Selma Blair is smart, a good writer, and is living an interesting life. The book is an hour or more too long, but it's not repetitive. There's some actory, self-indulgent stuff in there that I find annoying. I'm interested in what others think. 

This is a long story about events that occur within a 15ish year period, told from the point of view of mother and daughter conjure women on a plantation during enslavement, the war, and afterward. I stuck with it because I liked the two main characters, May Belle and Rue, but I wasn't all the way engaged in the tale. 

The boy band Saturday is tightly controlled by its management company, Chorus, with everything from their schedules, their clothes, their music, and their whole identities, designed by their handlers. Ruben has been asking to come out as gay for a couple of years now, and Zach has been trying to extend the band's repertoire with his own songs. The other two band members are Jon, who is the boss's son, and Angel, who was renamed by the brand and whose personal style was rebranded and who is developing some difficult behaviors. 

The story is told by Ruben and Zach and centers their will-they-or-won't-they romance. Zach is straight--or so he's always thought! I was impatient with Zach figuring out his bisexuality, and neither boy is all that compelling. Somehow, the novel kept me going, despite the fact that I didn't love its leads. 

It's like A Very Young Dancer, but with feelings and sequential art. 

This Dutch resistance novel got me thinking, as a lot of things do right now, about what I'm doing to resist fascism. How would I sign up to shoot Nazis?!? It also go me thinking about the unfairness even between saviors and saved. Hannie, a Dutch Christian hid her two Jewish friends in her parents' house. Hannie faced danger every day, but she also had autonomy while her friends sole job was to survive (as Hannie insisted). 

But about this book--it's the fictionalization of Dutch resistance hero Hannie Schaft's life during WWII. It's compelling and reads as if it could be close to the unembellished truth, but what do I know? I hadn't known much of anything about the Dutch resistance and how the country was starved for four years. Nazis and cops--the absolute worst!

I'd read the book before, in print, so you can refer to that edition for my full review. I thought I'd try the audio, just to see what it was like hearing a book I'd read (and loved). Certain things, including beautiful images, came through more for me. Profundities and sadnesses went deeper. Like this one

I'd completely missed it on the first read. Also the scene with Manny and the poet hit harder, or will stay with me longer. 

The reader, Victoria Villareal, does a good job with MC Addie's voice, and those of women and other girls, though her librarian wants to go prissy, despite the text not supporting librarian prissiness one bit. Her boys and men are a little less solid, but she nails the emotional moments. 

Closeted queer sibs have judgy Catholic parents, one of whom is living in Mexico after having been deported. 

Yami observes after beating the shit out of a mirror, and her hands. 

texts to a homophobe before blocking her