I was glad to get sucked into this book, since reading under quarantine has been hard for me. Truly Devious is centered on girl detective Stevie arriving at an exclusive boarding school for exceptional high school juniors and seniors. She is determined to solve a crime that took place at the Vermont school over 80 years prior. She's joined in her dorm by an engineer, a published novelist, an artist who was raised on a commune, a YouTube star, and I'm not sure if the other kid, David's, speciality is.

Before Stevie can identify Truly Devious (that's how the murderer signed their first threat), another mystery emerges, and she is treated to her first dead body. She hadn't fully accounted for that reality of murder.

I would have given the book 5 stars, if it weren't for the "To be continued" ending. I think books in a series should stand on their own, and I don't like the feeling that I've been manipulated.

Marva is a serious voting enthusiast, and at 18 is getting to pull the lever for the first time. She's pissed at her boyfriend, Alec, who for reasons that never become clear, isn't voting. Enter Luke, a disenfranchised voter, who obviously Marva has to help vote. I forget which state they're in, California, I think, but it's a state that has same-day registration, not to mention school is held on Election Day. Is that really a thing? It's the November election, not a primary, and Marva is so committed that she misses a calculus test to help get Luke to the polling place for his former residence. Luke teases Marva for going to a fancy school and driving a Volvo, which annoys her, but she still thinks he's cute.

As the day progresses, they talk about race (they're both Black), class, and other topics, they get to know each other better. Luke even meets Marva's parents, who immediate like him better than ignorant white Alec.

It's a readable, but not the most satisfying. Also the Eartha Kitty (Instagram cat celeb) plot line was totally wack. If one of my cats was ever missing, I would freak the hell out and wouldn't worry about one dumbass kid with other resources getting his vote on.

Thanks, NetGalley and Disney for the DRC.

Sometimes I don't like story collections because they're uneven, but you know what? You can skip the ones that don't speak to you! I wouldn't say these stories are uneven in quality, which is uniformly high, it's just that one likes what one likes.

Ibi Zoboi sets the stage for what kind of book about Blackness this is going to be with this statement

If global Blackness had a rating scale of one to ten, the Haitian Revolution has got to be at level ten, being the most Blackest thing that ever happened in history.

That is a bold, stirring opening. The stories themselves aren't overtly radical. Unless you think living a Black life is radical, which apparently it is in the United States and other places in the world. Instead the stories are more intimate. They're not about police violence, protests, or other issues that provoke. A lot of them are about crushes and love because that's often the main thing teenagers are thinking about.

Another quality sports memoir, and about the same Olympics as the last one I read (Aly Raisman, Fierce): 2016, which drew my attention to the fact that although she had every reason to, Raisman doesn't mention Trump in her book, and Muhammad does. Muhammad succeeded by always keeping her faith and her responsibility to her communities (Muslims, Black people, and Black Muslims) first in her goals. But oops, I'm getting ahead of myself!

Muhammad was raised in Maplewood, NJ, in a family of five kids and a mom and dad. The kids were all encouraged (strongly. "forced" might not be too strong, but not in a bad way) to play sports. Fencing was big in Maplewood (who knew? I always wondered how people got into obscure/über fancy sports. Specifically, how do you get tracked into rhythmic gymnastics?), and Muhammad found her way into it, despite the sport's whiteness being off-putting. She eventually found role models and peers in a POC fencing club run by Black former Olympic fencer Peter Westbrook.

She doesn't downplay her athleticism, but still makes it clear that her success was due to hard hard hard work, competitiveness, intelligence, and having a plan. I'm having a hard time writing articulately about it, so here are some quotations:

Maplewood is a diverse town, but in the classrooms, segregation was in full effect.

Muhammad was a star student, as well as a star athlete and was accepted at several Ivies. She chose to attend Duke, which gave her the best package. She fenced for them, but her money wasn't dependent on doing so. That didn't stop a high school classmate from saying within Muhammad's hearing that she only got in because she was Black. She took all AP classes, while competing in three sports, for the love of Allah!

And that wasn't the only time peers were dicks to Muhammad. Per her account her fencing national team teammates and coaches didn't give her the time of day, not even rooting for her at the Olympics or expressing concern when she injured herself. Ugh, one of her tormentors said of their team, "'This is sport. It doesn't matter what hair color you have, or what religion you are. The point is to go out there and be the best athlete you can be,' American teammate Dagmara Wozniak said." Like Wozniak's purple hair got her death threats, as Muhammad's hijab did?!? The teammates totally mean girled Muhammad, accidentally forgetting to tell her about practice times, leaving her off emails, excluding her from team meals, and snubbing her mother. That behavior literally made Muhammad sick, but she overcame her anxiety-induced fatigue with therapy and meditation. I looked for a response to Proud from Wozniak and their other teammate Mariel Zagunis, but haven't seen any yet. Let me know if you catch anything.

This newfound weight on my shoulders changed and reshaped my conversations with God. Instead of praying for a win or praying during times of difficulties, I started to ask Allah to allow me to represent my community and my family well.

I'm not religious, but I am an altruist when I'm at my best, and I appreciate this perspective that Muhammad developed after being asked for her autograph by a young hijabi girl. Though hella competitive, she realized she wanted to succeed for Muslims, who needed a role model.
Here's where she starts on US politics in 2016,

...during the run-up to the November presidential elections, that Muslim Americans came under vicious attack from then presidential nominee Donald Trump, who in turn normalized bigotry and emboldened an entire subset of Americans to act on their hate.

Muhammad used her success to speak out against bigotry. She couldn't not. That's brave and badass, but also not a choice, for a lot of people who are firsts. Even with all the pressure on her, Muhammad wrote of her mindset at the Olympics,

I reminded myself to fence from a place of happiness and gratitude. Competing at the Olympic Games was a gift beyond my wildest dreams, and no matter what happened I was proud of myself for making it this far.

She goes on,

I came into the games ranked eighth in the world, and no matter what everyone else expected of me, I wanted to win. I always wanted to win and here on the world stage, I wanted to taste Olympic glory more than I ever had in my life.

I finished reading this book a week ago. I know I gobbled it up in a day and a half. It's about a queer Black teen in a prom-crazy town. I thought I'd made a million highlights, but there's only one, "staff the table," which I highlighted because why do people still insist on saying "man the table"? BUT NOT VERY INFORMATIVE.

Liz Lightly is a likable character. She and her younger brother live with their grandparents because their mom died from Sickle Cell Anemia concerns. Her bother has the disease, too. Despite, or because of the adversities in her life, Liz is an achiever: she's valedictorian and concert master in her school's orchestra. She's got a tight group of friends, even if she lost one of her besties at the beginning of high school over a racist and sexist incident the former friend did not have Liz's back on.

Her BFF, Gina, turns out to not stand up for Liz either, especially when Gina feels threatened by new girl Mack's growing closeness with Liz. There is also an enemy: Rachel Collins, who asks of the Prom Queen competition,

"Okay, well, I just wanted to make sure there isn't going to be any funny business going on with the scoring process. Like we're not going to have to tell with an"--she turns around to look pointedly at me--"affirmative action aspect, perhaps?"

One of the reasons Liz takes to Mack is Mack's response

"Actually, Rebecca, before you start concerning yourself with skewed scoring, you should probably know that the biggest beneficiaries of affirmative action are white women."

Finally, someone is looking out for Liz!

A pandemic causes the United States to separate from America. In a novel.

Protagonist Polly Nader agrees to time travel to work for a megacorp, in order to secure treatment for per boyfriend, Frank. The megacorp, being a soulless megacorp, sends her to a time five years after the time she'd signed up for, landing her in 1998 Galveston, Texas, where she is meant to work restoring furniture for hotels and the tourism industry. She and Frank had a planned meet-up spot and time...in 1993, and in a Galveston that looked a little different in 1981 than it does in 1998.

Given our current state, the politics of the pandemic and its 1998 aftermath are super compelling, but An Ocean is really a meets/loses/gets back love story. Polly and Frank's relationship is believable and even relatable, if you're the emotionally distant one with a loving partner.

I don't feel like I have a much better sense of Melania Trump now than before I read this critical biography, despite the author's extensive research and documentation (about 25 pages of notes, an index). There's a good chance that's because she's not all that knowable, or that she's too controlled to let anything slip. Jordan's interview subjects characterize Melania Trump as professional. Some say cool, and others say warm. She and her staff are reported to have the tightest lips in the White House. When talking to her parents and son, Trump speaks Slovenian, even if Donald is around, which apparently he isn't much. They genuinely seem to like each other, sources say, but they don't spend much time together, day to day.

When Melania does speak, her statements are generally broad, like "children shouldn't be harmed," but she doesn't get specific, even for the sake of illustrating her points. She seems to prefer her privacy above all else. The only time Jordan records Trump having lost her cool was once when a reporter made a weak joke about Donald being able to name a child "Barron," but not having the authority to bestow the title "Baron."

I had understood that the story would include Trump renegotiating her prenup, but though the original prenup was mentioned, there's no talking a revision. The information on how Trump and Donald reconciled after a breakup isn't provided, nor is their decision to get married. I wonder if the book got chopped up before its final publication. Anyone have an early ARC???

3.5 rounded down because it took me so damn long to read it. I believe in print format it's 560 pages. It was 502 on my tablet, and I don't think the length was warranted. Still and all, it's a powerful story about injustice and rage, and timely for its vaccine-related plot. You'll want to have read Dread Nation first because Deathless is mostly recurring characters whose development is crucial to the story.

Protagonist Jane McKeene pretty much goes from one zombie apocalypse to the next. She has to do one very bad thing for someone she loves, which leads her to doing bad things to people she doesn't, and who might, in the context of 19th century frontier justice, deserve it. In her afterword, Ireland shares that part of her mission in writing this novel is putting Black people back in the history of the American West. She accomplishes this goal and also peoples her novel with American Indians and Chinese, as well as whites. Because I know a little of her history in YA Twitter, calling out and being called out, I wonder if some of the elements of Deathless are Easter eggs for those in the know.

The protagonist in this queer brown girl YA, Nishat is Bengali-Irish. Her family is Bengali, and they live in Dublin. The love interest, Flávia, is Brazilian-Irish--Brazilian mom and Irish dad. As a side note, it is interesting to learn that Ireland is not the red-headed monoculture an ignorant American might think it is.


I just read an angry zine about being a lesbian in Ireland, which apparently is not the most enlightened country, so I expected more societal issues about Nishat's coming out journey. Instead the judgment comes from her family, and a cur of a competitive, bigoted schoolmate named Chyna.

In Nishat's corner is her younger sister, Priti and her friends Jess and Chaewon, the latter Korean-Irish. All the white kids disappoint the brown kids at one point or another, but they mostly come around. Although the characters are mostly 16, the story reads a little middle-gradesy, so if MG is your jam and YA isn't, give The Henna Wars a try.

I hung in for over a hundred pages because of the interesting premise. Due to China's one child law and the Chinese preference for boys, there is a population imbalance. Men are allowed to have one child. Women can have as many as they want--in plural marriages. May Ling has two husbands already and is interviewing a third, a gym owner in his 40s. She loves her first husband, Hann, and has reproduced with him, but although Hann loves May Ling, too, he's not that into her, sexually. His younger brother and May Ling's second husband is on the autism spectrum, but not diagnosed as such because that would preclude him from fathering a child.

I gave up because the book is just too long for me for a pandemic read, and it was taking too long to get somewhere.