Phoenix and mom Nina have spent years on the road, using their charm and wits to swindle and steal to get by. Now they’ve made it to their ultimate destination, Mom’s hometown of Jasper Hollow. The plan: bring down Ellis Bowman, the man who ruined Nina’s life.
After Phoenix gets caught spying, she spins a convincing story that inadvertently gives her full access to the Bowman family. As she digs deeper into their secrets, she finds herself entrenched in the tale of a death and a disappearance that doesn’t entirely line up with what Mom has told her. Who, if anyone, is telling the whole truth?
My Review
So much happens in this book. Every time I felt like I knew what was going to happen, new things surfaced and I had to recalculate my predictions. I wasn’t sure at first that I’d like Phoenix. She seemed like a really hard person at the beginning, but it wasn’t long before I started to see how much she was fighting to keep her world together and how much she wanted to be a good person.
I liked the way THE HOLLOW INSIDE is set in this small town with these larger-than-life personalities: the bestselling author and town hero; the fire and brimstone preacher who just might have a soft heart underneath his judgmental, controlling exterior; the snarky, outsider daughter and her loveable, sweet brother. It was easy to picture them in the little town sprawling out from a roundabout with a huge tree at its center.
You’ve probably already guessed that this is a pretty dark, angsty story. And it is! It’s suspenseful and twisty. Phoenix finds herself caught in a tug-of-war between uncovering the truth and delivering revenge. For the most part, I got completely swept up in the drama and emotions of the story.
In one part, though, a character does something drastic really publicly and says he has to do it because he has to silence someone. I was kind of confused because, like, that scene happened in public? I couldn’t see how his decision would actually do anything but create a bigger mess, so I didn’t understand why he did what he did. I guess it was really supposed to be a desperate move and maybe he was supposed to be pushed so far he wasn’t thinking clearly. I’m not sure. I liked the rest of the story well enough that I really just rolled with that scene and moved on to what came next.
On the whole, there were a lot of things I liked in THE HOLLOW INSIDE. I think readers who enjoy dark books like SADIE or THE PROJECT by Courtney Summers will like this story.
Content Notes
Recommended for Ages 14 up.
Representation Phoenix is a lesbian. Another character is also a lesbian.
Profanity/Crude Language Content Extreme profanity used infrequently.
Romance/Sexual Content Kissing and making out between two girls.
Flashbacks imply that a man and a sixteen year old girl have a sexual relationship. A later scene implies that he may have had other similar encounters and in fact be a sexual predator? That question doesn’t really get pursued in the story.
Spiritual Content The story features a small town with a strong connection to a Christian church. Some scenes reference church services and prayer. Phoenix herself doesn’t share in their faith.
Violent Content It’s implied that a man hit a woman, but it happens off-scene. Phoenix hits a man and knocks him unconscious after getting caught robbing his house.
Some homophobic comments about a girl in town who was caught kissing another girl.
A car accident kills a teenage boy who was perhaps crossing the street. Another car accident kills a man when his car goes off road and down the mountainside. A sign falls, nearly injuring someone. An object smashes through a window, spraying a family with glass. A man with a severe allergy is stung by bees multiple times.
A person with a gun confronts a crowd. Someone in the crowd is shot.
Drug Content One minor character has a drinking problem and is drunk in multiple scenes. Phoenix and her friends drink wine at a dinner party.
Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support running this blog. I received a free copy of THE HOLLOW INSIDE in exchange for my honest review.
Eli isn’t just a teenage girl — she’s a made-thing the witches created to hunt down ghosts in the human world. Trained to kill with her seven magical blades, Eli is a flawless machine, a deadly assassin. But when an assignment goes wrong, Eli starts to question everything she was taught about both worlds, the Coven, and her tyrannical witch-mother.
Worried that she’ll be unmade for her mistake, Eli gets caught up with a group of human and witch renegades, and is given the most difficult and dangerous task in the worlds: capture the Heart of the Coven. With the help of two humans, one motorcycle, and a girl who smells like the sea, Eli is going to get answers — and earn her freedom.
My Review
The story world in GIRL OF HAWTHORN AND GLASS is unlike anything else I’ve ever read. It’s both contemporary and fanciful, charming and full of teeth. A tiny coffee shop to a forest of awake trees to a walled compound of violent witch children to a library where the books might attack. It kind of has everything.
From the first page I found Eli likeable. Right away I wanted to follow her down the path of solving the mysteries of her existence and to learn more about the mysterious motorcycle rider who befriends her. I loved the banter between Cam and Tav, too. Those two were fantastic.
The story is a bit dark. The magic has that eye-for-an-eye feel to it, where the rules are unbreakable, and it’s all about figuring out how to make what you need conform to the rules of the magic. And Eli is, after all, an assassin, so she thinks a lot about killing, and, until things start to go sideways, she never questions her assignments.
Representation Tav is Black and nonbinary. Cam is Asian-American and gay. Eli is pansexual.
Profanity/Crude Language Content Extreme profanity used infrequently.
Romance/Sexual Content Kissing between two girls. Kissing between a girl and nonbinary character.
Spiritual Content Witches, who live in a connected but separate world, created Eli to kill ghosts in the human world. Eli is made from stone and blood and other materials. Witches have rituals– sometimes about giving gifts or accepting favors.
Violent Content One scene describes Eli killing someone she believes to be a ghost. Other situations of peril. In the witch world, there are children who are fixated on violence. Eli can transform into a toothy crocodile girl and does so to bite an opponent.
Drug Content None.
Note: I received a free copy of GIRL OF HAWTHORN AND GLASS 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.
It’s 200 years after Cinderella found her prince, but the fairy tale is over. Teen girls are now required to appear at the Annual Ball, where the men of the kingdom select wives based on a girl’s display of finery. If a suitable match is not found, the girls not chosen are never heard from again.
Sixteen-year-old Sophia would much rather marry Erin, her childhood best friend, than parade in front of suitors. At the ball, Sophia makes the desperate decision to flee, and finds herself hiding in Cinderella’s mausoleum. There, she meets Constance, the last known descendant of Cinderella and her step sisters. Together they vow to bring down the king once and for all–and in the process, they learn that there’s more to Cinderella’s story than they ever knew . . .
This fresh take on a classic story will make readers question the tales they’ve been told, and root for girls to break down the constructs of the world around them.
My Review
I think the thing that drew me to this story most was this idea that a culture could twist a fairy tale, particularly Cinderella’s story, until it actually became a reason to oppress women and remove their personhood.
Our relationships with fairy tales can be a bit complicated as it is. I know women who’ve rushed toward a wedding, thinking of it as this happily-ever-after moment without a lot of thought for what comes next. That seems to me like a model we’ve adopted from fairy tales, so I kind of liked reading this dystopian take on how a wedding ISN’T always a happily ever after.
All that aside, CINDERELLA IS DEAD was a super quick read. It’s a bit dark, between the twisted fairy tale story and some dark magic and violence. Sophie is brave and angry and incapable of giving up on the people she loves, and I love those things about her. She’s headstrong, kind of an “attack now, plan as I go” kind of girl.
I love Sophie, but there were times I wanted to see more emotional range from her. She stays super intense through so much of the story. Honestly, though, that intensity might have been what drove me through the book so quickly.
Something about the writing style and the setting reminded me a little bit of THE SELECTION series. It’s kind of the opposite in terms of the plot, but I think readers who liked the series for its strong-willed heroine and the marriage of romance and rebellion will definitely enjoy CINDERELLA IS DEAD.
Content Notes for Cinderella is Dead
Recommended for Ages 14 up.
Representation Sophie and two other characters are lesbians. Sophie meets a boy who’s gay. Sophie’s Black.
Profanity/Crude Language Content Strong profanity used around a dozen times.
Romance/Sexual Content Kissing between two girls.
Spiritual Content A sorceress uses necromancy to raise the dead. Another character uses the lives of others to fuel their own power.
Violent Content – TRIGGER WARNING Under King Manford, women have no rights and are treated like property. Their husbands have total authority over them, and can bring them to the castle as “forfeit” if they displease their husband or father. (This is pretty much a death sentence.)
Several scenes show bruised and injured women with the implication that their husband has harmed them. Some scenes show brief violence, and Sophie overhears a man attacking his wife in another room.
Sophie also consistently fears unwanted touches and advances, reacting angrily and sometimes violently if any man gets too close to her. It’s unclear whether this is the result of personal trauma or growing up in a culture which allows men to abuse women.
One woman is executed in a public square after being accused of a crime she did not commit.
Two women stab enemies.
Drug Content None.
Note: I received a free copy of CINDERELLA IS DEAD 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.
Adam Silvera reminds us that there’s no life without death and no love without loss in this devastating yet uplifting story about two people whose lives change over the course of one unforgettable day.
On September 5, a little after midnight, Death-Cast calls Mateo Torrez and Rufus Emeterio to give them some bad news: They’re going to die today.
Mateo and Rufus are total strangers, but, for different reasons, they’re both looking to make a new friend on their End Day. The good news: There’s an app for that. It’s called the Last Friend, and through it, Rufus and Mateo are about to meet up for one last great adventure—to live a lifetime in a single day.
My Review of They Both Die at the End
Okay, so I read this book mostly as a result of my daughter complaining that she wanted to read a book where people fall in love and then they both die at the end. So I was like, I think I know the right book for this! Ha.
I love that Mateo and Rufus have such different voices. And I love the rituals between Rufus and his friends, the Plutos. I love the way he challenges Mateo to come out of the safe careful cave he has lived in, and how Mateo challenges Rufus to stop hiding from his emotions.
In the story, you get a call the day you die, letting you know it’s coming. There’s nothing you can do to stop it, and you have no idea how or when during that day it’s going to happen. It’s an interesting paradox because knowing you’re going to die changes what you do that day, but you were already going to die before you decided to make those changes.
And it’s not only Rufus and Mateo getting those calls, it’s everyone. So all around them are people who’ve gotten the call or who are living in fear of it or living wilder because they haven’t gotten it. There are whole businesses that exist for people who are living their last day, which is kind of weird to think about, but would definitely happen if we knew what day everyone was going to die.
I love the two-people-thrown-into-a-situation-together-ness of this book, and I love how knowing each other changes both Rufus and Mateo. I like that they don’t meet each other looking for love, but find it unexpectedly.
It’s very weird to read a book knowing someone will die at the end. It’s kind of like accepting that something is going to hurt you but doing it anyway, knowing that along the way, that same thing is going to make you laugh, make you think about things in a way you hadn’t thought before. I guess all that to say that I was afraid this book was going to be too sad for me, and it’s definitely sad. But it’s also so full of hope and value and love. And I’m so glad I got to read it for those things, too.
Representation One character is bisexual and another is gay.
Profanity/Crude Language Content Extreme profanity used mainly by Rufus.
Romance/Sexual Content Kissing between two boys. At one point they fall asleep together.
Spiritual Content Rufus and Mateo discuss what they think happens after death, whether there’s an afterlife. Neither believe very deeply in any sort of religion. One character believes in reincarnation.
Violent Content At the beginning of the story, Rufus is beating up another boy. Later, a character brings a bomb to a gym and sets it off, killing himself and others nearby. A girl stands on top of a building, contemplating killing herself. A car accident kills another person. Someone points a gun at a member of a crowd. A fire kills someone.
Drug Content None.
Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support the costs of running this blog.
About Queer: the Ultimate LGBTQ Guide for Teenagers (2nd Edition)
Teen life is hard enough with all of the pressures kids face, but for teens who are LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender), it’s even harder. When do you decide to come out? To whom? Will your friends accept you? And how on earth do you meet people to date?
Updated in 2018, Queer is a humorous, engaging, and honest guide that helps LGBT teens come out to friends and family, navigate their new LGBT social life, figure out if a crush is also queer, and rise up against bigotry and homophobia.
Queer also includes personal stories from the authors and sidebars on queer history. This updated and revised edition is a must-read for any teen who thinks they might be queer – or knows someone who is.
My Review
QUEER has a lot of personal stories from the authors about experiences they had that they learned from– either because they went well or badly. The authors are frank, funny, and warm. The overall message is that if you’re a person looking to better understand yourself, you’re not alone. Being comfortable in your own skin and learning to have healthy relationships part of a lifelong journey, and there are lots of great tips in the book on those things.
The book offers suggestions on topics like how to come out to your family, how to approach a crush and find out if they might be interested in you. I thought those tips in particular were great. The advice is practical and simple.
There were a couple of things that I wish QUEER had gone into more depth about. The great majority of the text refers to gay and lesbian issues– perhaps because those are the authors’ experiences? There are some moments where bisexual or transgender issues get a focus, but they don’t get the same focus or depth. Asexuality is mentioned only briefly as well, and again, I wish there had been more information about the spectrum of asexuality.
I would have especially liked to see tips and suggestions for how to come out to family members as nonbinary, asexual, or transgender. (There’s a mention of coming out as transgender in the chapter on coming out, but I wish there had been more, because it’s not the same as coming out as gay or lesbian.)
QUEER focuses on support and validation, so it’s a very permissive book. There’s no judgment toward non-monogamous relationships or one night stands. It leaves readers (and encourages them) to decide on moral values and relationship rules for themselves and with their partners.
One of the really great assets of this book is the resource section, which lists support websites for LGBT teens and sites that will help you connect to supportive groups and organizations in your area, including how to find religious organizations that are friendly to members of the LGBT community. I love that section and am anxious to explore more of those resources.
Overall, I think QUEER is warm and engaging, and a great resource particularly for lesbian and gay teens and support communities.
Content Notes
Recommended for Ages 14 up.
Representation Written by and intended for members of the LGBT community.
Profanity/Crude Language Content None.
Romance/Sexual Content Brief personal stories about romance (with hints at sex but not graphic descriptions). Some references to sexual acts.
Spiritual Content The resources section lists ways to find religious groups that are friendly to the LGBT community.
Violent Content None.
Drug Content None.
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 QUEER: THE ULTIMATE LGBTQ GUIDE FOR TEENAGERS (2nd Edition) 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.
