Holiday Reads

Read three books over Christmas break:

Zoe Rosenthal Is Not Lawful Good (by Nancy Werlin) 

A young adult novel about a girl who finds herself through fandom. I found the fandom property itself (a sci-fi show called Bleeders about a virus that causes bleeding) kind of weird but sure, sci-fi can be weird! I loved Zoe and I loved watching her process of self-discovery and realizing that her boyfriend Simon was insufferable. (He is largely an off-screen character but so great and so infuriating.) I also enjoyed that romance was not the endgame here.  Very satisfying.

Subdivision (by J. Robert Lennon) 

For the Tournament of Books. So weird and so intriguing. An unnamed narrator finds herself in a peculiar neighborhood, the subdivision, a dream-logic world that we sense has some underlying "real" logic to it that gradually reveals itself.  I find myself flipping through it again trying to puzzle it out; very excited to discuss in the Tournament and hear others' theories. This one was right up my alley and one I wouldn't have read without the Tournament, always one of my favorite things.

If This Gets Out (by Sophie Gonzales and Cale Dietrich)

About two boys in a boy band (one gay, one who starts out thinking he's straight) who fall for each other. Despite having some of my favorite tropes and a good concept, and having really good main characters, I didn't fall in love with this for some reason? (I tried to check out Goodreads to figure out if someone had articulated it, as they so often do, but found a lot of squee about One Direction so had to nope out of that.) Not bad, but not amazing. Extra points for bisexual rep though!