What do you do with the world's longest licorice rope? Honestly, the child who is selling the rope is the smartest one here.

The joy of what you can do with a rubber band! So many things!  If you like quirky books, this is for you.

I read this because it's being challenged at a local middle school. It's a sweet story about two teens deciding whether they should stay together or break up when one goes off to university. There is one sex scene at the end of the book that is slightly more explicit than fade to black. 

I got this to preview for a library program I was running. Since we weren't using sewing machines, it wasn't helpful for my needs, but it looked like it would work well for learning your machine.

Twin girls, separated at birth, ending up cursed in their teen years as they are drawn together. The story deals with American history, with the way that white supremacy hurts so many families, including white. It also illuminates some of the horrors of what passing does for individuals. I enjoyed it. 

Told in alternating view between Georgia, an outcast queer teen, and Todd, the dead teen in question, this story outlines the murder of a boy and the steps that led to that conclusion. It didn't go the way I thought, which was a fun change. It is a book with another dead LGBTQ+ individual, but the author acknowledges why they did it in an author note at the end which I found helpful.

I haven't read Jackson's previous series, so I'm coming in brand new. This is a thriller that keeps the pages turning. One of the characters drove me slightly nuts (just too take-charge with no one standing up to him). The twists were unexpected to me, and I appreciated that. I don't know if it will stay with me forever, but for this moment together, I had fun. 

Harris moves from California to New Jersey because of his dad's job (which also provides his brother with better lacrosse opportunities). He thinks he can reinvent himself as more than "the wheelchair kid" and lucks out into getting a young nurse, Miranda. Miranda has her own baggage, however, and while she expands Harris's horizons and sees him as more than his wheelchair, she offers some dangers too. 

Harris thinks he can learn a lot about people by color theory, which is expressed in the book. I could kind of see where he was going with that--it wasn't a lot different than horoscopes honestly. It made me think a lot about my own internal biases about people in wheelchairs and the life they live. I appreciated seeing Harris through their lenses. It also made me wonder what happens to people who don't have fierce advocates like Harris with his mom. 

I enjoyed this one a lot more than I thought I would. Asher knows exactly how long ago his mother died as the victim of a drunk driver, and he still hasn't recovered. He starts going to various grief groups, and befriends three other people who seem to struggle like he does: Henry, an elderly man who misses his wife Evelyn greatly, Will, a boy who lost his younger brother to cancer, and Sloane, who lost her father to cancer as well. They find a connection to each other in their grief, which leads to a road trip to Memphis, Tennessee. Each has their own reason for going, which they aren't sharing with the others. Asher's is revenge--will he get it?

I know some have said they had issues with how repetitive Asher gets--I was okay with that. It felt like the ramblings of someone who is focused on their trauma and can't get out of their own way to me, or the way my anxiety spirals go. Parts of the road trip were a little unbelievable to me, but I haven't experienced grief in that way yet, so it could be something I am missing out on. 

This collection of short stories loosely covers a Cherokee family over generations. It starts with a sixteen year old girl, Ama, being turned into a vampire against her will, and go from there. There are monster stories, more emotional horror, and science fiction horror. Some end happily, some do not. All will haunt you.