Middle Grade
A First Time for Everything
Dan Santat
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Santat takes us along on the trip to Europe he took in middle school. So much freedom those kids had!
Young Adult
Some Kind of Hate
Sarah Darer Littman
A very interesting premise that was bogged down by stilted dialogue and annoying omissions. Here are two: How does one make a spiked bat? How do you block security cameras? It seemed as if the author didn’t want to give us that information, but the show-don’t-tell rule still applies to things you don’t want your readers to do.
Different for Boys
Patrick Ness and Tea Bendix
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A very of-the-moment book what with the self-censoring black bars across text to make a point. But also succinctly and briefly examines and explores being gay in high school.
Nigeria Jones
Ibi Zoboi
Nigeria’s grown up in “the Movement” a Black separatist household. Her mother is gone, and she’s navigating life and coming to terms with what she believes rather than what her father believes.
Saints of the Household
Ari Tison
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Two brothers each give their perspective of the last semester of their senior year of high school and the aftermath of a fight. To find their way, they connect more with their Bribri (Indigenous Puerto Rica) heritage.
Warrior Girl Unearthed
Angeline Boulley
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I love a main character who is an underachiever, and Perry is one such character. She also fully knows herself. That’s why learning more about NAGPRA rocks her world. This book is also a good mystery and readers will benefit if they have recently read Firekeepers Daughter.
Buffalo Flats
Martine Leavitt
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Rebecca and her family are “settling” Canada in the 1890s and this book abounds with pioneer details and a sprinkling of love interests. This is a slim book that packs in a lot of detail.
I was Born for This
Alice Osman
A famous 18-year-old trio is wrapping up a word tour in London. Angel is a superfan who is finally going to meet the band. Told in alternating perspectives from Angel and Jimmy, one of the members of the band, we get a thorough examination of celebrity from both sides.
Grownup Fiction
Romantic Comedy
Curtis Sittenfeld
An engaging book that hit all my pleasure zones. So much so that I read it again immediately after finishing it. Aside from hanging out with a female writer of a sketch comedy show, I wrapped Sittenfeld’s long paragraphs and observations of subtle things around me like the warm blanket they are.
“It was a belated realization to have, but it occurred to me that perhaps this was how grownup conversations worked—not that you communication didn’t falter, but that you both made good-faith attempts to rectify things after it had.”
Curtis Sittenfeld, Romantic Comedy
Once More with Feeling
Elissa Sussman
This is a serviceable romance that unfortunately was next up after I read Curtis Sittenfeld’s book Romantic Comedy. While the main romance was served up as usual, I never got the feeling the main characters had anything to do with starring in a Broadway play. Whereas with Sittenfeld’s book, I felt like I was sitting in the writers’ room at a sketch comedy show.
Grownup Nonfiction
Hollywood Ending: Harvey Weinstein and the Culture of Silence
Ken Auletta
A deep dive into Weinstein and his various enablers. It includes his trial in New York City. Detraction: the book put a big focus on the size and condition of Weinstein’s body in a way I didn’t love. There are many gross things about Weinstein. There’s no need cast his body, which is similar to bodies of a wide variety of people—the majority of them good and kind people, as gross.