This is a super sweet middle grades novel about a nonbinary figure skater discovering that gender is fluid and that who you are should be part of who you show on the ice. Ana's road to self-discovery is helped by a trans boy beginning skater. One thing I like about mg books is that there's not necessarily romance to kids hanging out together. 

Couldn't get into it, unfortunately. 

Too mean, maybe?

a dear friend recommended this, and i tried really hard to stick with it, but i hated it.

I struggled through this book because it seems like people love the author. Did I fall victim to BookTok? The premise of the book--six long-time friends enjoying a final week at their summer getaway--is a good one that I relate to (my happy place is my friend Susan's family's beach house that they sold like ten years ago), and the core friendship between the three freshman year college roommates is sweet. The problem is the central boy-gets-girl-back takes for fucking ever, especially because the getting and the losing take place before the story starts. 

I don't buy the Black lesbian best friend being best friends with two straight white woman, but it's worth the diversity nod. 

The author and an artist she becomes friendly with over the course of her Asperger's diagnosis collaborated on this graphic memoir of self-discovery. I appreciated learning about the syndrome and enjoyed the art, which often featured a white membrane around the characters, separating them from their surroundings. 

A queer pop bad breaks up after album #3 because they're all done with it--except Eva, who is heartbroken when she loses her band and her girlfriend, Celeste. But still, life goes on, with total silence from the band, who had been each other's everything since the members were tweens growing up in Duluth, Minnesota. When global climate change comes for Duluth, there's talk of a one-show reunion. 

Author Moreland does a good job of distinguishing the four band members, and making you care about all of them. One clever bit is a band member thinking of naming an album Eponymous. 

Overgrowth is overwritten. The novel's concept, being in the mind of an alien colonizer who was born and raised on Earth and didn't realize her bloodlust until the invasion, is a fascinating thought experiment. But it should have been a novella instead of 480 pages. I read a DRC, so maybe (maybe?) they'll weed the book before it comes out in May?

The characters are really good. Anastasia--Ana at work and Stasia to her friends--is the main character. Her boyfriend, Graham (a trans man, because I know you'd want to know this novel is queer) is a herpetologist, and her roommates, Mandy and Lucas have shared nerdy interests. Other than that, Stasia doesn't have a lot of friends. That might be because she can't shut up about being an alien on the vanguard of an invasion. Some people find that annoying. 

One thing I didn't realize about Chelsea Manning is how young she was--when she joined the army and when she did what she did. She was born and mostly raised in Oklahoma (with a soupçon of Wales and I think Maryland). The main thing she had going for her as the closeted queer/trans child of an alcoholic and a blowhard was her affinity with computers. That's also what worked for her in army intelligence. Anyway, you probably know the highlights of Manning's story. It's an enjoyable/sad read that makes you hate how Don't Ask Don't Tell isolates people--like many trans people, Manning made two suicide attempts, one while in the army and one in prison. 

I listened to the audiobook, which I recommend, but I'll also warn that hearing a voice that sounds like voices I associate with male-presenting people made it harder for me to get and keep the right pronouns in my head.  

They kind of had me at nonbinary lesbian birder teen, and the story is as compelling as the four-word description of its protagonist. Title character Bianca identifies as a sheep. As their title characteristic indicates, they've got some issues. They only have one friend, Anderson, a popular cis guy who shares their taste in nerdy fandoms. They're out to their sister, Kate,* but not their parents or anyone other than Anderson. A running theme in the book is Bianca's list of fears (complete list at the end), things like public speaking/humiliation, my mom reading my semi-erotic fanfic, being alone, beautiful people, phone calls, being needed in a crisis, and Doki Doki Literature Club! Bianca is awesome, but they are a little bit creepy in that they use their birding telescope to spy on their neighbors, which is sort of what gets them in trouble, but only sort of, because cult. 

The book is a murder mystery/thriller. It has a sense of humor but isn't too wink wink about it the way some books are. 

*their mom loves Shakespeare, but I didn't notice any other Taming of the Shrew similarities.