📚 It was such a joy to be back with Eva and her crew! I love the universe Valdes has created with these books - wild aliens, a dangerous space underground, and political intrigue, all led by a kickass heroine.
📚 PRIME DECEPTIONS and its previous book, CHILLING EFFECT, are basically nonstop action. If you're looking for space battles and duels with aliens, this is it.
📚 I love how Eva's heritage is woven into the story through her memories and consistent use of Spanish, especially when talking to her family. I don't know of many books set in space with Latinx protagonists, so it's pretty cool to get to read one.
📚 Also, the psychic cats feature much more prominently in this book, which I obviously enjoyed! 

Thanks to Catapult for the free copy of this book. 

Taking us from the slave era, when white women fought in court to keep their slaves, through the centuries of colonialism, when they offered a soft face for brutal tactics, to the modern workplace, WHITE TEARS/BROWN SCARS tells a charged story of white women’s active participation in campaigns of oppression. It offers a long overdue validation of the experiences of women of color. (via Goodreads)

If you've read the basic-level antiracism books, WHITE TEARS/BROWN SCARS is your next step.

This book digs into the many shifting ways white women have used their image of being "damsels in distress" order to protect white supremacy and their power over women of color throughout history.

The author is Australian, so while much of the book focuses on American racial issues, there is a wider global perspective many books like this don't have, and it covers the oppression of all racialized people, not just Black Americans.

There are a few ideas at the end of the book that I wish were given more page time, but that's the only quibble I have, that I wish it was longer. 

Content warnings: homophobia, Islamophobia, misogyny, physical abuse, police brutality, racial slurs, racism, rape, religious bigotry, sexism, slavery, trafficking, and xenophobia

✨REVIEW✨

Camino lives in the Dominican Republic. Yahaira lives in New York City. One terrible day, both girls receive news that their father has died in a plane crash. In the midst of this pain, they find out about each other and the double life their shared father lived. 📚

•

Acevedo's novels in verse are not to be missed. She brings complex families and emotions to life within just a few pages, and in CLAP WHEN YOU LAND she digs deep into these girls' overlapping lives and the competing pain and joy they each feel. 📚

•

Additionally, Yahaira identifies as gay, and while she and her girlfriend are of course an integral part of the story, their queerness is simply a part of the larger story rather than the story itself, and I am so grateful that more and more books are taking this tack recently. Being queer is more than your coming out story - it's an ongoing part of your life and novels are finally beginning to reflect that. 📚

•

Content warnings: plane crash, parent death, sexual harassment, sexual assault. 

✨REVIEW✨

The first time Jay meets Maria, he dismisses the possibility that she might be an intelligent person because she is gorgeous, dressed to the nines, and talking about Taylor Swift. Maria calls him out on it and they become immediate enemies, each venting to their online bestie about the situation. Little do they know, they are each others' faceless online besties and have been texting and flirting via science jokes for over a year. 📚

•

HOLD ME is really precious, and also digs into some complicated stuff around gender and sexism. Maria really holds Jay's feet to the fire, both to his face and as Em, the blogger he's in love with. And Jay - after some refusal to engage - does eventually sit with what Maria has explained to him and realizes what a jerk he's been. I thought at first that this was going to be one of these romance novels where the intial hate is too strong to believably overcome, but the nuanced way the two leads talk (okay, mostly argue) through it felt pretty real. 📚

•

In addition to all this, Maria is a trans woman, which plays into her refusal to back down from being the hyperfeminine woman she loves to be. And while this fact about Maria is an integral part of who she is, it's a total nonissue in her relationship with Jay and I loved that. There is a scene where she comes out to him, and he simply absorbs the fact and realizes why this compounds the pain of his actions. It's not framed as though anyone was hiding anything or felt betrayed - it's just another fact about her life. 📚

•

Content warnings: transphobia, sexism, racism. 

 📚 I loved the world of this book, an America where the supernatural is a normal and accepted part of everyday life.
📚 Plus, who wouldn't want to keep a ghost version of their favorite pet around?
📚 The central mystery of this book kept me turning pages as fast as I could.
📚 Ellie is lowkey asexual, in a way that's casually dropped into conversation and has no bearing on the story. Love.
📚 ELATSOE also uses the supernatural aspects of its world to talk about colonization and violence against generations of Native peoples. Baked into the story (and the stories of Ellie's Six-Great-Grandmother) are discussions of who has the right to exist and where, and who is allowed to steal what rightfully belongs to others - from land to lives.
📚 ELATSOE falls closer to middle grade than YA. That's not a knock on the book, just something to know going in. 

 📚 SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT is so precious! I absolutely loved Emma and Jo and watching their relationship blossom.
📚 This book is the slowest of slow burns - somewhere in the middle there I began to wonder if this should even be classified as a romance novel since it's so focused on what's happening in their workplace, but that plot was still compelling enough to keep me reading.
📚 This book is in large part about power dynamics, not only in the sense that Jo is Emma's boss, but also in discussing women and women of color in the entertainment industry and the sexual harassment situation that happens to Emma. It was all very well done, too, never heavy handed or feeling like it was dropped in just to create tension.
📚 I liked that Emma and Jo weren't quite your standard mainstream entertainment lesbian couple. They truly had their own personalities instead of simply being stereotypes with specific jobs/names/etc. overlaid on that.