I really enjoyed Eat Your Heart Out. It has profound character growth and insight into how different people react in traumatic situations for the main group, and it's a really engaging read. Kelly DeVos has a wonderful skill for describe setting in a way that draws the reader into the story. I think the concept behind how the zombies are made and develop is really interesting and unique to this story. 
I'm not giving Eat Your Heart Out a 5 star review partially because of how it uses the classic horror tropes, though the usage and breaking of these tropes is also one of my favorite parts of the book. I didn't like that

one of Vivian's first thoughts after Allison's death was to kiss Steve

It's 100% a trope used in slasher fiction all other time, but it's one of my least favorite tropes. The body positivity aspects of this book were also really well done. There was a strong message that thin doesn't equal healthy or strong without making the book didactic.

I enjoyed The Stonekeeper. It's an interesting story, but it's definitely meant for a younger audience. It's not long enough to keep me engaged as an older reader, but if I had the whole series in front of me, I would read them one after the next. I do plan on reading the rest of the series.

This book addresses the death of a parent and the oldest child's drive to take responsibility in a parental role whether or not it's what's needed. Its an interesting introduction into the healing process and I look forward to seeing how it progresses and how the characters develop through the rest of the series. I've taken a shine to Navin and I think he is going to play a far larger part in the series than the other characters realize. I think his curious nature is going to play a large role in subverting the traditional chosen one trope that Em is currently playing.

I listened to Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter as an audiobook on 1.75 x speed, and it felt like a fever dream that happened after doing hours of history and anatomy homework and then falling asleep at the desk. It's gory, historically accurate to a degree, and enrapturing. I generally don't go for political historical fiction, but I genuinely enjoyed this novel. The concept of a failed novelist being sought out by a vampire to write the narrative told in Abraham Lincoln's lifetime of journals is interesting and reminds me of Mary Shelley's introduction to Frankenstein. The shift between first and third person with the journal quotes and narration was slightly off-putting initially, but not a deal breaker.

The story was adorable and pulled me back into autumnal pumpkin patch adventures with friends and that weird future nostalgia of preparing to miss things before a big change. The characters are lovable, and I really enjoyed Josie's himbo moment of realization.
The cast of characters is diverse and fun, there's positive LGBTQ representation, and there's a good message about remembering to cherish what/who you have without being didact. I think I want to read this again in the Fall, maybe for a book club.

The story unfolds with minimal words, but the repetition of motifs in the illustrations create an impactful narrative. It shows how isolated people can become and continue to be when they don't push themselves out of their comfort zones physically and emotionally. The man in the lighthouse is an allegory for the isolation the sailors feel as well. Not something I normally read, but I enjoyed it quite a lot.

The illustration style of Sheets is gorgeous and expressive. The characters are expressive and illustrated with realistic proportions. The color scheme and setting tie into the colors of the main characters and make the the setting look inviting.

I really liked that there were adults and kids willing to stand up for and with Marjorie. The story had a really unique way of addressing grief and death.

This book is written for an elementary to middle grade audience, so it makes sense that most of what Marjorie sees of her father's grief is is absence and his resignation to losing the laundromat. His alcohol abuse is referred to as 'special coffee', and while she is trying to protect her brother from seeing their father's depression spiral, she still needs to be cared for. The swim instructor and his family, as well as Colton reaching out and helping her where she's at by supporting her and buying her detergent to help her save the home she loves is a really profound statement on empathy. I also really like that Colton always liked Marjorie, and the only thing that changed about Marjorie for him to properly ask her on a date, and for her to accept, was her confidence and trust in herself. The fact that she gets to take the coveted piano lessons her bully had taken for granted is an added plus. Wendell coming to terms with his own death, Marjorie coming to terms with her mother's death, and the two of them jumping into the shallows of the river together is the perfect end. Neither of them forget why they're afraid or sad, but they are moving on.

The Starless Sea is entrancing. It's easy to fall into and fall in love with the characters. The shifting settings and perspectives makes the story feel fluid and dreamlike and I look forward to reading the book again and finding the pop culture and mythology references that I missed the first read through. I like a book with a good ambiguous ending, and I really enjoyed how Morgenstern 

brought Zachary and Dorian safely together, brought the woman who is not and never will be Eleanor and Simon within sight of each other, brought Mirabel and the keeper together outside of the harbor, and gave Kat a family while allowing the opening of the door to be open ended. It's an end and a new beginning all in one, and

I think that fits really well with the cyclical nature of the story.
The book is a coming of age story for a generation that grew up with their heads full of magic and had the traditional coming of age narrative delayed

Saeed Jones' vocabulary and the lyrical quality of his formatting serve to draw the reader in closer to the events and emotions within the poems, forming an encompassing bond that drew me to finish the book in one sitting. The poems feel like one continuous narrative from an ever shifting speaker, rich with cultural references.
For now, I'm content with interpretation, but I look forward to my next read through, and all of the read-throughs after that, when I can pull apart the syntax and spacing and study it line by line to see how Jones poured so much pain and complex emotion into the deceptively simple poems in this book. Prelude to Bruise deserves all the praise I can give and more.

Holy racism, Batman! They gave a man the ability to talk to animals only to make the man and the animals racist. Yikes.

I hadn't read this book as a child, so I gave the free Google books edition a shot. It does not stand up to the passing of time, but it did lay the ground work for the modern iterations of the story, which are far less racist and far more entertaining.

The story was not particularly gripping, and leans very heavily on racial stereotypes and the idea that goodness is related to whiteness. It was definitely written with a younger audience in mind, in terms of sentence length and structure, pacing, and plot. I will not be recommending this to others

Stonewall is dense with information within a short amount of pages, and tells the story of the Stonewall riots, the AIDS crisis, the period of peace between the two, and the 2010's fight for marriage equality in an engaging narrative format. It took a bit to get through, and  though it was a solid read, I wish it was longer with more density of information and first hand accounts on the time periods discussed after the stonewall riot.  It's gotten me interested in the period after the Stonewall riot, but before the AIDS crisis. It's a good introduction to queer history for middle grade and young adult readers, which is exactly it's purpose.