Thanks to FSG Books for the free advance copy of this book. 

Edie is a young Black woman working in publishing in New York, barely making rent, sleeping with a series of the wrong people. She finds herself dating Eric, a married man from New Jersey in an open relationship. When Edie winds up unemployed and without housing, Eric's wife Rebecca invites her to live with them for awhile, despite not seeming to really be on board with the situation. 

Oh my god. How do I even talk about this book? I can't form my own sentences after reading Leilani's, which are each individual works of art that form a masterwork. I kept stopping reading to simply stare at the page when the paragraphs were too perfect. The text drags you down with Edie, with occasional sentences that run on for pages, pulling you both forward and underwater at the same time. 

Ugh, I haven't even gotten to the plot yet. It's not a highly plotted story, but I found myself whipping through the pages anyway. LUSTER covers everything from being a Black woman in a white-dominated field to the repercussions of growing up in an emotionally abusive home to simply trying to find yourself in a world that refuses to see you. 

I know this review is a confused mess. That's because I am in no way equipped to review and critique a novel of this magnitude. You need this book in your life, I promise. 

Content warnings: racism, sexism, self-harm, physical abuse, sexual assault, alcoholism, miscarriage, drug abuse.

✨REVIEW✨

Pablo is working at a bodega in New York, dodging bill collectors and his parents after dropping out of NYU. In the middle of the night, a gorgeous woman walks into his store. Halfway through their flirty transaction, Pablo realizes she's mega pop star Leanna Smart. Suddenly, Pablo's life is a series of improbabilities - private jets, room service...he can't get enough of Leanna, but no one else can know, or his life will be turned inside out. 📚

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PERMANENT RECORD seems to be a really polarizing book. No, I don't think the central relationship makes any sense at all - it pretty much exists just so this book will exist. Pablo is an intensely frustrating character, making one bad money decision after another. Leanna is a cipher who we never really see fully. 📚

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I don't care. I loved this book. I wanted to give everyone a hug. I loved Pablo and his friends and family. I loved how deeply rooted in New York City this book is. I appreciated the close look at how nobody tells you how to handle your money as an adult and if you don't figure it out immediately it can ruin your entire life, snowballing before you even know what's happening. 📚

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Mary H.K. Choi is the master of creating characters who are complicated in an everyday way. I'll buy everything she ever writes. 📚

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Content warnings: stalking, chronic poverty. 📚

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Thanks to Books Forward PR for the free advance copy of this book. Full review to come.

Thanks to Avon Books for the free advance copy of this book. 

Soap opera star Jasmine just had a very messy, very public breakup. She hopes her new gig as leading lady on the streaming series Carmen in Charge will help her reset her life and priorities. That is, until she meets her new costar, telenovela heartthrob Ashton Suarez, and all her planning goes out the window. 

YOU HAD ME AT HOLA has it all. A heroine striving to be a "badass queen making jefa moves." A standoffish hero who is really a sweetheart. Actual conversations between the characters...when they're not...ahem. It's so good, y'all. 

This book is about family, both in the sense of blood family and the larger Latinx community. Jasmine speaks often about how lucky she feels to be working on a show with largely Latinx actors and staff and how rare that is. There's also a lot of Spanish mixed into conversations with little to no translation, just as these characters might actually speak in real life. 

Now, I really want books about Jasmine's cousins and books about her coworkers! Pretty safe to say I'll be reading whatever Alexis Daria writes from here on out, though! 

Content warnings: stalking, home invasion.

Thanks to St. Martin's Press for the free advance copy of this book. 

It's the summer of 1991 and Cassie is planning to spend the summer before college working at the mall with her boyfriend. But before the first day even begins, she find herself jobless and boyfriendless. Her plan B job, though, might just turn out to be infinitely more exciting. 

This book was absurd and I loved it. It's set entirely within the mall and involves everything from a secret bar for employees in the basement to a decades-old treasure hunt with Cabbage Patch Kids as clues. Cassie is smart and clueless, easy to root for and easy to get frustrated with - and the same is true for most of her fellow mall denizens. 

This book is classic McCafferty, deeply sarcastic, viscerally embarrassing, and full of feelings the characters don't know how to deal with. It's also set in Pineville, NJ, the setting of her Jessica Darling books, so many supporting characeters' surnames will be familiar to her fans. (None other than a young Bethany Darling makes an appearance within the first few chapters!)

This is the ideal book to devour in one lazy summer sitting, which is precisely what I did. 

Thanks to HMH Teen for the free advance copy of this book. 

Mariana's father has been a politician her whole life, something she's mostly been able to ignore, just posing for photo ops here and there. But now that he's running for president, all of her privacy is gone and her parents feel like they're worlds away. Plus, Mari is beginning to uncover exactly what her father's policy positions are, and she does not agree with any of them. 

RUNNING is a story about finding your voice when the whole world is watching you. It's terrifying enough to try to separate yourself from your parents as a teenager, but when your classmates are booing you for your father's political ideology? That's something else entirely. This book delicately navigates the confusing layers of living a public life you didn't ask for - invasive photos, people knowing your family's business, being unable to simply be a teenager like everyone else. 

Plus, RUNNING also deals with how very personal Mari's father's Republican stances are to her friends and family in Miami. Xenophobia, homophobia, inaction on climate change, and more all affect their lives in measurable, negative ways. It may be theoretical to Papi when he's away in DC, but Mari witnesses the effects firsthand and decides she cannot stand aside. RUNNING is not to be missed. 

Thanks to Random House for the free advance copy of this book. 
Utopia Avenue is the hottest new band in 1960s England. The four members were brought together by their manager, who saw that their separate potentials could come together and create stardom. And he was right, for two albums, at least. 

Well, how does one sum up a nearly 600-page novel we've been waiting five years for? "Sprawling epic" hardly does it justice. This book begins in the gutters of London and ends in the hills of Los Angeles and visits a dozen or more locations inbetween, all while digging deep into the backstories of each of the band members. 

Additionally, given that this is a David Mitchell novel, it is set in his existing multiverse and many characters from previous books recur, ranging from Bat Segundo to, of course, Marinus. And naturally, band member Jasper de Zoet is a descendant of Jacob de Zoet, which comes into play quite dramatically. Usually I tell people you don't need to read Mitchell novels in any order to know what's going on, but I think this might be an exception and this one plotline will make a lot more sense if you've read THE THOUSAND AUTUMNS OF JACOB DE ZOET. 

I will say it did feel a bit long in the middle, but maybe only because it took most of the book before any temporal or supernatural hijinks occurred, which are my favorite parts of Mitchell novels. But UTOPIA AVENUE is a wonderfully detailed look at the highs and lows of rocketing to fame, with cameos from every musician and culture maker from the era popping delightfully in along the way. 

Content warnings: racism, sexism, alcoholism, addiction, abuse, sexual harassment, sibling death, child death, attempted suicide, dated racial slurs. 

Thanks to Delacorte Press for the free advance copy of this book. 

Margot's mother has always kept any information about their family history from her. They live shut up in a small apartment, alone together in the world. But Margot stumbles across her grandmother's phone number and decides to call her up and visit her ancestral hometown, only to find that her family's history is much longer and darker than she could ever have imagined. 

BURN OUR BODIES DOWN moves quickly and powerfully, a story of a matriarchy twisted into something horrible. The whole book has an atmosphere of something off kilter, of a storm in the distance. And when the pieces begin to fall into place, I could not turn the pages fast enough. 

It's also a knife-sharp illustration of emotional abuse and the lasting, even generational effects gaslighting can have on those who experience it and turn it on their children. 

Additionally, I just want to note the small joy of a book that features a queer character - one who explicitly names herself as such on the page - and that it has no bearing on the plot at all. There's no romantic thread to this book and it's not even a coming out story. She simply is a lesbian, that's all. 

Content warnings: emotional abuse, death, body horror.