This was so sweet!! 💕💕 Mariama J. Lockington nailed a lot of adolescent experiences, from trying to cope with anxiety and mental illness at a young age (in increasingly unhealthy ways), the connection kids can build with each other, and the awkwardness but also excitement of falling in love for the first time. The scene of Zora comforting Andi in the bathroom before their showcase made me tear up, it definitely reminded me of the times I’d broken down in front of a close friend at 12 or 13 years old. (And how lucky anyone is to have that kind of support! Carter and Everett, I hope you’re both still doing well.)

I thought I’d be bored by the long stretches of time where the story would be in only one of the POVs—they switch every week, not every chapter—but both Zora and Andi were interesting narrative voices. Not only do they have their own personal touches added by the author, but I also loved seeing the ways they viewed each other in their chapters!! (Especially in the first week and first few Zora chapters, when they didn’t know each other as well.) I do wish, though, that I at least could’ve seen Andi’s POV one more time after everything that happened in the end.

This isn’t 5 stars because I was a little disappointed by how sparse the poetry was—most of it was in the interludes and unfortunately seemed to be kept to the camp’s POV; not much of the cast was developed besides Andi, Christopher, and Zora; and the ending was a little abrupt. But I enjoyed a lot of this. The kids acted like kids, and the romance was cute and well-paced (for both the plot, and Andi and Zora’s age group).

And this isn’t something I enjoyed,  but I was surprised at the accuracy of the self harm depicted. I think everyone should take the TW seriously.

It’s been three months since I’ve read this, and I still don’t quite know how to summarize my thoughts on “Cantoras”. I certainly struggled in my Sapphic September post. And for reference: I barely skimmed my StoryGraph notes to jog my memory! This book has just stuck in my mind this whole time😦

What a beautiful book that lives up to its popularity. Knowing the lengths that De Robertis had gone to in order to capture the time period—and put bits of oral history into each character’s narrative—definitely enhances the reading experience. I also loved the Spanglish included throughout, language is a key part of the themes around censorship and ostracism, and I really loved how the interpretations of different terms were written. (I so badly want to be a fluent Spanish speaker because how on earth does this read when it’s translated???) 

I’ve never read a book with this many lesbians part of the main cast, too. (Tbh it’s hard for me to claim the label as a masc-leaning nonbinary person, but!! I love being a lesbian!!!) There was something so queer about their sisterhood, how some of that was because a couple of them had loved each other prior and still decided to stay close (sapphics and being friends with their exes, lol), and… goodness. The way everyone tried making sure Paz found a space to be accepted when she started out as a teenager makes me SO EMOTIONAL ESPECIALLY… (don’t get me started on how she grew up to be like Flaca when she was the closest to her… lord I’m unwell…) Seeing the found family dynamic grow more complicated as the book progressed, though, was one of the most bittersweet parts of this— the first third has the nostalgia of finding a space where you truly belong for the first time, but holding onto that initial idealism and excitement becomes near-impossible the more the characters are endangered. 

(AND PAZ…. DEAREST… seeing her literally grow was so wonderful to see. I loved seeing her go from a lonely teenager, to an independent young woman more confident in her lesbian identity. Perhaps I’m biased with her being a favorite, though— not only do I use the name “Paz” online, but the maturity in some of her thought processes reminded me so closely of my younger cousin.) 

While this isn’t my first time reading a book by Caro De Robertis, this was the first time where I could connect to their lush writing. Every chapter fighting for survival, every fear kept in the words a character couldn’t say, every moment someone would unexpectedly find themselves unconditional love, was described so beautifully and I could feel it in the pages. (Especially in Malena’s last chapter… they nailed the depersonalization/disassociation☹️) Ugh! Devastating shit, but it also made the queer discovery and joy in those first days of living on the beach so much better. 

Even though both the writing style and the emotional content were dense, I still ate up every page and quickly read this. I forgot this is barely over 300 pages! With how well-written each character is, I thought it was longer. No, my memory just failed me😅 but that’s still a testament to the quality of this writing! Goodreads user 

lauraღ worded her thoughts a LOT better than I could’ve. Go read this, damnit!!! 

Unfortunately the lack of absurdism made the one-liners hit a little less than the ones in Bianca Torre, but maybe that’s just my personal preference. While the characters were fun in their own right and had their own personalities and banter, they weren’t really fleshed out. I did, however, like the relationships Gigi had with her family, especially her mom. (Which, sidenote, a nonbinary mom!!! Yo!!! That’s gonna be me in the future if I have kids lmfao)

There were a couple of archetypes and plot similarities I thought could be drawn back to Justine Pucella Winans’s YA debut. Not as many as I thought—I guessed incorrectly who the killer was and it’s gotta be one of my worst bookish moments(seriously. All the clues were right there)—but still enough to make me raise a brow and wonder if JPW was starting to establish some tropes in their writing. I did like the (definitely on-purpose) Easter eggs, though!

And while this wasn’t a frequent problem, Gigi’s attitude to her attraction to boys kinda irked me, even though I’m not bisexual. I think this happened mostly in the beginning, but it made for some unintentional biphobia in the writing.

But as with JPW’s other YA novel, I enjoyed the snark, the terrible puns, and the main character herself. (I like how JPW writes teenage voices. It was interesting seeing their writing in the mind of a more closed-off and arrogant character, though.) MCs that are a bit of an asshole are usually the bane of my existence, but it turned out Gigi just had a strong set of morals and a reluctance to admit vulnerability. She still cared about the other characters in the main cast.

If you need to, though, take my review with a grain of salt. JPW is an auto-read author of mine and I had an unnaturally personal (and lasting) emotional attachment to her first YA thriller novel, so returning to that genre was comforting.

DNF at 37%. Hei was interesting, but not much else was. Sohmeng was an annoying protagonist (I don’t care to stick around for her growth, if there is any), there’s very little worldbuilding—you get more explanations on different places and terms in the 2-sentence glossary definitions than the story, and I just thought the story was bland. I was thinking of sticking it out(I never DNF books, no matter the quality), but when I realized I dreaded coming back to this book in-between my other reads, I called it quits so I wouldn’t waste any more time.

A shame, because I really enjoyed “Pluralities”, a book by the same author. 

Enjoyable, and definitely some of the most realistic queer rep I’ve read in a middle grade(also, a book that has a gay character but doesn’t give them a love interest?! Kudos), but it still has some of the trademark “wobbly on its footing” execution of a debut novel. The magic elements were infrequent, which was a bit of a bummer with the cover, and Murray’s thoughts could be repetitive (which was worsened by the marine life metaphors throughout, imo).

Regarding the magic itself, though, I was interested by how Murray’s abilities seem to be more about a connection to the ocean rather than fully controlling it. (And how she sometimes talked to the ocean like a friend or sentient entity!) And the scenes of Murray trying to reconnect with her magic through her time with Dylan were cute. It showed their understanding of each other.

The book references were fun, especially to other queer MG! I read about as much as Murray, so I added the books she mentioned to my TBR if they weren’t on there already.

I thought the found family/community plotline was handled well: you as the reader could tell why Murray felt safety with these different people and places. While Murray and some of the characters are affected by queerphobia(her parents are conservative. That’s plot-important), there is a surprising amount of queer joy and (platonic/familial) love. I especially appreciated her friendships with Blake and Dylan. (Oh, the joy of being queer kids with somewhat similarly funky gender stuff and unintentionally helping each other express themselves bc of the simple understanding you have…) But I also liked Murray’s bond with Patrick, even if some circumstances meant that Patrick couldn’t always be there for her. I think it would’ve been fun to get to meet more characters, though! Especially in the roller rink.

Overall, this was sweet, albeit not perfect. 

Incoherent in ways that seemed sometimes deliberate, and other times because of overindulgence. The author seems to know her characters very well, which would normally be a compliment, but the rambles prevalent in the writing style seemed to insert her own analysis and thoughts more than once. (I have mixed feelings on the narrator character, if you can’t tell.)

I liked the middle/third quarter though, when I started to be able to settle into the different kinds of madness each character represented, and thought that Hattie’s near-invincibility, combined with her chilling collectedness,  made her more of a horror movie monster rather than a Mary Sue. (But it is a little frustrating to not know the limits of her magic, especially by the end.)
The magic itself was gruesome in an artistic way…while I can’t get behind “Off With Their Heads”s specific kind of prose, I really enjoyed the body horror embedded in the fantasy—particularly with Icca’s decline, and, in general, Hattie’s abilities.

I appreciate some of the concepts it was going for: I liked the casual inclusion of Korean honorifics and even some cultural dress, the thrill of Caro and Icca’s back and forth(even if they got very predictable and the wording was repetitive—we know they want to love and kill and die alongside each other! Goddamnit!), and the built-up dread in the first quarter. (When there were actual stakes in the story… sigh.) But the retelling aspect felt just like aesthetics or set dressing, I either tolerated or hated the new interpretations of different characters (I never cared about Cheshire. He was annoying, and his quasi-love triangle thing with Icca lead to nothing), and if it weren’t for detailed notes I kept in my phone as I was reading, I would’ve never known a thing about what was happening. Icca’s trial (or rather, the idea of it), and the Saint Races were the two events in the story that left me the most confused. But the entire ending was a mess. I liked some of the imagery, but I feel like the “villain in someone else’s story” route taken in Icca’s POV(relating to the moral grayness I guess) didn’t suit what I’d read from her character.

There were a couple of nods to the original Alice In Wonderland that, although meant to be clever callbacks, made me put my book down or laugh. “Wonderland is like a looking glass”, the “eat me” callback, SHUT UP!!! 

(And although Caro and Icca’s antics were fun to read about, I didn’t feel their chemistry. I started feeling detached from whatever kind of romantic or sexual tension they had. They’re also a main part of an overarching issue in this book, which is that the moral grayness—and evil—of the characters doesn’t feel complex, but overdone and even edgy.)

ummm additional star though because a.) there were a couple of quotes that were bangers (“glorious magic was seen in those days, but also glorious hubris”🔥🔥), b.) I think I analyzed this too much as I was reading because Caro and Icca, as a concept, became FASCINATING to me and I couldn’t stop thinking about this book until I read the ending and the little embers of faith I had were snuffed out like a candle… in my own words via Instagram DM’s, “get yourself a book so bad you hyperfixate on it”?! 

Sharp, poetic in its prose, and with a mystery (and setting) reminiscent of classic noir, “Even Though I Knew The End” was a novella I burned through much quicker than I thought I would. (Usually, it takes me a week or two to read one!) Unfortunately, the short page count rushed some of the characterization and worldbuilding, but I enjoyed reading nonetheless. I especially appreciated the inclusion of secret queer bars, and how while they made room for beautiful relationships like Helen and Edith’s to bloom, they weren’t havens: ultimately (and unfortunately) they were the only place queer folks could actually exist as all of themselves. I think a couple of historical fiction books tend to glamourize that (perhaps unintentionally), but with the bits of commentary embedded in the asylum segment, there wasn’t room for that.

Besides that, though, I loved the atmosphere. Some of the imagery was incredible, but this also felt relatively grounded in its 1940’s setting. (Especially with its portrayal of women’s and queer issues.)

Perhaps it’s just going to take a while for the implications to truly set in, but I wasn’t as devastated by the ending as I expected to be based on the title and reviews. But I would still like to check out more of C.L. Polk’s stuff, this was great. 

I started this book so ready to love it—the dreamy writing drew me in, the depression representation was authentic, and I’d loved the previous middle grade I’d read by Kacen Callendar. But unfortunately, the plot was thin, drenched in metaphor that sometimes worked but other times was redundant. None of the characters really felt fleshed out except for Moon, either. I can at least (kinda) excuse the Guardians and other spirits, because of the mystery surrounding these literally immortal beings, but even the human characters felt like props or plot elements. I would’ve liked to see more on Moon’s classmates, for example, especially since they became a central part of their recovery!! 

(Also, while I know that people trying to get Moon to talk is supposed to show the issues with therapy that they encountered, why is it that not even the one person who helped Moon could come up with a way to have them talk through writing or even a communication device?? Maybe I was just quick to think of this because I’m sometimes nonverbal, but still.)

I predicted all the plot twists re: the magician and Blue’s story, but I still thought it was a highlight. The balance of depression and dreamlike fantasy was handled a little better in those vignettes, I liked getting to actually meet the magician later on (they were an interesting character! Would’ve liked to know more about them), and I thought the ways that it would question some mechanics of the human world were very creative. In general, though, I liked the fantasy elements when they toyed with a couple real-world concepts. The Spirit World itself was super intriguing and I liked the lore that tied it into Moon’s writing.

I also really appreciated the normalization of nonbinary identities! A lot of this cast is essentially “assume they’re genderless unless explicitly stated otherwise”, regardless of gender presentation. While I’m a little unsure how much of that can be attributed to Moon’s perspective on gender as a nonbinary child, I’d also never seen so many characters in a book that used they/them pronouns lol?? (Which is extremely surprising, considering how many queer books I’ve read. More of that, please.)

This was a little above okay, I liked some parts of it, but I still thought the story could use some improvement. A lot of the plot seems to be a way to vent out Kacen’s own philosophical beliefs, and I’m a little iffy on how Moon’s depression seemed to be (mostly) resolved.