Category Archives: Young Adult/Teen 12-18

Review: Opening My Eyes Underwater by Ashley Woodfolk

Book Review and Content, Nonfiction, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , , , , ,
Opening My Eyes Underwater: Essays on Hope, Humanity, and Our Hero Michelle Obama by Ashley Woodfolk cover shows cartoon layers of water in pink, orange, yellow, purple, dark blue, light blue, and dark green.

Opening My Eyes Underwater: Essays on Hope, Humanity, and Our Hero Michelle Obama
Ashley Woodfolk
Feiwel & Friends
Published September 27, 2022

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About Opening My Eyes Underwater

Inspired by the life and quotations of former first lady Michelle Obama, OPENING MY EYES UNDERWATER is a collection of essays penned by bestselling author Ashley Woodfolk.

In essays about bullying, heartbreak, racism, and confidence, Woodfolk taps into her past to share those stories that made her who she is today. She seamlessly weaves in parallel experiences that both she and Mrs. Obama have faced in their separate childhoods as well as their adult lives. Open, searing, and honest, these are stories that will help readers feel seen. Readers who are growing and learning as they move forward through life’s triumphs and pitfalls will undoubtedly gravitate to and find comfort within its pages.

My Review

Ashley Woodfolk is an author whose books I’ve been wanting to read. When I came across this book, the concept of it really hooked me. Essays on hope? Michelle Obama, you say? Yes, please. I’m in.

I always forget that reading a collection of shorter pieces, whether essays or short stories, is something I really enjoy. It’s nice to be able to read a chunk of something and pause in the reading to think about that piece as a whole. It’s so different than consuming an entire novel or nonfiction book and then reflecting on the entire thing.

These essays are loosely connected– several talk about the author’s experiences with panic attacks and anxiety, especially about school and college. At the start of each essay is a page with a quote from Michelle Obama. The quotes are well-chosen and inspirational just on their own. In the essay that follows, the author explores some of her own life experiences and reflects on experiences Michelle Obama has described about her own life, expanding on the ideas from the quote.

The essays are thoughtful and encouraging, but also pretty real. Ashley Woodfolk wrote the book during the days of the Covid-19 pandemic, and she isn’t shy about how hard that process or those experiences were. But she also calls us toward hope again and again. She reminds readers of their value as human beings and members of the same world in which people like Michelle Obama live and thrive.

I really enjoyed the book and found it to be a really easy read. I think readers looking for some encouraging words, especially as they transition from high school to college, will find a lot of inspiration for life in these pages.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 12 up.

Representation
Michelle Obama is a Black woman and the former First Lady of the US. The book includes some biographical information about her as well as quotes from speeches she’s given and things posted to her social media accounts. Ashley Woodfolk is also a Black woman and identifies as Queer.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
References to romantic relationships that the author was in. At one point she describes a boyfriend who continually pushed past her boundaries. She reflects back on that now as an unhealthy and unsafe relationship.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
The author describes what it’s like when she has a panic attack. She also references George Floyd’s murder by police. She discusses a job at a clothing store at which many of the employees stole merchandise. Though she herself did not steal, she uses this as an example of having personal values and sticking to them even when others aren’t doing what you have committed to do for yourself.

Drug Content
None.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support this blog. I received a free copy of OPENING MY EYES UNDERWATER in exchange for my honest review. All opinions my own.

Review: Valiant Ladies by Melissa Grey

Book Review and Content, Historical, Romance, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , , , , ,

Valiant Ladies
Melissa Grey
Feiwel & Friends
Published June 14, 2022

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About Valiant Ladies

Two teen vigilantes set off on an action-packed investigation to expose corruption and deliver justice in Valiant Ladies, Melissa Grey’s YA historical novel inspired by real seventeenth century Latinx teenagers known as the Valiant Ladies of Potosí.

By day Eustaquia “Kiki” de Sonza and Ana Lezama de Urinza are proper young seventeenth-century ladies. But when night falls, they trade in their silks and lace for swords and muskets, venturing out into the vibrant, bustling, crime-ridden streets of Potosí in the Spanish Empire’s Viceroyalty of Peru. They pass their time fighting, gambling, and falling desperately in love with one another.

Then, on the night Kiki’s engagement to the Viceroy’s son is announced, her older brother―heir to her family’s fortune―is murdered. The girls immediately embark on a whirlwind investigation that takes them from the lowliest brothels of Potosí to the highest echelons of the Spanish aristocracy.

My Review

Okay, so the premise completely sold me on reading this book. It pretty much had me at “real seventeenth-century Latinx teenagers known as the Valiant Ladies of Potosí.” I also really liked THE GIRL AT MIDNIGHT by Melissa Grey, so I was excited to read another book by her.

The cover copy also mentions them taking on the patriarchy, and like, I guess they do fight some individual men. I kept waiting for that to solidify into a larger conspiracy or something. For them to have a more overt victory over a system that oppressed women. I don’t know. Maybe I missed something.

I liked Ana and Kiki’s characters. I felt like the romantic storyline was a little uneven. There was a lot of focus on it at the beginning and then almost no focus on it for a while and then lots of focus on it again. I don’t know if that was supposed to be because Kiki got engaged, and so Ana backed way off, and Kiki repressed her feelings? It wasn’t really clear to me, but maybe I missed some more subtle clues.

Unanswered Questions

There are several places in the story where the girls make choices that really don’t make sense to me. At one point, they go to a brothel looking for a girl who lives there. This is the same place Ana grew up, so the girls are familiar with it. For some reason, they go at night. Guards won’t let them in. They get caught when they break into the girl’s room (which they find completely destroyed). The owner (who raised Ana) asks the girls to leave quietly.

Instead of asking her what happened to the obviously destroyed room and where the girl is, they attack the guards and kill one of them. It just seemed weird to me that it didn’t occur to them to ask the owner what was going on or to assume maybe she hired guards to protect the rest of the girls. At the least, they might want to know why the room was destroyed or what happened.

There are some other places where it felt like maybe some scenes got deleted, and the information in them maybe didn’t make it back into the surviving part of the story if that makes sense? When Kiki’s brother is murdered, for some reason, everyone assumes he died by suicide, but no one really explains why they think this? It was kind of odd. There were other instances where characters made assumptions that didn’t really make sense to me, too. It left me wondering if these were things that had been more obvious to the author but just weren’t as clear to me.

I’m not sure what happened.

Conclusion

On the whole, I love that this book raises awareness about Ana Lezama de Urinza and Dona Eustaquia de Sonza. If you’re interested in knowing more about them, Broads You Should Know has a podcast episode on them.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Representation
All characters are Latinx. The main characters, Anna and Kiki, are attracted to women.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used fairly frequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing and attraction between two girls. Ana grew up in a brothel. Both girls are friends with a sex worker.

Spiritual Content
A family seeks to have a loved one buried, but the church refuses since it’s believed that the man died by suicide. References to demonic rituals. Kiki and Ana attend a funeral service at a church.

Violent Content
Situations of peril and battle scenes. Ana and Kiki fight criminals together. A group of men attack Ana. One punches her in the face. They find the body of a murdered young woman. A woman reveals scars that indicate someone tortured her. Men kidnap two women, threatening them.

Ana attacks a man who then sends his accomplices to beat her up. Ana discovers a man’s body hanging from a tree.

Drug Content
Several characters drink alcohol, including Ana. While drunk, she makes some choices she regrets later.

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Review: The Magic Fish by Trung le Nguyen

Blogger's Favorites, Book Review and Content, Fantasy, Graphic Novel or Adaptation, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , , , ,

The Magic Fish
Trung le Nguyen
Random House Graphic
Published October 13, 2020

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About The Magic Fish

Tiến loves his family and his friends…but Tiến has a secret he’s been keeping from them, and it might change everything. An amazing YA graphic novel that deals with the complexity of family and how stories can bring us together.

Real life isn’t a fairytale.

But Tiến still enjoys reading his favorite stories with his parents from the books he borrows from the local library. It’s hard enough trying to communicate with your parents as a kid, but for Tiến, he doesn’t even have the right words because his parents are struggling with their English. Is there a Vietnamese word for what he’s going through?

Is there a way to tell them he’s gay?

A beautifully illustrated story by Trung Le Nguyen that follows a young boy as he tries to navigate life through fairytales, an instant classic that shows us how we are all connected. The Magic Fish tackles tough subjects in a way that accessible with readers of all ages, and teaches us that no matter what—we can all have our own happy endings.

My Review

One of the things this book does so cleverly is clue the reader into the different threads of the story with the color of its panels. There are different timelines and stories all being told at the same time. In the present, Tiến is figuring out his feelings for a fellow classmate and how to tell his parents he’s gay.

His mom shares memories of her own life, and later, her journey back to Vietnam to visit her family. In the midst of these stories, in Tiến’s family, they share a lot of stories with one another. For example, in some scenes, he reads fairytales to his mom. In others, his mother listens while her aunt tells her a fairytale. Each of those threads– Tiến’s perspective, his mom’s perspective, and the fairytales are color-coded so that the background of the panels is one color.

That way when the story switches to a different thread, the panels change color. It’s pretty genius. This is the first time I’ve ever seen anything like that, and I have to say it made the story really easy to follow.

Another thing that I really liked is the fairytales themselves. I loved the choices the author made in terms of what the settings looked like for those stories– that’s something we kind of take for granted in reading fairytales in text, I think. But it’s really clear that the author made very purposeful, carefully considered choices about the clothes and backgrounds of each of the tales. I loved that.

The author’s note points up the fact that cultures all over the world have their own versions of tales like Cinderella. For some of those stories, like Cinderella, the western version wasn’t even the first version of the story. I loved that the author points this out in the note at the end of the book.

Conclusion

So I feel like I talked a lot about the setup and background of the story, but let me say that I also really enjoyed reading THE MAGIC FISH. They way Tiến wrestles with what to say to his family felt very real. I love the way his family used stories to bond with and communicate with each other.

There’s something really special about a story that can transcend genre and tell a transcendent story as well. I think THE MAGIC FISH does that beautifully.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 12 up.

Representation
Tiến is gay and Vietnamese American. His best friend Claire is Black.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
Tiến has a crush on a boy.

Spiritual Content
A priest speaks to Tiến about his feelings. We only see the beginning of the conversation, but it’s clear he says some deeply homophobic things.

Fairytales contain magic and spirits. One is about the grandfather of the sea, a man who rides on the back of a skeleton and tries to claim a girl for his bride. Others contain mermaids. In one animals speak to humans.

Violent Content
Brief references to prison camps in Vietnam. Some of the fairytales have some dark themes or scenes. In one, a woman stabs another through her heart. A woman unknowingly consumes a meal made from her daughter. A tipped over container of the soup shows it contained human bones.

Drug Content
None.

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Review: Wish of the Wicked by Danielle Paige

Book Review and Content, Fantasy, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , , , ,

Wish of the Wicked
Danielle Paige
Bloomsbury
November 14, 2023

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About Wish of the Wicked

Bestselling author Danielle Paige puts a dark spin on fairy godmothers in a new YA series for fans of Brigid Kemmerer and Maleficent.

For centuries, the enchanted members of the Entente have worked in tandem with the Three Fates—the Present, the Past, and the Future—to maintain destiny across the Thirteen Queendoms. But when Queen Magrit learns of her untimely demise from Hecate, Fate of the Future, Magrit burns Hecate at the stake and decrees death to all Entente in order to live forever.

But some survive, including sixteen-year-old Farrow, who hatches a dangerous plan to seek revenge. Along the way, she finds herself falling for the one person who could ruin everything. With life and love hanging in the balance, she must decide who to trust and what’s most important: living in the past or forging a new future.

Bestselling author Danielle Paige launches a brand-new fairy godmother origin story full of intrigue, magic, and romance.

My Review

I found the pacing of this one a little different than I expected. Sometimes an origin story takes us right up to the beginning of a familiar tale, or right up to a character’s involvement in a familiar tale. I expected something like that here. To follow Farrow’s story until she meets a crying girl in a wrecked dress who just wants to go to the ball.

Instead, about half of the book tells Farrow’s history, relating how she has magic, what happened to drive her to the palace, and why she’s interested in helping Cinderella in the first place. The second half basically tells the story of Cinderella, but from the fairy godmother’s point-of-view.

My favorite parts of the book were how the setup changed or reflected the story of Cinderella. I really liked the setup involving Cinderella’s step-family. That reflected the original story and turned it around completely differently. It created connections between the fairy godmother and the family that added a lot of interest and stakes.

I also expected a lot more romance in the book. There are a couple of kissing scenes, but they’re mostly performative, and Farrow spends so much time focused on revenge and survival that she barely spares a thought to her feelings about a certain boy. It’s possible that the romance develops more in a subsequent book in the series, though.

All in all, I thought this was an imaginative origin story/retelling with some clever changes to the original tale. Fairy tale readers will like getting the often-overlooked perspective of the fairy godmother in a female-dominated cast.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Representation
Farrow is described as having light brown skin.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Mild profanity used somewhat infrequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between boy and girl. At one point, a boy’s friends tease him and ask him to have Farrow disrobe in front of them as part of the aftermath of a ceremony where she’s presented to him. She obliges, down to her undergarments.

Spiritual Content
Some characters have magic. Three of the Entente have the ability to see events: past, present, or future. Some characters refer to Fate as a source of power or guidance.

Violent Content
Situations of peril. Some brief descriptions of women being burned alive or drowned. A few scenes contain some body horror, in which a person’s body transforms into beetles, bees, or scorpions. Soldiers attack using magic-suppressing weapons.

Drug Content
None.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything but help support this blog. I received a free copy of WISH OF THE WICKED in exchange for my honest review.

Review: No One Left But You by Tash McAdam

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No One Left But You
Tash McAdam
Soho Teen
November 7, 2023

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About No One Left But You

A trans teen is swept up in a whirlwind friendship with lethal consequences in this taut YA thriller, for fans of Sadie, K. Ancrum and HBO’s Euphoria.

BEFORE

Newly out trans guy Max is having a hard time in school. Things have been tough since his summer romance, Danny, turned into his bully. This year, his plan is to keep his head down and graduate. All that changes when new It-girl Gloss moves to town. No one understands why perfect, polished Gloss is so interested in an introverted skater kid, but Max blooms in the hothouse of her attention. Caught between romance and obsession, he’ll do whatever it takes to keep her on his side.

AFTER

Haircuts, makeovers, drugs, parties. It’s all fun and games until someone gets killed at a rager gone terribly wrong. Max refuses to believe that Gloss did it. But if not Gloss, who? Desperate to figure out truth in the wake of tragedy, Max veers dangerously close to being implicated—and his own memories of that awful night are fuzzy.

Both sharp-edged thriller and moving coming-of-age, this gorgeously wrought novel is perfect for readers who want stories with trans characters front-and-center.

My Review

I’m going to go ahead and admit that I laughed at some things in this book that I don’t think were meant to be funny. For example, at one point, the main character is making a point that he’s noticing some recovery from previous depression. He says something like, “I’m finally asking myself normal questions, like ‘do I want to do mushrooms in the woods with a girl I might like.” And I don’t want to minimize the shift in his mental state or the joy of noticing a new distance from depressed thoughts.

But also, I couldn’t help laughing at how differently I defined “normal questions” in my own high school experience. It struck me funny.

Interesting comparisons aside, though, Max’s emotional journey through the book really packs a punch. The story travels from him peeling apart his feelings about an ex he’s not over to exploring new feelings for a girl who might be too cool for him to reeling from grief over a sudden loss. Every emotion felt real and raw, drawing me deep into Max’s story.

The cover copy hints that Max grapples with hazy memories of the time of the murder, but the story doesn’t really focus on that much. It’s much more about Max trying desperately to understand why this person died and what the relationship meant to him. Those threads are so well-spun that I rocketed through the book from start to finish.

I think readers who enjoy Caleb Roehrig’s mystery books will love this one.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 16 up.

Representation
Max is a transgender boy. A minor character is Black. Another character is gay but closeted.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used somewhat frequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between two boys. In one scene, two boys go into a tent to have sex. We know they undress and that one asks the other permission to have sex, and the scene fades to black. In another scene, a group of teens decides to skinny dip at the beach. Some people choose to keep their shirts on.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
Kids at school (often boys) bully Max after he comes out as transgender. They misgender him on purpose and shoulder-check him as he walks by. A boy shoves Max against a wall and kisses him hard enough to bruise and split his lip.

References to Max’s mom using his deadname. She misgenders him repeatedly in the couple of scenes where she appears.

Someone dies of a cut throat. One scene shows them dying.

Drug Content
Max smokes pot and drinks alcohol with his friends in multiple scenes. In one scene, he and a girl drink mushroom tea. In another, a girl pushes a pill from her mouth into his.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything but help support this blog. I received a free copy of NO ONE LEFT BUT YOU in exchange for my honest review.

Review: Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo

Blogger's Favorites, Book Review and Content, Contemporary, Poetry, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Clap When You Land
Elizabeth Acevedo
Quill Tree Books
Published May 5, 2020

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About Clap When You Land

In a novel-in-verse that brims with grief and love, National Book Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Acevedo writes about the devastation of loss, the difficulty of forgiveness, and the bittersweet bonds that shape our lives.

Camino Rios lives for the summers when her father visits her in the Dominican Republic. But this time, on the day when his plane is supposed to land, Camino arrives at the airport to see crowds of crying people…

In New York City, Yahaira Rios is called to the principal’s office, where her mother is waiting to tell her that her father, her hero, has died in a plane crash.

Separated by distance—and Papi’s secrets—the two girls are forced to face a new reality in which their father is dead and their lives are forever altered.

And then, when it seems like they’ve lost everything of their father, they learn of each other.

My Review

CLAP WHEN YOU LAND is the third book by Elizabeth Acevedo that I’ve read, and she just wows me every time. Some of the lines in this novel in verse were so achingly beautiful. They crafted tender images of grief, the strength of the bonds of family, and the beauty of the beach.

I loved both Camino and Yahaira’s stories, and I am so glad the book told both. I loved the way their connection developed, even though it was under such difficult circumstances.

My favorite scene is one late in the book, in which a man has attacked a female character. Three other women, all family members by blood or choice, stand together and force the man to leave. There was so much power in that scene. I loved the way that they lent one another strength and that because they joined together, their strength was multiplied. There was something truly beautiful and fierce about it that I feel like I’m going to remember for a very long time.

CLAP WHEN YOU LAND was a deeply compelling story of sisterhood and grief and a beautiful tribute to the Dominican Republic. I think fans of DEAR HAITI, LOVE ALAINE by Maika and Maritza Moulite or NEVER LOOK BACK by Lilliam Rivera will love this book.

Content Notes for Clap When You Land

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Representation
Yahaira is Dominican American, living in New York. She’s in a relationship with a girl. Camino is Dominican and living in the Dominican Republic.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used infrequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between two girls. A man stalks a girl as she goes to and from the beach. He obviously has sinister intentions, and she feels she can’t escape him. Brief description of a man assaulting a girl on a train. She’s shaken and traumatized afterward. In one scene, a man attacks a girl in the dark, tearing open her blouse.

Spiritual Content
Families gather and pray after Yahaira and Camino’s dad’s death and attend church services. Camino’s aunt also consults the saints using other spiritual practices.

Violent Content
Some details about the plane crash

Drug Content
References to drinking alcohol.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support this blog.