Dino and July were best friends, and then they were not. When July dies suddenly, Dino isn't sure what to feel. When she comes back to life while he's touching up her makeup at his family's funeral, the two embark on an adventure to figure out why July is back and where their friendship went wrong.

I thought this covered friendship drama very realistically. You grow apart for a lot of different reasons, and first romances can be a big one. I liked that part a lot. I'm not sure I 100% bought part of the plot where all people dying hinged on July's staying because she didn't want to die still fighting with Dino, but I didn't necessarily mind it either. I just feel like Hutchinson's brain comes up with such weird exciting stories and I want to read them!

Honestly, there was no way I wasn't going to take a break from my YA reading for this. I love this series so much. It is beautifully written and just has so much magic and power in it. I love it.

I don't think that this book does a good job of establishing that it takes place in 2004. I honestly had no idea that was the time period. Knowing that after reading the author's note, it puts the story in a bit of a different light. Many of us have changed our thoughts about sexuality and gender in the past 15 years, and many people have the same thoughts that are expressed in this book. It does involve some very homophobic and transphobic comments, which could be triggering for some people.

I did really like that there were people who were fluid on the sexuality spectrum and people were okay with that. I think a lot of people are more fluid than they realize, and more support for that would be good. I also wanted to shake the character when it came to interacting with her mother, but at the end they made up, and Maggie admits that she had forgotten why she hated her mother in the first place, which I can see as realistic for being a teen. I also thought the friendships in this book were really interesting, because of them did seem very situational to me, and not necessarily the type of lifelong friends you would make.

Love this series so much! I'll be sad when it ends.

I'm not normally a person who marks a book up, but I think I want to write all over this one. There's a lot to respond to and unpack here, and I want to be able to write my thoughts in it. I really liked reading the part that told about Anderson's life, as I didn't know a lot about her history and she is one of my favorite authors. It isn't necessarily easy to read, but I liked learning about her life. Then it goes into her history with school visits, which was harder to read. It's harder because she's talking about the kids she encounters, but it also calls out administration and librarians who are gatekeepers of knowledge for kids. As someone who is starting a YA Award, the idea of censoring the list based on too controversial topics is on my mind a lot. I personally think this is excellent reading for all, but will it make it past nervous gatekeepers? I don't know, but that's something I need to sit with for a while.

I enjoyed most of this, but there was one point where a weird character was introduced and I thought I missed something but no.

All my favorites get canceled. But this is good.

This was a lot especially coming off of Saga Vol. 9.

I finished this book a while ago, but I wanted to sit with it, really think about it, before writing my review. This is a collection of stunning poems, ones that will break your heart and remind you of the humanity each one of us owns. I bookmarked the copy I borrowed from the library with more post-it notes than I normally do, because I wanted to make sure I followed up on the work of the poets I liked best. "Immigrant" by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, "My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at Sears" by Mohja Kahf, "Pronounced" by Carlos Andres Gomez, and "Off-Island Chamorros" by Craig Santos Perez struck me as particular favorites, both because of what they illuminated about their particular experience, but also where I as a non-immigrant white person might fail. Really worth thinking about for a while.