It’s Juneteenth, which makes an incredibly appropriate day to review Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley. This book was on my radar since it first came out in 2014, but it took a wee bit of time to actually find time to read it. (Seriously, on this site, I know I’m not the only one who’s reading list is longer than the time I’ll ever possibly have to read over the course of my entire life…) What first drew me in was that the […]
YA Lesbian and Trans Love From All The Angles
I’d been wanting to read this compilation of lesbian YA short stores from Julie Anne Peters for a few years and so I was very excited when I discovered a copy in my country library collection. As a fan of Peters for a while, since I love how she draws me into believable worlds of lesbian and trans teen characters with humor, warmth, and great writing, this book didn’t disappoint. In fact, it went beyond my expectations in terms of variety. Without going into spoilers […]
Good ole Nebraska U
This book took me completely by surprise. I mean, of course I knew I’d like it, since Rainbow Rowell is a favorite around these parts, but I had no idea it would hit so close to home. I added Fangirl to my wishlist along with a whole mess of other books at the beginning of my push to even out the male-female author ratio in my library. I knew the basic premise of the book but nothing about the author besides her gender, so when […]
First love, gender, and other complicated things
Sometimes, a random internet search leads you to some awesome places. One night two weeks ago, I was in the library. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to read, so I did a search for Southern Lesbian fiction. There were no new Rita Mae Brown books (that weren’t fox or cat related) and most of titles the query returned, the library didn’t have. (I know, shocking that a fairly conservation, Northern NJ, small-town library wasn’t overflowing with Southern Lesbian lit, right?) However, they did […]
I Think I Finally Love YA Again
In a nutshell, this book is what I had hoped The Mortal Instruments series would have been, and as you know from my review of City of Bones, I was less than happy with the cliches, teenage drama, and terrible love triangle. I’m happy to report that literally NONE of that exists in The Raven Boys. Even though the characters are all high schoolers, and they do believable high school things, this was a mature plot with mature characters. It tackled big issues in comprehensive ways, and even though there […]
Revolutionary War Goonies
I have always enjoyed YA and Middle Grade novels, a good book is a good book regardless of its target audience. However, I keenly felt all through reading 7th Grade Revolution that I was most definitely not the target audience and that a younger person would have enjoyed the book a lot more then I did. That’s not to say that it’s a bad book, it’s not, it’s just not one that crosses the demographic from young reader to adult reader well. It’s a perfectly […]