There’s this moment in Flamefall, the second book in Rosaria Munda’s Aurelian trilogy, where the protagonist asks one of the leaders of a scrappy band of rebel freedom fighters what they’re fighting for. She’s like “Equality!” and he’s like, “Neat, cool, great, but like what are your policy proposals?” How many dystopian YA novels have you read where the scrappy rebels our protagonist is allied with just have the basic policy “we won’t throw you in a fiery hellpit filled with ravenous snakes like these current bastards”? Like, that is a great start and I’m all for toppling your dystopian…
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Anyone who didn’t read A Song Below Water last year missed a trick, and I would also like to report that I, while reading it, missed a trick. The heroine of A Song Below Water is a siren, though she dedicates a lot of energy to hiding this fact about herself. While the world is friendly to some types of magic–particularly the charming and melodical eloko, of which Tavia’s school’s resident mean girl Naema is one–they’re acutely hostile to sirens. It is no coincidence that only Black girls and women can be sirens. A Chorus Rises is a companion novel…
Leave a CommentMy pandemic reading seems to come and go in waves — one month I’ll be tearing through books like there’s no tomorrow, and then another month I am just staring at the page blankly trying to make myself engage with what’s on it. August was a good reading month, and I can already tell September’s not going to be. I’ve got like sixteen YA books checked out that I’m officially excited to read, but I can’t get started on any of them, or any other book either. Is anyone else having this problem? Luckily, I read two terrific contemporary YA…
Leave a CommentLulu Shapiro is rather famous on Snapchat Flash, not least because of the video she took of herself kissing another girl — the video that led to her breakup with her boyfriend Owen. In the aftermath of going viral, Lulu has hidden in plain sight, shutting herself off from her real life friends while creating an image on Not!Snapchat of a perfect life of elegant parties and beautifully framed selfies. But at one of those parties, she meets Cass, who takes her to spend time at her rich friend Ryan’s new work-in-progress, The Hotel. No phones are allowed at the…
Leave a CommentTavia and Effie are sisters — not by blood, but in every way that matters. Both of them badly need the support and love of a sister. Like her late grandmother, Tavia is a siren. But the world, not to mention Tavia’s father, dislikes and distrusts sirens, and Tavia lives in fear of her secret being discovered. Meanwhile, Effie was long ago the only survivor of a terrifying incident in a Portland park, and she has begin to fear that the incident is coming back for her. After a few years of hearing about — but not being able to…
Leave a CommentOn the run from a dangerous father, Steph has never lived in one place long enough to make real friends; but her clowder (group chat) on CatNet supplies most of what she needs. But one day she complains to her clowder about a teacher bullying a classmate, Rachel (whom Steph has a crush on), and the next day, the teacher has left the school permanently. She chalks it up to confusing coincidence, but the reality is that one of the members of her clowder is a benevolent AI who likes her and wants to help improve her life. When one…
Leave a CommentWhat, and I cannot emphasize this enough, the fuck. Kate Alice’s Marshall’s sophomore novel is the scariest book I have read in… I don’t know, maybe ever? It’s hard for me to say from my current vantage point of being huddled up under a warm blanket mumbling soft prayers for safety in a world so cold and bleak. Rules for Vanishing is fucking scary. Read it in the dark. Read it in the winter. Let it seep into your brittle bones and fuck you all the way up. Sara’s sister Becca disappeared one year ago. Probably she ran off with…
Leave a CommentHands up everyone who read Freshwater and thought “When will Emezi grace us with a YA novel? That is clearly their metier.” Because I freely admit that I was not among your number. Freshwater was one of my best reads of 2018 — the writing was brutal and gorgeous, and I felt elated to be reading the debut of an author of Emezi’s talent, and to know that they had a whole writing career ahead of them and I would get to read all those books. But still, when I saw the announcement that Emezi would be releasing a YA…
Leave a CommentAdele Joubert is a good girl. Her white father pays her school fees at Keziah Christian Academy, and Adele is permitted in the ranks of the wealthiest girls at the school — until one year she isn’t. Suddenly she has lost her place among the popular clique, and she has to share a room with ferocious Lottie Diamond, who is unequivocally at the bottom of the school’s pecking order. But in living with Lottie, Adele slowly begins to realize the ways that power and injustice function in her world — and the ways she can fight it. I want to…
Leave a CommentIt’s June and I have been reading some YA and I will be so honest with you: A lot of it has let me down a little bit. I’m going to start with the one that I thought unequivocally was terrific, and then I’ll work forward and we will get through this together. Genesis Begins Again was an impulse grab at the library, and I’m so glad I picked it up. It’s a YA book that feels written for young teenagers, and specifically for black girls. Debut author Alicia D. Williams is dealing with difficult topics, and she never talks down…
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