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challenging
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
I almost put this book down a few times before I got sucked in because it was confusing/nuanced. At her private school, Alejandra Kim, with her Argentinian first name and Korean last name (and appearance) is widely seen as a diversity case. Most students kind of keep that assessment to themselves--more because they're afraid of getting canceled than because they believe their take is problematic. When a famous author guest teacher says the quiet thing out loud, Ally (her name at school. vs. Ale, her name at home in Queens) doesn't make a fuss. However, her best friend Laurel white saves her, and the jerk is fired.
I wish Jonathan Brooks James had straight-up bungled my name, like my teachers before him did. Just like every day I wish I had a normal name, like Jane or Anjali or Jiyoung. A name that at least looks like what I'm supposed to be.
The dynamics between Ale/Ally and her friends and mother (her father died by suicide a year ago) show all of the characters as flawed, but not terrible, including Ale herself and her semi-imperfect YA love interest, Billy.
Ma said Papi used to be, like, a piano prodigy back in Argentina, but immigration. He never had the chance to pursue his dream of being a músico. He never had the chance to do a lot of things. I thought immigration was all about achieving the American dream. But in my family, immigration just seems to be the American dream killer.
The teacher who replaces Jonathan Brooks James's subject is cultural studies, which opens Ale's eyes to race and racism in America. That includes how some Asian kids feel that they're impacted by the model minority myth and college admissions.
Ask any Asian kid I went to Stuy with. It's like we get the worst of both worlds: all the cons of not being white, with none of the pros.
hopeful
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
This time it's the lady who's got daddy issues! The protagonist, Sophie, is the bastard daughter of a nobleman who died and left her to the care of his wife who has two daughters of her own. It's a Cinderella story, which is fine. Sophie meets hottie Benedict at a ball at Bridgerton house, and the two fall immediately in love, even though "at sight" is less relevant because the ball is a masquerade.
They're both dumbasses in predictable ways, but in the end, good triumphs over evil, and>the girl from the wrong side of the tracks still ends up on the right side of the bed. </spoiler
They're both dumbasses in predictable ways, but in the end, good triumphs over evil, and
funny
informative
medium-paced
The only queer members of the main L-Word cast immediately became the closest of friends. Moennig's wife refers to Hailey as Kate's "other wife." The two met when they were the only people auditioning to play Shane! Obviously, Moennig got the part, but the producers made sure to cast Hailey, too. I listened to the audiobook and felt like I was listening to friends tell a story. It's thorough without being overly detailed, and pretty much the perfect length to keep a reader/listener engaged.
Filming the show in Vancouver sounds magical, and I love that the two are still besties.
Filming the show in Vancouver sounds magical, and I love that the two are still besties.
adventurous
hopeful
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Loveable characters:
Yes
This is a Back to the Future story without the ick factor--and with brown people (other than Chuck Berry getting his sound from a white teen boy Columbusing Johnny Be Goode). Samantha feels misunderstood by her mom and idolizes her grandmother--until a wacky taxi takes her to school--in 1995. The GenZ take on live GenX culture is funny.
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Less absorbing than the first one. OMG Anthony, get over your daddy issues.
lighthearted
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Completely absorbing, but omg Duke, get over your daddy issues.
adventurous
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Loveable characters:
Yes
Another page turner from Sarah Van Name. This summer coming-of-age novel focuses on a foursome: narrator Callie, her local best friend Talia, their summer best friend Cleo, and Cleo's new local bestie Polly, who is joining them for the summer for the first time. Callie and Talia (and Cleo's grandparents) live in a North Carolina beach town. It's the summer between their junior and senior years.
I liked July. It was the only month of the year that had no school on either end. It had no landmarks: the tide of renters came in and went out on Saturdays, and the town held a cookout for the Fourth of July, but otherwise nothing much happened. In July, no one had birthdays or crises. It was pure, undiluted summer, molten and sweet like ice cream at the edges.
Every summer they undertake a group project. Callie had radio DJing in mind, but Cleo's proposal--learning to disappear kind of trumped Callie's idea. Callie goes along, even though she's thinks corporeal evaporation seems like a tricky goal. But, it's her crew. Cleo and Polly seem really convinced and have videos to prove it.
It would only be one more year, after all, before we graduated and scattered into the rest of our lives.
Thinking about it now, I may like this book even more than the first SVN I read. The metaphor of girls wanting to disappear is powerful. Makes me think of how in power imbalances, sometimes the only way to "win" is to absent yourself.
emotional
hopeful
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
I flew through this novel of self-discovery. June has moved in the middle of the year to Virginia (from North Carolina, and she's freezing throughout the winter months lol) after having been expelled from her former school for being caught drunk with her best friend. The best friend, Jess, gets to stay because her parents make a large contribution to the school. So June is in a new town with her grandmother, a day student at a boarding school.
She misses Jess intensely, but a lucky physics group assignment joins her with Claire and Kitty, who are dating, but are super welcoming. June isn't always the third wheel because she meets Sam, Claire's cousin in photography class. She'd never been interested in anything artistic before, but the elective fit in her schedule, and she found herself elbow deep in developer!
Developing prints is an apt metaphor for how June learns things about herself and who she is when she's not with Jess.
She misses Jess intensely, but a lucky physics group assignment joins her with Claire and Kitty, who are dating, but are super welcoming. June isn't always the third wheel because she meets Sam, Claire's cousin in photography class. She'd never been interested in anything artistic before, but the elective fit in her schedule, and she found herself elbow deep in developer!
Developing prints is an apt metaphor for how June learns things about herself and who she is when she's not with Jess.
mysterious
medium-paced
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Tom Lake, the story of an actor-turned farmer and her family is lovely, lyrical, and engaging, but ultimately unsatisfying. I'm not saying don't read it, but it feels sort of like a bravura performance of a meh story. Impressive, for sure. The main character is discovered while playing Emily in Our Town in college, after having played the part well in high school. She makes a movie that takes forever to come out, and in the meantime gets a summer stock gig--playing Emily (as well as May in Fool for Love). There, she meets and falls in love with Peter Duke, a movie star in the making. Duke becomes a movie star, and Lara (who dropped the u from her name) marries a farmer in a town near the theater and has three kids. The kids are three girls: Emily, 26, who will take over the farm; Maisie, 24, training to be a vet; and Nell, 22, who wants to be an actress. It's 2020, so they're back home with their parents and harvesting cherries.
Lara relates the story to the girls in installments, with some help from her husband, Joe.
Lara relates the story to the girls in installments, with some help from her husband, Joe.
we remember the people we hurt so much more clearly than the people who hurt us
Is this true? What a revelation! For Lara, it means that she still feels bad about dating her first Our Town co-star, when her friend had also been flirting with him.
Unrelated, I must complain about the Boundless ebook app. The dark setting didn't work, and I kept getting logged out. Even when you're not logged out, it takes a few screens to get back to reading. v annoying.
dark
informative
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Loveable characters:
Yes
Lithuanians were relocated by Stalin (I think) to camps in Siberia where they starved and froze, but also lived their lives. Eventually, the kids were brought home on an orphan train, though many of them weren't orphans. In being saved, they were taken from surviving parents. What a shitty world.