Rowell's long awaited sequel to Carry On sends Penny, Simon and Baz on a road trip through the western half of America. Penny's stated goal is to check up on Agatha, who has been living in San Diego and not returning anyone's calls. But her actual reasons are to have a difficult face-to-face conversation with Micah, her long-time, long-distance boyfriend, and to get Simon out of the house. Simon has dropped out of his University classes and has spent the last several months in a depressed stupor lying on the couch. Baz goes along with it because he's getting pretty desperate. They buy the plane tickets with magic money, hid Simon's wings with spells, and use faked passports; none of them tell their parents where they are going. This trip is off to a great start!

This book is tonally and stylistically very different from the first one, and I've heard several friends say they thought it wasn't as good as the first one. I, on the other hand, thought it was better. I like that it takes place over a much shorter span of time. I was very interested to see how Rowell's magical world was adapted to fit into the American setting; I liked the new character who was introduced; and I didn't even mind that it ended on a massive cliffhanger which was an obvious set up for book three!

This follows two boys, Ari and Hector, and their sweet, light, summer romance after meeting in a bakery in a seaside tourist town. Ari's family runs Kyrkos Bakery, but Ari doesn't want to work in the family business: he wants to move to Baltimore with friends and pursue music. He hires Hector on as a possible replacement for himself. But Ari soon finds that he enjoys baking a lot more when working a long side Hector. The art is gorgeous and this type of story would usually be right up my alley but the book has several small flaws that kept adding up, until by the end I was more irritated than charmed. Most the things that bugged me where little plot inconsistencies, things like, a character already knowing another character's name the very first time we see them meet on the page, implying some kind of either prior meeting or maybe prior gossip that the reader never sees. Or a character bringing up something that would usually be foreshadowing for later plot which is then never mentioned again. I'd still recommend the book if you just want to read a fluffy sweet gay romance, but it doesn't have the emotional weight of Kiss Number 8, Check Please!, or Always Raining Here.

I highly recommend this audiobook, read by the author and a full cast. It's a very short production, under four hours, the majority of which is dialogue. Mira opens with a series of conversations with her five year old son that begin with queries about Michael Jackson and head into questions about race, the treatment of brown and black people in America, and the experiences of mixed-race families. Mira dips back and forth between memories from her own childhood in New Mexico, conversations with her East Indian immigrant parents, memories of dating, temping and writing in New York in her 20s and 30s, meeting her Jewish husband and his Republican parents and scenes from the lead up to the 2016 election. I loved the quickness of the narrative, the way nothing was over-explained or lingered on. My brain immediately suggested that this book would probably make a very good comic!

This book definitely has that Two Towers "middle book of a trilogy" feeling, but I really enjoyed it. Lyra is twenty now, and a student at Oxford. Her and Pantalaimon have grown painfully apart; they have intense intellectual disagreements about some of the theories and scholars Lyra has been studying, and a deeper emotional disconnect that neither can name. When Pan (out on a risky solo night ramble) witnesses a murder he reports some, but not all, of the information to Lyra. They are drawn into a secretive investigation that puts Lyra in touch with Oakley Street, and Malcolm Polstead, now a professor as well as an Oakley Street agent. Suddenly Lyra is being called in to a meeting with the next Headmaster at Oxford; her rooms are being searched, and confiscated; Pan goes missing; she decides to flee, with only a vague thought of pursuing a rumor to the Middle East. The second half of the book is split between Pan's travels and Lyra's. Both are pursued by enemies but both also encounter astonishing kindness at the hands of strangers. Spoiler, the book ends on quite a cliffhanger. I can't wait to see how this story is going to wrap up!

As expected, this was delightful. It's a personal story of childhood struggles with anxiety which will be relatable to many. I especially appreciated the inclusion of therapy sessions, a subject I had no knowledge about as a child and am only learning about now, as an adult. I loved that Raina holds onto the fact that she attends therapy as a dark secret, but when she reveals it, all of her friends understand that in fact, it's no big deal.

This is a cute but predictable story of a New England teen who discovers that magic powers run through her mother's side of the family. 13 year old Moth Hush is already something of an outcast in her small town; she's mixed race in a white neighborhood, raised by a single mom who inherited the local thrift shop. Moth doesn't have any friends until a new boy transfers into her school, and a talking cat appears to be her familiar. Moth and the Cat steal her mother's diary when her mom refuses to teach her any spells or magic history, and Moth casts a spell to help her new friend get a part in the school play. But things go downhill from there- it turns out the town major has a long running feud with the Hush witches, and the past is much closer to the present than Moth ever expected.

Tillie Walden is one of the most talented comic artists of our generation. However, this is not my favorite of her books. I'd recommend On A Sunbeam and Spinning before this one- both of those books knocked my socks off. This one isn't bad, but I was frustrated by how similar the two main characters were, both in looks and in personality, and by how the surrealist/sci-fi elements of the story were never fully explained. In essence, do go read Tillie Walden; but don't read this one first.

Lindy West is a gem. I liked this collection of essays even more than Shrill, which I read and enjoyed last year. One of the pieces, on leaving Twitter, I had previously read online but all the rest of the content was new to me. I listened to this as an audiobook so the names of the chapters have escaped me, but some themes that stood out to me were: West's mediation on loving Seattle, her home city, and her heartbreak over it's flaws and racial wealth imbalances; thoughts on how student activism was seen in her teen years verses today; thoughts on climate change and how it's effecting us physically and emotionally. Another chapter I enjoyed was about pitching the Shrill TV series and her insistence that the pilot episode had to contain an abortion scene which was not regretted by the main character. West has only grown in insight and feminist rage since 2016 and I am here for it!

I hesitated on starting this because I have no nostalgic childhood love of DC characters; but the art looked amazing, and I love everything I've ever read by Mariko Tamaki so I gave it a try and it is delightful. Harley Quinn is reimagined as the teen Harleen; sent by her struggling single mom to stay with her grandmother in Gotham City. When Harleen arrives she finds that her grandmother has passed away, leaving her a tiny apartment full of knicknacks. The rest of the ramshackle building is full of drag queens, and they adopt Harleen into their found family. But the whole neighborhood is under threat of gentrification and redevelopment; the wealthy Kane family's threats go from subtle to overt. At school, Harleen meets Ivy, the politically active daughter of the city major. Ivy encourages Harleen to join marches and school protests. Sneaking around at night, Harleen meets a teen in a joker mask who encourages her to through bricks through windows. Which tactic is more effective to save the neighborhood and which way will the wind blow this impressionable teen?