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I’d been slow to read Emily Henry’s debut novel The Love That Split the World (in part because it’d been advertised as the lovechild of Friday Night Lights and The Time Traveler’s Wife, and … I irrationally dislike that book). The Love That Split the World is chock-full of the sort of themes I very much enjoy in young adult novels: relationships, belonging, figuring out one’s identity and one’s place in different communities. And in The Love That Split the World, those were the aspects I most enjoyed. Give me all your feelings! The trappings of time travel or parallel universes, while interesting, were often confusing to me. And while understanding those things was necessary for plot purposes, it wasn’t necessarily all that important in terms of the story’s emotional impact, which was – at least for me – much more powerful. Still, I feel conflicted about The Love That Split the World. Here’s why. The premise is... Read more »

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I was excited to read Nicole Castroman’s debut, Blackhearts, because I love historical fiction! I love historical fiction set in the 18th century! and Blackbeard! And, um, as a North Carolina resident, I went to the NC Maritime Museum this summer and saw artifacts from Blackbeard’s ship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge. If you are in or around Beaufort, NC, by the way, you too can do this thing. While I did not totally love Blackhearts, I am not sure that it’s the fault of the book? I went into Blackhearts wanting richly developed historical fiction with a little bit of romance on the side. What made Edward Teach into Blackbeard? Instead, the book is … a lot of romance. It’s primarily about Teach’s relationship with Anne Barrett, who is working, when they are first introduced, as a maid in Teach’s father’s home. Anne is the daughter of a white merchant and a... Read more »

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Truthwitch is my first book by Susan Dennard and it won’t be my last. I didn’t get a copy at BEA this year – I think it’s fair to say that it was one of *the* books to get? – and I was bummed that my flight got in too late to even make grabbing Truthwitch a possibility. But lo and behold, Susan Dennard was at NCTE in November and so not only did I get a copy of Truthwitch buuuuut Susan Dennard also signed it! So things worked out for me in the end, and splendidly, because I loved Truthwitch and you should 100% read it. Even if you do not enjoy fantasy novels? You should read it. Because it is pretty great, and I loved it. Here is the number one reason why: there is an epic female friendship at the center of the series and that is basically everything I... Read more »

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Time travel! Romance! A hunt for hidden artifacts! Alexandra Bracken’s latest book, Passenger, tells the story of teen violinist Etta Spencer, who is pushed through a wormhole on the night of her debut and ends up on an 18th century ship en route to New York. Etta quickly learns she’s been kidnapped by the head of a family of time-travelers who are holding her mother as hostage and who want her to retrieve something her mother stole many (many, many) years ago that could (literally) change the course of human history. Her mother’s hidden it away in time and left a series of clues only Etta can decipher that send her to different periods of human history. Think of it as “Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?” but instead of chasing Carmen Sandiego through history, Etta and her partner are chasing down a priceless, dangerous artifact. To find it, they have to locate... Read more »

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What if the draft had been extended to young women in WWII as well as men? That’s the premise of Michael Grant’s new book, Front Lines, and that’s pretty much all I needed to know before making grabby hands at it at NCTE this year. I saw the cover, saw the tagline – “she’s fighting for her country” – and was like, oh yes, I shall be reading you, book. I mean, I will read alternate histories any day of the week and if they’re alternate histories that focus on women’s experiences, then hell yes, I’m there. And as far as that goes, Front Lines did not disappoint! So Front Lines follows three young women – Rio, Frangie, and Rainy – as they enlist in the army and are shipped overseas. They have different motivations: Rio, a white girl from California, wants to do her part (but is also talked into it... Read more »

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You get two for the price of one today–Layla has a review of The Scorpion Rules for you, and Wendy has a giveaway + recap of the Erin Bow event she attended awhile back! Review: I enjoyed the hell out of this book. I have been in the middle of a fairly severe reading slump (and am also reading nonstop for my dissertation, so you know, take that into account, too) and The Scorpion Rules is one of the few books that have successfully broken through the haze of grumpiness I’ve been in for the last few months. But The Scorpion Rules really worked for me. From what I can tell, though, it seems like it’s been a fairly divisive read – you’ll either love it or you’ll hate it. Luckily for me, I am firmly on Team Scorpion Rules (and Team Talis!). If you like dark humor, morally ambiguous AIs,... Read more »

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Top Ten Tuesday is a meme created by The Broke and the Bookish. This week, the theme is “Top Ten Debut Authors Who Have Me Looking Forward To Their Sophomore Novel / Top Ten Sophomore Novels That I Loved Just As Much If Not More As The Author’s Debut” and we’re happy to be participating! Let me note here that I’m going to do five of each because I make the rules! Muahaha. Except for when I don’t.   Top Five Debut Authors Whose Sophomore Novels I’m Looking Forward To Becky Albertalli – I loved Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda (Oreos! gay teens in love! falling in love through letters! Harry Potter slash!) and can’t wait to read whatever Albertalli writes next. I know Wendy loved this one, too. Stacey H. Lee – Lee’s book Under A Painted Sky came out this year, and I really enjoyed it. If you didn’t get... Read more »

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What We Left Behind was one of my most anticipated reads of 2015. Ever since I heard more about Robin Talley’s latest book back at BEA in May, I’d been incredibly excited to get my hands on it. I thought Talley’s debut novel – about an interracial teen couple during the Civil Rights Movement – was beautifully written, even if I had some issues with the way the relationship between the two women played out. What We Left Behind – about how the relationship between a self-identified lesbian and her genderqueer partner changes once they both make the shift from high school to college – sounded great to me. Books with queer characters! Relationship feels! A protagonist who IDs as genderqueer! I love all of it; bring it on. But … now that I’ve finished? If there were more novels (young adult and adult alike) that dealt amazingly with non-binary gender identities, I think I’d... Read more »

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Top Ten Tuesday is a meme created by The Broke and the Bookish. This week, the theme is “Top Ten Author Duos I’d Love to See Write a Book Together” and we’re happy to be participating! Let me note here that I’m only going to do five author duos because, um, this is a hard one, you all. I also apologize in advance because I think these might be verrrrry specific to my interests, which is to say, they get a little odd towards the end.     Rachel Hartman and Naomi Novik. Ok, so basically what I want from this pairing is fanfic, so get ready, world. All I’m asking for is a short story where the Temeraire dragons meet up with the dragons from Shadow Scale and, like, talk about dragon stuff. (War. Humans. What it’s like to be dragons, I don’t know! I’m not very creative.) Courtney Milan and... Read more »

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If you enjoy historical fiction with a spunky female lead, some romance, and a murder mystery thrown in for good measure, you might want to pick up Jennifer Donnelly’s latest book, These Shallow Graves. I admit, I was lured in by the promise of a spunky female lead in this case – a girl who secretly dreams of being a writer and defying societal expectations! – ’cause that’s my jam all the time. In turn-of-the-century America, no less! (An aside: my love for American history has been totally revitalized by the release of the soundtrack for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton: An American Musical, by the way. And this is … a century later! Where’s my Revolutionary War YA when I need it?) Anyway. Ahem. Back to business! Despite the spunky female lead, while I liked many aspects of These Shallow Graves, I didn’t connect with it emotionally in the way that I wanted... Read more »

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Hey all, I’m especially happy to be hosting today’s discussion of Gene Stratton Porter’s 1909 novel, A Girl of the Limberlost. Come talk to me in the comments, since Wendy and Kim aren’t able to participate this month. I am eager to chat! This book was one of my childhood favorites (and I mean favoritest favorites) so I was really looking forward to revisiting this one. I remembered it being chock-full of food porn and also involving a lot of rhapsodizing about nature. Trees! Moths! Butterflies! THE LIMBERLOST! On those fronts, I was not disappointed. As Wendy noted last month, it’s also the sequel to Stratton Porter’s earlier book, Freckles, which I also read as a kid. It’s not necessary to read Freckles to appreciate this book (which is good, I think, because Freckles is by far the weaker book), but if anyone’s interested in knowing a bit more about it, the... Read more »

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A Thousand Nights is the Arabian Nights retelling I have been waiting for. I know there have been a few to come out this year, but A Thousand Nights has been my favorite of them all. If I could imagine an Arabian Nights retelling that would make my heart sing, it’d be this book. Go read this book when it comes out. It’s awesome. Probably you are already familiar with the story on which this novel is based. If not, let me give you a brief synopsis. There’s a king. He takes a new bride every day and kills her each night. One woman, Scheherazade, becomes his queen and delays her execution by telling a series of interlocking stories with cliffhangers for 1001 nights. What I liked about A Thousand Nights is that it takes this frame narrative but transforms it – the novel stays faithful to the spirit rather than the letter of its... Read more »

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Do you want to read a dystopian novel with a genderqueer protagonist who may or may not be part lizard? If this sounds like something you didn’t know you wanted, Lizard Radio is the book for you. It’s a hard book to describe. Our protagonist, Kivali – familiarly known as Lizard, was abandoned as a baby  (wrapped in a lizard t-shirt!). Lizard is adopted by Sheila, a human woman who becomes her foster mom and sends her, at the opening of the novel, to CropCamp. The novel takes off from there – CropCamp is all about teaching teenagers how to be good citizens of an oppressive totalitarian government; teens have to attend CropCamp or one of the many other strictly regimented government-run camps and, if they fail, risk being sent to Blight. At CropCamp, a camp focused on developing agricultural workers, group conformity is prized; state-sanctioned heterosexual relationships are supposed to emerge... Read more »

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Top Ten Tuesday is a meme created by The Broke and the Bookish. This week, the theme is “Top Ten Books That Would Be On Your Syllabus If You Taught X 101” and we’re happy to be participating!     I would like to make about a million of these (social justice & YA! LGBTQI literature!) but eventually settled on this topic, which is basically … novels from the Western literary canon and YA books that I think it’d be cool to teach with them and vice versa. Some of these are adaptations of canonical lit, others are loosely inspired by it, and others are just paired together because I want them to be. The sort of guiding question that I had in mind for these pairings – because there are approximately a million adaptations in the world! – was how do these novels explore what it means to be human? (With secondary... Read more »

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If What We Saw isn’t already on your radar for September 2015 releases, it should be. I can’t say that I enjoyed it – the book, for the most part, centers on the rape of a high school student by a group of her peers and its effect on her community – but it’s a good book and an important one, and you should read it. If you’ve ever wanted a book that unpacks and critiques rape culture, What We Saw is here and it’s a good start. Here’s the premise of What We Saw: high school junior Kate Weston wakes up the morning after a party with little memory of what happened the night before. While Kate’s concerns are initially about herself (did she drive herself home? Is her car across town? Does Ben Cody, longtime good friend and fellow scholar-athlete, like her?), her focus quickly shifts. The next day at... Read more »

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Top Ten Tuesday is a meme created by The Broke and the Bookish. This week, the theme is “Top Ten Authors I’ve Read the Most Books From” and we’re happy to be participating!   1. Courtney Milan It is possible that I write about Courtney Milan far too often in my Top Ten Tuesdays! But like, it’s because I think she’s the shit, and conveniently for this week, she’s also written a ton of books. And I’ve read them all because, again, her books are awesome. If you’re not a romance reader and aren’t familiar with her books, you should read them because they feature banter (who doesn’t like banter!), super kickass protagonists (biologists! suffragettes! chess prodigies!), and good conversations around consent. They are  excellent. And hey, she started a New Adult series this year, starting with Trade Me. Woo! 2. Tessa Dare Fair warning, I hope you enjoy romance, because... Read more »

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Out of Darkness brings to light often marginalized voices in young adult fiction. Centered on the New London School explosion of 1937, Out of Darkness features protagonists who are racially and culturally diverse and a heartbreaking story that confronts you with the realities of racialized and gendered violence in 1930s Texas (and … also contemporary American culture). If you are in the mood for some truly excellent historical fiction that will emotionally devastate you, well then, do I have the book for you. I read this book in less than a day and I couldn’t put it down the entire time. I haven’t seen much press around this book yet, which is a bummer, because Out of Darkness is so, so good and also as thoughtful and thought-provoking as hell. It’s one of my favorites of the year so far. (And hey! My list of favorites for 2015 is not going to be... Read more »

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Top Ten Tuesday is a meme created by The Broke and the Bookish. This week, the theme is “Top Ten Characters Who Are Fellow Book Nerds” and we’re happy to be participating!     For this week’s Top Ten Tuesday, Jamie explains that “book nerds” can include a variety of things – people who work at bookstores! people who are aspiring writers! – so I’m also working with this broader definition for my list today. 1. Jane Eyre from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë: One of my all-time favorite novels! As you might remember, the book opens with Jane trying to read Bewick’s History of British Birds stealthily in the windowseat and getting caught at it by her awful cousin John Reed. 2. Catherine Morland from Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen: Catherine’s love for Gothic novels – particularly Ann Radcliffe’s – causes her to suspect that Northanger Abbey holds deep dark secrets at every turn.... Read more »

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Hey hey, guess what I just read? Lies We Tell Ourselves! A really great book that came out last year that I should have read immediately upon its release! Why? Because it’s an interracial lesbian romance set in the South during the desegregation of Virginia’s public school system. (You had me at lesbian romance.) Anyway, while it is not without its problems, Robin Talley’s Lies We Tell Ourselves is a really strong debut novel. I read it in one sitting, and it is a testament to the book’s excellence that I really enjoyed it despite having to endure a massive airport delay. (I wasn’t even bothered! I just wanted to sit down again so I could keep. reading. the book.) I wanted to review it because (1) if you haven’t read it, you should read it and (2) man, I have all the feelings about this one, and I want to... Read more »

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I’m not entirely sure how I feel about Hannah Moskowitz’s new book, A History of Glitter and Blood. It is a really weird book, you all, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. It was not entirely to my liking and I still can’t stop thinking about it?  Books about fairies are not my thing, and thinking about unreliable narrators reminds me of how much I disliked We Were Liars, but hey, I picked this one up because the cover was pretty and Moskowitz writes queer-centric fiction. If you like weird books and fairies and unreliable narrators and thinking about how history’s written, you’ll probably like this, though. I suspect it’ll be a polarizing read. Why is it weird? Well. There are fairies. Who are covered in glitter. And gnomes who eat fairies, despite disliking the taste of glitter. (And most fairies are missing some body parts as a result.... Read more »

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Adam Silvera’s More Happy Than Not hit me right in the feels. I checked this one out from the library on an impulse: I wanted to read a book with LGBTQI content, particularly one that considered intersectionality; I don’t tend to look for stories about LGBTQI-identified young men enough and I’d like to amend that; there was the hint of a sci-fi premise with the Leteo Institute’s mind-altering technology; and last, but not least, I liked the unsettling half smiley face on the color. (Hey world, if you are trying to get me to read a book here are some pro-tips on how to do it: make it queer, make it sci-fi, make me feel vaguely creeped out by the cover. I will read that book in a heartbeat.) And this impulse paid off. I read More Happy Than Not in one sitting (thank you, coffee, for making this possible) and was... Read more »

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Top Ten Tuesday is a meme created by The Broke and the Bookish. This week, the theme is “Top Ten Books on My TBR for Summer 2015″ and we’re happy to be participating!     What I’m Going to Read This Summer (In Addition to Research, I Promise) 1. The Paying Guests – Sarah Waters This has been on my TBR list forever, basically, but it’s FINALLY happening, you guys. Why do I want to read this? Um, Wendy loved it, I love Sarah Waters’s other books, and I hear there are ladies being gay together. Also, some of my friends have had mixed feelings about it, so if I read it, I can finally talk about it with them. And that is all I ever need from life. Thankfully, the queer book club I belong to just chose this for July’s meeting, so I will actually read that book that I’ve... Read more »

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Hey, y’all, I have a recent New Adult book to recommend: Courtney Milan’s Trade Me. This is one I’ve been meaning to review forever, but I love Courtney Milan so much, it’s hard for me to put my feelings about her books into words sometimes. But they’re basically this: only Courtney Milan could make me love a New Adult book about billionaires. And have me anxiously making grabby hands towards the next book in the series, which I am even more excited about. End of 2015, why are you not here yet?! To be totally fair, Trade Me is about much more than billionaires and/or their secret pain, and that is probably one of the reasons that I liked it so much. When I read a book by Courtney Milan – and I have read them all, because she is one of my favorite authors and I love her, and if... Read more »

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  Kim: Well folks, another year, another BEA. Layla: Says Kim! Another year, and BABY’S FIRST BEA. (That’s me. And it was my first BEA.) Kim:I was so overwhelmed by my first BEA I can’t even believe I signed up for another!  Layla, you were such a pro babby BEA-er. *sniff* So proud! By the way, did you know that it is actual magic when co-bloggers meet irl for the first time? You can actually wish upon a star from the magic of co-bloggers meeting. Or maybe that’s just us. Layla: Oh, I second this. My heart grew three sizes that day.     Some of the highlights from our trip: On the floor at BEA     Layla: I can show you the world … replete with shining, shimmering, and splendid ARCs. A herd of bloggers amassed for the drop of Disney’s A Whole New World, a retelling of Aladdin in an... Read more »

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  Top Ten Tuesday is a meme created by The Broke and the Bookish. This week, we’re happy to be talking about books we’d most like to see as movies / TV shows.   I’m going to try really hard not to cheat and choose things that have already been made into TV shows or movies, but I make no promises! I will also say that all of this is obviously influenced by the kind of TV and movies I like to watch: I like sci-fi and fantasy, I like story-lines that are focused on ladies, and I like LGBTQ characters and content. So! 1. Throne of Glass – Sarah J. Maas Maybe this is not a super unexpected choice, but man, these books would make for great movies. When was the last time you saw a high fantasy film about a kickass teenage assassin? Wouldn’t you like to do that?... Read more »

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