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In her book House of Hearts, Skyla Arndt cleverly uses naming as a form of allusion and symbolism. This strategy emerges most obviously in names like Oleander and Violet. Arndt’s most often used word, however, is splayed. And after the death of her best friend Emoree Hale, Violet Harper’s grief is the most on display. Violet has “always lived in a black-and-white word, worshipped at the altar of knowledge, and kept [her] heart in a box under lock and key” (225); her bestie was the ray of sunshine to Violet’s own Eeyore mood. Both young women are from trailer park homes, but Em wanted moreRead More →

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For seventeen-year-old Lola Espinoza, the main character in Ella Cerón’s first novel ¡Viva Lola Espinoza!, life is predictable and planned: sacrifice a social life and focus on earning good grades in order to get into a good college. Those expectations leave Lola feeling like she’s in “an academic purgatory with no salvation in sight. . . . There is no time for mall hangs or homecoming dances or parties or, God forbid, a relationship” (6). Although the quiet, deliberate, and introverted Lola likes being smart, she also feels like there has to be more to life than what her parents want for her; she daresRead More →

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Fierce, determined, proud, and furious, Leto wants to be remembered as extraordinary. Instead, at seventeen years old, she becomes one of the twelve girls sacrificed to appease the raging sea and to abate Poseidon’s wrath so that others in Ithaca can prosper. Only, Leto doesn’t die. She washes up on the shores of the island Pandou where Melantho introduces her to a mission: In order to break the curse and to save other girls from the annual hanging ritual, the Prince of Ithaca—who gives the orders for the deaths—must die. However, once Leto and Melantho reach the shores of Itaca under a ruse, they discoverRead More →