Fresh off the heels of a messy breakup (and even messier unemployment), Avery Keller arrives in small-town Note: an ARC was provided by the publisher.
Fresh off the heels of a messy breakup (and even messier unemployment), Avery Keller arrives in small-town Magnolia intending to collect her inheritance and then run—but her late father’s will includes massive debt and two half-sisters Avery didn’t even know existed. With nothing calling her back to California, Avery reluctantly settles into what she hopes will be a short stay in North Carolina, but first, she’ll need to untangle her father’s legal mess, stay out of her sisters� decades-long rivalry, and somehow resist the charms of her attractive next-door neighbor, single father Grayson Atwell. The Magnolia Sisters, the first in a new series from Michelle Major is an enjoyable and quick read, and seamlessly blends themes of family, self-growth, and forgiveness into a love story. Just as Grayson overcomes his first impression of Avery, and Avery her snap judgment of small-town life, readers should give The Magnolia Sisters the same courtesy and not judge this book by its cover....more
Continuing her Princes of Texas Romance series (after The Devil in the Saddle), London's The Billionaire inNote: an ARC was provided by the publisher.
Continuing her Princes of Texas Romance series (after The Devil in the Saddle), London's The Billionaire in Boots focuses on eldest Prince son Nick as he struggles with his late father’s wish that he run the family cattle business and his own desires to be a pilot, while the company’s office manager Charlotte Bailey is torn between artificial insemination and her deep wish for a loving husband and family. London peppers Boots with witty dialogue and palpable sexual tension, transforming the book from “co-workers who accidentally slept together and want to again� into a slow-burn romance with nods to family expectations and the pursuit of long-held dreams. The small-town setting and characters immediately feel familiar and accessible, and readers will be able to jump right into the Princes of Texas world before continuing with series starter The Charmer in Chaps. My only critique is how obvious London sets up the next book in the series—although it is fun trying to guess the as-yet-unreleased book’s protagonist....more
Note: an ARC of this title was acquired via the publisher.
To be honest, the cover of We Are Lost and Found is what sold the book for me. It had been oNote: an ARC of this title was acquired via the publisher.
To be honest, the cover of We Are Lost and Found is what sold the book for me. It had been on my radar through NetGalley, but once I saw a huge stack of books available at BEA, I went *grabby hands* hard. I mean, this wasn't a bad book, but I didn't love it the way I'd expected to (especially with the blurb name-dropping The Perks of Being a Wallflower!), and so it came off as more boring and just all-around "meh" rather than, say, terrible.
The protagonist, Michael, just happens to be in the middle of a superbly interesting time period, but his particular story is kind of bland in comparison. (I personally enjoyed his friends Becky and James much more than anyone else in the book.) He is supposed to be your everyday teenager struggling with his identity while living in 1983 New York City. But add in his homophobic and overbearing parents, his desire to explore his sexuality under the constant threat (and reminder) of AIDS, and his attempts to navigate being a closeted gay kid and everything he does to explore his identity becomes that much harder—and he somehow never measures up.
The prose is written in short vignettes and without quotation marks—a style that, admittedly, you do have to get used to—but even when we aren't in Michael's head, it sort of feels like we are anyway. But Michael is boring, y'all. His friend James, who is an English teen performance artist living alone in New York and who more directly engages with AIDS, is much more interesting. His friend Becky, who basically single-handedly deals with her drug-addicted mom while also raising herself, is more interesting. Michael's brother, Connor, who publicly came out at his high school graduation and got kicked out of the house, is more interesting. Even Becky's boyfriend, Andy, who is a member of the and who we barely even meet�he was more interesting than Michael.
It was so hard for me to empathize with Michael because nothing bad ever really happens to him. And when it does? Everything just happens to work out in the end. Dunbar does such a good job at imbuing her characters and plot with vivid detail, but she chose the wrong person to introduce us to the story. It's fair to say that, after finishing We Are Lost and Found, I feel energized to tackle either And the Band Played On or How to Survive a Plague (or perhaps both?)—but it also means Dunbar's book was lacking, that I need someone else's account of early 1980s New York to fill in the gaps....more
Note: an ARC of this title was acquired via the publisher.
Sometimes, when I finish a book, I don’t know how to really process what I’ve just read. I kNote: an ARC of this title was acquired via the publisher.
Sometimes, when I finish a book, I don’t know how to really process what I’ve just read. I know the book was good, and that I liked it, but I can’t put into words all of the emotions it made me feel. And to write a coherent book review that I can then post on my blog? Absolutely not. So I literally close the cover and stick the book somewhere where I can see it and be reminded of it, but, instead of sitting down with my thoughts, they whir inside like an internal keyboard smash.
The Last True Poets of the Sea was one of those books.
It’s the kind of uncomfortably realistic young adult book I gravitated toward as a teen; the one where the plot actually feels like it could happen, where the main conflict is more than just a question of whether the two protagonists will get together, where the characters are full of hopes and dreams and flaws and make mistakes.
We meet main character Violet as she’s on the plane to Maine, sent to live with her uncle after her brother attempts suicide. She is Going Through Some Shit, and the rawness Julia Drake imbues in Violet is one of the reasons I enjoyed this novel so much. We’re allowed to sit in the messy spaces with her as she grieves and makes friends and falls in love. While the book could be considered a romance, it’s so much more than that. (Even though Drake completely normalizes Violet’s bisexuality and I need more of this please and thanks.)
The Last True Poets of the Sea is a novel about family and friendship and grief and growing up and making hard choices but always, always choosing to swim up. If you’re in the right headspace, I think you should read it....more
I had high hopes for Technically, You Started It: an adorable pseudo meet-cute with mistaken identity? In a young adult novel told exclusively throughI had high hopes for Technically, You Started It: an adorable pseudo meet-cute with mistaken identity? In a young adult novel told exclusively through text messages? Yes, please! I feel very, very lucky to have (literally) stumbled onto an arc, because it was the perfect backdrop to my train ride down to New York City. (The return-trip book, not so much.) It was so easy to fall into Haley and Martin's developing relationship: to laugh at their jokes, smile at their obliviousness, cheer when they both finally admitted that what they were doing actually meant something—that the book fulfilled all of my expectations.
I wasn't sure if I'd enjoy reading a book of nothing but texts, if it would feel like something was missing, but the only real difference is how quickly I got through the book. Lana Wood Johnson does such a good job at developing the world in which Haley and Martin exist that I quickly grew accustomed to the format. I felt like I knew the two of them—their friends, their families, how they were spending their summers—that it was if I'd grabbed one of their phones and scrolled through their entire text history and not that Johnson had made the whole thing up.
While Martin initially texts Haley to ask a question about school, and Haley accidentally restarts their conversation a few days later, their infrequent and short threads quickly morph into daily, in-depth conversations. It's so easy (for so many reasons) to be more open online, and Johnson takes advantage of this, allowing both Haley and Martin to connect without having to deal with the anxiety of an in-person meeting. (And even when Haley brings up that Martin is only continuing their correspondence because it's just texting, he's quick to shoot her down—because that isn't the only reason, at least not for Martin, and at least not at that point in the story.)
The majority of the plot revolves around Haley thinking that she's texting one Martin ("the good one") while she's really texting the other one ("the burrito clown"), and the fun is in how Haley's torn between the connection she feels with Text Martin and the growing attraction she has to IRL Martin—who she doesn't know are the same person. Martin figures this out pretty quickly, but Haley remains in the dark for the bulk of the novel, and it's this in-between space where Johnson lets us live. Haley's reluctance to ever meet Martin irl heightens the dramatic tension, but it also makes sense for her, and the text format never feels like a crutch Johnson uses just to keep her protagonists apart.
I'm sure that readers will judge Technically, You Started It by its cover, or its summary, or even its format, but they shouldn't. The book is such a refreshing (and modern) look into how humans connect with one another, how much easier it is to talk to a screen but how gratifying it becomes when you let yourself truly be vulnerable with another person. This book made my soul happy, and it's something I know I'll return to when I need a pick-me-up....more
Notes from My Captivity is a strange novel, and flew way, way under the radar when it was published this past summer. (TBH, the only reason I read it Notes from My Captivity is a strange novel, and flew way, way under the radar when it was published this past summer. (TBH, the only reason I read it was because a patron donated her ARC and I was like why not.) Kathy Parks divides her book into three-ish parts, but each one kind of blends together that the story moves forward before you stop to question whether any of it even makes sense. There's a river-rafting adventure, then some conspiracy-theory fueled mystery, and then straight-up magical realism. (I mean, Parks includes these so-subtle-you-miss-them hints that not everything is as it seems, but they're basically no less magical than a teenager stranded in Siberia so, you know, whatever.)
I didn't not like the book, but rather felt like the supernatural elements weren't introduced in such a way to satisfyingly get me to the ending that Parks wrote. (Like, does she classify this book as magical realism or just simply magical or as an allegory for faith?) I liked the mystery aspects (and their debunking) way more than the literal trek it took to get to that point in the story, and a part of me wishes Park could have written a little less literal action to more quickly focus on the emotional action.
With that said, however, Adrienne felt like an authentic teen completely thrown out of her element, written with pathos and an emotional arc that I could follow and root for. Her motivations were clear, her behavior genuine, and her grief palpable. And the book itself is filled with such great sarcasm and a swoon-worthy first-love that the good parts successfully tuck the bad ones out of sight....more
The Prestige is one of my favorite, favorite films: a knot of a cipher that explicitly asks its audience to pay attention. Are you watching closely? aThe Prestige is one of my favorite, favorite films: a knot of a cipher that explicitly asks its audience to pay attention. Are you watching closely? a character asks. Because here are all the answers. But no one does the first time around; whether it's the magic of the movies or the pull of a story, we want to be deceived. It’s only looking back that we see all the clues laid bare. (Please go watch this film, y’all; it is so, so good.) For me, the beauty of Marisha Pessl’s latest, Neverworld Wake, is not the driving force of its protagonist, Beatrice, who wants to figure out what really happened to her late boyfriend, Jim. And it isn’t found in the novel’s core plot, either, when the main characters do everything (and then do it twice) to decipher and beat the Neverworld. It’s folded around the monotony of repetition. When faced with only hours and also eternity, how do individuals occupy their time? Whom or what do they prioritize? It’s tucked into memory and choice and the things we tell ourselves after the fact. What makes something real? Is it the act? What about the feeling of the act? Or the memory of the feeling of the act? Or the memory of the memory of the feeling of the act?
When Pessl finally explains what happened to Jim, it almost doesn’t even matter anymore. Both we and her characters have gone through so much that the act of uncovering has become more insightful than what we were waiting to uncover. In such a short book, she manages to beautifully flip everything around, recenter reality to explain how we weren’t watching closely at all. We wanted to be fooled and so we were. Neverworld Wake is so good at hiding things in plain sight that I want to read it again just to figure out how much I missed....more
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