bones of the story were good, the book’s resolution mirrored exactly an episode of Glee and I wonder if the author subconsciously absorbed that plot point, or if it was one of the things that springs forth from the culture.

We Regret to Inform You
Ariel Kaplan

Mischa has worked hard for four years and her mother has sacrificed a lot to send her to a fancy private school. Now it’s time for all of that to pay off as the college acceptances roll in. But they don’t.

When she’s rejected from every school she applied to, including the safety school where the average student’s SAT score is half of hers, Mischa is bereft, which turns to anger, which turns to asking questions.

I love Kaplan’s books. Her characters are so immediate!

Grendel’s Guide to Love
Ariel Kaplan

Tommy lives in a quiet neighborhood full of retired old ladies who pay him to mow their lawns. It’s summer and all is fine until loud parties start up next door.

Among other things I liked about this book was the depiction of an abusive sibling relationship (I can think of only one other YA book that depicts this not-uncommon situation) and the organic way the parents were absent.

This is also somehow related to the Beowulf story, but I haven’t read enough of the classics to have caught that connection.

More Than Just a Pretty Face
Syed M. Masood
Read for Librarian Book Group

What a delightful character! Danyal is fully conscious of who he is (pretty, loves to cook, good guy) and who he isn’t (smart, diligent student). This was a funny book, that also had me thinking differently about arranged marriages.

It’s worth the price of admission just for Danyal’s conversation with the library employee.

How to Save a Life
Sara Zarr

Jill is trying to get through life after her father’s sudden death. Things get harder when her mother invites Mandy, a pregnant teenager, to live with them so she can adopt Mandy’s baby after it is born.

There are a lot of feelings in this book, expressed in that great Sara Zarr way. Also, I could not for the life of me figure out how the story was going to end. This made for a singular experience.

Of note. This was in the to-read pile for a few library borrowing cycles. This meant that for many weeks I caught a glimpse of it which queued up The Fray’s song “How to Save a Life.” I’m not opposed to that song, but it was nice when the book returned to the library, thus ending the auto play in my brain.

Grownup Fiction

Ooona Out of Order
Margarita Montimore

I love books that play with time, so this one was a winner. It was fun to jump between years of Oona’s life. It was so enjoyable that at one point I felt sad I wouldn’t be able to read all of Oona’s years.

I also appreciated the realistic depiction of a character’s body changing over time. Most of us do not stay the same weight year after year, decade after decade.

Young Nonfiction

Facts vs. Opinions vs. Robots
Michael Rex
Read for Librarian Book Group

Solid intro into the concept of facts and opinions, with very engaging robots explaining the difference.

Title-wise I didn’t feel like the “vs.” attached to “Robots” in the title is accurate. The robots were used to show the difference between facts and opinions. They weren’t in opposition to either facts or opinions.

Grownup Nonfiction

Love Money Money Loves You
Sarah McCrum

Incredibly woo woo book about how to talk about and interact with money. It’s one of those books where my attitude is, why not? Can’t hurt.

Young Adult Fiction

Who’s That Girl
Blair Thornburgh

Nattie has a crush on a boy, but no real relationship with him. Then he writes a song about her and the song becomes a hit. Nattie feels both weird and flattered.

This was a predictable novel, but with an interesting angle on feelings about being an object.

Our Wayward Fate
Gloria Cho

What a great main character! What a great collection of microaggressions! What a great parent-child disconnect! What a great swoony romance! What a great plot conundrum!

Unscripted
Nicole Kronzer
Read for Librarian Book Group

I read this fast because Kronzer did such a good job illustrating sexual harassment and sexual assault (complete with gaslighting!)

This makes this book sound heavy, and it was in places, but it’s also about a girl who loves improv and who is thrilled to attend a famous improv camp. Books where we get to sink into what the main character loves are always wonderful.

I had a few questions about where the adults were, but Kronzer made it work.

I’ve only seen mixed-gender improv groups and this book really opened my eyes to potential bro-y issues with that form of comedy.

Far from Normal
Becky Wallace

High schooler interning in the city for the summer. Great Chicago vibes and fun romance.

My Eyes Are Up Here
Laura Zimmerman
Read for Librarian Book Group

A thorough examination of the perils of having very large breasts as a teenager. It’s also a very funny book.

Public service announcement: A properly fitted bra will change everything! Find your nearest fitting expert and experience the wonder that is a well-fitting bra!

Burn
Patrick Ness
Read for Librarian Book Group

There was a distinct Story of Owen vibe in this book (though it lacked the Canadian details) where dragons are hired out to do work like clearing fields.

It’s 1957 and most of the action takes place on a farm in Washington state But Patrick Ness likes to throw a monkey wrench into his plot, so don’t settle in too early.

Not So Pure & Simple
Lamar Giles
Read for Librarian Book Group

Del has a longstanding crush on Kiera and that crush combined with daydreaming during church leads him to take a Purity Pledge. This book is funny while also doing a deep dive into emerging male sexuality.

Freshmen
Tom Ellen & Lucy Ivison
Little Free Library Insomnia Read

A duel-narrator novel about freshman year from the perspective of two students who went to the same high school. Or whatever the equivalent of high school is called in Britain.

I was confused about some things because I’m not familiar with the British secondary education system. For example, there seemed to be pressure to find a place to live off campus second year, but there also seemed to be second year people living in the dorms?

This book also disabused me of my notion that British undergrads drink less than those the in the US because the drinking age is younger.

Overall, I loved how much this book felt like a true freshman year experience.

You Should See Me in a Crown
Leah Johnson
Read for Librarian Book Group

I didn’t buy the world that was created here, one of a cutthroat world of Prom King and Queen backed by a $10K scholarship for the winners. I also wasn’t really clear on the town. It seemed to be a small town, and a wealthy town, and a town very close to Chicago?

But the world did its job setting up the impossible scenario for our hero as she stepped out of her comfort zone to chase that scholarship.

It was also a good book to show how race and LGBTQIA+ issues affect life, even if they aren’t the forefront of the story.

Grownup Fiction

Searching For Caleb
Anne Tyler
A Little Free Library Insomnia Read.

Read in the wee hours of the night whilst waiting to fall back asleep and provided to me by the magic of the Little Free Libraries.

Justine and her grandfather are on the search for Caleb, her grandfather’s lost brother.

While depictions of the Black servants are representative of the 1970s publication date (read: cringe-y) this is otherwise a book full of Anne Tyler things: interesting families, rich characterization, odd situations, and a kind of sad ending that maybe passes for happy.

I read a lot of Anne Tyler in the 90s and wasn’t sure if I had read this novel. It wasn’t sounding familiar until I got to the part with a character who always whistled the song “St. James Infirmary.” And I had read it! In the 90s I would have had to track down that song at the library or a record store. But now I’m listening to a version on YouTube.

Manhattan Beach
Jennifer Egan

What a full picture of life in the 1930s and 1940s! I loved the different characters we followed through eight or so years. This was a book that took me a long time to read because I liked to read it in bits and put it down.

Young Nonfiction

The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh
Candace Fleming
Read for Librarian Book Group

Fleming uses her usual engaging manner to take us through Lindbergh’s life. While Americans are given the basics about his ocean crossing, sometimes taught about his son’s kidnapping, and might be taught about his America First proclivities, there are so many other things you didn’t know about Charles Lindbergh.

Mostly, those things are disturbing.

Grownup Nonfiction

The 12-week Year
Moran & Lennington

Toss out your annual goals and change over to a twelve-week year to get more focus and get more done. The authors lay out a plan for your success.