In this novel full of surprises from the New York Times bestselling author of We Were Liars and Genuine Fraud, E. Lockhart ups the ante with an inventive and romantic story about human connection, forgiveness, self-discovery, and possibility.
If you could live your life again, what would you do differently?
After a near-fatal family catastrophe and an unexpected romantic upheaval, Adelaide Buchwald finds herself catapulted into a summer of wild possibility, during which she will fall in and out of love a thousand times—while finally confronting the secrets she keeps, her ideas about love, and the weird grandiosity of the human mind.
A raw, funny story that will surprise you over and over, Again Again gives us an indelible heroine grappling with the terrible and wonderful problem of loving other people.
My Review
It took me a little bit to get my footing with this book. Basically, as a scene unfolds, there are other possible outcomes that appear in bold (at least, they’re bold in the ARC). So you read a scene as it plays out several different possible ways. Then the text goes back to normal and you read on.
At first, I found it a little confusing. In a way, that made the story reflect Adelaide herself– because she’s definitely confused and kind of going in circles at the beginning of the story.
The more I read, the more I liked the style of storytelling and the characters in the book. I especially liked Adelaide’s relationship with her brother, Toby. It felt so raw and aching and yet like there was so much potential for joy there. The way they spoke about their parents felt so real in terms of sibling relationships.
I feel like AGAIN AGAIN delivered a thing that drew me to E. Lockhart’s writing in the first place (She also wrote WE WERE LIARS, which I LOVED!). It’s like she has this uncanny ability to peel back the outer layers and cut straight to the core of emotions and grief and sort of reinvent the experience of reading a book. I wouldn’t want every book to be told in this way, but I feel like it really worked for this particular book with this particular family. All in all, I am so glad I read it, and would definitely recommend it to others.
Content Notes
Recommended for Ages 14 up.
Representation Adelaide’s roommate is a lesbian.
Profanity/Crude Language Content Strong profanity used a couple dozen times or so throughout the book.
Romance/Sexual Content Kissing between boy and girl. Reference to sex and nudity.
Spiritual Content Some reference to a higher power.
Violent Content A girl gets bitten on her wrist pretty severely by a Pitbull.
Drug Content Adelaide and Toby’s parents are pretty permissive about teens drinking alcohol. One character develops an addiction to opiates and then heroin. One scene describes finding out a person has overdosed on heroin.
Note: I received a free copy of AGAIN AGAIN in exchange for my honest review. This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support the costs of running this blog.
Ever since Tori Weston and MamaBear were abandoned by her dad, finances have been tighter than a new pair of skinny jeans. As if keeping her grades up for scholarships and working every spare moment weren’t enough, Tori gets suckered into visiting a retirement home and paired with ancient resident Marigold Williams. After learning she’s the only one to visit Marigold in decades, Tori becomes a regular at Willow Springs. Besides, someone has to help with her history homework.
Corbin Dallas barges into Tori’s life with a prosthetic leg and a dimple, working his way into her hectic schedule. Though she tries to deny it, there’s something beyond his Texan drawl that gets Tori hoping she’s more than his sidekick. Together, they race to find Marigold’s missing family before she fades away. Tori ditches her soul-sucking job, along with her dreams of having a paint-peeled clunker to call her own, in order to help her friend one last time.
My Review
It took me a bit to get into this book, but by the end, I had laughed and cried right along with the characters.
Tori is kind of grumpy. Sometimes it can be cute, but especially at the beginning, she just seemed to complain about everything. I love her relationship with her mom, who’s a police officer. The things they talk about and their text message exchanges felt authentic and really endeared Tori to me.
I also love Marigold. She’s classy and sharp and really brings out the best in Tori. That relationship and its effect on Tori really made the whole book, for me. When I was in high school, I visited and befriended a woman in a nursing home, so in some ways, it reminded me of that, and made me miss her all over again.
There were a couple things I found problematic, though. One is that at one point, Tori and Marigold discuss the Japanese Internment camps in the US during World War II, which is where many of Marigold’s family members died. Tori makes a comment, like, “how horrible,” and Marigold responds with something like, “not really, no,” and goes on to defend the US for imprisoning Japanese citizens– it was a time of fear, Japanese soldiers had killed Americans, etc. I felt shocked, if I’m honest. It’s the only time anything like that happens (which doesn’t make it okay), and later when Tori learns more about the internment camps, she’s horrified and disturbed about it.
Later in the story, Tori’s love interest does something really out of character and then basically chalks it up to being inexperienced with girls, and she immediately forgives him. I had a hard time buying into that– both his misstep and the speed with which she forgives him. She’s got a history of men betraying her, so it seemed like this would take a lot more to get past.
On the whole, I enjoyed some things about the book, especially Tori’s relationships with her mom and Marigold, and the way her relationship with Marigold impacts her life.
Content Notes
Recommended for Ages 12 up.
Representation Victoria befriends an elderly woman whose mother was Japanese. Her friend Corbin has a prosthetic leg.
Profanity/Crude Language Content A couple crude references to bodily functions.
Romance/Sexual Content Kissing between boy and girl.
Spiritual Content References to attending church and behaving in a Christian way.
Violent Content References to the Japanese Internment camps in the US during World War II. References to wounded soldiers in hospitals where supplies and staff have run short during World War II, when Marigold was young.
Drug Content None.
Note: I received a free copy of VICTORIA GRACE THE JERKFACE in exchange for my honest review. This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support the costs of running this blog.
WHEN DIMPLE MET RISHI meets SIMON VS. THE HOMO SAPIENS AGENDA in this rom com about two teen girls with rival henna businesses.
When Nishat comes out to her parents, they say she can be anyone she wants—as long as she isn’t herself. Because Muslim girls aren’t lesbians. Nishat doesn’t want to hide who she is, but she also doesn’t want to lose her relationship with her family. And her life only gets harder once a childhood friend walks back into her life.
Flávia is beautiful and charismatic and Nishat falls for her instantly. But when a school competition invites students to create their own businesses, both Flávia and Nishat choose to do henna, even though Flávia is appropriating Nishat’s culture. Amidst sabotage and school stress, their lives get more tangled—but Nishat can’t quite get rid of her crush on Flávia, and realizes there might be more to her than she realized.
My Review
I think this is my favorite f/f romance that I’ve read so far. I love the relationship between Nishat and her sister Priti. I’m a huge fan of sister books and sister relationships in books, so theirs was an easy win for me. It felt so much like my relationship with my sister in school– that tug-of-war between needing each other and needing to do things on your own or needing to find your own way.
If I struggled with anything (big IF!) it was feeling like Flávia didn’t deserve Nishat. The heart wants what it wants, but sometimes I struggle with a book where someone is in love with someone who just doesn’t seem worthy of them. As the story went on, however, it became clear that there was more to Flávia than I originally gave her credit for, and ultimately, she won me over.
I also loved the evolution of Nishat’s relationships with her parents. It obviously wasn’t an easy journey, and I don’t want to give anything more away. But there were some great moments there for me, too. (My favorite was her mom’s comment about someone being pansexual, but the way she said it sounded like someone who was in romantic love with paan. I definitely laughed out loud at that!)
On the whole, HENNA WARS was exactly the book I needed right when I read it. It’s funny and heartwarming (and at times, heartbreaking) and packed with the high of first love and the strength of a sister bond.
Content Notes
Recommended for Ages 12 up.
Representation Nishat and her family are Bengali. Flávia is Brazilian and Irish. They all live in Ireland.
Profanity/Crude Language Content Strong profanity used infrequently.
Romance/Sexual Content Kissing between two girls.
Spiritual Content Some references to Muslim faith and beliefs.
Violent Content – Trigger Warning Some instances of bullying. Someone sends a hateful text message outing a lesbian. Some property destruction as bullying and references to cruel comments. When other girls find out that one character is a lesbian, they refuse to change in the locker room with her. There aren’t any descriptions of events when anyone directly attacks the bullying victim (which doesn’t make any of the things that happen better or okay, just thinking in terms of triggers).
Drug Content References to alcohol at a teen party.
Note: I received a free copy of THE HENNA WARS in exchange for my honest review. This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support the costs of running this blog.
About The Life and (Medieval) Times of Kit Sweetly
Kit Sweetly slays sexism, bad bosses, and bad luck to become a knight at a medieval-themed restaurant.
Working as a wench―i.e. waitress―at a cheesy medieval-themed restaurant in the Chicago suburbs, Kit Sweetly dreams of being a knight like her brother. She has the moves, is capable on a horse, and desperately needs the raise that comes with knighthood, so she can help her mom pay the mortgage and hold a spot at her dream college.
Company policy allows only guys to be knights. So when Kit takes her brother’s place and reveals her identity at the end of the show, she rockets into internet fame and a whole lot of trouble with the management. But the Girl Knight won’t go down without a fight. As other wenches join her quest, a protest forms. In a joust before Castle executives, they’ll prove that gender restrictions should stay medieval―if they don’t get fired first.
My Review
Oh. My. Gosh. This book! I love so many thing about THIS BOOK. I don’t even know where to start.
First off, the narrator, Kit, has this fantastic voice. She’s funny, awkward, determined and smart and I adored her from page one. Her friends and family members all stood out as distinct characters. I often get side characters mixed up, but I did not have that trouble here because they were all so memorable and different from each other.
You don’t have to read very far into the cover copy to guess that a theme of the story is feminism and gender roles. I was a little worried that that would dominate the story, but actually, I felt like it was integrated really well with the characters and other plot elements.
I also loved that Kit goes a lot broader than simply looking for female rights to work as Knight characters (a higher paying role) at her job. She quickly realizes that others– specifically her transgender and nonbinary friends– are also barred from applying for that position. So I thought it was cool that the story included a wider push for equal rights rather than falling into the sort of cliché story about a girl wanting to do something she’s been told she can’t do. It reminds us that those sorts of “men only” roles leave out more than women. I thought that was a great point and loved the inclusivity of the story in this way.
Another thing that I thought was well-balanced in the book with these elements was Kit’s relationships with her family and friends. She’s kind of an avoider, so her emotional journey involved some situations where things implode because she’s put off something important– from math homework to confrontation with a parent. She has to learn to live in balance, and I loved being on that journey with her, celebrating her victories and laughing or crying right there with her.
So, yes. If you need an uplifting story that will make you laugh and warm your heart, just go get this book right now. (Check the content notes– there’s some swearing and drinking, so know that’s there.)
I think the book is amazing, and I love it and can’t wait to read it all over again. Also I want more heroines like Kit Sweetly in my life immediately.
Representation Kit’s best friend is black. She also works with someone who is nonbinary (and uses they/them pronouns), and a transgender woman.
Profanity/Crude Language Content Extreme profanity used with moderate frequency.
Romance/Sexual Content Brief kissing between boy and girl. Brief/vague reference to sex.
Spiritual Content Kit’s dad works as a musician for a large church but is himself something of a con.
Violent Content Some descriptions of jousting as a part of a medieval show. One worker falls from a horse and is seriously injured.
Drug Content Scenes show teens drinking alcohol. A drunk adult tries to get children into the car with him, but they refuse. Some references and brief descriptions of drug use.
Note: I received a free copy of THE LIFE AND (MEDIEVAL) TIMES OF KIT SWEETLY in exchange for my honest review. This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support the costs of running this blog.
May is a survivor. But she doesn’t feel like one. She feels angry. And lost. And alone. Eleven months after the school shooting that killed her twin brother, May still doesn’t know why she was the only one to walk out of the band room that day. No one gets what she went through–no one saw and heard what she did. No one can possibly understand how it feels to be her.
Zach lost his old life when his mother decided to defend the shooter. His girlfriend dumped him, his friends bailed, and now he spends his time hanging out with his little sister…and the one faithful friend who stuck around. His best friend is needy and demanding, but he won’t let Zach disappear into himself. Which is how Zach ends up at band practice that night. The same night May goes with her best friend to audition for a new band.
Which is how May meets Zach. And how Zach meets May. And how both might figure out that surviving could be an option after all.
My Review
At the beginning, I wasn’t totally sure I’d like May or Zach. He seemed so… wheedling? I don’t know if that’s really the right description. I found his awkwardness endearing, especially once he began trying to interact with May.
I liked a lot of things about May. She’s so obviously deeply wounded and prickly/angry as a result. I guess I just didn’t understand her choices at first. She was brave enough to vandalize property, but too scared to tell someone she was being harassed. I found that a little hard to reconcile at first.
Ultimately, as I got more and more drawn into the book and the healing process of both May and Zach, I couldn’t help rooting for them and hoping they’d find a happily-ever-after, or at least, have a breakthrough that opened the possibility of a happy ending.
THE LUCKY ONES is a journey through grief. Some parts hit hard, landing some pretty sharp punches straight to your heart. Other parts can’t help but inspire hope. I think that was my favorite part– that though the story gets dark as May revisits what happened, there’s hope.
Representation Lucy, May’s best friend is from Haiti and prefers female partners.
Profanity/Crude Language Content Lots of extreme profanity used frequently.
Romance/Sexual Content Lots of feelings of attraction and brief kissing. References to making out.
Spiritual Content None.
Violent Content References to a school shooting during which May heard the shooter killing people.
Drug Content Teen drinking and references to past drug use.
Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support the costs of running this blog. I received a free copy of THE LUCKY ONES in exchange for my honest review.
It’s summer 1977 and closeted lesbian Tammy Larson can’t be herself anywhere. Not at her strict Christian high school, not at her conservative Orange County church and certainly not at home, where her ultrareligious aunt relentlessly organizes antigay political campaigns. Tammy’s only outlet is writing secret letters in her diary to gay civil rights activist Harvey Milk…until she’s matched with a real-life pen pal who changes everything.
Sharon Hawkins bonds with Tammy over punk music and carefully shared secrets, and soon their letters become the one place she can be honest. The rest of her life in San Francisco is full of lies. The kind she tells for others–like helping her gay brother hide the truth from their mom–and the kind she tells herself. But as antigay fervor in America reaches a frightening new pitch, Sharon and Tammy must rely on their long-distance friendship to discover their deeply personal truths, what they’ll stand for…and who they’ll rise against.
A master of award-winning queer historical fiction, New York Times bestselling author Robin Talley once again brings to life with heart and vivid detail an emotionally captivating story about the lives of two teen girls living in an age when just being yourself was an incredible act of bravery.
My Review
So by now you probably know I LOVE books about music, and I have a particular soft spot for punk. I also found myself drawn to the historical aspect of MUSIC FROM ANOTHER WORLD, too, as I’m not familiar with very much of what happened in the 1970s.
The story is told entirely in diary entries and letters that Tammy and Sharon write to each other. In the diary entries, they often report things they aren’t ready to tell each other, or things that happen to both of them together. I liked the format and felt like it made things really personal. I felt like I could watch their friendship grow and its affect on their diary entries and feelings of isolation.
Both Tammy and Sharon belong to conservative Christian schools and communities and wrestle with feeling like they don’t belong. Tammy believes if she ever tells the truth about who she is (that she’s gay), she’ll be cast out of her family and community. Sharon worries for the same about her brother, who’s also gay.
This story hit me pretty hard. I grew up in a conservative Christian community (and still live in the town where I grew up), and I’ve wondered before about what it would be like to come out to that group of people. I think there would have been talk of conversion therapy, not by my parents, but by some of their friends and church members. My parents wouldn’t have stopped speaking to me or kicked me out. That’s just not how they operate. But it would have cost me most (if not all) of the contact I had with my faith community, and that would have been really painful and difficult.
I grew up with a girl who came out to her parents and lost her relationships with them. They haven’t spoken to her in years. They didn’t even try to contact her after the Pulse shooting to see if she was okay, and I can’t even imagine how hurtful that is.
Anyway, I guess reading this book, not only did I connect with Tammy and Sharon and everything they went through, I guess I pictured the faces of my friends, and it made me think about what it was like– even decades later than this book takes place– to grow up in a conservative church and be gay.
I really enjoyed the book, both for the emotional journeys that it brought me on and for the really fun punk scene (Midge Spelling is my favorite!).
Check out the Q&A with Robin Talley after the content notes!
Content Notes
Recommended for Ages 14 up.
Representation Multiple characters are gay.
Profanity/Crude Language Content Extreme profanity used fairly frequently.
Romance/Sexual Content Kissing between boy and girl, references to making out. Reference to oral sex. Kissing between same sex couples.
Spiritual Content Both Tammy and Sharon are part of conservative Christian churches which believe that being gay is a sin. They come across as dogmatic, angry, and manipulative. One church leader gets caught in an affair and embezzling money from a charity.
Violent Content Some references to fights during punk shows.
Drug Content Teens drinking alcohol.
Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support the costs of running this blog. I received a free copy of MUSIC FROM ANOTHER WORLD in exchange for my honest review.
Q&A with Author Robin Talley
Q: What is your favorite thing about Tammy or Sharon?
A: I love the close connection between Sharon and her brother, Peter. That was another element of the story that came to me very early and was crucial in how I envisioned the characters’ lives. They’re siblings and best friends who know exactly how to get on each other’s nerves when they want to, but when it comes down to it, they’ll do absolutely anything for each other.
Q:
Are there any parts of Tammy and Sharon’s lives that reflect your own?
A: Their lives are pretty different from mine — for one thing, I wasn’t born yet when their story takes place, and I’ve always lived on the East Coast. I did grow up in a more right-wing community than I live in now, though, and I was part of a pretty conservative church community there. Though my church wasn’t politically active, thank goodness.
Q:
How did you come up with the letters to Harvey?
A: From the beginning, my very first kernel of the idea that led to this book was the image of Tammy in her church basement, writing a secret letter to Harvey Milk while around her, everyone she knew was celebrating the victory of Christian singer and TV commercial star Anita Bryant’s campaign to overturn a gay rights law in Miami. I imagined Tammy surrounded by people, but still completely isolated, and reaching out to the only person she’d ever heard of who she thought might be able to understand how she felt. At that time, Harvey was getting a lot of media attention nationwide as one of the most outspoken gay rights activists (he also served as a convenient bogeyman for anti-gay right-wing activists).
Q:
What inspired you to write in the Harvey Milk era?
A:
The history of activism for LGBTQ equality has always
been a big interest of mine. Before Music
From Another World I’d written two books that both focused on queer
characters living in the 1950s, when being a member of that community meant,
almost by default, being closeted. I wanted to explore a later era when, for
the first time, some LGBTQ people began to see coming out as a real option —
but an option with consequences that could be catastrophic. The late 1970s was
also when the anti-gay community first started to emerge as a major political
player, so that was interesting to explore as well.
Q:
What was the most difficult part of the story to write, and why did you feel it
was important to include that part?
A: I had a lot of trouble writing some of the things that happen to Tammy near the story’s midpoint (trying to be vague here to avoid spoilers). I hate to ever write about the characters that I care about experiencing anything negative, but the reality of the situation required it. The stakes Tammy faced were simply too high.
Q:
How do you balance the intensity of the time period and subject with the love
story?
A: That’s just the thing — we’re all living our lives against the backdrop of history, one way or another. We’re living through an incredibly turbulent time in the world right now, just like Sharon and Tammy were in the late 1970s, but people are still going to school, fighting with their parents, getting their first jobs, etc. And, yes, falling in love. For all of us, just like for these characters, we have to figure out how the minutiae of day to day life (and sometimes the drama of it) fits in with the bigger picture, and not lose sight of the contributions we make to the larger world, too.
Q:
What is one thing you hope readers take away from MUSIC FROM ANOTHER WORLD?
A:
I hope they’ll go on to read more on their own about
the events that followed the end of this story. There were a ton of both highs
and lows in the movement for LGBTQ rights, and although this story focuses
largely on 1978’s Proposition 6 in California, also known as the Briggs
Initiative, that was just one campaign out of a much larger movement, and it
was the larger movement that laid the foundation for events that we’re still
seeing play out today.
