Back in February, I highlighted eight books I’d raved about on Book Riot’s “All The Books” podcast.  Now that a few more months have gone by and I’ve now had the chance to highlight even more amazing new books, here’s a roundup of the titles I selected for March, April, May, and June.

Pooling these books into reviews like this is especially helpful now, as so many books released in these four months have fallen under the weight of the many things going on in the world around us. Here’s a reminder of what’s out there and why you should want to get reading. As always, I try to pick books that aren’t necessarily ones that get talked about a lot, though some of the below definitely have seen some talk (which is great!). There’s a mix of adult fiction and nonfiction, YA fiction and nonfiction, and maybe even a middle grade book or two. I like to think of these book picks to be a real glimpse into the ways my reading life moves.

 

March

The Story of More: How We Got To Climate Change and Where To Go From Here by Hope Jahren

One-sixth of the global population uses ⅓ of the world’s energy and half the world’s electricity. They’re responsible for ⅓ of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, ⅓ of the world’s meat consumption, and ⅓ of the world’s sugar consumption. It’s statistics and data like this that Jahren breaks down for readers in a book that’s meant not to terrify readers about the overwhelming scope of global warming and climate change but instead, to instill hope that indeed, small changes add up over time. 

“Having hope requires courage” is her big message throughout the book, which was inspired by the classes she’s taught at universities. The book breaks down big topics, such as meat consumption, carbon dioxide emissions, energy creation and consumption, the growth in the use of plastics, and more, and looks at how just over the course of her own life the richest countries in the world have consumed more than their fair share and how that’s impacted less-wealthy countries, as well as the world as a whole. 

Unlike a number of climate change books, this one is data-driven and extremely accessible for the average reader. It doesn’t feel overwhelming — in fact, Jahren is reassuring that doing even the tiniest things adds up over the long haul. Can you go one night without eating meat? That can make a difference. Can you swap a flight for a trip on a train? What about purchasing lower-energy appliances, washing clothes with cold water, purchasing less stuff including food that you ultimately end up throwing away? 

By using less, we allow more resources to be better distributed among those on Earth. That, in turn, reduces creation of more, which can and does impact the overall vitality of the globe. 

Encouraging, accessible, and written conversationally, Jahren’s book should be a first stop for anyone interested in reducing their own footprint. It’s short, too, making it feel completely doable, as opposed to overwhelming and complicated. Start small, as she does with her students: dump open your briefcase or purse and count up how many of those items are made from plastic. What can you swap out for something not plastic when it runs the course of its life? 

And more, change in your own life doesn’t need to be global in scope, either. Choosing one area in your life to target for change is good work. If you change your consumption habits and swap soda for water at more meals, buy fewer processed goods, consume less meat (and she never says you need to go vegetarian or vegan, like other books preach), that does make an impact. 

The book doesn’t overlook the realities of living in a capitalist society and that it’s big corporations that have done this to us. That’s the binding thread throughout. But, by choosing to battle back with changes in our lifestyle as dictated by capitalism, we can better help our fellow inhabitants on Earth by sharing resources. 

 

Be Not Far From Me by Mindy McGinnis

The title of this book is inspired by Psalm 22, which is the verse prior to the one everyone seems to know. And that’s the most apt metaphor for what this book is, as well as who Ashley, our main character, is too.

Ashley is the main character in this story, and she’s got a hard and sharp edge to her. She’s a little rough, a little tumble, and she grew up with her father after her mom abandoned the family. They make do in a trailer, with very little money. It’s a small town in Tennessee and everyone knows everyone else. Tonight, Ashley is joined by her friends Meredith and Kavita for a party deep in the Smokies, where everyone will get drunk and do stupid things. That’s what you do when you’re a small towner on the edge of the wild. 

Except, as the party progresses and Ashley awakes needing to pee….she finds her boyfriend Duke having sex with someone who isn’t her. Drunk brain tells her the best course of action here is to run, so run she does. And that’s when things turn from bad to worse. 

She awakes deeply lost, with a mangled foot, and no idea where she ended up. She’s now on her own to find her way out of the woods and make her way back home.

Told over the course of roughly two weeks, we get to know not only Ashley’s current circumstances, we get to know her grit and determination. Turns out what can be off-putting in school can be extremely useful in the woods. She’s not afraid to make due with the things she finds, including a shelter in the form of a former meth lab, eating possum when there’s nothing else to eat, and using flint to remove parts of her own body so that infection doesn’t take over. But the longer she’s gone and further she attempts to feebly travel, she shares how and why it is she has these survival skills. 

Ashley’s experiences with religion play a fascinating role in her story, as does a relationship she fostered with a slightly older boy named Davey Beet.  He, too, was a person who liked the outdoors and respected it. Like Ashley, he found himself alone in the woods. But when he never returned, the community mourned his loss. No body was ever found, and Ashley keeps thinking about him and the lessons he taught her about survival as she herself fights for those very things. 

Perhaps Davey isn’t far away at all.

This one is pitched as Hatchet meets Wild and yes to both, except like I will forever argue, it’s a million times more compelling than Hatchet. You see the actions required to survive in such a place, but it’s not mundane or drawn out. We get to know Ashley very well, even though the story itself is pretty tight and fast paced. The tactics she takes can be pretty raw and unflinching but they’re absolutely in line not only with the realities of surviving in the wilderness alone, but also to who she is as a character. It’s a pretty insular read, insofar as we don’t get to know many other characters at all, save for Davey and Ashley’s father, both through flashbacks, but that is what makes it so compelling.

Hand to readers who like challenging protagonists, survival stories, and wilderness adventure books where things go really wrong. Then make sure you don’t go party too hard in the woods. 

 

Spirit Run: A 6000 Mile Marathon Through North America’s Stolen Land by Noé Alvarez

Noé grew up in Yakima, Washington, alongside his mother who worked in an apple-packing plant. As the son of two Mexican immigrants, he knew he was lucky to receive a scholarship to attend college, but a year into his program he is having a hard time fitting in and figuring out what it is he wants to make of himself as a first-generation Mexican American. This is a theme that will carry throughout the book, with no definitive ending, but along the way, Alvarez does a great job highlighting why this space of indecision, of opportunity, and of longing for connection and a place to fit in IS the immigrant story. 

At 19, Alvarez discovers the Peace and Dignity Journey, which is a movement by Native American and First Nations people meant to create cultural connections across the Americas through marathoning. He drops out of school as he realizes this is something he needs to do, and he begins his journey in Canada, where he runs along side individuals of a whole array of Native and Indigenous backgrounds and experiences. The journey takes him through all kinds of terrain, experiences of hunger and thirst and exhaustion, as well as land that has been stolen by colonizers and turned to profit at the loss of original culture, tradition, and pride. Throughout the marathon, he not only finds himself being pushed to his physical, mental, and emotional limits, but he faces being kicked out of the race over and over — which fuels his determination to fight harder, until the moment he knows he wants to end. 

When he finishes his race through Mexico and lands in Guatemala, Alvarez boards a plane and heads back home. He doesn’t have any answers, but he has found passion and connection with the land and the people of the land. 

What makes this book special is there’s actually very little about the race itself — something I could have read so many more pages on. Instead, woven into the runs are Alvarez’s anecdotes about his parents, about his home life, about the ways he’s lived what could be seen as a classic tale of a Mexican-American immigrant’s life. It’s a short read, but it’s packed with so much heart and soul, along with a tremendous sense of desire for finding one’s place in space and time, while understanding that being a person who isn’t white and privileged and living on stolen land in a country that isn’t his own makes finding oneself fraught and complicated. 

Readers wanting a story of an immigrant, of the child of Mexican migrants, will do well with this memoir. The ways it ties into Native American history and culture, too, adds a whole layer of complexity that’s necessary to better seeing immigration through a wide, thoughtful, and nuanced lens. Likewise, the marathon itself is a fascinating event and one I know I want to read a heck of a lot more about. 

 

Only Mostly Devastated by Sophie Gonzales

Before diving into the deeper parts of the book, I want to note this is the first YA book outside of my own where a character has polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) and talks openly about it that I’ve read. The description of it isn’t 1000% accurate, but that’s a thing only someone who has been seeing a specialist about it for a while and knows the ins and outs of the chronic and invisible illness would know — it is an incredible thing to see in a YA book, given it impacts 10% of those with internal reproductive organs. More please!

That said…

This is a queer riff on Grease. Ollie and Will had a whirlwind romance during  the summer when Ollie spent time in North Carolina with his family. He’s preparing to head back home to California for the new school year when his parents break the news they’re going  to be staying. His aunt, who has cancer, is really struggling, and being in North Carolina will be a way for them to help out with her husband and kids as she attends to appointments and caring for her own health. She will have ups and downs in the story, and it’s worth noting that she will die in the book. That’s not  really a spoiler nor something that impacts the romance here, but worth noting for anyone who might be tender about reading death. It’s handled extremely well. 

Ollie immediately finds a friendship with a group of girls at his new school — and immediately learns that, despite the fact Will doesn’t live in the same town he does, he does attend the same high school. But Will has stopped responding to texts and is cold at the sight of Ollie. What happened to their connection? Can it be kindled again?

Will isn’t out at school, among his basketball peers — many of whom are homophobic — and he worries that coming out will mean disappointment from his parents. This is why he’s keeping Ollie at arm’s distance and why, again and again, the two of them come close then once again fall apart. 

The thing is, neither Will nor Ollie can resist one another, and it’s this magnetism that keeps them working toward a goal of connecting, of finding the same romance they had  that summer. It will require Will being honest about who he is, as much as it will require Ollie to let down his preconceived notions of who he is and what it means to be a good partner in a relationship (for him, the challenge is understanding that it’s not only about his interests — he has to also participate in the interests and passions of his partner and show up for him). 

This is a capital-R romance, so Will and Ollie will have their happily ever after. It’s cute and sweet, but more than anything, this is a funny read. Ollie has a way with descriptions and words that is at times laugh-out-loud goofy, and his passion for Will is so whole-hearted. Given we see the world only through Ollie’s eyes, we don’t get the whole of who Will is or how he sees Ollie, but it is obvious Will wants to be with him, but he has to have a reckoning with himself and his world first to have that. 

Need a feel-good queer romance? This is a great pick. Even the loss is handled well and doesn’t make the book too heavy. The grief is explored thoughtfully, but not at the expense of what readers come to the book for: L-O-V-E. 

 

April

Goodbye From Nowhere by Sara Zarr

One thing that’s been consistent in Kyle Baker’s life is his family. It’s big, full of personalities, and every summer, they all gather at the Nowhere Farm to celebrate one another. This year, he’s bringing his serious girlfriend Nadia and cannot wait for her to meet them and get to know where he comes from. 

Things go well — Nadia loves his family and they seem to love her. But it’s not too long before everything Kyle thought he knew about himself and his family comes crashing down. His father breaks the news that his mother is having an affair. 

Kyle promises not to share that news with his sisters, but the silence begins to kill him. . . and it kills the relationship he has with Nadia, as he becomes distant and cold toward everyone. He’s struggling with how to process the news and it comes to a head the more he begins to think about the woman and child who are connected to the man with whom his mother is having her relationship. They don’t know, and when Kyle meets them both by chance, he’s further devastated carrying the truth around with him. 

So he does what feels right: he reaches out to his cousin, who helps him navigate the ups and downs of discovering family secrets and navigating what it means to see someone in a light different than one in which you’ve always held them. 

Sara Zarr’s latest book feels a lot like a Sarah Dessen book, and that’s a compliment. There’s tremendous real-world world building, with a complex family relationship that Kyle has to navigate. His relationship with Nadia at the beginning doesn’t last, though what we see of it is fascinating. They’re extremely mature on the outside, joking even about potentially getting married. But it becomes clear how immature Kyle is as he wrestles with the bomb his father delivered. He doesn’t seek support but distance, becoming cold and unapproachable toward someone he had such strong feelings for — as well as worries about what she might now think about the family he’d shown her to be something out of dream. 

This well-paced book is perfect for readers who love family stories, who love flawed but likable main characters — and Kyle is both of those things, even when he becomes extremely frustrating to watch — and those who want stories about what happens when the next generation of a family is poised to take over traditions that span their entire lives and the lives of their own parents. In the story, we learn that the Farm might not be around much longer, and this shift causes turmoil for Kyle and his generation who have to decide what stays, what goes, and what’s most important to hold onto when it comes to family. 

A quiet read that packs in a lot of really good stuff. I can’t recall the last time I saw a parental affair in a YA novel addressed quite like this, and I appreciate how much that will resonate with readers, both going through it or those who themselves have been through it. Kyle’s mom is certainly not given a pass here, but she is allowed to be a little more nuanced in regards to why she made the choice she did to pursue an extramarital relationship.  

 

Joy at Work: Organizing Your Professional Life by Marie Kondo and Scott Sonenshine

Even before the world descended into a pandemic, I saw little talk about Marie Kondo’s new book. I know we all read Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and without question, readers who loved that book are going to absolutely eat up her new title. But even more than that, I think this is a book that readers who are looking for a book about how to be their best at work or enjoy their job more will want to page through. It’s a shorty and reads quickly. 

The book flips between Marie Kondo sharing her insights and Scott Sonenshine, who is a business professor/researcher on organizational psychology — the study of how people operate in a workplace. 

Rather than give a blow-by-blow of this book, which is hard to do, here were some of the key takeaways for me while reading the book. I really and truly did take notes while reading and I plan on trying to implement or think about some of these things. This will likely apply more to white collar workers than those working in blue collar jobs or those in service industries, but chances are some of these principles will apply there, too. 

There are three key pieces of joy at work when it comes to what is on or in your desk: 1. It needs to spark joy personally, 2. It needs to be functional and aid in your work (these things might not spark joy), and 3. It needs to lead to future joy (things like receipts which lead to reimbursements).  When you focus on these three things, you’re better able to realize what your ideal work life looks like. 

When you sit down to clean, it’ll be through the same method as KonMari: books, papers, komono, and sentimental. 

The way that this book talks about organizing your digital work was especially helpful. Digital work includes documents, emails, and phone apps, and like with home KonMari, you’re instructed to thank everything you let go of for the service it provided. Recommendations included keeping the number of files and folders you have on your computer as low as possible. I loved a line about when it comes to social media, it pays to be choosy about who you follow, as that can help detract from overwhelm when it comes to cleaning out your profiles. 

Although this book is definitely about “stuff,” it’s much more than that, just as Tidying Up is. This is far more about the process of self-discovery than it is organizing, and it’s about the importance and power of choosing your things. That they offer how to look at what’s important in your work routines, meetings, and tasks is extremely helpful and straightforward: it’s a notecard methodology anyone can do. 

The biggest takeaway is that tidying should be part of your decision making process, and they give you the roadmap to make it so.

 

We Didn’t Ask For This by Adi Alsaid

Tonight is the night of the International School’s annual lock-in. It’s a beloved tradition and one that’s always legendary. All kinds of activities take place, from decathlons to dance parties, and  this year, Peejay is eager to be the master of ceremonies. His brother earned incredible respect when he was in charge, and Peejay is desperate to top him. 

Tonight, Amira wants to win the decathlon, keeping her passion for sports and her interest in other girls from her conservative mother. 

Omar wants to finally kiss Peejay tonight. 

Kenji wants to star in the improv show, proving acting chops are alive and well. 

And Celeste? As the new girl in the school, she’s hoping tonight she can make her first real friend since moving to another country from her Chicago suburban home. 

All of it looks like it should go on….until it doesn’t. Tonight, driven by her passion to make change in the world, Marisa Cuevas and a group of fellow environmentally-conscious students chain themselves to the doors of the school and refuse to let anyone else enter or exit the building until all of their demands are met. And those demands are many, ranging from the school banning single-use plastics to protective measures being enacted to protect a local island from destruction. 

As the night drags on, it becomes Marisa and her team won’t back down until their demands are heard — and not just heard, but met. 

One night bleeds into the next and then the next, and the protest goes on for a full week before things reach a breaking point. Students once  inconvenienced and angered by Marisa are now listening and even stepping up to help her. They know people who know people who can make change happen. So they do what they can now, hoping that meeting those demands not only gets them set free but also really does help change the world for the better.

It’s not smooth sailing, of course, as there’s a group within the school who are hoping to take down Marisa and her team, and they get closer and closer through the story.

Will all of her demands be met? How? And will everyone else be able to achieve the things they desperately hoped for when the lockin began?

Alsaid’s book is a smart look at standing up for what you believe in, and it’s really creative in execution. Marisa isn’t seen as a hero for championing these causes for a long time. She’s rather seen as the enemy until something drastic happens to her, and her peers not only begin to listen to her, but they begin to understand why it is she chose this as her hill to die on and why it is she chose to execute her protest during the lockin. 

I’ve read a ton of books this year on student activism and student activists, and this is a worthy addition to that collection. It’s especially noteworthy for the lack of immediate agreement seen among students, though — and this is an extremely diverse student body, as well as a student body with the means to make change happen, as they come from wealthier families. It’s a reminder that even though this generation of teenagers is vocal and stands up for their beliefs, it’s not universally agreed-upon or followed. It’s easy to forget that sometimes kids want to be kids and that in and of itself can be the challenge with making change. Are they supposed to be anything more? And why do we expect that? 

Creative, thought-provoking, and timely. 

 

Hidden Valley Road: Inside The Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker

Trigger warnings on this one for mental health depictions that may be unsettling, for suicide, and for sexual assault and rape. 

Don and Mimi Galvin had 10 kids between the years 1945 and 1965, eight boys and two girls, who were the youngest of the family. Of the siblings, six of the boys were diagnosed as schizophrenic over the course of their lives, and this book explores how this family at this time and place highlight how far our understanding of schizophrenia has come, as well as how much is still largely unknown about it. 

The book alternates between telling the siblings’ and parents’ stories — how they came to have so many kids, the sorts of challenges they experienced with living with schizophrenia or being witness to it — with what science was doing in terms of researching schizophrenia through the generations. There’s a lot of argument about nature vs. nurture, and the Galvins became the first family ever studied by National Institute of Mental Health. They also became a way of understanding where and how schizophrenia may be genetic and along which bloodlines. Why was it none of the girls in the family experienced this illness but just the boys? 

Through the Galvin family, schizophrenia’s history and the treatment of those experiencing it are explored, from lobotomy to institutionalization to medication, and the fallouts of each of those treatments. Still to this day, the Galvin family DNA is being used in research to better understand the disease, and at the end of the day, even decades later, there’s still so little understanding. 

This book is extremely compassionate and empathetic, even as it delves into how troubled the Galvin family was outside of their mental health crisis. Don, the patriarch, turned out to be someone wholly different than anyone thought, while both of the sisters in the family and potentially a brother experienced sexual assault or rape from another brother. There’s the possibility some of the boys were victims of sesual abuse from a beloved church leader, as well. All of these things, combined with tremendous secrets Mimi kept from her kids about her own trauma growing up, only further make their story more fascinating, heartbreaking, and powerful. 

A slower read, but wholly immersive, this is an incredible well-done, balanced, and moving look at mental illness, schizophrenia, and a family that experienced the illness in many manifestations, ultimately highlighting the complexity, severity, and the need to continue researching what it is and how it works. 

 

May

 

Goldilocks by Laura Lam

The comps for this book are The Martian meets The Handmaid’s Tale and I don’t especially like either of those for comparison. This book is something different and, I suspect, given how eerily relevant and realistic it feels right now, maybe the marketing will be shifting, too.

Thirty years after the Atalanta took five pioneering women to space in hopes to settling a far-away planet named Cavandish, Naomi, one of  the Atalanta 5, is finally telling her story. It begins with grand theft spaceship — yes, the spaceship was stolen — and ends with Earth’s humans falling victim to a pandemic that may have been started purposefully. 

Naomi, who’d been raised by Valerie Black after the deaths of her mother and father, is deeply in love with the smart woman who invites her to be among the five women who will travel to the new planet in order to set up a new world, free of the flaws plaguing Earth. Right now, women’s rights have been decimated, the environment is collapsing, and the reality is there aren’t more than a few dozen “good” years left for it. Naomi, along with three other women, embark on the journey without permission from the government, but they believe in their heart of hearts they’re doing the right thing. 

Then Naomi finds out she’s pregnant, and the father is one of the people who might be able to help change the course of the future of planet Earth. But it won’t come easy and it won’t come without the power of these women to steer the ship right.

Wholly immersive and dark, this book is about what leadership is — and what it is not. Lam’s writing is captivating and engrossing, evoking a scarily close-to-home scenario of a global pandemic destroying the planet in conjunction with human consumption, climate change, and the revoking of liberties for women across the globe. What sounds like will ultimately be a utopian setting at Cavendish, though, isn’t: instead, the story takes a ton of twists and turns that are surprising and ultimately change what it is these women perceive to be good and flawed about human nature. 

When you’re destined to start something new, do you go for it? Burn down the past and try to forget it? Or do you learn from that past and build with the materials you have at hand to do better? 

Lam’s stand alone science fiction space novel grapples with a lot of big questions but does so in a compelling and interesting way. Naomi is a great character, and all of the motives of the women on board are parsed out just well enough to keep it clear that not everyone aboard has everyone’s best interests in mind. Will they make it to Cavendish and create the world they envision? 

I did a little poking around and this book was inspired by the Mercury 13, where a group of women went through the same battery of tests the men who want to join NASA did, and while the privately funded group who ran these tests found them successful, this was never actually a NASA program, no mission was taken, and the women never actually went to space. I don’t know much about it beyond that, but definitely plan to learn more and see the parallels with the book. 

We Dream of Space by Erin Entrada Kelly

I don’t read a lot of middle grade, but I do know EEK’s books always hit the spot when I do. Her latest is no different, as it follows a family in January 1986 experiencing a whole host of discontent and challenge amid the Challenger launch. 

Bird and Fitch — short for Bernadette and “Pitch a Fit” — are twins. Their older brother Cash has been having a hard time in school, and despite being older than them, he’s in the same grade, 7th, they are. Early in the story, things begin to spiral when Cash breaks his wrist and loses any and all interest in school again, threatening the chance he might have to move on to the next grade. Fitch spends his free time at the local arcade, winning at a game that’s been unpopular with his peers but which he defends to the death as a great game. He’s got a temper he can’t control or understand and it comes out at really inopportune times. Bird dreams of being the first female space commander, and she’s absolutely fascinated with machinery, which is something we get to see via her art in the book — but Bird worries she’s being overlooked again and again, disappearing behind her two brothers. 

Home life isn’t especially great. Mom and dad have a rocky relationship, which comes out again and again in unsettling ways. It impacts each of the kids, and the only way that the siblings are hanging on is through their shared science teacher who applied for the Teacher in Space program but didn’t get accepted. Fitch and Cash aren’t as invested in it as Bird, but it’s this teacher and space which keep all of the threads of this story together.

This slice-of-life book is aching and hard, and when the Challenger launches, all of the pain built up in each of the siblings explodes. Bird, feeling her dreams fall apart and feeling the immense weight of loneliness. Fitch has an extremely violent outburst in class because of how he’s been a bit bullied but also because of how much he’s packed in from home. Cash continues to withdraw, knowing that he can’t play basketball because of his grades and now the broken bone. 

The Challenger Explosion happened when I was 2, so I don’t remember it, but I do remember my mom talking about it when it happened. This book really captures that era, without being nostalgic for the 80s. Rather, it’s extremely contemporary in terms of how it approaches family challenges, without attempting to make it sound as if family problems weren’t common then — they were. The book reminded me a lot of a younger YA title from many years back that really captured some similar feelings and experiences when it comes to space and the possibility of what exists beyond this planet and how young people were impacted by the Challenger tragedy — Jenny Moss’s Taking Off. 

Readers who want feelings-heavy books will be enraptured with this one. All of the characters are compelling, complex, and sympathetic, and they all experience those really painful moments of what it is to be in 7th grade: first crushes, not being seen as whole but rather parts of a whole (there’s a moment when Bird is told she can’t be pretty and smart but she’s rather smart and not pretty — to which she responds by turning to an imaginary conversation with one of the Challenger crew women and is comforted with the idea that there’s no singular thing defining what “pretty” is, anyway), a family that’s shifting and fracturing and changing, the desire to be anyone and anywhere else, and so much more. There’s a great thread in the story about interracial dating that, while small, is a powerful reminder of the role parents can play in a young person’s perception of themselves and others, as well as a reminder that even in the mid-80s, interracial relationships were even more fraught than they can be now. 

Grab some tissues, but also know you’ll be loving these characters deeply, too. This is a literary middle grade title that I suspect will get some award buzz when that time comes around. 

War and Speech by Don Zolidis

One of my favorite YAs in recent years is the wildly underrated The Seven Torments of Amy and Craig. It’s funny, with spot-on teen dialog. This is Zolidis’s follow up to that book and I’m thrilled it has equally enjoyable dialog and wit to it, while also offering some real depth. Zolidis is a playwright and that is especially evident in the dialog he writes. 

Sydney’s father is in jail for a white collar crime, and she flunked out of her last high school. She’s starting fresh at a performing arts school not because she’s got the talent in her but because she resides within the school’s residential boundaries and can. She and her mom are living together in a tiny apartment and money is supremely tight. The girl’s got a mega chip on her shoulder going into school but it only grows bigger when she learns that her school is famous for its speech and debate team. The kids on the team are, in her perception, utter jerks and with her new-found friends, Syd devises a plan to take down the speech team and in particular, ensure the top stars of the team have their lights dimmed. Why do they get to be special? Reign supreme in school?

And when she shows up for her first practice, imagine her surprise when the teacher happens to be the man who ran informational programs about how to make money and scam people that got her father wrapped up in tax issues in the first place.

Sydney begins by doing a speech she finds online about becoming a heroin addict. She does really well, too — winning her first competition and finding herself earning a surprise elite status in the eyes of her coach. She begins to better understand the team and the stars of it, almost seeing them as humans who don’t deserve to be taken down…

Until she changes her speech, getting raw and honest about her father being incarcerated and how much that’s impacted her. Her mom has a new boyfriend and doesn’t want to visit her father on Saturdays like she does, and she’s alone to see her dad’s humanity and the way the system convinced him that having all the best in life was the purpose of life all together. He broke the law and is serving time for it, but he was caught up in a system that rewards others for the very same thing. Like her speech coach, who believes her speech about her dad needs more depth, despite it being popular with audiences. “Just make up stuff,” he encourages her. And it’s here — this moment of realizing he, along with his elite speech team members, Sydney discovers what it is she’s truly passionate about: speaking her truth and living fully into it, rather than believing she needs to be rich, polished, and a liar to get ahead. 

This book is very funny, while also being a smart look at social class. Syd and her family experienced wealth for a while during the time her father was evading tax laws, but then she and her mother became very poor, very quickly. Her mom works at the Mall of America, and Sydney, who hates the new man in her mom’s life, decides to get a part time job at the American Cookie shop at the mall too, thinking it might help them afford their apartment (spoiler — it won’t and doesn’t, but some of the cookie store moments are among the best in the book, as she chooses to write super snarky messages on the cookies and they sell like mad). 

At times, Sydney is downright mean, and some of the choices she makes to take down the fellow speech team members aren’t especially kind or justified. BUT she recognizes that along the way, and she realizes who the real enemy is — they’re collateral damage along the way to making her point about inequality and unfair preferential treatment. 

Smart dialog, which feels really teen and not adult-sounding-teen, with a teen who is sarcastic and snarky and also deeply hurting. She’s not especially likeable but that’s what makes her compelling: her rough edges don’t get softened, but rather, readers better see why she’s got those sharp parts. 

The speech and debate team and competitions being huge parts of the book were fun, even for someone who was never involved in either. Are they accurate? Who knows. What’s refreshing is it’s not a sports team being singled out for being treated as special at school but instead, a group that often doesn’t get that kind of golden treatment.

For readers who want humor, as well as a challenging main character. I especially found how she talked about Luke, her mom’s boyfriend, funny — and even though he’s pitted as an enemy in her mind, we discover he’s much deeper than she gives him credit for, and it explains why he  behaves the way he does. 

 

Almond by Won-Pyung Sohn, translated by Joosun Lee

This book is different, and it’s different in a way that’s purposeful as to leave readers wondering whether this was a love story or a complete tragedy. Maybe both? 

Yunjae was born with Alexithymia, which means his brain is wired so that he doesn’t know how to feel or respond to emotions. His mother and his grandmother love him despite his challenges, though he’s never been able to make friends. He’s an outsider, as others cannot relate with him and he, with others. He lives with his mother above the bookstore she owns, and she works to help him navigate responding to emotions with helpful sticky notes around their apartment. Yunjae isn’t especially bothered with his lot, but everything changes in one instant on Christmas Eve, when his grandmother and mother are victims of a random act of violence. His grandmother passes and his mother is comatose. Not knowing or understanding how to process emotions that are small, this big series of emotions lead Yungjae to withdraw.

That is, until he meets Gon. Gon isn’t nice to Yungjae, and in fact, he’s quite a bully. But Gon’s story is tragic as well, and it’s wrapped up in a favor that Yungjae agrees to with a man whose wife is on her deathbed. Yungjae may be a victim of bullying here, but he’s unable to stop wondering about — and being desperate to know — Gon and his story. He’s hot and angry, and by getting close to him, Yungjae hopes that he might be able to work through this emotions himself. Though we don’t get to know Gon through his own voice, we’re led to believe he’s bullying on Yungjae not because he’s nasty but instead because he’s impressed with how much he’s been through and never loses his cool. It becomes quite clear that Gon desires a friendship here, even if he doesn’t know how to approach making friends. Interestingly, the translator of the book put in the notes in the back of the book that she believes there might have been romantic feelings here, too, though in her translation she held back on pushing that narrative forward. It wasn’t until I read that where I could see it, but indeed, I could see it.

It’s through this friendship between two “monsters” that both Gon and Yungjae begin to really become themselves. Yungjae in particular begins to find he wants to spend time with a bookish girl named Dori who wanders into his life — something he never dreamed possible. Of course, pursuing that means his friendship with Gon takes a backseat. But when Gon’s life is in danger, Yungjae really pushes through all of his fears, all of the things he’s believed about himself, to step in and potentially become a hero in Gon’s story . . . as well as his own.

Don’t go into this one for plot. Go into it for fascinating character studies. It’s a short book, with small chapters, but each word and description is exacting and offers so much depth to Yungjae and his experience living with a disorder that doesn’t allow him to fully feel or express empathy, even though consciously he understands what it is. I wanted to blow through this one quickly because it reads quickly, but I found myself pausing a lot and setting it down frequently so I could think about it and think specifically about what it must be like to live like Yungjae. He’s far more than his traumas and he’s also not here to be a feel-good story of a character overcoming a challenging brain condition. That’s where, I think, this book is really smart. It’s complex, and the metaphor of the almond — referring to the shape of the amygdala — is apt. 

Almond is Sohn’s debut novel and an award-winner in Korea, and as the translator notes in the book (note: read the translator’s note!), this book being brought to the US market is a pretty incredible thing. It’s marketed as YA in Korea, and while it’s being marketed as adult in the US, it’s perfect for YA readers who want something literary and challenging. Readers who are familiar with the book Nothing by Janne Teller will for sure want to pick this up, but anyone who wants to read more broadly global literature, stories of adolescents that don’t often see the light, and stories of neuro atypical characters will find so much to enjoy here.

 

June

You Should See Me In A Crown by Leah Johnson

I LOVED this book. Loved it to bits and pieces. Loved reading it when I did, as it was the kind of hug in the shape of a book I needed. 

Liz Lighty cannot wait to leave her small Indiana town. She’s a poor Black girl, living with her grandparents after her mom has died and her dad disappeared. She also happens to be queer, but because of her situation, she’s not openly out. Liz cannot wait to get to Pennington College, three(ish) hours away from home, and she’s anticipating a nice scholarship to help her do it on her own, without the help of her grandparents. She’s got the grades and the extra curriculars to make it happen.

But when she discovers she didn’t get the scholarship, she doesn’t tell her grandparents. She will have to come up with another plan if she wants out of town and into a new life for herself.

Enter: prom.

The thing about where Liz lives is that Prom is a big deal. Think: big deal like football in small town Texas. There is a weeks-long competition for becoming part of the Prom court, and the king and queen of Prom earn a nice chunk of money for their future education. Getting on the court involves community service, grades, and being an upstanding citizen of the school community. 

It also means not being openly out and not attending the event with a same-sex partner.

Liz doesn’t want to do it, but because she so desperately wants to go to Pennington, she decides to run for Prom queen. It’d be good money, even if it means she has to hide who she is.

But things get even weirder when a new girl named Mack — Amanda, as we’ll learn Liz gets to call her — begins school mid-year and decides she, too, is going to run for Prom. She is part of a family legacy in town, so likely has good chances to get in. 

Instead of getting mad, though….Liz finds herself falling for Mack. And now, she’s crushing on her competition.

This is a sweet, fun, humorous story of a girl who wants to be so many things to so many people. She lost her mother to sickle cell, and her brother, who is only a year younger than her, struggles with it, too. She wants to protect him fiercely, while also being conscious of how little her grandparents have financially to help her go to school or to cover hospital bills or even the home they live in. She’s aware she’s among the less fortunate at school and even more painfully aware that she’s Black in a small town. So keeping her identity secret is important not just because of the rules for Prom, but also because she doesn’t want to stand out anymore than she does. 

Many readers will want to know there’s an outing in this book, but it’s not cruel. It doesn’t break Liz, though she certainly has to deal with the ramifications of being outed. Will she lose her chance at Prom queen and, ultimately, money to go to college over it? Or will she be further marginalized? 

This book has so much heart and it is swoony. Liz and Mack have a great relationship, as does Liz with her family. Her relationship with her brother is especially great, and the fact that Liz doesn’t know how much people rally behind her and want her to succeed feels authentic to someone in her shoes and, I think, more broadly to so many teens. 

I never went to prom and had no interest. But this book about prom, outlandish promposals (oh, the promposals are a hoot here), and a girl who just wants to go somewhere bigger where she can be her whole self is one I ate up. Leah Johnson’s writing is fun and easy, with plenty of references to today’s pop culture — including the title — that will be especially appealing. 

 

Again Again by E Lockhart

What if you made other choices? What if your life was playing out in a different way in another reality? I cannot believe how wildly close to today’s reality Lockhart’s new book was and it was such a refreshing return to her writing that I loved. I wasn’t a fan of her thrillers, but this….felt very much like the E Lockhart I found so compelling before.

Adelaide is at a boarding school, Alabaster Prep Academy, where her father is a teacher. Her mother and younger brother Toby are living still in Baltimore, hours away from her father. The why of this remains quiet for a while in a book, but it is revealed that Toby has a drug addiction and their mother is staying there to help ensure he finds a way to recover. Adelaide and her father move so he can continue to make an income for the family and so she can get a good education.

Except it won’t be that way. Or at least not in this reality. 

Adelaide and her boyfriend broke up, and she’s feeling lonely and sad while walking the dogs she’s watching this summer. She meets Jack at the dog park and he looks familiar to her, but she can’t really place it. But she knows immediately she likes him and begins to pursue him hard. 

In the mean time, she’s failed to turn in a major project to her set design class and her teacher isn’t thrilled. Yes, it’s summer. Yes, it’s break. But she’s been given more time to complete it anyway, since her teacher believes she has talent. Set building is, you see, about executing an idea in a way that isn’t necessarily the real image of the thing, but as true a rendition as possible so the audience understands what it is. 

In Adelaide’s experience, the people in her life are the set, but none of it is real to her. She’s walking through it, but none of it is real, alive. 

Mired in grief and sadness, worry and fear, Adelaide begins to attach herself to Jack who isn’t interested in her in that way. When her ex reaches back out, in desperation, Adelaide feels compelled to forgive him. 

That’s the story in one reality. 

But this book is about the multiverse, or the idea of multiple realities. So the story plays out in a number of different ways throughout the book. Sometimes Adelaide and Jack are together. Sometimes Adelaide is a good sister to her sick brother. Sometimes, she’s a nasty human being — and in each of these realities, we see a complex picture of who she is.

This is a love story but the romance is no where near central. It’s purposefully peripheral, as it’s there as a means of Adelaide waking up to how she behaves towards others in her life and specifically, those people who are closest to her. She’s privileged and healthy, but she can’t take those blinders off to see the bigger picture and to see where she herself is falling apart or too dependent upon others to give her reason and purpose. 

Clever, unique, and packed with emotional moments, depth, and philosophical fun, Lockhart’s book is one that will delight many readers. It packs in a lot without saying too much — this is a slight book, with chapters written in broken-apart dialog and texts — and doesn’t rely on anything cheap to pack a punch. 

Fun fact: Alabaster Prep is where The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks was set as well, and Jack from this story was inspired by Jack in Lockhart’s short story in the “21 Proms” anthology. I love those little Easter eggs and more, love this book had signature Lockhart writing and smoothly-executed wit. 

Some of the marketing suggests this is funny, and it’s not really. It’s clever, but not necessarily funny. And important to note: none of the dogs die or get hurt. 

 

The Language of Butterflies: How Thieves, Hoarders, Scientists, and Other Obsessives Unlocked the Secrets of the World’s Favorite Insect  by Wendy Williams

It’s almost universal that people love butterflies. It’s almost equally universal people don’t like moths. But the difference between a butterfly and a moth isn’t what you might think it is. Instead, it’s a small body part that controls how the wings move and that’s about it.

If that has you intrigued, this book will be your jam like it was mine.

Set up in three parts: past, present, and future, Williams — who writes in a super approachable, delighted manner, but with great research to buoy the book — takes a deep dive into the butterfly and her allure. We go back deep into history with how Victorians became obsessed with collecting these creatures and highlight a few women who were leaders in butterfly research and discovery and yet never had their stories shared because sexism. The book highlights parts of the US where butterfly studies became hot beds and what made the ecosystem in those places so supportive of a vast array of butterfly species.

In the present section, Williams goes deep into the monarch. I loved this section in particular as someone who has a native garden meant to attract pollinators, and who, last year, watched a handful of monarchs reach maturity and make their lengthy trip down to Mexico. It digs into the reason why butterflies and other insects choose to eat milkweed, which is exceptionally toxic. If you have milkweed in your yard like I do, you know it’s not just the monarchs but a few other insects and they all share something similar: a bright orange coloring. It’s a warning of the insect’s toxicity to other creatures. 

The final section about the future traces the flight path of the monarch from the north to the south — at least in the central US. Not all monarchs make that journey, as those on the west coast take a different one, while even those in warmer climates like Florida may migrate while others may stay. And it’s this wide range of migratory habits that are fascinating to researchers and citizen scientists, and Williams digs into how wild these creatures truly are in terms of the incredible lives they live. They go from places they know they can find food to traveling thousands of miles, stopping along the way in unfamiliar places and still finding things they enjoy eating and that will fuel their travels. 

A wholly fascinating book, I learned so much about butterflies. Their wings are actually made of scales, which I didn’t know, and more, the blue butterflies that are so highly prized are such because they are among the few things in nature where blue is an actual hue, as opposed to a reflection of light upon their wings. Williams doesn’t go into the thievery of butterflies as much as I’d hoped, but with name drops, I know there are a ton of people whose stories and crimes I’ll be Googling later. I also had no idea the black on the wings of the monarch are actually veins. Oh, and the book digs into how horrible the male monarchs are toward the females when they want to mate . . . at least in the early generations. Once they’re onto the fourth generation, or the ones that will migrate, the females are much more safe, as the males have lost a lot of their machismo. If you’re unfamiliar with the ideas of monarch generations, you’ll get up to speed here, too.

Williams is delighted by everything she learns, and by turns, it makes the reader delighted, too. This isn’t an especially long book, and while it’s well-researched, it’s a breezy read. In the author’s note, Williams mentions being almost 70 (or in her 70s, I can’t entirely remember). I don’t remember the last time I read a book by an author who was older, so bonus points for that. It was neat to experience the world of butterflies through her eyes, and frankly, I’ll never look at them the same way through my own. 

I’ve always loved these little creatures, but for sure, now I might become even more in love with them. 

 

The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta

Michael is half Greek-Cypriot, half-Jamaican, and he lives in London with his mother. Dad isn’t in the picture, but early on in his life, a stepfather comes around for a bit, which brings to his life a half-sister named Anna. This book in verse begins from Michael’s young age — he’s six in the first section, coming to understand his mixed race heritage, as well as his family’s unique structure. 

As the book progresses into Michael’s teen years in high school, it becomes clearer and clearer that Michael is queer. He’s super lucky in that his family is mostly supportive, particularly his mother, who at times oversteps in trying to provide Michael a safe place to explore and express his identity while he’s not quite ready to step into it entirely himself. 

The book progresses then to Michael’s first year in college when everything changes — he’s eager to try on a new identity, eager to find people like him at school in a very queer-friendly college and community. And while he sidesteps the opportunity to take part in the Greek club and the LGBTQ+ club….he signs himself up for Drag Society, which plays deeply into his interests in acting and performance. He’s immediately overwhelmed by the idea of performing drag, but, as he begins to come into his drag identity as The Black Flamingo, Michael also begins to come to understand his identity can shift, can sway, and it can be whatever it is he desires it to be. And it’s the first Drag Society performance — one he almost misses — which helps him to this realization and allows him to become deeply, fully himself.

The Black Flamingo won a Stonewall Book Award last year, which I thought was interesting, given that this book wasn’t even available in the US. It was out in the UK first, and it hit shelves here last week. But I see why and how it was seen as such a vital addition to queer literature for young readers: Michael is a compelling character grappling with the intersections of his mixed race identity with that of his queerness. Although he doesn’t use the language in the book, it’s clear he’s not entirely sure he leans into being a cis man, and he’s pretty sure he’s not trans, either — instead, he starts to see all of the shades of identity between them and allows himself to be a flamingo in them.

This is a slice of life story, and it was great watching Michael from his young age to his coming-of-age. The poetry is fantastic, both that of which tells his story and that which he writes himself. The author, Dean Atta, is himself a performer and a poet, and those pieces of his own lived experience come alive in Michael. 

Though Michael’s mother and sister are supportive of him, as is the majority of his family, not everyone is, including some of the people Michael considers his closest friends. This isn’t one of those everything-is-rosy stories. It feels real and raw, and while Michael himself doesn’t make a lot of poor choices, his story is about not making many choices at all until forced to do so. So his coming into himself on stage is a huge moment for him, as well as readers, who understand how challenging — and how liberating — doing that is.

A great addition to the queer YA canon, as well as a great read for fans of Jason Reynolds and Elizabeth Acevedo. I’m super eager to see what Atta writes next, and I loved the setting outside of the US. We don’t get many UK imports to the YA market, and this one is a gem — a Black Flamingo, even.