Genre 📚: YA Speculative Fiction, Coming-of-age, Romance
Tropes 💁♀️: Empathetic environment, Family drama, Grumpy x Sunshine
Rep ✔️: Bangladeshi American main character, Turkish American love interest, queer side character
CW ⚠️: Depression, suicidal ideation, anxiety, panic attacks, emotional (and some physical) abuse
Rating ⭐️: 4.5/5
Genre 📚: YA Contemporary Fantasy, Coming-of-age, Romance
Tropes 💁♀️: Time travel, Secret pen pals, Opposites attract, Reverse harem
Rep ✔️: Biracial Japanese American main character
CW ⚠️: Messy divorce, emotionally distant parents
Rating ⭐️: 4.5/5
Genre 📚: YA Contemporary, Coming-of-age, Romance
Tropes 💁♀️: College road trip, Former friends to lovers
Rep ✔️: Chinese American main characters
CW ⚠️: Loss of a loved one, grief, anxiety, diaspora, brief moment of racism
Rating ⭐️: 4.5/5
Genre 📚: YA Contemporary, Romance, Coming-of-age
Tropes 💁♀️: Fake dating, Opposites attract
Rep ✔️: Palestinian-Canadian main character, Lebanese-Canadian love interest
CW ⚠️: Anxiety, claustrophobia, panic attacks, alcoholism
Rating ⭐️: 4/5
Genre 📚: YA Contemporary/Fantasy, Dark academia, Romance, Coming-of-age
Tropes 💁♀️: Body swapping, Hidden identity, Friends to lovers
Rep ✔️: Chinese American main characters, POC and queer side characters
CW ⚠️: Depression, Self-loathing, Grief, Off-page death of a parent
Rating ⭐️: 5/5
Genre 📚: YA/NA Contemporary, Romance, Coming-of-age
Tropes 💁♀️: Rivals to lovers, Ex-friends to lovers, First love
Rep ✔️: Bisexual love interest, Indian best friend character, queer and non-binary side characters
Rating ⭐️: 3.5/5
**CW: Contains themes of child abuse and trauma.
This book is ~sweet~. Like sipping lemonade out on the front porch kind of sweet. In the Orbit of You had me from the very beginning, when we meet young Nova and Sam playing in the dirt by their connected fence. The queen and king of Snailopolis, as they call it. (Freaking adorable.) They’re torn apart, however, when Sam is taken away from his abusive home to live with his uncle. Snailopolis and its royalty become a distant memory. Until Nova and Sam meet again in their final years of high school.
Continue reading “Mini Review: In the Orbit of You”
So much to say about All That’s Left to Say. The novel, written by Emery Lord, follows protagonist Hannah MacLaren after her cousin and best friend Sophie dies from an overdose. Hannah’s world is completely shattered, as she deals with this loss and the mystery surrounding it. The Sophie she knew wouldn’t have used drugs, wouldn’t have kept such a huge secret from her. Yet that’s the truth she’s left with. Her grief is big and all-consuming, the only thing driving her forward being her determination to find out who gave Sophie the pills that ended her life.
Continue reading “Review: All That’s Left to Say”
Somehow, in the black hole that is the YA Fiction community, I missed the name Emery Lord. She made her debut in 2014 with contemporary novel Open Road Summer and pounded out four more novels after that. It was the 2017 romance When We Collided that finally got her on my radar. Funny, heartwarming, and achingly raw, WWC takes first love and intertwines it with themes of grief and mental health — themes very much needed in the YA genre. Continue reading “Double Feature: The Start of Me and You & The Map from Here to There”
Sara Bechtol 