Tag Archives: California

MMGM Review: Eureka by Victoria Chang

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Eureka by Victoria Chang

Eureka
Victoria Chang
Farrar, Straus, & Giroux
Published January 27, 2026

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About Eureka

A novel-in-verse by poet Victoria Chang that relates the tragic events surrounding the 1885 expulsion of Chinese Americans from Eureka, California.

Love illuminates the dark.

The year is 1885. San Francisco is dangerous for Chinese immigrants like twelve-year-old Mei Mei. She must venture on her own, without her family or friends, to Eureka, California, where it is supposedly safe.

But 300 miles from home, Mei Mei misses her Ma Ma’s kindness, helping out in her Ba Ba’s store, and playing hide-and-seek with her best friend, Hua Hua. Despite her fear and the increasing violence against her community, she finds hope in an unexpected friend, the giant Redwood trees, and a new learning how to read in English. As the world around her grows more scary, Mei Mei discovers her own power, as well the joy of found family, the importance of courage, and the nature of freedom.

My Review

This is the second historical novel-in-verse that I’ve read this month, and the second about a moment in history that I’m not as familiar with as I’d like to be. I love that authors are bringing these stories to the page.

Mei Mei faces some intense circumstances, but the descriptions and her understanding of what’s happening stays appropriate for a middle grade audience. She finds friends and builds community even when she moves far from her family. It’s easy to root for her and cheer her on as she faces difficulties.

While the story identifies some of the cruel and racist things that happened to Chinese immigrants in 1885, the novel also highlights the power of hope and the importance of taking care of one another. Mei Mei helps others when she can, and others look out for her at different points in the story, too.

If you enjoyed Lion of the Sky by Ritu Hemnani, a novel in verse set in the 1940s during the British Partition of India, add this book to your reading list.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 9 to 12.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
None.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
A thief steals items from Mei Mei’s parents’ store. Dangerous people come to the shop looking for Mei Mei, planning to kidnap her in exchange for her parents’ debts. Mei Mei witnesses someone mistreating household staff. Someone locks her in a closet to punish her. Mei Mei worries about anti-Chinese sentiment that could lead to violence against her or others.

Mei Mei’s mother’s feet have been badly damaged due to the practice of foot binding that was common in her generation in China. Walking is painful for her, which limits what she’s able to do.

Drug Content
Mei Mei witnesses an adult who’s been drinking alcohol.

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.

Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday

I’m sharing this post as a part of a weekly round-up of middle-grade posts called Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday. Check out other blogs with posts about middle-grade books today on Marvelous Middle-Grade Mondays at Always in the Middle.

Review: Spark by Chris Baron

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Spark
Chris Baron
Feiwel & Friends
Published July 15, 2025

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About Spark

As a community recovers from a devastating wildfire, two friends find their way back to each other and their homes, by award-winning author Chris Baron.

Perfect for fans of Alan Gratz and Lauren Tarshis.

Finn and his friend, nicknamed Rabbit, live in a rural area that’s been hit hard by wildfires. Families were displaced and school was interrupted. Moreover, their beloved forest is suffering — animals and plants haven’t been able to come back, and the two friends wonder if there’s anything they can do to help. Rabbit’s uncle, a science teacher, is part of a study that may help bring the forest back to life, but Finn and Rabbit wonder if the forest can wait. And what if another fire comes in the meantime? They believe a small part of the forest — the forest heart — that survived the wildfire may hold the key to regrowth, but first, they have to find it and then convince the adults around them to listen.

For any young person who’s ever felt powerless against the world, here is a story about two kids doing all they can to understand their natural world and preserve it.

My Review

This is the second novel by Chris Baron that I’ve read, but the first in verse, and what a treat! Like, it’s largely a serious story that bravely excavates some big feelings and mental health issues. I found it incredibly easy to get lost in this story, though. A couple times, I had to pause and just breathe.

In the story, Finn faces some scary situations. Afterward, he experiences some symptoms of PTSD. I remember experiencing some of the symptoms he described. Those lines took me back to those moments– it felt like the kind of observations that had to come from someone who’d been through what Finn felt.

It’s also such a hopeful story, and that’s so important. Wildfires and the threat of them is terrifying. What can one person do in the face of such a huge fire or a serious threat? Baron’s characters explore these questions themselves and look for ways they can help their families and community. They celebrate a connection with nature that others don’t always understand. As they continue sharing their hope and passion, others begin to listen and forge their own connections with the natural world.

I loved that the story faces hardship head-on but remains so focused on hope. I can’t think of anything we need more than stories that take our kids fears and experiences seriously and make space for those things but also remind us to be hopeful and remind us how powerful a little hope can be.

Expect to see Spark on end of the year favorites lists. It’s so worth reading.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 8 to 12.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
None.

Spiritual Content
Finn and his family celebrate the sabbath and attend services at a synogogue.

Violent Content
Situations of peril. Finn’s family must evacuate when a fire gets too close to their home. Their escape is a bit harrowing, though the descriptions of the danger are brief. Finn learns about others who also had to hunker down (safely/with gear) and let the fire pass by. Some people lose homes. A girl searches for a missing dog. A man slides off the roof of his house (because he’s in a hurry to get his family to safety) and injures his leg.

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.

Review: Salvación by Sandra Proudman

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

Salvación
Sandra Proudman
Wednesday Books
Published May 20, 2025

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About Salvación

In this Latinx YA fantasy inspired by El Zorro, Lola de La Peña becomes the masked heroine Salvación in order to save her family and town from a man who would destroy it for the magic it contains…if she doesn’t fall in love with one of his men first.

Lola de La Peña yearns to be free from the societal expectations of a young Mexican lady of her station. She spends her days pretending to be delicate and proper while watching her mamá cure the sick and injured with sal negra (black salt), a recently discovered magic that heals even the most mortal of sicknesses and wounds. But by night, she is Salvación, the free-spirit lady vigilante protecting the town of Coloma from those who threaten its peace and safety among the rising tension in Alta California after the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

But one night, a woman races into Coloma, barely alive, to tell the horrifying tale of how her town was obliterated by sal roja, a potent, deadly magic capable of obliterating anything it comes into contact with and the man who wields it: Damien Hernández. And when Hernández arrives the next day with a party of fifty strong and promises of returning Alta California to México, Lola knows it’s only a matter of time before he brings the region under his rule—all Hernández needs is the next full moon and the stolen, ancient amulet he carries to mine enough sal roja to conquer the land. Determined to protect everything she loves, Lola races against time as Salvación to stop his plans. What she didn’t count on was the distracting and infuriating Alejandro, who travels with Hernández but doesn’t seem to share his ambitions. With the stakes higher than ever and Hernández getting closer to his goals, Lola will do anything to foil his plans, even teaming up with Alejandro—who she doesn’t fully trust, but can’t help but fall in love with.

My Review

The setting of this book took me back to my childhood memories of watching Zorro episodes on TV. It’s set in California in a town built up around a mine where someone has discovered a salt with healing power. Lola lives a privileged life in her town, but she wants nothing to do with the fancy dresses and future romance that her family might want for her. Instead, she wants to help others. Particularly, she wants to protect the people in her town from those who would harm them.

The story doesn’t follow a stereotypical superhero path. For one thing, though Lola has a secret identity as Salvación, she shares the identity with her brother. The two of them work as a team, but he stays in the shadows. As Salvación, she’s the face of their team.

I liked exploring the teamwork and their relationship as brother and sister within the story. Lola also isn’t the kind of hero who charges into danger with a sword every time there’s trouble. She does background investigating. She forms relationships. The girl has layers! I love that.

On the whole, I enjoyed the book. It really delivered the vibe of the Zorro TV episodes I watched as a little kid while telling a Latinx-centered story. If you like historical fantasy, you’ll want this one on your reading list.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
A few instances of profanity.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing.

Spiritual Content
Salt with magical properties can either help or harm someone.

Violent Content
Situations of peril. Battle violence. A couple scenes include someone killing a captive or enemy.

Drug Content
Salt with healing properties cures disease and injury. Salt with destructive properties destroys any living thing it touches.

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: Gita Desai is Not Here to Shut Up by Sonia Patel

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

Gita Desai is Not Here to Shut Up
Sonia Patel
Nancy Paulsen Books
Published September 10, 2024

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About Gita Desai is Not Here to Shut Up

It’s eighteen-year-old Gita Desai’s first year at Stanford University, and it’s a miracle she’s here and not already married off by her traditional Gujarati parents. She’s determined to death-grip her good-girl, model-student rep all the way to medical school, which means no social life or standing out in any way. Should be easy: If there’s one thing she’s learned from her family it’s how to chup-re—to “shut up,” fade into the background.

But when childhood memories of her aunt’s desertion and her then-uncle’s best friend resurface, Gita ditches the books night after night in favor of partying and hooking up with strangers. Still, nothing can stop the nagging voice in her head that’s growing louder and louder, insisting something’s wrong… and the only way she can burst forward is to stop shutting-up about the past.

My Review

I feel like I should have realized from the back cover copy that this book explores trauma and its effect on a young college student. Though I’m not always a fan of young adult literature featuring protagonists in college, I do think this– trauma emerging and demanding to be dealt with in the first semester of college– is something we don’t talk about enough. It seems like something that a lot of people experience as they leave home for the first time and enter a busy, stressful time of life with a lot of academic and social demands.

Anyway, regardless, I kind of went into this book unprepared for its themes, which made it hit really hard. Some of the scenes are hard to read, not because there’s anything wrong with them, but because they explicitly state things that we often shut people up for talking about. We sometimes treat these things like they’re too shameful or complicated to talk about.

Gita is incredibly smart academically. She finds two really great girl friends, both white girls, and feels sidelined by the guys at the events the three of them attend. At one point, a guy Gita sleeps with asks for her friend’s phone number immediately after they’ve had sex. Ugh. Awful.

As the story unfolds, there are more and more hints at past trauma in Gita’s life. The slow reveal of those things was agonizing for me. I suspected where things were headed, and I could feel Gita’s resistance to remembering what happened. The writing is so on point. It was hard to stay on that knife’s edge for as long as the story keeps its readers there, though.

Because the story takes place in the 1990s, there are so many music references that 90s music lovers will enjoy. Gita listens to a broad range of music, and some of the songs were really well-placed in terms of what was happening in the scene as the song played.

Conclusion

Ultimately, I love that Gita’s relationships with Marisol and Jane anchor her and help give her the courage to speak up for herself. I love the arc of her relationships with her family members, too.

Overall, this is a heavy book that won’t be for everyone. It does a good job exploring the transition from home to college life and the role of trauma and shame in choices someone might make during that time.

Content Notes

Content warning for sexual abuse and assault.

Recommended for Ages 16 up.

Representation
Gita is Indian American.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Some F-bombs and infrequent use of other profanity.

Romance/Sexual Content
Gita observes a couple having sex. One partner notices her, but the other does not know she’s there. Kissing between boy and girl. Some scenes show sexual assault from the point of view of a girl who’s very drunk and not really processing what’s happening. Details are sparse but graphic.

Spiritual Content
References to Hindu faith practices.

Violent Content
Some scenes show sexual assault from the point of view of a girl who’s very drunk and not really processing what’s happening. Scenes also briefly show or reference child abuse. A girl hits a boy who kisses her against her will.

Drug Content
Gita and her friends (freshman in college) drink alcohol at parties and the home of some men they barely know.

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: Accountable by Dashka Slater

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Accountable: The True Story of a Racist Social Media Account and the Teenagers Whose Lives It Changed
Dashka Slater
Farrar, Straus, & Giroux
Published August 22, 2023

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About Accountable

“Powerful, timely, and delicately written.” —Ibram X. Kendi, #1 New York Times–bestselling and National Book Award-winning author

When a high school student started a private Instagram account that used racist and sexist memes to make his friends laugh, he thought of it as “edgy” humor. Over time, the edge got sharper. Then a few other kids found out about the account. Pretty soon, everyone knew.

Ultimately no one in the small town of Albany, California, was safe from the repercussions of the account’s discovery. Not the girls targeted by the posts. Not the boy who created the account. Not the group of kids who followed it. Not the adults—educators and parents—whose attempts to fix things too often made them worse.

In the end, no one was laughing. And everyone was left asking: Where does accountability end for online speech that harms? And what does accountability even mean?

Award-winning and New York Times–bestselling author Dashka Slater has written a must-read book for our era that explores the real-world consequences of online choices.

YALSA AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN NONFICTION WINNER ● From the NEW YORK TIMES-bestselling author of THE 57 BUS comes ACCOUNTABLE, a propulsive and thought-provoking true story about the revelation of a racist social media account that changes everything for a group of high school students and begs the question: What does it mean to be held accountable for harm that takes place behind a screen?

My Review

I read The 57 Bus earlier this year, and when I saw that Dashka Slater had another nonfiction book coming out, I knew I wanted to read it. She has this incredible ability to zoom in on the people involved in a situation, inviting readers to get to know them and think of them beyond the choices they made. Yet, she never minimizes the harm anyone causes. There’s never any backing down from how awful what happened was or how much it hurt people. But we are also not allowed to consider only the hurtful actions. She helps us look at the whole picture.

In some ways, this book was a harder read for me than The 57 Bus. It’s messier in some ways. Some of the way the community and school responded added to the harm in ways that may have made it even harder for people to find healing afterward.

As I read about the boys involved in the social media account that posted the racist images, I felt like I kept wanting to shake them. They would talk about how the whole group of them made racist jokes, and considered it edgy humor. They would continually be shocked and surprised that people were outraged and deeply hurt by the photos on the account. And it seemed genuine, like they genuinely didn’t think about what they were doing, like really think about it? But it made me want to shake them.

The book also made me think a lot about how we, as a community, respond to incidents like this. This morning I saw someone blaming parents for kids who bullied others. They must be learning that at home, the post implied. Maybe. But in Accountable, I read about how hurtful that sentiment was for the families of these kids who were also horrified by the social media posts. It made me think about people saying things like that after the murders at Columbine High School about the families of the perpetrators.

I think this is an important book, because it examines our relationship with social media, accountability, racism, and community, but because it asks hard questions and doesn’t leave us in a comfortable, easy place at the end.

If you haven’t read this or The 57 Bus, I highly recommend both.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Representation
The author interviews students, teachers, parents, school administration, and other community members of various races and ethnicities.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used somewhat frequently, in quotes from statements, interviews, and videos.

Romance/Sexual Content
None.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
Descriptions of racist images, including photos of lynching. Brief descriptions of the history of lynching. References to people arrested for sexual crimes against children. References to death by suicide and suicidal thoughts. In one section, the author describes a boy’s plan to harm himself. Parents worry that their kids are having thoughts of suicide.

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.

Review: Desert Echoes by Abdi Nazemian

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Desert Echoes
Abdi Nazemian
HarperCollins
Published September 10, 2024

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About Desert Echoes

From Abdi Nazemian, the award-winning author of Like a Love Story and Only This Beautiful Moment, comes a suspenseful contemporary YA novel about loss and love.

Fifteen-year-old Kam is head over heels for Ash, the boy who swept him off his feet. But his family and best friend, Bodie, are worried. Something seems off about Ash. He also has a habit of disappearing, at times for days. When Ash asks Kam to join him on a trip to Joshua Tree, the two of them walk off into the sunset . . . but only Kam returns.

Two years later, Kam is still left with a hole in his heart and too many unanswered questions. So it feels like fate when a school trip takes him back to Joshua Tree. On the trip, Kam wants to find closure about what happened to Ash but instead finds himself in danger of facing a similar fate. In the desert, Kam must reckon with the truth of his past relationship—and the possibility of opening himself up to love once again.

Desert Echoes is a propulsive, moving story about human resilience and connection.

My Review

I think I have at least one other of Nazemian’s books, but this is the first one that I’ve read. The writing and characters are so compelling in this book. I usually have a really hard time with long chapters, but I couldn’t stop reading this one, even though it only has about nine chapters which are each somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 pages long.

The story follows two different timelines: the present, in which Kam faces a return trip to Joshua Tree, the park where he last saw his boyfriend Ash, and the early days of Kam’s relationship with Ash two years earlier leading up to Ash’s disappearance.

Because the chapters are long, there aren’t a lot of transitions back and forth between these two timelines. This helped keep me immersed in each storyline and meant that I was going to get a lot more information every time I switched to a new chapter. I liked that.

I’ve sometimes read books that show a reflection back to a lost loved one or relationship that didn’t last, and sometimes those stories leave so many unanswered questions that reading the book can feel unsatisfying. Desert Echoes does provide Kam some closure, though it’s not the information he expected to uncover. He does begin to process his feelings and see his life in a new way once he has the information he needs, and once that happens, other things that felt left in limbo in the story begin to shift into place.

It has the kind of ending that might feel too easy to some people, but readers looking for an uplifting ending will definitely appreciate the way that Nazemian closes Kam’s journey. The back of the book has a moving note from the author explaining his emotional connections to the story, too. It explains why he writes about these topics with so much authenticity.

On the whole, I enjoyed this book a lot, even though it’s a story of grief. I’m glad I read it, and I am excited to read more by Abdi Nazemian.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Representation
Several major characters are queer. Bodie, Kam, and their families are from Iran and recently moved to the United States from Canada.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Some f-bombs and profanity used here and there. Some references to homophobic comments, particularly by Kam’s dad.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between two boys. Very brief descriptions of sexual contact in a couple of scenes.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
A character is missing, presumed dead. There’s some question as to whether this person died by suicide or an accident of some kind.

Drug Content
References to drug addiction. One scene shows a person with drugs and an intent to take them. Kam’s dad is an alcoholic and is frequently drunk when he’s in the house.

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.