Told in three parts and based on real lives of otters cared for at Monterey Bay Aquarium's SORAC (Sea Otter Research and Conservation) program, Odder is an endearing, unflinching novel in verse that will have a broad appeal for animal-loving elementary and middle schoolers. It perfectly straddles the lines between fact and fiction, reality and sentiment, offering much to love for both the serious-minded and the whimsical reader. My one complaint is that part one is a little more disjointed than I would like. There's a selected bibliography that includes resources for young readers, however, and a trail of further reading breadcrumbs is basically a love language to me, so I'm rounding up to 5 stars. 

Imagine Sabrina the teenage witch grows up to be Leslie Knope but with a witchy, Buffy-style Scooby-gang friend group who fights a growing evil in a Midwestern river town. And Sabrina/Leslie/Buffy is an indie bookstore owner. And there's a friends-to-lover romance with a grumpy farmer. 

If only the execution had been as good as that plot. But let me say that I feel like this book is going to get dinged because of its very confident, type-A protagonist who is a proud, loud, somewhat insufferable feminist in a small Midwestern town. And, I mean, I get it, because I can't say I thoroughly enjoyed spending this entire narrative journey in her head, but I also reject it, because, yes, she's a little intense but she's not wrong. I do think she could've been written and rounded out a little more skillfully so her whole personality wasn't a string of stereotypes and mini-lectures. But even more than that, I think a ruthlessly good edit to the first few chapters would've helped this whole book tremendously. And I'm still confused about the town's timeline. Is this contemporary fantasy based on alt history or is the timeline supposed to make sense in actual history? It was supposedly settled by witches after the Salem Witch trial in the late 1600s, when really the earliest "towns" in the area were little more than French and Spanish trading posts set up in the mid-to-late 1700s. 

So yeah — a great idea, an enjoyable read, that could've been much more so with a tighter edit. 

Incredibly good graphic novel debut from author and artist! Gorgeous, vibrant art captures the sweetness and the pain in this story of a Dominican American family coming to terms with personal grief and inherited racist ideas about beauty. Marlene is an absolute delight — a good kid and talented young artist who is questioning hair politics, growing into her authentic self, and finding the courage to bring others with her. And three cheers for tia Ruby and her chicken!

For some reason, I thought this was a standalone. It's very much not, and now I have to wait a year to resolve a cliffhanger endng. I tried to not let that affect my rating, but I'm only human, not a semidiós! 

After breaking up with her fiance in "Delilah Green Doesn't Care," ice queen Astrid Parker is struggling to regain her footing. Her interior design business is faltering, her uber-judgmental mother is looming larger than ever, and her nerves are frayed. Which almost explains her struggles to remain polite, aloof, and professional around Jordan Sherwood, the lead carpenter on the historic inn renovation project that is the key to securing Astrid's success and her mother's approval.

The Sherwood Inn has been in Jordan's family for generations and in her own heart for decades. She's recovering from heartbreak and grief and can't seem to do anything right anymore, but she can keep the inn from getting modernized into blandness by the predictably uptight Astrid.

A little light sabotage and a few power struggles raise more than the resident ghost at the inn in this enemies-to-lovers romance that features a later-in-life queer awakening and the excellent ride-or-die friends from the first book. Even though it has allllll the right vibes and backstories to appeal to me (historic inn! hot carpenter chick! perfectionist unraveling! implementing healthy boundaries!) the story and development just didn't flow for me. I'll definitely still check out Iris's story coming in book 3, though!