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XiXi Tian’s debut young adult novel, This Place Is Still Beautiful, features the stories of Margaret and Annalie Flanagan. The two sisters face the complicated elements of identity, family dynamics, ugly truths about racism, and growing up as mixed race teens in Illinois.  Tian’s approach challenges the reader’s perspective as she shares insight and invites us to look from various lenses. Annalie’s father left when she was only three, so she has no memory of him. Her Chinese mother is determined to protect her girls from the pain she herself endured in a biracial marriage that ultimately fails when cultural differences intrude. Still, Margaret lovesRead More →

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G.F. Miller sets out to explore early relationships in her book Not If You Break Up with Me First. The novel follows two best friends: Eve McNeil and Andrew Ozdemir. The pair has “seen each other through growth spurts, family drama, and broken bones” (9). However, hormones and other life changes occur during the summer between seventh and eighth grade. When Andrew returns from a Florida trip taller, stronger, and with a deeper voice, Eve’s parents are struggling to hold their family together. At school in Andrew’s circle of friends, talk of Legos and video games has shifted to talk of which girls the boysRead More →

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Set in both New York and Pennsylvania prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic, Stepping Off by Jordan Sonnenblick tells a story of human relationship dynamics. The novel’s primary characters are three sixteen-year-old youth who navigate issues like parental death, divorce, and friendship challenges. Ava Green, Chloe Conti, and Jesse Dienstag are best friends whose parents own summer homes in Pennsylvania where the official motto of the vacation-home community is “The Real World Isn’t Real.” Tall Pines Landing provides an escape from the crowds, traffic, pollution, endless noise, and pressures of school and jobs in New York. Although she has a tendency toward a pricklyRead More →

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On par with The Inheritance Games series by Jennifer Lynn Barnes, Thieves’ Gambit by Kayvion Lewis is a thrilling page-turner with all the ingredients of a good spy novel. Although Rosalyn (Ross) Quest is only seventeen years old, she is a master thief, having acquired her experience through her family-run business of thieving. Living on the remote island of the Bahamas, Ross seeks social contact with people beyond her family. In fact, she seeks escape. While the heists provide their own brand of exhilaration, Ross feels isolated. She sees her options as staying locked up in the family industry where trusting people outside the familyRead More →

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Sixth grader Frances Bishop is prone to worry. She wonders how thoughts can be compartmentalized or put into a box when “worry is like water. It leaks” (41). Furthermore, “no one chooses to worry. Worry just is” (99), and it causes Franny to get herself into a tangle. Because her mother is a former drug addict, Franny has had to be the responsible one, making worry a constant for her. As an escape, Franny has math where the problems have clear steps and a solution. Math is her happy place. Franny also has an ally in her mother’s Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous sponsor, Mimi, whoRead More →

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The plot of Sabina Khan’s recent book, What a Desi Girl Wants, revolves around the life of Mehar Rabbani, a mixed race girl who lives in Newton, Kansas. Speaking her mind is Mehar’s brand, which doesn’t always work in her favor. Prone to whining, Mehar hates being reasonable—a trait that backfires on her when she makes a trip to India to reconnect with her family on her father’s side. Hoping to salvage her relationship with her father, Mehar is intent on apologizing to him and mending their fractured bond. She also wishes to reconnect with her judgy grandma while in India for her father’s wedding.Read More →

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Wren Warren and Derek Pewter-Flores ae both sixteen-year-old members of the four founding families in Hollow’s End. Wren’s family grows wheat, and Derek’s grows melons. The the pair hopes to build on their families’ 150-year-legacy, marry, and have children someday, but Wren has overheard her parents arguing about money, so she takes measures to help increase the farm’s production. Soon after, a blight appears, one with devastating effects on the soil, crops, animals, and people—one with the power to fracture not only a family but a future. Believing herself responsible, Wren takes matters into her own hands, and what she discovers rocks her core. WhenRead More →

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Set in a world similar to our current reality but not quite, The Darkening by Sunya Mara is a study of both psychology and sociology. Mara explores the consequences of classism and social hierarchies while also taking a deep dive into the effects of despair, vengeance, hate, pain, and anger. In the process, she also asks some critically important questions worthy of soul-searching. Seventeen-year-old Vesper Vale is the daughter of revolutionaries and refers to herself as “a hopeful little screwup from the fifth ring” (216). Her father’s fear has kept her safe, but Vesper wonders if it is wrong to want more out of lifeRead More →

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Based on the web comic from WEBTOON, Crumbs by Danie Stirling is a fantasy romance featuring characters Ray and Laurie. A number of this graphic novel’s scenes occur in a bakery owned by Laurie’s Aunt Marigold, who names pastries after enchantment spells she has concocted. A seer who attends Council Academy, Ray wants to put her visions to good use. The novel’s second protagonist, Laurie Garcia aspires to be a world famous musician who plays sold-out concerts in which the entire audience sings along. Yet neither character has a straight route to that sought-after goal. Ray struggles with parental expectations and her own assurance thatRead More →