WHAT I LOVED: I read various poems and short stories written by Edgar Allen Poe as early as seventh grade, when my teachers started assigning them–and they were almost always assigned around Halloween. Listening to “The Telltale Heart” and reading “The Cask of Amontillado” out...

WHAT I LOVED: Excuse me, who gave Anna Priemaza permission to bug my house and use my brother and I as character inspirations? All jokes aside, it’s eerie how similar Lainey and her brother Cody are to me and my own older brother. I plan to...

Los Angeles, Ferguson, and Baltimore. Three cities where years of racism, injustice, unchecked police brutality, and rampant anti-Black racism came together and riots ensued after a failure of accountability let cops get away with brutal assaults on black men. Less than two weeks before he was assassinated, MLK Jr. himself...

I started out reading an ARC of Symptoms of a Heartbreak, but then I switched to reading a hardcover in part because my mom used my ARC to kill a bug and because the book was just so good I wanted a finished copy to keep reading and then put...

WHAT I LOVED: Readers get a dual POV novel narrated by Jasmine, a fat Black girl, and Chelsea, a white girl who presumably wears straight sizes but at the very least is nowhere near Jasmine’s size. I bring their body sizes up because it’s relevant; Jasmine and...

The Parkland massacre took the lives of 17 students the day it happened and the very recent passings of two survivors bump the number up. That makes for 19 young lives stolen before they could even drink legally or decide their futures. And yet people still say the shooting was...

As of chapter one, Embry is a senior in high school, a girl feeling adrift as Christmas approaches, and the recipient of a marriage proposal from her ex-but-it’s-complicated-boyfriend Luke. He’s overseas on deployment and isn’t actually aware she’s hooking up with this guy Holden instead and doesn’t share Luke’s vision...

WHAT I LOVED: AJ is your average kid and doesn’t have anything exciting going on in his life, but he’s got a serious crush on his classmate Nia. His efforts to win her affection by pretending to be a vampire since she says herself she’s obsessed with the creatures...

See more of my reviews on The YA Kitten! My copy was an ARC I got from the publisher as a reviewer for YA Books Central. Lord, anthologies are having a good run when you have a diverse, #ownvoices set of authors involved! First Fresh Ink and...

The phrases “beautiful disaster” and “bad romance” but NOT the well-known novels that use those phrases for their titles. Five different Emilie Autumn songs, “Did You Imagine” by Lumidee, and “I Want My Tears Back” by Nightwish. These are just a few of the things that Winner Take All is...

Anthologies have such a special place in my heart. The art of the short story is undervalued and it’s just really cool to see a bunch of authors you like sharing space inside the pages of a book. As one of two anthologies put together thus far by We...

WHAT I LOVED: When Louise’s boyfriend Cam first disparages Native people in front of her–specifically his brother’s Kickapoo spouse–he isn’t aware Louise is a Muscogee (Creek) Nation citizen herself. Then he keeps doing it and has the gall to get mad at her for “being too sensitive.” The instant...

WHAT I LOVED: One of Us Is Lying presents us with a remarkably strong base for the mystery to come: four compelling, unique narrators you won’t mix up easily; a highly unusual death in Simon’s deadly allergic reaction to a peanut oil-laced cup of water; and quick pacing to...

WHAT I LOVED: I’ve always tried to be my best self online, but even I’m terrified at the idea of all my texts, emails, etc. being leaked online. Whether it would expose someone’s two-faced ways or provides enough evidence that they could be successfully convicted of a felony, everyone...

WHAT I LOVED: Dusty and Dylan, each one named after one of their mother’s favorite singers, are pretty opposite. Dusty is former beauty queen about to marry a Scottish nobleman after dating him on a reality show called Prince in Disguise; our introduction to Dylan is her...