Thanks to the publisher & Netgalley for the complimentary e-ARC. All opinions provided are my own.I was impressed by Mazey Eddings’s adult romance debut A Brush with Love but for me her voice shines even more in this adorable & also emotionally striking YA contemporary romance, Tilly in Technicolor. Mazey captures so well the feeling of not belonging / not feeling free to be oneself & how critical putting yourself into new experiences, putting yourself out there, being yourself, can be to your own happiness…& maybe it will allow you to find and appreciate happiness with someone else too. The neurodivergence rep, the story of recent high school graduates, Tilly and Oliver—the former trying to figure out her path forward—, the leads’ bad initial impression of each other, & some adventures in different European cities results in a book that really had me smiling on the inside & also feeling so happy by the end. There’s one moment in particular where Oliver realizes that unlike other people, Tilly is actually into his interests, like the color of a door, that is particularly lovely. Though I wanted more in regards to Tilly’s relationship with her overbearing, often toxic mom—the resolution is a bit hasty for me—everything else is basically pitch perfect. I’m really glad this book was written! 5⭐️. Out 08/15.CWs: Overbearing, overmanaging, dismissive mom; lack of understanding & even cruelty from others regarding neurodivergence.
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Thanks to the publisher & Netgalley for the complimentary e-ARC. All opinions provided are my own.Having lost my dad when I was 19, I’m always struck & moved by YA books that talk grief & the feelings & emotions that come with it. Ashley Schumacher’s The Renaissance of Gwen Hathaway is a heartwarming tale set in the world of the Renaissance Faire—where new things are made to look old, a young girl can grow up with two loving parents & then one, & that same girl can one day randomly become a Ren Faire princess. Watching Gwen develop more confidence in her body & in herself as the book progresses is another mark in this book’s favor, as is her relationship with Arthur, the irrepressible & kind son of the owners who is also somewhat insecure about his own appearance. If you’re looking for a book that handles the loss of a parent & finding your way after that loss in a soft & lovely way, check this one out 4⭐️. Out 03/14.CW: Reference to parental judgement (grandparents). Reference to homophobia. Grief over losing a parent.
Thanks to the publisher & Netgalley for the complimentary e-ARC. All opinions provided are my own.Emma Lord’s YA books always get me right in the feels. Eminently readable, skillfully written, characters that navigate complicated situations with humanity & grace, these books are always winners for me. Begin Again continues that trend for me, this time in a college setting as Andie Rose arrives at her dream school as a freshman transfer. Despite the fact that Andie’s contending with a lot—including a long distance relationship with a longtime boyfriend, a somewhat fractured relationship with her dad, & the legacy of her mother—this book is hopeful & graceful & even helped me feel like my own life experience was somewhat relatable in its discussions of family grief. The wrap up to one of the elements of this story could have used some more time & attention IMO but overall this is a sweet, sincere, & lovely story—interspersed with moments of humor (shout-out to the grandmas!) that I flipped through the pages quickly of. 4.5⭐️. Out 01/24.CWs: Death of mom. Emotionally abandoned by dad. Cheating manipulative bf. The other lead was cheated on too.
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own. 📖 Q: have you ever lived in a small town? I’m currently living in a town that has around 1,000 residents. If you have, did you like it? Casey McQuiston’s I Kissed Shara Wheeler is wild—I had no idea what was going to happen—& it was so fun & unexpected (but maybe should have expected since McQuiston is always serving up something new!). The book basically opens with Chloe Green—who’s long been competing with Shara for valedictorian—realizing that before “Perfect” (said sarcastically) Shara disappeared, she kissed her & Shara’s neighbor Rory—not to mention Shara has a boyfriend, Smith. Chloe has enough questions about all of this to fill an investigative reporter’s notebook. Shara only encourages the mystery, leaving a trail of clues on pink stationary that Chloe, Rory, & Smith work together to find. I feel like I’m still putting together this book, which explores what makes some teen girls come across as perfect & approachable versus scary & mean. That feels really important to me, not to mention how the book addresses Christian hypocrisy, being non-binary (& recognizing & celebrating that), & living—and being happy in a small towns—especially when you’re not what some of those “Christians” want. (Like maybe if you’re a Pomeranian—like Chloe’s parents suggest—& the people around you only want poodles.) The book’s incisive & also soo funny, with quips about vampire hunters & Phantom of the Opera & much more, & heartwarming moments as Chloe finds friends in people she wasn’t expecting. Seeing Chloe—a very smart person—realize her own feelings for Shara (& vice versa) is amusing & relatable. On the whole the book is both cutting & warm, hard & sweet. My only quibble with this one is just that at the end of the day, I still didn’t feel like I entirely knew Shara. She still feels somewhat inscrutable to me. But this is another mega-talented offering from Casey McQuiston—honestly I think the author can write anything. 4.5 ⭐️. Release date: 05/03.
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own.In prep for reading my ARC of Namesake I re-read Fable & I was struck again by how lush & gorgeous it is. It’s a thrilling adventure. Namesake picks back up with Fable, West, the rest of the Marigold crew, Saint, et al. & it’s another wonder-ful offering from a prodigious talent. I’m so excited by Adrienne Young’s writing—what stories she’s already put into the world & what will come—but Namesake doesn’t quite live up to Fable in my heart & imagination. Hopefully I won't spoil too much of Namesake’s plot in this review but it feels more circuitous to me—as does Fable & West’s romance, which is tested by the same mistakes they make over & over again. While Fable often questions West’s decision-making in this book—she considers how far he’s gone, how far he’s willing to go—there’s a moment where I feel like he goes too far & Fable kinda drops it. He crosses too big of a line for me. Like Fable, Namesake has beautiful, evocative language & moving storylines about family & place in the world. I love its moments of tenderness & Young’s writing can stop me in my tracks. But overall I have some issues with Namesake that leave me having enjoyed it but not falling in love as I did with the first book. 4⭐️. Namesake is available 03/16.Thanks to the publisher & Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own.Q: did you ever go to a camp? I went to a church camp once when I was a kid & got stitches on my chin after trying to show off for a boy on the see saw. He was not impressed 🥴. I thought Emma Lord’s Tweet Cute was adorable & I couldn’t *wait* to get my hands on You Have a Match. Featuring Abby Day, a grieving 16 year old who’s also trying to recover from the humiliation of having feelings for the best friend who doesn’t have feelings for her, You Have a Match takes it one step further on the emotional scale by having Abby learn her family’s biggest secret after taking a DNA test: she has an older, biological sister named Savvy. Abby & Savvy make plans to get together at the same summer camp where they’ll try to figure out what happened: how their parents know each other & why they haven’t known anything about the other sister until after the test. At camp, Abby will also try to put the Big Embarrassing Incident—when she tried to kiss her best friend Leo—behind her, a feat made more difficult by the fact that he is in fact at camp with her. This is a heart-stirring & emotional YA contemporary that takes place in the charming locale of a summer camp. Seeing Abby make new friends while getting into hijinx, form a strong bond with her seemingly total opposite sister, figure out what’s going on with Leo, & take charge of her photographer dreams is really sweet. It just is. My only real quibble with this one is that the situation with the parents after they find out what their kids know feels so big & I wasn’t entirely satisfied by how it plays out on the page. Not that it wasn’t well done; I just wanted something more—especially with Savvy—because there’s so much emotion there. Lord has a deft way of writing stories that pull me in & make me invested, & while Tweet Cute is still my number 1, You Have a Match cements Lord as one of my fave YA contemporary authors. 4.5 ⭐️. YHAM is out now.Q: have you ever gone to a different country? Which one(s)? Today I’m coming to you with the most special treat of a book: Laura Taylor Namey’s YA contemporary A Cuban Girl’s Guide to Tea & Tomorrow. Told in writing that’s often lyrical, ACGGtTaT is both a story of grief & celebration as Lila Reyes copes with suffering three recent big losses & being sent away from the loving arms of her family to live in Hampshire, England for a summer. After her beloved Abuelita dies—the woman who taught Lila how to bake—& her long-time boyfriend breaks up with her, & her best friend changes their graduation plans & moves to Africa for work instead, Lila is unmoored. Her protective, loving family decides that the best thing for her is a temporary new environment. Lila leaves Miami, her family bakery, & her family (internally) screaming. But spending time with some of her other family in England, running the kitchen in their inn, & becoming friends with the local tea shop owner’s son, Orion Maxwell, make her see that her life & heart can follow a new map . This beautiful book gives such love to place whether it’s Miami or England. Vivid descriptions; characters who delight in the world around them & the things they create; & food-rich scenes—mostly of Lila baking Cuban and/or English recipes—make for a sensory feast. Lila’s confidence is inspiring & her relationship with Orion, their friendship that doesn’t stay just a friendship, is so sweet & banter-filled. While I did have a slight problem with the romantic timing of it all—esp given that Lila had just gotten out of a 3 yr relationship—her relationship with Orion moves so slowly, so gradually, that I was okay with it. And honestly, they’re so great together. So. This lovely contemporary gave my heart the boost it needed last week. I highly recommend it & I’ll be singing its praises for a while into the future. 5⭐️. Thanks to Simon & Schuster and Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own.I don’t even quite know what to make of Samantha Cohoe’s A Golden Fury. I think I started with certain plot & character expectations & the book kept blowing them up. This made for a reading experience that was both captivating & somewhat disorienting & I didn’t feel like I had quite found my footing until the end. Beginning in Normandy in 1792, A Golden Fury tells a story centered around alchemy. Thea has long worked for & with her famous alchemist-mother Marguerite. They’re very close to creating the White Elixir & then hopefully the Philosopher’s Stone when her mother cuts her out of the process & kicks her out of their lab. Thea has never looked to her mom for kindness but this last betrayal is huge. On the same night that Thea discovers that her mother has figured out how to create the Elixir & the Stone, her mother seems to have gone mad & tries to murder her. Out of other options Thea travels to meet the father she’s never met before but not before grabbing some of the White Elixir. She will make the Stone on her & cement her reputation as the foremost alchemist. But things never go as one hopes... Inventively plotted & featuring complex characters, A Golden Fury is intriguing. I love the focus on female alchemists, how Thea constantly rises above the narrow expectations men have for her & forges her own way again & again. This critique likely reveals my own biases, but while I loved that Thea is often unlikeable, there are times that I find her unadmirable & hard to connect to as well. Ditto for most of the other characters, who rarely do “good” things & who live in a world that mostly feels dark & unsettling until the end--which feels a little too hopeful to be entirely believable to me. (Just to be clear: I don’t have to like and/or admire characters to love a book but in this one the individual characters seem portrayed unevenly & I had a difficult time emotionally connecting to them & to the book itself.) On balance, I appreciated how unpredictable this book is, how it took me for a thrilling ride that wasn’t afraid to venture into dark territory, but I also didn’t feel overly invested in any of the characters or their fates, & that's a bit of a disappointment to me. 3⭐️. A Golden Fury is available on 10/13. Thanks to Wednesday Books and Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own.5⭐️. Q: what’s some of your fave YA fantasy lit.? Drop them below and help a woman out! Wow. I’m going to start with some of the typical words I see in fantasy reviews but honestly, Adrienne Young’s Fable *is immersive. I did feel transported. And a little awed, tbh. Like the other books of Young’s I’ve read, Fable features a strong young woman (major understatement) who has to fight for herself. Her food. Her shelter. Her life. Years before, after her mother died, the man that no one knows is Fable’s father dropped her off on a thieves’s island & never came back. Now she’s a dredger, someone who dives underwater & finds pyre that she can sell to traders. Every block she brings back to the surface is working toward her ticket off the island & back to her father. When things go pear-shaped Fable makes an earlier exit than she planned—on the ship of West, a helmsman who regularly purchased her pyre & the closest thing she has to someone she can trust (but that’s still a long way off). He & his crew want nothing to do with Fable. But they’re all drawn together in ways they probably don’t want to be. Some fantasy books have the worldbuilding down beautifully but they lack the emotional component that makes a book really stick for me. But Fable has both & her story grabbed at my heart. I love love love that Fable is a female character who makes her own way, even as my heartstrings were pulled at what she’s gone through & how visceral those images are. Her life’s been all about strategy & survival since her father left her but she’s still soft in some ways. Still able to be shocked. Still able to care. The only aspect of this book that feels a little thin to me is her relationship with West. I watched it develop rapaciously & gobbled up every little sign but I’d love to see more emotional intimacy between them. Hopefully that will come in the second book! Fable is far from a lighthearted read. It’s sometimes violent & sad & scary, but it also made my heart happy. Fable is out on 09/01. Thanks to St. Martin's Press and Netgalley for my complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own.5⭐️. 🥇Q: what superlative would you give your high school self? I randomly started Rachel Lynn Solomon’s Today Tonight Tomorrow one day last week when I thought I couldn’t get into any books. Then I couldn’t stop. Rowan Roth & Neil McNair have been battling over high school achievements since freshman year & now that graduation is almost here, the ultimate prize—valedictorian—will be revealed. Rowan doesn’t get it, and when she realizes that she also hasn’t met any of the goals on her Guide to High School Success, she hinges all of her hopes and dreams on winning a Senior scavenger hunt. Today Tonight Tomorrow has: ⭐️ A prickly heroine (but only with the hero. TBH, there is one occasion when I thought: ooof harsh). Rowan secretly wants to be a romance novelist & has lots of interesting—and relatable—thoughts on why women are shamed for reading and writing them. ⭐️ A highly freckled cinnamon roll hero with lots of secrets. ⭐️ Fantastic Jewish rep. Both leads are Jewish, something they discover in the book. ⭐️ A slow burn and a love letter to Seattle. Today Tonight Tomorrow is sex-positive and funny, and might have you sagely nodding your head in agreement with its lovable characters’s observations. Highly recommended for fans of Jenn Bennett & Julie Buxbaum, Solomon’s book wooed me ardently and I can’t wait to read more. CW: antiSemetism Today Tonight Tomorrow is out on 07/28. Thanks to the publisher & Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own. |
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