Category Archives: Contemporary

Review: Rainbow Boys by Alex Sanchez

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Rainbow Boys by Alex Sanchez

Rainbow Boys
Alex Sanchez
Simon & Schuster BFYR
Published September 29, 2026 (Orig. 2001)

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About Rainbow Boys

Navigating through an intolerant world and their own insecurities, three teenage boys find each other and the confidence to come out of the closet.

Three teenage boys, coming of age and out of the closet. Jason Carrillo is a jock with a steady girlfriend, but he can’t stop dreaming about sex…with other guys. Kyle Meeks doesn’t look gay, but he is. And he hopes he never has to tell anyone—especially his parents. Nelson Glassman is “out” to the entire world, but he can’t tell the boy he loves that he wants to be more than just friends…

In a revealing debut novel that percolates with passion and wit, Alex Sanchez follows these very different high-school seniors as their struggles with sexuality and intolerance draw them into a triangle of love, betrayal, and ultimately, friendship.

My Review

This 25th anniversary edition of Rainbow Boys opens with a foreword from Maia Kobabe, who offers some context for why books like this one are so important. Not only do these books let readers see themselves as the central characters, but the stories also celebrate who they are while acknowledging challenges many LGBTQIA+ teens face. The book also includes a note from the author that tells why he wrote the book and its journey to publication.

The writing in Rainbow Boys is straightforward and easy to follow. The story alternates between Nelson, Kyle, and Jason’s perspectives, giving readers glimpses into each boy’s experience. Nelson, out and proud, faces different challenges than Jason, who is still learning to accept who he is. Kyle’s parents’ response to his coming out is very different than Jason’s parents’ reaction. I love that the book shows these different experiences side by side, highlighting a spectrum of stories that many readers will identify with.

Though Nelson begins the story out and proud, he still shows growth in how he thinks of relationships and his self-confidence. Jason and Kyle also experience some character growth throughout the story.

All in all, I can see why this book deserves to be revisited and published for a new generation. Rainbow Boys is the first book in a trilogy following Nelson, Jason, and Kyle through the summer after graduation. I’m not sure whether there are plans to release new editions of all three or just this first book.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 15 up.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Strong profanity used somewhat frequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing. Some brief, scant descriptions of sexual encounters. References to sex. References to HIV and safe sex.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
One character remembers his dad beating him up after catching him with another boy. Some scenes show bullying by other students, including a fight between multiple boys. One character’s dad gets violent after having too much to drink.

Drug Content
Characters attend a party where teens drink alcohol. One character’s dad is an alcoholic and appears drunk in multiple scenes.

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

Review: Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech

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Walk Two Moons
Sharon Creech
HarperCollins
Published October 6, 2009

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About Walk Two Moons

“How about a story? Spin us a yarn.”
Instantly, Phoebe Winterbottom came to mind. “I could tell you an extensively strange story,” I warned.
“Oh, good!” Gram said. “Delicious!”
And that is how I happened to tell them about Phoebe, her disappearing mother, and the lunatic.

As Sal entertains her grandparents with Phoebe’s outrageous story, her own story begins to unfold — the story of a thirteen-year-old girl whose only wish is to be reunited with her missing mother.

In her own award-winning style, Sharon Creech intricately weaves together two tales, one funny, one bittersweet, to create a heartwarming, compelling, and utterly moving story of love, loss, and the complexity of human emotion.

My Review

This book has been on my reading list for YEARS. I’ve heard so many great things about it, and wanted to read it for so long. I recently went through some drama with my Amazon account, and couldn’t access any of my Kindle books, but I had this one as a Nook ebook, so I figured it must be time to read it.

The story starts very much in the middle of Sal’s life. After her mom’s death nearly a year earlier, she and her dad moved to a new town, and now she’s on a road trip with her paternal grandparents to visit her mom’s grave. It’s a long car trip, so she tells her grandparents the story of her best friend in her new town to pass the time.

Setting up the story this way means juggling a lot of different timelines and revealing a lot of information quickly. I thought the pacing of these reveals and the control of the different timelines (the car trip, Sal’s year in the new town, and her memories of her mom) was really nicely done. I didn’t feel confused or overwhelmed by the information, and it felt pretty close to how a kid of Sal’s age might talk about things.

It’s also kind of a weird story, which I loved. Sal’s grandparents are funny. They have their rituals and ways of doing things, which sometimes Sal finds endearing. Sometimes it’s clear their habits annoy her.

I also liked the way that the stories come full circle and connect. Sal begins to see beyond her grief over her mom’s death. She starts to see her father’s grief, and starts to understand her friend Phoebe’s feelings about her mom, too. I loved how the story pulled all those threads together. The story balances the humor and grief elements really well.

I will definitely be reading more books by Sharon Creech, and I do recommend this one for readers who enjoy emotional books.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 10 to 14.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
Sal has a crush on a boy from her class. They have a few near misses with kissing.

Spiritual Content
Sal prays to the trees. Her logic is that sometimes God might be far away, but there’s always a tree nearby.

Violent Content
References to the death of a parent. (Death not shown on scene.)

Drug Content
None.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use but help support this blog. I purchased a copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

Review: How to Lose Yourself Completely by Peter Bognanni

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How to Lose Yourself Completely
Peter Bognanni
Balzer + Bray
Published June 2, 2026

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About How to Lose Yourself Completely

An incredibly poignant story about a teen grappling with grief and anxiety who is sent to wilderness “adventure therapy,” where he meets a group of friends who will change his life forever. With its captivating voice and dry wit, this novel is perfect for fans of Jandy Nelson and John Green.

Ever since Sean’s death, Case’s anxiety has been spiraling. Sean wasn’t just his older brother—he was also Case’s best friend. The only person who really got him.

When his parents suggest “adventure therapy,” Case is desperate enough to agree. Maybe roughing it in the woods with a group of anxious strangers will help him find a way forward. After he boards the bus, he sees the one person he’s been trying to avoid: Diana. Sean’s girlfriend.

Once they set off, there is the expected cringey singing and forced sharing. But when their counselor mysteriously disappears, the trip suddenly turns into a journey of survival. This group of kids, with nothing in common but their prescriptions and lack of social skills, will have to band together to make it back home. In the process, they will change each other’s lives forever.

From award-winning author Peter Bognanni comes a profound, surprising, and hopeful novel about grief and love.

My Review

Most of this book appears in second-person point of view, using “you” pronouns, though it’s written from Case’s perspective. Once I got to the pronoun shift, it made so much sense why the first part of the book was written this way. I like the way that it connected to Case’s relationship with his brother and elements of their relationship.

The story’s premise is really interesting. The nature program is supposed to provide group therapy opportunities and immerse the campers in an outdoor adventure. The story doesn’t really focus on whether time spent in nature is a remedy for anxiety, but the characters do ask some interesting questions about it along the way.

One interesting thing for me while reading this book is that I sometimes felt at odds with Case’s interpretation of events. He idolizes his brother, both as part of his grief and as a younger sibling might look up to an older one. But in the descriptions of his brother’s behavior, I felt like there were a lot of clues that his brother didn’t always deserve Case’s adoration. This added a lot of tension to the story. I could feel the conflict between Case’s view of his brother and the true timeline of events building to a crescendo.

The wilderness adventure part of the book gets pretty intense, too, as the cover suggests, taking characters across dangerous rivers and through a raging forest fire. I can definitely see the comparison to John Green’s books. Readers looking for an intense story about grief and anxiety will get that, along with memorable characters and entertaining banter.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
One f-bomb. Other profanity used pretty infrequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing.

Spiritual Content
For a period of time, Sean embraced Buddhism.

Violent Content
References to a diving injury. One character’s risk-taking behavior increases over time. Descriptions of panic attacks and anxiety. Encounters with wildlife. Characters encounter a forest fire. Description of an accidental death.

Drug Content
Sean’s friends drink alcohol and smoke in his room. (Happens off-scene.) Case witnesses one friend leaving the house drunk. One character confesses that they have a drinking problem. One character steals others’ medication. One scene shows a character who has overdosed on medication. It’s unclear whether this was accidental or intentional.

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

Review: Let’s Get Together by Brandy Colbert

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Let’s Get Together
Brandy Colbert
Clarion Books
Published September 9, 2025

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About Let’s Get Together

Boston Globe–Horn Book Award–winning author Brandy Colbert gives The Parent Trap a fresh, funny, and delightfully unexpected update in this story of two girls—one raised by her single father, the other in the foster care system—who meet by chance . . . only to discover they’re identical twins.

Kenya Norwood likes things just the way they are. She’s lived all her life in Pasadena with her dad and grandmother, she’s attended the same school with the same friends since pre-K, and whether it’s at outdoor club or her own lunch table, she loves being the center of attention. Even as she’s about to start middle school, she knows one thing for sure: none of that is going to change.

For Liberty Perry, change is all she’s ever known. Her mother disappeared when she was a toddler, and ever since, she’s never stayed in one place for very long. But her new foster mother, Joey, seems different. Maybe in this home, in this school, change won’t come so quickly.

Except everything changes the day the girls meet—and Kenya and Liberty discover they are identical.

Neither Kenya nor Liberty is ready to find out she has a twin sister (in fact, they’re both unsure if they even want one), and when the girls learn the truth of how they were separated, it’s clear that no one else in their lives was ready for this, either. But soon, they realize that the connection they share might be even stronger than the things that kept them apart—and that teaming up might be the only way to set everything right.

My Review

I must be especially vulnerable to earworms because all it takes is seeing this title to get the song from the 1961 movie, which I haven’t seen since elementary school. The power of music.

This novel is based on that original idea: twins separated as babies, with no memory of one another, who reconnect unexpectedly and decide to set their parents up to fall in love. Some elements have been updated to be more modern and more believable. For example, Liberty lives with a foster mom. Kenya lives with her dad and grandmother. Neither girl knows where her biological mother is. (They find out in the course of the story.)

While the truth about the girls’ mom comes out, the story doesn’t center her experiences. Their grandmother and father tell the girls that their mother was sick and that the illness led her to make very painful choices. They acknowledge her drug addiction as part of her illness, but the explanation stays fairly neutral. They tell Liberty that they tried very hard to find her and her mom. The girls ask some questions and briefly discuss feeling angry at their mom, but again, it’s not a central focus of the story, and the narrative moves forward pretty quickly.

While Liberty hasn’t always had a positive experience with foster care, she loves her new foster mom, Joey (short for Josephine), and it’s easy to see why. The two have a great rapport. Joey offers stability and emotional support at a time when Liberty really needs them. I really appreciated that even though foster care wasn’t a focus of the book, Colbert made space for nuance and didn’t oversimplify or overly demonize the foster care experience.

Fans of the original story will note that these identical twins do not switch places as the characters in the earlier work did. I actually like that the story sidestepped what I imagine actual identical twins get tired of seeing/being asked about. A character jokes that the girls could swap places, and that’s about as far as that idea goes.

All in all, this is a charming, upbeat, family-focused story celebrating both biological bonds and bonds made purely from love.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 8 to 12.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
Vague reference to the romantic status of adults.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
Reference to kidnapping and abandonment of a young child. (Happens long before the story begins.)

Drug Content
Mention of a character with drug addiction issues. Nothing shown on scene.

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

Review: Change of Plans by Sarah Dessen

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Change of Plans
Sarah Dessen
Simon & Schuster
Published May 5, 2026

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About Change of Plans

From acclaimed and #1 New York Times bestselling author Sarah Dessen comes a “sweet, nuanced, and reflective coming-of-age love story” ( Kirkus Reviews, starred review) about an unassuming girl who learns to stand on her own while falling in love during a life-changing summer.

Finley has always felt most comfortable in someone else’s shadow. Fortunately, she’s got Colin, her magnetic boyfriend, who sweeps her along for activities, friendships, and future plans. Then she goes on a last-minute trip with her distant mom to a family vacation house that Finley didn’t know existed and is now about to be sold.

Her mom was estranged from her own parents and siblings since leaving home for college, and it’s a novelty for Finley to see her aunts and cousins. There’s also the handful of teens who work at the Egg, her aunt’s diner, and make up a found family of their own—including undeniably handsome guitarist Ben.

Then her relationship with Colin goes into freefall, and Finley’s roadmap for life after high school is gone. She has no choice but to live, for the first time, without plans. The longer Finley stays, the closer she gets to the truth about why her mother stayed away—and why she’s brought Finley here now.

And the closer she grows to new friends at the Egg, the more she starts to fall for charmingly awkward, soulful Ben and to realize how much of herself she’s been missing. By the end of the summer, nothing will be the same—for this community or for Finley herself.

My Review

It’s been a long time since I’ve read a Sarah Dessen book, but this one took me right back to all the reasons I’ve loved them. Finley begins the story in desperate need of a shake-up. Though her relationship with Colin is sweet, it’s clear she’s clinging to him as much for the security and stability the relationship brings as her feelings for him. The unexpected trip with her mom forces Finley to reevaluate all her careful plans. For the first time in a long time (maybe ever), she makes new friends and makes new choices. From forging connections with estranged family members she barely knew to committing to a summer job and exploring the possibility of a new romance, Finley explores a lot of new things and what each means to her.

I love the balance of introspection to adventure in this book. Finley does a lot of soul-searching, but she also engages in what’s happening around her. As a former restaurant worker, I totally appreciated the scenes describing restaurant work. Those scenes capture the rush and chaos of food service and the way that you bond with coworkers in those roles.

I enjoyed this book a lot. It makes me want to go back and reread some of the other titles by Sarah Dessen that I’ve read in the past and try out the ones I missed. (Looking at you, Saint Anything, still sitting neglected on my shelf.)

While it’s probably too late to make this one a 2026 summer read, I think it’s a perfect summer nostalgia book to pick up as we head into the fall.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
A few instances of strong profanity.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
References to an unsafe home life for one character. Nothing happens on scene. One character behaves (off-scene) in increasingly erratic and worrisome ways. One character learns that their parent is facing a serious illness.

Drug Content
Teens drink alcohol at home and at a party. Reference to one character’s parent being an alcoholic.

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

MMGM Review: When You’re Brave Enough by Rebecca Bendheim

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When You’re Brave Enough
Rebecca Bendheim
Viking Books for Young Readers
Published April 7, 2026

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About When You’re Brave Enough

A heartfelt, gorgeously written debut middle grade novel about best friends, first crushes, and coming out—perfect for fans of Kyle Lukoff and Jake Maia Arlow.

Before she moved from Austin to Rhode Island, everybody knew Lacey as one half of an inseparable duo: Lacey-and-Grace, best friends since they were toddlers. Grace and her moms were practically family. But at school, being lumped together with overeager, worm-obsessed, crushes-on-everyone Grace meant Lacey never quite fit in—and that’s why at her new middle school, Lacey plans to reinvent herself. This time, she’s going to be cool. She’s going to be normal.

At first, everything seems to go as planned. Lacey makes new friends right away, she finds a rabbi to help her prepare for the bat mitzvah that got deprioritized by her parents in the chaos of the move, and she even gets cast in the lead role of the eighth-grade musical. Which is when things start to get stressful, because it turns out the students at her new school have a long-standing, unofficial tradition: No matter what the show is, in the final performance, the leads always kiss for real.

Lacey’s never kissed anyone before—she’s not even sure she’s ever had a crush. And in Bye, Bye, Birdie, there are a few different co-lead kiss possibilities for Lacey to choose from. There’s confident, cocky Andre. There’s sweet, friendly Jaden. And then there’s the other new girl at school: dryly funny, impossibly cool Violet.

But while her new friends and older sister create whiteboard wall charts and botched field trip schemes to help her decide, suddenly Lacey can’t stop thinking about Grace, who she was so sure she wanted to leave behind. When Grace comes back into her life, Lacey needs to decide if she’s brave enough to be who she really is, in front of the person who matters most.

My Review

I enjoyed so many things about this book. Lacey’s quest to reinvent herself was nicely done. I’ve seen a lot more middle grade books that focus on the friend who is being left behind instead of the friend who is plunging ahead, wanting to embrace a new middle school identity.

Bendheim allows readers to realize Lacey’s feelings gradually, almost as if we figure things out right along with Lacey. I also like that Lacey is at a different school, far from Grace. This creates a buffer between the girls and gives Lacey space to try out her new identity without hurting or rejecting Grace. I think it might have been harder to admire Lacey and root for her if she was unkind to Grace in order to fit in with new friends.

Lacey also has to navigate her feelings about her role in the family. Sometimes her family feels like too much. Sometimes what she wants gets pushed to the side. Part of reinventing herself involves figuring out how to support and celebrate her family while speaking up when they hurt her, too.

I also enjoyed that the story explores Lacey’s preparation for her bat mitzvah and what that means to her. Lacey reads Anne Frank’s diary as she tries to figure out what she believes and who she is. She lingers on certain passages and rereads sections that stand out to her. I liked the way that the author included this experience and related it to Lacey’s faith journey.

All in all, I absolutely agree with the comparison between this book and books by Kyle Lukoff. I also think readers who enjoy books by Claire Swinarski will enjoy this one.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 10 to 14.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing.

Spiritual Content
Lacey prepares to celebrate her bat mitzvah. She memorizes a part of the Torah and writes a speech about what the passage means to her.

Violent Content
Brief homophobic comments. Some brief bullying or meanness.

Drug Content
None.

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