This was overall a pretty fun and breezy read! I think a lot of teen readers, like myself, will enjoy the look at the life of an Instagram (the book just calls it "the app") Influencer and the pressures and perks it contains. I think the way CeCe struggles to express herself and her activist values is relatable, and I also think it's great to showcase the backlash a bi teen girl might face from some members of the queer community when she ends up dating a boy, as well as to show her

Spoiler

triumphantly giving a speech about being bi at a Pride festival and getting a lot of positive feedback

. The middle phase of the book, when CeCe is mid-backlash, might be a little rough for some readers, but it's definitely a romance with a happy ending.

I also really liked that while the book is aware of the ~dark side of social media it ultimately also acknowledges the value of social media friendships and the good effects social media can have as well. I feel like there easily could have been potential for this to be a book where it's about CeCe's new, social-media hating boyfriend convincing her to delete the app and go off the grid or whatever. So yeah, I liked this a lot and I think it'll resonate with a lot of teens too.

I couldn't put this down as I was reading it--I loved Daunis as narrator and I was fully engaged with her world and ongoing investigation. It did fall apart a little bit toward the end and as I think about it I think maybe this book ultimately bit off a little more than it could chew, but it's still an amazing debut novel and I definitely look forward to seeing what Angeline Boulley writes next.

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Like for example why was it a late-book reveal that Daunis has nerve damage in her shoulder? It's from her POV, why was she keeping it a secret from...herself...and then why did that reveal have very little to do with anything going forward? And I suspect the writing around the Little People was out of a respect to not wanting to write too much about Ojibwe lore but it was also kind of like..."here's hundreds of pages of mystery about meth and also there are magical creatures that are literally real and talk to you when you're high but we can't tell the FBI about it so anyway, my shoulder hurts. like I respect that maybe you don't want to write about this lore and I know some other Native American writers have gotten some backlash for putting too much sacred lore into writing but then like, IDK, maybe don't write about it at all instead of just the smallest, wildest tease of a plot element?!?! Also I'm just speculating that that might be the reasoning for it but it just seemed like...a weird level of buildup for extremely little follow through on this plot element that seemed very interesting to me!

Also hey, great to have another hockey novel for my teen hockey enthusiasts! (It's a hockey B-plot for sure but still a good amount of hockey content I think.)

Also content warning for sexual assault, drug use/overdose, murder, etc...like PG-13 but heavy for a younger teen or anyone with specific triggers.

As a former small-towner, I enjoyed this! It was a pretty quick, engaging read overall (some of my favs were "The (Unhealthy) Breakfast Club" by Monica Roe, "Fish and Fences" by Veeda Bybee, "Best in Show" by Tizah Price, and "Island Rodeo Queen" by Yamile Saied Mendez, while a few others didn't really click as much for me). I think it's always a little tough to get teens to pick up anthologies for leisure reading unless they have particular ties to the subject or are die-hard fans of specific authors included, so I think this might be a hard sell for a lot of kids in my particular area. It might be more popular in more, um, rural areas. Also good for classrooms looking for short stories.

I don't know a lot about Aquaman generally but that worked out fine because in this book neither does Aquaman (rimshot). I enjoyed this! Kelly Sue is great, I'll read whatever random character she writes about!

Join us for a virtual live show about this book! Wednesday March 31, 8pm!

https://www.portersquarebooks.com/event/virtual-worst-booksellers-podcast-live

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:|

https://www.frowl.org/worstbestsellers/episode-170-didnt-see-that-coming/

I think this book is going to CRUSH it for current teens--it's so the pandemic experience. (I often personally really struggle with magical realism/magical realism-adjacent stories because it's hard for me to understand like...what's really supposed to be happening? But with AS King I always get it, I'm always plugged into the emotional core of the book.) This is the weirdness of this moment.

!!!!!

Hmm...I wanted to like this more than I did. There are some great authors in here and I love the basic concept--interlinked short stories set in the same neighborhood, Hungry Hearts Row, known for its excellent (and magical?) ethnic food from a variety of cultures. But reading it felt kind of like a casserole where everyone threw in like whatEVER without a sense of what flavors would go together? Like clearly the authors sort of collaborated because there were recurring characters/places throughout the stories but the mix of genres really threw me. Like is Hungry Hearts Row a fairly realistic setting or is it a setting for a graphic mafia drama or is a place where superheroes live???

Also like...I fully get that for nonwhite kids, getting teased about what foods they bring to school lunch is shitty and traumatic and it makes sense that multiple authors who grew up with that might want to process that trauma in their food-themed short story. But like why are there still food bullies in this magical food paradise?? IDK I guess white people will ruin everything but it seemed weird that that element kept popping up in stories given this particular setting. (If it were set in like a non-magic food paradise I'd have no ish!)

Anyway...I dunno....not for me. And I think short story anthologies are a hard sell for most teens anyway. Could be a good read for kids who are into cooking, or kids who seek this out for stories from fav authors (for example I really liked Sara Farizan, Anna-Marie McLemore, Sandya Menon, and Jay Coles' stories--which also seemed like some of the stories most grounded in some sort of real world?) Overall the reading experience was a bit jarring for me. I just think ultimately it would have been a better reading experience to either have A) an anthology where authors can write whatever food-related story they want in whatever setting they want OR B) an anthology where different authors all write short stories in the same food paradise setting, but then if that's the case all the authors should have maybe come to more of a consensus on what that same setting is like and what the tone is there?

This is a really strong anthology! Particular favs: Justina Ireland's story of a rad fat sorceress, Patrice Caldwell's story of a teen vampire enthusiast who gets a taste of the real deal, and Charlotte Nicole Davis's story of a girl who realizes that the shitty toxic water on her side of town has given her supernatural abilities that the wealthy white kids at her private school don't have.

This is a great book for tweens through adults, honestly. It's written in Q&A format loosely broken into sections (like "history", "tribal languages", etc), which gives it almost a magazine-like feel--it's an approachable format. Some of the "questions" are like, very blunt rude things (like "Why do Indians have so many kids?") that as the title suggests people might be afraid to ask (for good reason bc it's rude AF) but address certain pervasive stereotypes, and Treuer's answers are generous, thoughtful, helpful, and funny. He's also aware that he can speak best about his own tribe and experiences but makes it clear that every tribe and every individual American Indian person has different experiences.

This was interesting to read cover to cover but could also work great as a reference book in a classroom setting.