January Reviews

Hello 2020! I made it one of my goals this year to read 100 books, and I gotta tell you, January was off to a very promising start. Let's not waste any time and just jump right in:

Her Royal Highness by Rachel Hawkins

Hooo boy, what a way to kick off 2020. This book was funny and charming and a darling wlw romance, exactly what the doctor ordered for the new decade.

Technically the sequel to Royals (which I reviewed back in October of 2019), Her Royal Highness can be read as a standalone book, but I did appreciate some of the character background Royals provided, and it was fun to dive back into this verse. Her Royal Highness is the lighthearted enemies to friends to lovers LGBT romance of my dreams, complete with grand romantic gestures, making out in Scotland, a bar brawl, and a few familiar royal wreckers.

Millie Quint is running away from a bad breakup with her best friend/not-quite girlfriend, and what could be further from Texas than a boarding school in Scotland? Except, it turns out her roommate is the actual princess of Scotland, Flora Baird, and she's entitled, spoiled, and the prettiest person Millie's ever seen. Now deeply entrenched in a world that couldn't be more different from her own, falling for a literal princess is the worst thing Millie could do, until it's not.

Hawkins has already proved herself to me with Royals, and this book just continued to endear her to me. She has such firecracker protagonists that find themselves amidst royals, at no fault of their own, just trying to have a good time. Millie's a lovely protagonist who loves geology and pretty girls, and honestly I can't blame her for either. The other characters, both new and returning, were fun, and I feel like in this book I finally liked Flora. Her character arc contained significant self improvement without losing her stubborn spirit, and it was hilarious to read (even if it was frustrating at times in the beginning). The other characters upheld witty dialogue and grand exploits, and of the newbies Saks and Perry were my favorites. It was a shame we didn't get to spend more time with some of the background characters, and I thought for sure part of Millie's story was building for a big fight with her friend Lee, so that might be a minor complaint of mine. Then again, they are background characters for a reason, so I can't be too upset about not seeing them more than I did.

This will be a shorter review because, honestly, this was a quick and fun read that featured a lesbian princess and bisexual American girl falling in love, which is really all I can ask for.

Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu

This is one of those books that I desperately wish I had read in high school, back when I was a burgeoning feminist and in need of a guide to dealing with stuff I didn't understand yet. However, I'm pleased to have read it now and know that it exists for girls in high school now, when the world needs more feminists than ever.

Moxie is the story of a high school junior named Viv, who gets fed up with the sexist nonsense the boys and administration allow to happen at her Texas high school including everything from letting the football players say whatever they want to unfair dress code rules to trying to cover up sexual assault. Taking inspiration from her mom's Riot Grrl days, Viv creates and secretly distributes a all girl zine calling for action. And before she knows it, more girls have taken up the call and have started their own movement, culminating in a stand off against the principal in what is essentially a girl revolution.

What I really liked about this book is that it touched on all sorts of issues in equality and feminism, including the way beauty standards lean more toward white and thin presentations. Viv has several conversations about race within feminism with another girl, Kiera, and it goes towards educating both her and the reader that when it comes to feminism, race is just as much as issue as gender.

Viv's friend Claudia was more hesitant to deal with anything Moxie related and didn't really like the term feminist, something that I remember hearing in high school when girls were first learning about equality and feminism. It was a scary, big, somewhat bad word, and it took a lot of time for us to feel comfortable with it. And unfortunately, Claudia's arc toward accepting the word included some trauma and asshole boys, something the book handled with as much grace as a situation like that can be handled.

We also got to see growth on the boy side, with Viv's boyfriend Seth, who was guilty of using the phrase "not all guys..." several times, not seeing that he was negating Viv's argument that, unfortunately, yes most guys. He did some growing up in the book too, and his arc was a reminder that feminism is also a mantle guys can carry.

Overall, Mathieu did a great job telling Viv and her friend's stories, including a lot of growth in Viv's relationship with her mom and grandparents, her relationship with Seth, as well as her creation and the subsequent revolution of Moxie. I spent a lot of the time reading this book angry, angry at the boys who got away with shit, angry at the adults who refused to do anything to help, angry at the way girls have to grow up so fast because the boys around them were never told no. It makes me remember that we're nowhere close to being finished with the fight for gender equality.

It sort of feels like the only really big issue not tackled in this book was gender identity, and how feminism absolutely includes transgender women. Maybe another author will rise to the task, but until then, I think Moxie's a good read and reminder that girls can do anything.

Wonder Woman: Warbringer by Leigh Bardugo

I was lucky enough to snag a copy of this book at The Last Bookstore in LA, which is a pretty spectacular bookstore. If you ever get the chance to go there, do it. Now I suppose I should talk about the book itself, since this is a book review and not a bookstore review.

I've read quite a few books from Leigh Bardugo now, and while this one wasn't my favorite, it was well written and once I got further into the story, very compelling. It was initially difficult to get into the story, and I think part of that had to do with Bardugo's sometimes heavy descriptors. I found myself skimming some of the paragraphs in the first few chapters, just trying to get into the action. But once it did, hot damn I was speeding through the story reading every word.

This book is part of a larger collection about DC heroes and their origins, looked at with new stories and a YA lense. I haven't read any of the others and don't really plan to, so the series' other books aren't necessary for the enjoyment of the individual story. Bardugo took on Wonder Woman when she was just Diana, daughter of the queen of the Amazons, coming into her own. Alia, a teenage girl descended from a long line of Warbringers, starting back with Helen of Troy, ends up in a shipwreck near Themyscira, but when Diana rescues her, she plunges her island into chaos. She must travel with Alia back to the world of man and cleanse her at Helen's tomb before the next full moon, or the world with descend into chaos and war.

Diana and the Amazons are some of the coolest figures in DC comics and (in the Amazon's case) Greek mythology. I adore the most recent Wonder Woman movie and, honestly, please let me live on an island of warrior women who will teach me how to wield a sword. That kind of just feels like the dream. This iteration of Diana struggled a lot with trying to find her place on an island where everyone else earned their home. She wants to prove herself as a worthy Amazon, someone who deserves to be on the island, so this quest with Alia feels like the perfect opportunity to do something good and just. Her friendship with Alia was also a lovely thing to watch grow, though I was a little disappointed that the little romance in the book that existed happened between (SPOILERS!) Alia's brother Jason and Diana, instead of Alia and Diana. Give me the glorious bisexual Wonder Woman I, no, the world, deserves!

Of course, (MORE SPOILERS) that little romance made Jason's betrayal even worse. My heart felt like it dropped to my feet when that happened, and I was scrambling to check how many pages were left to see if Diana had time to fix everything that just got screwed up. She did, thank goodness, we all know I'm not really a fan of sad endings.

There was a lot of violence in the book, and while that shouldn't have surprised me (because A) Wonder Woman, B) Leigh Bardugo) it was still a little bit jarring, especially with how blunt and sometimes graphic it was. But such is war, and there wasn't ever a point where it felt unnecessary or excessive. Additionally, Bardugo balanced the violence and hurt with a lot of humor. Her dialogue between characters (especially whenever Nim and Theo were involved) was fabulous, and it helped ease the tension whenever things got a little too intense.

Overall, I generally finished this book with a good feeling, pleased with the characters and this little journey into Diana's past. It served to further humanize Wonder Woman while, ironically, also serving to make her even more indestructible and badass. I've got a few other Bardugo books on my To Read shelf, so we'll see where this one ranks when I finish those as well.

Artemis by Andy Weir

I was lucky enough to see Andy Weir speak at the Fleet Science Center in Balboa Park a couple months before his second book, Artemis, was released. He was delightfully nerdy and awkward and my sister and I had a great time. We both loved The Martian, and I was very much looking forward to reading Artemis when it was released to the world. Except I was a broke college student, and then a broke postgraduate, and I couldn't seem to find a copy of it anywhere that wasn't wildly expensive. I complained about this every six months or so, whenever I talked to anybody about The Martian or space books or really anything to do with mars in general. And then, I got very lucky with my timing and mentioned my desire to read this book in front of a very generous person. So the copy I read was lent to me by a lovely young lady at work and I've been so very careful in making sure it stays in pristine condition, even when I wanted very desperately to squeeze the pages between me and Jazz Bashara trying to stay alive.

This book feels very different from The Martian, and that's not a bad thing. The protagonist is a sarcastic piece of shit named Jazz and while it took me a chapter or two to warm up to her, I was all in by the midpoint. Plucky, stubborn, and definitely criminal, Jazz was a genius with wasted potential and a big desire to be filthy rich.

Artemis takes place in a future where mankind managed to colonize the moon. Or, at least build a city on it. Jazz Bachara, our heroine, grew up on the moon with her welder father, finding ways to make trouble in low gravity. Now grown up and working as a smuggler, Jazz finds herself in deep shit when one of her bigger sabotaging jobs goes wrong, and suddenly a lot of people want her dead. With her life on the line, Jazz will have to call on ever wit and strength she has to survive this shit show.

This book shifted very suddenly from a solo moon sabotage mission to a veritable heist story, and I Lived for that. I love a good heist story, and when the stakes are the actual, literal moon? Fantastic. It did, admittedly, have some information that went over my head, and I definitely had to skim or skip a paragraph or two when it got to talking about compounds and explaining how certain mechanical things work on the moon. But Weir's an engineer, and it was obviously impressive research and thought that went into building something as realistic as possible for science fiction.

Wild at every turn, I never really knew what Jazz was going to do, but she managed very impressively to fight her way out of every corner she got backed into, sometimes physically. And while in some cases it got kind of obvious that this was a dude writing a woman, Weir did a manageable job of crafting a believable lady. The rest of the characters were a fun motley bunch, and while some of the relationships developed in ways I wasn't expecting (or wished had been fleshed out further) the story itself wasn't hindered by Jazz's caustic method of making friends.

I also liked how Weir included transcriptions from messages between Jazz and her business partner/pen pal on earth, since it gave the reader a lot of insight into Jazz's history without info dumping or drowning us in exposition.

I think overall I didn't like this one as much as The Martian, but it was still entertaining and enjoyable to read. Shout out to Kia for finally supplying me with a copy of Artemis. You will never see this, but you have my eternal gratitude.

Darius The Great Is Not Okay by Adib Khorram

Darius is a self-proclaimed fractional Persian with a love for tea and a complicated relationship with his white father. When his mother's parents back in Iran send word that his grandfather has a brain tumor, the family decides to take a trip to Iran, so that Darius and his sister can meet their grandparents for the first time. There, Darius is faced with the judgement of not only his father but the rest of his family, trying to find a way to fit himself into the puzzle of his family and culture. With the help of his new friend, Sohrab, Darius starts to realize that maybe it's not a place he needs to fit in, but a space he already owns.

This book reminded me a lot of Benjamin Alire Saenz's style of writing, with a very introspective main character and a storyline that followed more internal growth than external conflict. Which does take a little longer for me to read, simply because of the poetic nature of language in books like that, but I still enjoyed it. Khorram likes his repetitive phrases, which I can relate too, and he writes a lot of lovely metaphors and comparisons.

I don't really know what I was expecting from this book going in, but what I got was a book about a biracial teenage boy with depression, learning about his history and family. He relationships with all of his different family members and the friend he makes there are complicated, and we as the reader get to follow his up and downswings in interacting with this people and what he believes their perception of him to be.

The father-son relationship in this book was especially complicated, with Darius believing he has to live up to his dad's very strict expectations. It's not until the end of the book when the two of them have a conversation that the truth of where they both are in that relationship is revealed. It was a very important moment for both Darius and the reader, as a reminder of how human and flawed parents are too.

Darius' relationship with his grandparents felt a little reminiscent of my own. While my grandparents at least all live in the same country as me, there is an entire continent between us and I don't interact with them as much as all my other cousins do. This means that a lot of time I just don't know what to say to them or how to interact with them, and learning to let myself ask questions and tear down my walls is integral to forming a relationship with someone.

There are some places where the book isn't afraid to be very, very honest about some embarrassing teenage situations. I'm not great at handling second-hand embarrassment, so I struggled a bit with some of those parts, but being a teenager is all about feeling like you don't belong in yourself and growing, so it was important to include pieces of that for Darius' journey toward self-acceptance. Even if it made me want to run away sometimes.

Overall this was a beautifully written book about familial relationships, and I enjoyed it.

The Next Great Paulie Fink by Ali Benjamin

This was a middle grade novel I read at the behest of my coworkers, who were trying to determine if it would be a good fit for our reading program. And while I ultimately decided against recommending it, that in no way reflects my overall enjoyment of the book.

Paulie Fink was a legend at Mitchell school, a rural school run out of an old estate in Vermont. But when he doesn't show up for seventh grade, his classmates determine that new girl Caitlyn should help them choose who gets to be the next great trickster, Paulie Fink. But running a reality-show style contest isn't easy, especially when Caitlyn's still trying to find her footing in this strange new place.

I liked this story less than I did Benjamin's other book, The Thing About Jellyfish, but I still really liked it, especially the last hundred pages or so of the story. TNGPF may be a book about ridiculous middle schoolers trying to find a way to fill the hole their class clown left behind, but it's also about how our image and idea of other people is incomplete. We all tell stories about people who know, or people we think we know, but what we pass along in those stories is selective inclusion and perspective. We can never fully know a person other than ourselves.

There's a lot of great moments in this book, and that includes the breakdown of topics that younger readers don't often learn about, made easier to understand and applicable to the story. The characters learn about Plato's allegory of the cave, Greek terminology, and the problematic nature of history, and it's all explained for any younger readers to be able to easily follow along.

This book had a great cast of mismatched and quirky characters. The setting--a tiny school in an abandoned manor--was very creative and immediately drew me in as a reader. Caitlyn, the main character, wasn't the most likable person, but she got where she needed to be by the end, and her journey towards self-realization and improvement was worth the harder beginning.

The story format was interesting but added to the overall idea of perspective. Parts of the book were told as a narrative from Caitlyn's point of view, while other pieces were transcripts from interviews with the other students and teachers and email exchanges. It was difficult to read at first, since the reader kind of had to jump in the middle of everything with Caitlyn, but after a little bit I started to look forward to the interviews and getting the chance to see what the other characters were thinking.

The descriptions and language used in this book were beautiful and youthful, but also appealing to any audience that might be reading the book. I didn't have a problem reading about seventh graders despite being a post-college graduate. In fact, Benjamin's works seem to be very well built to be read by both adults and children, which marks them as very good children's books in general.

Read this book if you want something that's young and fun but also introspective and a little bit heartbreaking.

And that's January! Whew! Overall a great month of reading and a fun opportunity to explore different genres within the YA umbrella. I know next month is a short month, but hopefully I can get just as many books read as I did this month. Maybe I'll even make them all romance themed for Valentine's day!

Keep writing, my friends.

Sam

Literary Recommendation: Emma Mill's newest book, Radio Silence, was just released. I haven't read it yet, but it's bound to be fun!!

Media Recommendation: Pick of the Litter (2019) on Disney+ (I cry a lot when I watch this show, I love dogs so much)