WHAT I LOVED: I genuinely can't imagine four different events happening simultaneously in the same complex, but it happens all the time at the novel's presumed location: the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. Without ever stepping foot outside the hotel and convention center, the authors paint...

WHAT I LOVED: The two stories that tie for the best of the anthology are Tess Sharpe’s “The Heart in Her Hands” and Elizabeth May’s “Why They Watch Us Burn” because WOW. Both stories are f/f as well. Sharpe’s story, in which a young witch meets her soulmate...

It can be difficult to retell a tale as well-known as Pride and Prejudice, but Zoboi's retelling modernizes the story without compromising events. The Afro-Latinx Benitez family is full of remarkable characters, they live and practice their cultural traditions with pride, and it's unapologetically, delightfully Black. ...

The fallout and protests following police choking George Floyd to death in Minnesota has consumed social media for the last week, but it had only just started when I read Tyler Johnson Was Here. But let’s be real, police brutality against Black people is so common that if I’d read...

WHAT I LOVED: There have been countless school shootings in the United States and hundreds if not thousands of lives have been lost in those massacres, but the base for That’s Not What Happened comes from the most infamous of them all: the Columbine High School massacre of...

WHAT I LOVED: One of my biggest complaints about Of Fire and Stars was its lacking characterization, but that’s been turned around and now the characterization is what makes this novel such an enthralling, fulfilling read. Denna and Mare spend the beginning of the novel together, but once Denna...

WHAT I LOVED: People do inadvisable things for love. Some of us publicly embarrass ourselves, but Asra uses her life-draining magic to help her girlfriend Ina find the animal she’ll shapeshift into and inadvertently kills Ina’s entire village. To stop Ina from killing the king and destroying the...

WHAT I LOVED: The wealth of queer and POC representation is by far one of the best things about the book, but there’s far more to it than just that. The worldbuilding and the conflicts created by the king’s refusal to pass the crown to one of his...

Clara Shin is the class clown and definitely qualifies as a troll too. (Big difference between the two, I'm not gonna get into it.) Thanks to re-enacting Carrie's bucket dump when she wins prom queen, she's stuck working her her dad's food truck with her worst enemy Rose Carver. All...

Recently recognized as a National Book Award finalist and a Stonewall Honor book, Pet is also Akwaeke Emezi’s YA debut and the first title from Random House’s Make Me a World imprint. This short novel has been a bit of a Big Book with a good reputation that precedes it...

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...