In The Way You Make Me Feel, Clara Shin lives for pranks and disruption. When she takes one joke too far, her dad sentences her to a summer working on his food truck, the KoBra, alongside her uptight classmate Rose Carver. Not the carefree summer Clara had imagined. But maybe Rose isn’t so bad. Maybe…
“All emotions are universal. Regardless where we come from or where we are going, we live, we dream, we strive, we die.” Lukas K. Law, Foreword of Where the Stars Rise anthology Today I’m here to talk to you about two anthologies I’ve read and adored recently – The Sum of Us and Where the Stars Rise. Both…
Today I’d like to introduce you to Regan and Evelyn, two of the characters from RoAnna Sylver’s queer, hopeful dystopia, Chameleon Moon. I have had this book on my TBR pile for months, and this has moved it up even farther. ~*~ Hello, Regan and Evelyn! It’s a pleasure to talk with you both today! What do…
Zack Ramos is training for two things: being a parent to his twelve-year-old sister once his mother’s early-onset Alzheimer’s (the same kind he and his sister each have a 50% chance of developing–but let’s not think about that) progresses too far, and running a one hundred mile race through the mountains of Tennessee. His support…
It’s the start of Jordan Sun’s junior year at the Kensington-Blaine Boarding School for the Performing Arts in Noteworthy. Unfortunately, she’s an Alto 2, which—in the musical theatre world—is sort of like being a vulture in the wild: She has a spot in the ecosystem, but nobody’s falling over themselves to express their appreciation. So…
Gone is the spellbinding memoir of a violin virtuoso who loses the instrument that had defined her both on stage and off — and who discovers, beyond the violin, the music of her own voice. Her first violin was tiny, harsh, factory-made; her first piece was -Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star.- But from the very beginning,…
Sierra Santiago was looking forward to a fun summer of making art, hanging out with her friends, and skating around Brooklyn. But then a weird zombie guy crashes the first party of the season. Sierra’s near-comatose abuelo begins to say “No importa” over and over. And when the graffiti murals in Bed-Stuy start to weep….…
When Tea accidentally resurrects her brother from the dead, she learns she is different from the other witches in her family. Her gift for necromancy means that she’s a bone witch, a title that makes her feared and ostracized by her community. But Tea finds solace and guidance with an older, wiser bone witch, who takes Tea…
I had a rough start to my reading month. I just couldn’t focus on anything in print until midway through the month. It was incredibly frustrating, and damaging to my review schedule… I’ll be reading up a storm to catch up! A couple of books came off of my review schedule because I hated them, and…
In Everything Belongs to Us, two young women of vastly different means each struggle to find her own way during the darkest hours of South Korea’s “economic miracle” in a striking debut novel for readers of Anthony Marra and Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie. Seoul, 1978. At South Korea’s top university, the nation’s best and brightest compete to…
In Hope in Nautical Dusk, The Gift of Twilight flourishes within Opal Charm as winter descends on Dewdrop. Life was already rough before, but Opal’s got new obstacles to face – getting into high school, bringing her brother back home, and training to protect Athre and Earth from Samael, the mysterious overlord who seeks to…
In Binti: Home, it’s been a year since Binti and Okwu enrolled at Oomza University. A year since Binti was declared a hero for uniting two warring planets. A year since she found friendship in the unlikeliest of places. And now she must return home to her people, with her friend Okwu by her side,…
Pretty in Pink comes to the South Bronx in The Education of Margot Sanchez, a bold and romantic coming-of-age novel about dysfunctional families, good and bad choices, and finding the courage to question everything you ever thought you wanted—from debut author Lilliam Rivera. THINGS/PEOPLE MARGOT HATES: Mami, for destroying my social life Papi, for allowing…
Piecing Me Together is a timely and powerful story about a teen girl striving for success in a world that too often seems like it’s trying to break her. Jade believes she must get out of her poor neighborhood if she’s ever going to succeed. Her mother tells her to take advantage of every opportunity…
A newly out-of-the-closet band mom falls for an orchestra teacher while snowed in at All-State in Fearless. Lana Novak hasn’t played violin in over twenty years, her musical life these days confined to being a devoted band mom to her clarinet whiz daughter Robin. She didn’t think she could get back into it after this…