Santa Ana Boooo-oookksss

The title is a reference to this Crazy Ex-Girlfriend classic.  RIP Adam Schlesinger.  But I read two* YA books on my trip to Anaheim last week and flew into the Santa Ana airport, so here we are. 

*I actually also re-read Looking for Alaska kind of by accident in the middle there

Throwback (by Maureen Goo)

I definitely judge books by their cover. I had checked this one out so many times and then returned it before I finally got around to reading it, and it was after the cover changed from a photo to an illustration.  I had the same issue with Martyr! - procrastinated reading it because of the cover.  This is about a girl who goes back in time, Back to the Future style, to help her mother win homecoming queen.  Absolutely delightful although despite being about a first-generation immigrant and her daughter (I am first-generation and those themes usually make me cry) did not make me cry.

Reggie and Delilah’s Year of Falling (by Elise Bryant) 

I read this one right after Looking for Alaska which was kind of a hard bar to clear, so I was expecting to start a few novels and abandon them before I found one that measured up. But this was delightful right away! Reggie is a Black D&D nerd, Delilah is a biracial girl who has just started fronting a rock band. The romance is a lovely slow burn and the other issues the characters work through - does Reggie's love for "nerd stuff" make him less Black? Is Delilah being tokenized by the guys in her band? - are handled with subtlety. The third act breakup was clunky and honestly felt kind of obligatory but I loved these characters.  Recommended!

 

Grief in the Fourth Dimension (by Jennifer Yu)

I picked this one up after my frantic Tournament of Books reading (I ended up reading 14 of the 18 books this year) since it has been lingering in my backlog and I enjoy young adult and speculative fiction. (Oh, you don't say...)

Two high school students die and are reborn into a mysterious room where they can view - and attempt to communicate with - their loved ones back on earth.  Definitely interesting enough to finish, although it didn't make me cry despite being about literal death so clearly there was something missing for me. I feel like maybe I didn't get to know the characters enough or didn't like them enough. (There are also some editing mistakes that pulled me out of it - one character is named Iris, but is referred to as "Alice" multiple times, for example.)

Not a must-read but also an interesting premise and not a DNF.  (And I picked up two more YAs this week that I quickly DNF'd so that's not totally hollow praise!)