Recent Reads

And 75% of it wasn't even YA! 

Boyfriend Material (by Alexis Hall)

An adult M/M romance that I absolutely loved. Romance isn't actually my favorite genre but this was just hilarious, hot, funny - did I mention funny? Just thoroughly enjoyable with a great central couple. Plus, the sequel comes out next month! Highly recommended for romance fans.

Flying Solo (by Linda Holmes)

I loved Linda's first book, Evvie Drake Starts Over. This didn't quite hit the same heights for me, mostly   the pacing didn't work for me.  But the characters are great, and the main character's independence made for a nice subversion of the "hometown career girl discovers she belongs in her hometown with her childhood love" trope.

Follow Your Arrow (by Jessica Verdi)

Weak, but had a good ending that directly confronted biphobia and not being "bisexual enough" if you're with a man.  The main character did have some good growth over the course of the book but she was just insufferable at the beginning with her fixation on social media.  Plus she has a supposedly traumatic breakup and is in love with someone else in like a week? The timeline felt very compressed and clunky. I just stuck it out out of bisexual loyalty, I think.

Sea of Tranquility (by Emily St. John Mandel) 

This is one of the choices for Camp ToB this year (which is taking place on Discord for some reason, so I'm barely following it).  I didn't love Station Eleven as much as seemingly everyone else in the world, so I was not expecting this: I loved this novel. I adored it. I guarantee this will end up on my top 5 of the year and maybe even #1.  It's reminiscent of Cloud Atlas (jumps through time, a cyclical structure) but somehow Mandel pulls off a novel with the scope and impact of Cloud Atlas in like 300 pages? This blew me away.

Honor Girl (by Maggie Thrash)

I read this for the "read a nonfiction YA comic" part of the Read Harder challenge.  It's a graphic novel memoir about a girl's coming of age at a summer camp in Kentucky.

I didn't love the art style - in particular, how difficult it was to tell so many of the background characters apart. (The fact that they are all white did not help... I understand this was set in a very white area and was nonfiction so I understand, but they could still have been better differentiated.)

The bittersweet nature of the story is good, and it's subtly told. I did get confused at one point when it seemed to be stated that two characters had never kissed, but then I swear a few pages earlier they did kiss. I went and looked back to see if there was any clear indication it was a fantasy or dream, but didn't see it. Maybe I missed some obvious graphic novel signal that I'm just unfamiliar with.  At any rate, this wasn't my absolute favorite but it was fine.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This One Looks Like a Boy: My Gender Journey to Life as a Man (by Lorimer Shenher)

This Read Harder challenge was "a memoir written by someone who is trans or nonbinary"; Lorimer Shenher is a trans man who experienced dysphoria throughout his life, as well as PTSD stemming from an investigation of a notorious serial killer when working as a detective. He ultimately transitioned late in life, at age 50. 

I enjoyed Shenher's writing and his story; it was only written a few years into his transition but he still has thoughtful observations about male privilege and exclusionary politics. His story makes the pain of dysphoria visceral and understandable.  He doesn't get into genital dysphoria (I know from Detransition, Baby that not all trans people experience this) but obviously that's an understandable elision.

Ultimately his story is compelling and I enjoyed the read.

Again With the YA

Love Is for Losers (by Wibke Brueggemann) 

I’ve read a lot of YA recently (“you don’t say…”) and this one really stood out. The narrator has a snarky, British, Adrian Mole vibe, crossed with one of my all-time-faves, Amelia Westlake Was Never Here. The cast of supporting characters is sublime, I love the thrift shop setting, and humor and emotion are balanced perfectly. The conflict is just our lead’s slow realization that she might actually be gay, which was a refreshing change from the recent trend of characters just declaring “I’m bi!” on the first page. Super good. 

The Agathas (by Kathleen Glasgow and Liz Lawson) 

I wanted to like this more than I did; I would call it “fine” but it did not live up to the Agatha Christie premise for me. The twist isn’t bad, but I feel like Christie burns through suspects faster and spreads out suspicion more, and thus keeps you on your toes. I did enjoy the relationship between our two leads, Iris and Alice, unlikely friends, and the setting of a California coastal beach community. This is possibly the first of a series and I liked it enough to keep reading but not enough to call it a must-read. 

Flip the Script (by Lyla Lee) 

I was eagerly anticipating this one since I enjoyed Lyla Lee’s first book about a K-pop group. The premise is great: a Korean-American girl (complete with “I’m bi!” on the first page, which incidentally felt way too confident for where this character was at) moves back to Korea with her family to star in a K-drama and complications ensue. The details about life in Seoul are wonderful, as is the exploration of trying to assimilate into Korean culture after growing up in America. But the writing style seemed stilted and not… very… good? Overall? The characters were underdeveloped (Minjee) or unrealistic (Bryan) and it kept me a bit at a distance. Still, I enjoyed getting a taste of Korean life as the Seoul setting was the best part of this book!

Home Field Advantage (by Dahlia Adler) 

Mostly very cute.  I didn't love it as much as Cool for the Summer, but I did enjoy it. It did have some insta-love, which is not really my favorite, but my main issue was the main character's best friend and how completely awful she was, yet that's not really resolved.  In fact, the supporting cast is almost all uniformly horribly homophobic so that got a bit tiring.  Cute though.

A Little Bit Country (by Brian D. Kennedy) 

Speaking of insta-love, and cute, there was this story of two boys falling in love at "Wanda World" which is basically Dollywood. (Except Dolly Parton was mentioned in this book so in this universe I guess there is both a Wanda World and a Dollywood? In the same place? This is the same thing that bugged me in Fangirl, when the Simon Snow universe was clearly a Harry Potter pastiche but Potter existed also in that universe.)  Anyway this was also cute, although I thought Emmett was a bit too forgiving and the love story wasn't super deep.