I’ve been in the worst reading slump lately. From early March until a couple weeks ago, I read only one novel, and it was really hard to get through (not the novel’s fault—it was all me). But I’ve been wanting to break out, so I picked up Caletti’s newest. I started it on Friday and was so sucked in that I finished it the next day. It may have broken the slump (I’m hoping), as I’ve read another book since then, too.
So what made One Great Lie a reading-slump-breaker? Well, obviously it was good, which isn’t surprising given Caletti’s strong track record. This one starts in Seattle, too, with a girl, Charlotte, who has ancestral ties to a Renaissance poet named Isabella di Angelo. Her family had held on to a published book by the poet for centuries. Charlotte herself is a passionate writer and is a little fixated on understanding Isabella, whose association with a much more famous male poet overshadowed her own work. Charlotte’s trying to write a paper about Isabella for a class, but can’t find any information about her.
This quest is important, but the story really gets started when Charlotte somewhat impulsively applies for a summer multi-week writing workshop in Venice with a very well-known author everyone, including Charlotte, admires. To her shock, she gets in and even earns a scholarship, the only way she could go.
But things do not go quite as she expected. As one of the youngest there, she still befriends several of the other participants and they all learn that the author is … let’s say he’s complicated and very flawed. But she has an equally important other task while she’s in Venice: she is set on finding out more about Isabella, who was from the city. As the story unfolds, there’s a clear parallel between the horrible historical treatment of women and the gender-based challenges that Charlotte and other girls and women face nowadays.
Caletti tackles another feminist issue in this book without sacrificing story in any way. I loved watching the tale of Isabella unfolding, and Charlotte’s friendships with local Dante and the other workshop participants are great to see. She had no idea she’d have to step up and do something really difficult and face unfair consequences, but she rises to the challenge and I enjoyed seeing how that happened.
I loved this book, as I’ve implied, and highly recommend it if you like quality contemporary YA that addresses social issues.
The premise of this quiet book is really interesting. A couple of decades earlier, a private space company send a bunch of young women on a one-way trip out of the solar system. While I do not in any way see the appeal of this, it is an interesting concept and I’m sure there are people who would sign up.
This is a book I picked up for one of my reading challenges, but I was looking forward to it even though I’m not a huge fan of epistolary novels. But I like Rachel Maddow and she always reminds me of an old friend, so I figured it would be a good read.
Hanging Around for You is a YA romance set in Leigh’s biker world in the mountains of (I think) Oregon. The first two books were clearly tied together, but this third one’s connection is much looser, though it’s there. Pinecone, the heroine, made an appearance in Leigh’s second book (Burnout, previously reviewed 
This is a really creative YA sci-fi book with what I would consider fantasy elements, which is mostly set on a contemporary Earth. It really is very unique, with an interesting premise that’s revealed over the course of the early part of the novel.
I’ve read a decent amount of vampire literature in my day, and I enjoy it. So I was looking forward to reading this collection of vampire stories. The editors really made an effort to incite a range of stories, with many diverse experiences represented. Some of the underrepresented characters include a girl who uses a wheelchair, a transgender boy, some gay kids, and several Black people.
This moving book by Australian author Cath Crowley is really something. It explores grief and love in a deep way, bordering on philosophical but without straying from the novel that it is.
This is a rare book, featuring a Native American girl dealing with some interesting problems. The fact that her family is Native is important for a lot of reasons, including the plot and her identity. Lou is Muscogee (Creek), which was kind of cool for me because the Creek Nation extends from the southern edge of Tulsa a ways south, and the one time I went to a casino, it was the Creek Nation one that’s less than two miles from parent’ house. Not that I’m saying that casinos=Indian culture by any means, but I always find it fun to see something that is somewhat familiar to me in books I read, which rarely happens because I don’t generally live in cool places.
This is a hefty book for a contemporary, coming in at over 420 pages, but I enjoyed every bit of it.
The premise of this novel is amazing. This is the magical kingdom where Cinderella found her Prince Charming, 200 years later—except everything is not all unicorns and rainbows. The current king has maintained the tradition of every sixteen-year-old girl going to the annual ball to get “selected” by the men from the kingdom. If they don’t get picked, they have to go back the next year and then the next, and if they don’t get selected by then, they’re “forfeit.” It isn’t clear to people what that means, exactly, but it’s not good. And the girls are supposed to go all out for the ball—actually, they’re supposed to be visited by the fairy godmother, if they’re "lucky" enough. But in reality, parents spend loads of money they don’t really have on dresses and everything so their daughters can be competitive at the ball. So that’s the basic setup—with a sexist medieval Western European-flavor. But there is a lot more going on than the characters know about.
This time I’m reviewing a nonfiction book, something I don’t do very often. But I devoured this one. It tells the story of an attack on an agender teen by a Black teen on a bus in Oakland, California, and the aftermath. But it delves into the lives of both teens as well as the justice system and provides a really objective view of all the issues surrounding the attack.
I don’t remember how I found out about this book, which originally came out in 2014, but I’m glad I did. As I’m starting to explore suspense in YA more, this is a perfect thing for me to read. I saw it compared to a Harlan Coben book, and having just read my first Coben book, I can say the comparison is apt.
I've had this book a while and finally got around to picking it up. And I have to admit after reading it that I think it would work better as a produced play than a script (I was thinking that myself, but a friend of mine read the book and felt meh about it, but then saw the play and said it was awesome), but I still enjoyed the story.
I read this sharp Pride and Prejudice remix quickly because it really sucked me in.