April Reviews

For as much as March seemed to drag on, April has really flown by. I like to think it's because we're getting better at this whole quarantine and social distancing thing, but if I'm being completely honest, April had a lot of harder days than March. However, that didn't stop me from consuming as many books as possible to avoid facing my own terrifying reality. So, let's take a look at what distracted me this month:

Lucky Caller by Emma Mills

My heart is always so full after I finish an Emma Mills books. I'm not normally huge on romance stories, but Mills manages to take broken characters who make mistakes and create situations where they can still find love and self-improvement.

Nina's just trying to get through her senior year without running into Jamie, a childhood friend she plans to avoid for the rest of all time. But when she and Jamie are paired up for a project in their radio class, Nina's forced to confront the choices she made that ruined her relationship with Jamie years ago. In the meantime, her mom is getting remarried to a boring dentist (who may actually be more than he seems), her older sister is dealing with a crisis of identity at school, and her relationship with her radio spokesman dad is getting more and more complicated. Add in a bunch of grunge band fans and a boyband and it's a real recipe for disaster.

There were a few instances in this book that I might refer to as second-hand embarrassment, so I cringed a little bit at some of the choices Nina made, but they were all part of growing up and building her character. I survived, obviously, and they were worth getting through to see how far Nina had come.

Nina was flawed, and, like, I know that's what characters are supposed to be in order to create a compelling story, but there's something about Mills' characters and the way they approach problems and interact with people is just very relatable to me. She creates compelling dialogue and steps beautifully into her character's memories, setting up scenes with little background nuances that change the whole tone of the interaction. I don't know that I'm even making any sense right now, I just love these books so much.

Mills creates love interests that I genuinely think I could fall in love with. She makes what I will joyously refer to as the male version of a manic-pixie-dream-girl, which are male characters often only found in Hallmark movies. They're kind and a little quirky, in tune with what the main character wants, possibly even more so than her. They take care of the people around them, sometimes to the detriment of themselves, and they're always always good with the mc's family, especially their younger siblings. Jamie, Nina's love interest in this book, was no different, and I would trust him with not only my life but probably my heart.

That's all I've got. I just love Emma Mills' books so much and they make my heart so happy. I should've read this one right away when this madness started, but I knew I'd need it for later on. Now, some of you might need it too, so if you're looking for something easy to read and full of growth, give literally any of Mills' books a try.

Similar to: Save The Date by Morgan Matson and Along For The Ride by Sarah Dessen

Pulp by Robin Talley

I applied for a week-long writers conference in LA a couple months ago. The conference isn't until August, and I won't find out if I got in or not until next month, but with the chaos of everything happening right now, it's a little uncertain as to whether or not things will continue as planned. I only say this because the YA fiction author leading the portion I applied to is Robin Talley, and I bought this book because I wanted to get to know her a little bit through her writing. I had a few books to choose from, one of which was a lesbian horror retelling of Macbeth that I'm still going to read sometime, but I ultimately ended up choosing Pulp, and I have to say, even if I don't get into the program, even if COVID-19 changes the plan, I have no regrets.

Pulp follows two queer teens living Washington DC during two very different eras. Abby is a high school senior in 2017, trying to pretend that if everything stays the same--if she can get back with her girlfriend, ignore the approaching college application deadline, avoid her slowly collapsing nuclear family--things will be fine. So she buries herself in her senior project, becoming obsessed with lesbian pulp fiction novelists from the 1950's, with one very secretive author, Marian Love, at the center of it all. Janet Jones is an eighteen-year old living in the fallout of McCarthy and the communist scare. She picks up a novel at a bus stop, unaware that the story of two girls falling in love (a dangerous act in a very dangerous world) will change her life and her perception of herself. Writing a love story herself, Janet writes a letter to the author, hoping for guidance in a world that tells her that everything about her is wrong. Forced to choose between her truth and her family, Janet must decide if she's brave enough to live out in a world that wants to keep her in. A collision of timelines, these two girls are facing very different challenges in very different worlds, but are both drawn to the power of representation in fiction, seeking to find a place for themselves within the pages of pulp fiction.

I learned a lot from this book. And it's strange, because part of me knows that it was bad, it's still bad in a lot of places for queer people, but this book outlines the government's active attacks against those they perceived as "unconventionals," a witch hunt wholly and utterly terrifying. I'd never heard of the Lavender Scare before, but the way government workers would interrogate and blacklist anyone they even suspected of being queer was inhumane. The fear they must have felt is conveyed in Talley's book, contrasting starkly with the protests and rallies that Abby and her friends attend, out and proud as they fight for the rights of others.

Witnessing Abby's world slowly implode felt all too familiar, both to high school me and to the feeling of helplessness that's so cloyingly thick in the world right now. Her belief that if only she can keep things the same that they were before, then everything will be fine is a coping mechanism until it's not. Her slow realization that she's no longer in love with Linh mirrors her own parents' divorce, forcing Abby to look at the way she views love and forever. She's trying to live in the pulp fiction books, where a single love lasts a lifetime, hiding away from her reality where that's turning out to not be the case. The comparisons in this book run deeper than just the two eras, and it was fascinating to read.

Both Janet and Abby turn to fiction to find comfort, and while the books weren't a part of Abby's sexual awakening, they were still an integral part of her self-realization and path forward. Both Janet and Abby wrote their own stories and struggled with their characters, with themselves, with the fine line writers have between reality and fiction. Both girls have moments of heartbreak, where their world is falling apart and they say to themselves, "Remember this, maybe you can use it in your writing." As a writer, those moments felt so personal, because so much of fiction is drawn from reality, from what we as writers, as humans, know. To create order in chaos, we must first find it ourselves, and that journey can be far more harrowing than anything else.

Pulp was a book about acceptance, both from the world and yourself, about love, how it's always there, even if it's not forever. It was a book about two girls coming into their own in a world still so marred with hatred, but doing everything they can to change it for the better. It was a book about the power of writing, the power of representation, and how living however you can in a world that would rather see you dead is the bravest thing a person can do.

Similar to: Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour and Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan

Check Please #2: Sticks and Scones by Ngozi Ukazu

I'm having. A lot of feelings right now, and some of them are because I've been stuck inside my house for four weeks but a lot of them are because the web comic I've been following since my freshman year of college (2013 babyyyyy!!!) has come to a beautiful, heart-warming close. Ugh.

Not gonna lie, it arrived on my doorstep like four hours ago, and I did eat something first but then immediately dove into this book and emerged about five minutes ago, crying and Feeling Things. Because I am just. So proud of this comic and Eric Bittle and the way his story played out. Bitty and Jack and all the characters in this story have meant so much to me for so many years.

Eric "Bitty" Bittle is starting his junior year at Samwell University. He's started dating his best friend and former captain, Jack Zimmermann, and even though they can't tell anyone yet, things are good. Or, well, they're mostly good. Except Bitty isn't out to his parents yet, and hiding something this important from his friends is more difficult than expected, not to mention the pressure Jack is facing as the newest member of an NHL hockey team. But while Bitty's final two years at Samwell may be filled with some uncertainty, they're also full of love, laughter, and acceptance. And lots of hockey, of course.

I reviewed the first book when it was first printed, and the comic in it's entirety is available online for free, so I will continue to recommend this story to anyone and everyone who's looking for a world where it's possible to be yourself completely and find happiness.

I did cry when this story came to a close, both because the idea of it ending was super sad, but also because Bitty finally got the ending he deserved. He's happy and figuring out his future and everything is promising and beautiful. I might cry about it again.

Anyway, I could talk about the powerful parallels and intentional use of lighting in certain panels and the incredible character arcs, but that would make this a coherent book review, and Lord knows we can't have that. So just go online and read the whole comic for free (link here:) and then buy the books because, honestly, you're going to want to hold this story in your hands.

Similar to: Check Please #1: Hockey by Ngozi Ukazu, obvi, but also a lil bit of Running With Lions by Julian Winters

Wild Beauty by Anna-Marie McLemore

I want to say I've been on a bit of an Anna-Marie McLemore kick lately, since it feels like I've read a lot of their words in a short period of time, but there have been months between each books, so I can't in good conscience call it that. The reason it feels that way, though, is because they're books have a way of staying with me. McLemore writes beautifully and crafts such rich characters and storylines that it feels like I've only just put down their last book even though it's been months. Wild Beauty is unlikely to be any different.

The Nomeolvides women are cursed. They can grow flowers from their hands, caring for a land they cannot leave called La Pradera, and every time they love a man the garden takes him from them. Estrella and her four cousins are the youngest generation of Nomeolvides women, and they all love the same person: the girl who runs the garden, Bay Briar, an outcast from her own family. In the midst of upheaval and their attempts to stop the garden from taking the girl they love, Estrella and her cousins gift the earth trinkets they love and the garden gives them a boy. Fel doesn't remember who he is or where he's from, waking in the earth in this strange place filled with flowers and a family that loves too deeply. Together, he and Estrella uncover the mystery of La Pradera and Fel's past, and why the garden takes with such a vengeance.

As previously stated, McLemore has such a wondrous way with descriptors, painting lavish pictures of both scenery and inner thoughts. I can feel exactly as Estrella or Fel does in the way McLemore writes their surroundings and their emotions. It's almost as magical as the story itself, filled with wild color and feral land.

Wild Beauty is the story of powerful history and the way wrongs can linger over a land, poisoning everything on it, even the people who don't know. It's a story about found family and the feeling of belonging, of knowing and letting yourself be truly known, even when it comes with consequences. It's a story about women who care, who grow, who heal, but also women who rage and get to Fell Things, especially in the face of men who think they can control them.

Estrella and Fel are fantastic POV characters, because they both do so much growing, both in the literal and character-arc sense. All of the Nomeolvides women are fantastic, given their own personalities and traits despite their similarities and the way they tend to move as a unit. That's discussed in the books, a sense of identity among similarity, and it's fascinating as well as beautiful. I think 'beautiful' is probably my favorite word to use for anything McLemore book related, because it's all just so fucking beautiful, holy shit.

McLemore writes phenomenal queer characters and characters of color, bringing so much history and culture into her works. It's such a pleasure to step into those magical worlds with such powerful characters, and I eagerly await their next book to make their way to me.

Similar to: McLemore's other works The Weight of Feathers and Dark and Deepest Red, as well as Maggie Stiefvater's Scorpio Races

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloane

This was a bit of strange book recommended to me by a friend. She'd previously recommended The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, which I absolutely adored, so I figured I'd give this one a go to. And it was whimsical and strange and fun and absolutely fit with this friend's style. I was delighted and intrigued through the entire thing.

After Clay loses his marketing job in the recession, he finds himself working at the night clerk at a very strange 24-hour bookstore. Instructed not to look at the books in the back, Clay disregards the rules and is quickly sucked into a mystery involving a secret society, a book about singing dragons, fonts, and the potential secret to immortality. Aided by friends both new and old (as well as the quirky owner of the bookstore, Mr. Penumbra himself), Clay embarks on a cross-country ambitious mission to discover what exactly the secret unbound members have looking for all these years.

The characters in MP24BS are such a cluster of random encounters and fantastic weirdos who all happened to have a single point of connection: the main character, Clay. From the people he lived with to his coworkers to his friends, everyone was strange and wonderful in their own way. Clay's narrating also added a bit of splendor to it all because he obviously saw these people as both awesome and weird, so we the audience got twice the feeling of it all. He downplayed some things as the story progressed, but that just kind of added to his character, so that we got to be kind of blown away by even things Clay didn't find super impressive, as well as kind of wonder at what Clay has seen that makes this particular bit of excitement not as big a deal.

Clay has such a wry sense of humor and so much of his thought process is presented as internal wondermont and then responded to by the other characters that the reader can't help but wonder what exactly Clay is saying when he thinks. He says things that are both statements and abstract wonderings, and he kind of exists on the fringes of all the groups pulled together by his adventure. I spent the whole book fascinated by both the plot and the cast of characters revolving around Clay like little moons.

It's such a strange read that it's kind of difficult to write a review about. There are places where things are almost vulgar but in such a light-hearted way that you have to laugh, and times when the elation is practically pouring off the pages and Clay is still keeping the reader tense. Sloane has an incredible way of setting the tone for the whole book in a way that the reader never wants to put the book down. The adventure is surreal and the at the same time almost plausible; a secret cult buried within a bookstore, a key within a font, secret doors and a questing party. It's the medieval adventure we're all striving for with dungeons and dragons brought into a dusty San Francisco bookstore.

In short: weird book, definitely would recommend.

Similar to Roommates Wanted by Lisa Jewell, and Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

This book was recommended (and then subsequently lent to me) by a friend, who said the main character's quirks and mannerisms made her think I'd enjoy the story. When I read the first few chapters I was confused and a little bit offended, because while Eleanor is hilarious in her social ineptitude, she was also rude and almost intolerably embarrassing. But the further I got into the story, the more I grew to appreciate Eleanor's abrupt manner and the history that made her the way she was. This book felt more like a character study than anything else, but it was a study in growth and recovery, and that proved to be a worthwhile journey.

Eleanor Oliphant has never thought that life needs to be any better than fine. She has her routine (work, grocery shopping, Wednesday talks with her mother, vodka and pizza weekend) and that's all she really needs. Her life is fine and there's no point in changing things. But after a brief encounter with a coworker leads her to saving a man's life, suddenly everything about Eleanor's previously fine life is changing, and it's teaching her than even her seemingly irreparable heart can still love. A misguided love affair, a new family, and a bit of a makeover lead Eleanor to extreme low and subsequent highs that show her that life, and the things she does within it, can be way more than just fine.

Eleanor is a very judgmental narrator, and so our introductions to various characters are clouded by her own disdain or judgment of them. We then get to learn through their actions towards Eleanor what they're truly like, right along with Eleanor herself. The cast of characters is small, since Eleanor's social circle really only grows to include a few people, but they change her life an incredibly amount, and that's really a testament to the power of friendship. I kept waiting for the inevitable shoe-drop that was Eleanor and Raymond getting together, but in the end I was very pleasantly surprised that this wasn't a romantic love story, it was truly about friendship and the people that change your life.

Eleanor's history is revealed in tiny bits throughout the book, and a lot of it isn't completely certain until almost the very end. Eleanor deals with a lot of trauma and the system designed to help her fails until she's willing to ask for help. Her mother is a terrible person and the details of that are revealed both in Eleanor confronting her past as well as the abusive language she uses in her discussions with Eleanor. The ending twist with her mother was not one I expected, but it added another layer of depth to both Eleanor's character and her process of managing her trauma.

Eleanor managed to find happiness in her life without changing the core of who she is. She was still abrupt and strange and quirky by the end of the book, but she had people who supported her and a healthier way of coping, and that made all the difference in her outlook and acceptance. This book really is about learning to ask for help through the study of a woman who learned how to do it. Life shouldn't just be fine, it should be more than that, and sometimes it takes a little help to get there.

A complicated but ultimately very powerful book, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is a great book for those of you who might be looking for a strange character on a life changing journey, maybe even if it's just to recognize the journey you're going on too.

Similar to: Darius The Great is Not Okay by Adib Khorram and The Trap by Melanie Raab

The Science of Breakable Things by Tae Keller

There is a special place in my heart for middle grade books where science is used as both an extended metaphor and a way of allowing the characters to explore their feelings. It's probably my favorite complicated genre of books for younger readers.

Natalie's mom has been depressed for several months. She won't get out of bed, she won't take care of the plants in their greenhouse, and she won't even try to talk to Natalie. But Natalie has a plan. If she can win the school egg drop competition, she can use the prize money to fly her mom to New Mexico, where the cobalt blue orchids grow, the very plant her mom was studying before everything fell apart. If she can see that magic plant, maybe her mom will wake up and everything can go back to the way it was before. But it takes a lot of courage and a couple of friends to keep things from breaking, and sometimes you can't keep certain eggs from breaking.

Keller tells a really heartbreaking and uplifting story about a girl trying to understand what's happening with her mother. Her therapist father tried to help, but there's still a lot of disconnect between adults and kids in this book, something that's obvious in how Natalie interacts with and observes both her science teacher and her parents. Natalie is a great character, and she's surrounded by quite the cast, including her best friend Twig and her new friend Dari.

TSOBT, in addition to dealing with mental health, also includes a look at culture and what it means to find pieces of yourself in your history. Natalie is Korean (one quarter - her father is half-Korean) and her grandmother, or Halmoni, comes to visit them, bringing with her pieces of Natalie's heritage. While her Korean ancestry isn't an enormous part of the overall plot, it is touched on in a way that gives another example of how not talking to children about things can lead to distance. Natalie's dad doesn't want to make Korean food or speak Korean or really have anything to do with that half of him, but in doing so he's robbing Natalie of the chance to learn about part of her identity. I think that realization ultimately helped him recognize that Natalie needed to learn more about her mother's depression too, and that sometimes the history we'd rather ignore is the very thing we need to discuss.

The book is organized as Natalie's scientific journal for her seventh-grade science class, with different sections of the book organized by different parts of the scientific method or the processes her class is learning about. And while science plays a bit part in the book (Natalie's mom is a botanist, the egg drop competition comes from her science teacher), it's also serves as a way for Natalie to process the things she doesn't understand. In learning (and, spoiler alert, ultimately failing) how to try and keep the egg from breaking, Natalie has to face how some things in life can't be kept whole, but that doesn't make them any less than they were before.

If you're looking for a middle grade book that tackles a big issue with fun characters (whether for yourself or for an 8-12 year-old in your life), I would highly recommend this one.

Similar to: The Thing About Jellyfish by Ali Benjamin and See You In The Cosmos by Jack Cheng

That's all I've got for this month, but as the weather warms up and the world continues to turn, there will continue to be plenty of books to read. I'll see you all next month.

Keep writing, friends!

Sam

Literary Recommendation: Once and For All by Sarah Dessen

Media Recommendation: Alec Benjamin's song Six Feet Apart