The four in/dependent accomplished women protagonists have messy lives and messier men. I didn't love the omniscient style at first, where we're inside everyone's head at once, but I pushed past that irritation, and really appreciate each character's struggle and how they support one another..

content warning: unprovoked, racist violence against Black teens

Our protagonist, Faith, is a fat girl with a secret: she can fly! Is it much of a secret if you don't have anyone to tell, though? Faith's faithfuls are her Grandma Lou and her two best friends, Matt and Ches, but Matt and Ches are bester friends, and Grandma Lou is losing it. (Why is it that in YA novels almost all grandparents are doomed? When I was 16, my grandparents were in their 70s. They lasted another 15 years.) Faith does have animals--she's interning with a veterinarian--but the dogs have priorities other than superheroes. Their lot have gone missing lately, or been found in a catatonic state. Then the same thing happens to humans.

Meanwhile, Faith and Matt's favorite show, The Grove, has chosen their little town in wherever Minnesota to film after something or other happened at their last location. Faith has a meet-cute with one of the show's stars, who wants to adopt a dog, and things ensue, including a love triangle, a mystery, disappointment, and heroics.

It's a super fun read, and I was disappointed to have to wait a month for the next book in the series. I appreciate that [a:Julie Murphy|6433278|Julie Murphy|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1561677712p2/6433278.jpg] includes animals and animal lovers in her novels, and quotes like

Animal people are good people. It's just science.

And obviously, it's great that fat girls can be centered and not sidekicked, and that their weight doesn't have to be much of an aspect to the story.

I only rated Without You four stars, because I want to know more about its impact on North Korean citizens and external samaritans, but it's five stars in how fascinating the topic is. Most of us know very little about life in North Korea! I read [b:Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea|40604846|Nothing to Envy Ordinary Lives in North Korea|Barbara Demick|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1529606621l/40604846._SY75_.jpg|6358552] ten years ago and was similarly rapt (my review.

Author and journalist Suki Kim goes undercover as an undercover evangelical posing as a teacher at a university for North Korea's elite sons. The young men are at a Science and Technical institution, but don't know what the Internet is, and during Kim's first semester, there are no science faculty. I learned about this book when I heard Kim's poetic story on The Moth, which I recommend you listen to. She talks about her students lie all the time, and how hard it is to get used to constant, transparent lies. But what can you expect from life in a regime based on hidden truths? Because everyone is under surveillance there is no way to tell what anyone truly believes.

Either they were so terrified that they felt compelled to lie and boast of the greatness of their Leader, or they sincerely believed everything they were telling me. I could not decide which was worse.

Kim is always on edge that she'll commit a casual crime like taking an unauthorized photo or referencing something positive about the US or South Korea and end up imprisoned. The word "gulag" appears seven times in the memoir.

According to the latest UN report, the DPRK maintains some twenty gulags holding some 120,000 political prisoners (Human Rights Watch estimates 200,000).

It's hard to believe this regime is really in absolute power and has been for so long, but it has; it has.

Now here's a weird, interconnected story with multiple narrators who are even more multiple because most of them are time travelers so they are themselves at multiple ages. The story begins with the foursome of British women who discover time travel in the early 1970s. It jumps back and forth to their future selves, their future descendents' selves of various periods, and gestures to time periods as late as the 2400s (which seem to be a return to feudalism).

The plot is partially driven by understanding the death of one of the founders, but the time traveling element makes people feel less like death is final. One character works as a time traveling detective. As such, she can't prevent a crime, but she can impact elements around it. The paradoxes are referenced but not entirely explained, which I don't mind.

Quote of the novel:

They were librarians and curators--the kind of women who write zines and collect retro toys.

The titular older lady is an 88-year-old Swede named Maud, who is the last remaining person in her family. She's living out her life in a large apartment in which she lives rent free due to an agreement made when her mother sold the apartment building seventy years prior.

Maud is in pretty good physical shape for someone her age and is strong of mind. She's smart enough to know that it's not a bad idea if people think less of her. This first book in the Äldre Dam series is composed of five short stories. When I read the first one, I didn't know what to expect and was genuinely guffawed by the ending.

Despite her likability, Maud is kind of an asshole, and as with some other olds, some of her politics need updating. And other times, her quirks are pretty funny

When they got there, Jasmin turned around and gave her a big hug. Maud could feel Jasmin's soft breasts under her top as they pressed against her own small, flat bosom. She was so taken aback, it didn't occur to her to defend herself.

The titular Black kid, Ashley, is a rich girl attending a fancy, mostly-white public school in the LA suburbs, and the girls in her friend group are all white. One, Heather, is Jewish, which makes her thing she's hip to oppression that gives her a pass to say racist things. The friends are clueless and shallow, but still somehow written with depth, as are all of the characters. Ashley's parents wanted to give her and her sister Jo (named after Josephine Baker) a better life than they had, but in doing so have kept them sheltered. When Rodney King is brutalized without consequences for the cops, and the city erupts in riots, Ashley eventually begins to recognize her own Blackness. She also realizes how much she has missed by not doing so sooner.

Some scenes from 1992

Bill Cosby appears via a prerecorded PSA and tells the rioters to stop what they're doing and watch the final episode of the Cosby Show on NBC. And I know everybody loves Cosby because Dr. Huxtable and Jell-O or whatever, but it's condescending as hell.

She said, "We have to walk around being perfect all the time just to be seen as human. Don't you ever get tired of being a symbol? Don't you ever just want to be human?"

"You don't go rushing into chaos. You're girls. Pretty girls. Spoiled girls. We made you that way. You act like you know everything, but you have zero street smarts. You could've been hurt, or killed."
"We're already hurt." Jo sighs.

The newscasters bemoan the fate of several architecturally significant buildings that perished or were damaged in the flames.

Referring to the Tulsa Massacre

A bunch of the black men, World War I vets, decided to go protect the black kid from being lynched, so instead of lynching the one boy, the white folks decided to lynch the entire goddamn city.

Ashley's dad refers to Tulsa as a pogrom, which is accurate.

This friendship novel follows twins Skyler and Scarlett, lonely Ellie, and devoted Amelia Grace to a summer on a lake with their moms, who were also childhood friends. Early in the summer, when they're first getting to know one another, and don't necessarily like each other, the girls name impossible wishes to work toward achieving. They have to contend with arthritis, eating disorders, self-worth, racism, and a sexuality that seems at odd with their faith, and obviously mothers who don't get them, an abusive stepfather, and a father who betrayed them. It's not an unpredictable story, but do you really need the power of friendship to have spoilers?

Provocative quotation

I think he might be a jerk. Or the only person who gets me. It's a very fine line.

I could not have enjoyed Skye's (Haneul in Korean, but no one calls her that other than her mom) story more. I can overlook her total perfection (K-Pop double threat: singing and dancing) because she's just so damn likable. Skye's mom wouldn't call her daughter perfect, though. She thinks Skye is fat. That she should drop out of the competition--dance at least--because her appearance is shameful. Somehow Skye has come to have a healthy attitude about herself, but that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt when your mom has no faith in you or people make liberal use of the pig emoji in your Instagram comments.

Pretty much all of Skye's friends are queer (she's bi), and they're all of color. Given the K-Pop context, maybe all the kids being BIPOC isn't a big surprise, but Lee takes care to include brown kids, as well. One girl in the competition, despite being a lesbian, has this wisdom about men

...guys are awfully bad at talking about things. You can't just expect them to tell you what's wrong. You have to ask them first.

Things are not going well for Trisha. Her dad was just killed in a car accident, her mom is violent with her, and she can't seem to bring the fierceness of her Muay Thai training into the ring with her. Muay Thai boxing attracts fighters of many national ancestry, including Trinidadian-Canadian Trisha and her multicultural friends and teammates. Her mom left the island when Trisha was in utero, and her dad split his time between the two countries.

This isn't a suck-you-in story. Even though it's about a very physically person, it's a cerebral read. Normally I can relate to distance (lolsob), but I wish I'd been more drawn to Trisha.