Hockey Girl Loves Drama Boy by Faith Erin Hicks

Summary from Edelweiss:

New York Times bestseller Faith Erin Hicks is back with a young adult graphic novel romance about a hotheaded hockey player who asks for temper management lessons from the cool, calm boy in drama club.

It should have been a night of triumph for Alix’s hockey team. But when her mean-girl team captain Lindsay goes after Alix with her cruelest dig yet, Alix loses what remains of her self-control and punches Lindsay out. Before she knows it, their coach is dragging Alix off Lindsay, and her invitation to the Canada National Women’s U18 Team’s summer camp is on the line.

Alix is shaken. She needs to learn how to control this anger, and she is sure Ezra, the popular and poised theater kid from her grade is the answer. So she asks for his help. But as they hang out and start get closer, Alix learns that there is more to Ezra than the cool front he puts on. And that maybe this friendship could become something more?

Got approved for a galley on Netgalley and read it straight away!

More of a 3.5/5 stars – mostly because this feels very unfinished as a complete story arc. The issues with the emotional abuse from Alix’s teammates/her movement to another team with no one but Ezra to back her up really needed more of a resolution, imo. But I liked the development of Alix and Ezra’s relationship and really hope that there’s another volume in this story.

Content warnings: a lot of this book deals with Alix being emotionally abused by her teammates on the hockey team (which is not resolved to my satisfaction, imo, her coach SUCKS), biphobia

Hockey Girl Loves Drama Boy is out today!

Dear FTC: I read a digital galley of this book from the publisher via Netgalley.

Satan Talks to His Therapist

From Edelweiss:

“If the LOLSOB emoji could write verse that both sings and stings, the result would be Satan Talks to His Therapist.” —Allison Joseph, author of Confessions of a Barefaced Woman

In Satan Talks to His Therapist, Melissa Balmain explores the lighter side of dark times. Playful yet poignant, her poems perfectly capture our human fallibility and comedic sense of importance.

The collection begins with “On Looking at an MRI Cross-Section,” in which Balmain peeks inside her own skull to consider the jumble of thoughts and memories harbored there. After this introduction to the poet’s inner world, the book divides into three sections: Spiraling Down, In Limbo, and Climbing Out. The poems in this lyrical descent and ascent are about climate change, social media, pandemics, politics (sexual and otherwise), parenthood, consumerism, aging, loss, and ills, both physical and societal. Balmain writes in meter and rhyme, and she uses traditional forms (sonnets, villanelles, terza rima) as well as ones she’s coined for the moment.

The poems in Satan Talks to His Therapist provide clarity and comedy in a time that feels anything but clear or comic, and they hint at the consolations of art, kindness, maturity, persistence, love, and, of course, humor.

“It turns out that the literary establishment can’t quite kill off humorous poetry. Melissa Balmain’s Satan Talks to His Therapist is a marvel in the tradition of Martial, Jonathan Swift, and Dorothy Parker and the more recent generation of poets that includes Wendy Cope, X.J. Kennedy, and R.S. Gwynn. It is poetry you will enjoy—and enjoy giving to a friend who needs to see some humor in a world desperate for the medicine of laughter.” —A.M. Juster, author of Wonder & Wrath
“In one of the wickedly funny poems from Satan Talks to His Therapist, Dorothy Parker’s ghost drops in to comment on a political situation. Don’t believe it for a second, because if Parker’s ghost were to visit a Balmain poem, she would likely set fire to it out of spiteful envy. Melissa Balmain is the once and future Queen of American light verse, and only a ghost could keep from laughing all the way through this marvelous collection.” —Julie Kane, former Louisiana Poet Laureate and author of Mothers of Ireland

Proof that not all poetry must mine your trauma and make you cry.

Satan Talks to His Therapist is a short collection of punny, rhyming verse – much of it about things that happened during the heaviest parts of the COVID pandemic – and also includes some Weird Al-esque parodies borrowing from famous classics (“Come live with me and be my love” etc., which I found to be quite touching). I found this collection while browsing through publisher catalogs and it was a really nice read.

Satan Talks to His Therapist is out today!

Dear FTC: I read a digital galley from the publisher via Edelweiss.

Her Good Side by Rebekah Weatherspoon

Summary from Edelweiss:

**A New York Times Best Romance Book of the Year** A swoony, heart-melting YA romance from beloved author Rebekah Weatherspoon about two awkward teens who decide to practice dating in order to be good at the real thing. Perfect for fans of Nicola Yoon and Jenny Han.

Sixteen-year-old Bethany Greene, though confident and self-assured, is what they call a late-bloomer. She’s never had a boyfriend, date, or first kiss. She’s determined to change that but after her crush turns her down cold for Homecoming—declaring her too inexperienced—and all her back-up ideas fall through, she cautiously agrees to go with her best friend’s boyfriend Jacob. A platonic date is better than no date, right? Until her friend breaks up with said boyfriend.

Dumped twice in just two months, Jacob Yeun wonders if he’s the problem. After years hiding behind his camera and a shocking summer glow up, he wasn’t quite ready for all the attention or to be someone’s boyfriend. There are no guides for his particular circumstances, or for taking your ex’s best friend to the dance.

Why not make the best of an awkward situation? Bethany and Jacob decide to fake date for practice, building their confidence in matters of the heart.  

And it works—guys are finally noticing Bethany. But things get complicated as their kissing sessions—for research of course!—start to feel real. This arrangement was supposed to help them in dating other people, but what if their perfect match is right in front of them?

So, I LOVE Rebekah Weatherspoon’s adult romances – super sexy, kinky, and funny. And I was super-excited to have made my one visit to The Ripped Bodice (since I don’t live in California) when Rebekah just happened to be picking up a shift. (I got my copy of Rafe signed, eeeee!) So I was really interested in Rebekah’s debut YA romance. And it sounded so cute.

Fear not! It does not disappoint! Her Good Side is an adorable but extremely relatable fake-dating romance between Bethany, a self-described late-bloomer who wants a little romance, and Jacob, the photography whiz who gets a rep as the hot guy who gets dumped. After Jacob gets dropped by Bethany’s friend for being “boring” (aka quiet and not overtly horny) and Bethany gets turned down for a date because that guy doesn’t want to be her first date (uh, sorta gross my dude), Jacob and Bethany concoct a plan. They will fake date to raise each other’s romantic profile in the school’s gossip network. Does this involve cute Halloween costumes? Yep. Does this involve joint babysitting of rebellious younger sisters? Yep. Does this involve yummy cooking exploits? Yep. And does this involved kissing for “Science”? Double-yep. And then those pesky feelings had to go and get involved.

Oh, these sweet, awkward babies. Look, I know horny teenagers are a thing, but as someone who was also very much “I don’t get the hype” and didn’t date until college because, like, idk I was more into talking and less into doing #iykyk, I heart Bethany and Jacob forever for this. Being a teenager is so weird. You could not pay me enough to go back. But also…would I have liked some “practice time” dating a cute person who wasn’t going to shame me or anything for not being experienced or super-horny or anything? Oh, for sure!

On top of the A-plot, Bethany is working through the process of figuring out who she is and who she wants to be. She’s got two moms and two sisters were/are incredible basketball players and Bethany herself is really good at it…but she doesn’t love it. And since the expectation is that she will also go off to play elite college ball and then pro, she’s so worried that it’s going to change how her family thinks about her if she quits. Her true passion is cooking (yall, her sandwiches sound amazing). The way Weatherspoon explores the process of figuring out yourself through Bethany is so good. Also a great group of diverse friends in this book which is always super fun in a YA. Definite recommend.

CW for some implied fat-shaming/food-policing because Bethany (who is plus-sized) is told she needs to fuel her body better (paraphrasing) for elite basketball.

Dear FTC: I swiped the paper galley from the bookstore.

Dyscalculia: A Love Story of Epic Miscalculation by Camonghne Felix

Summary from Edelweiss:

An epic meditation on loving oneself in the face of heartbreak, from the acclaimed author of Build Yourself a Boat, longlisted for the National Book Award.

When Camonghne Felix goes through a monumental breakup, culminating in a hospital stay, everything—from her early childhood trauma and mental health to her relationship with mathematics—shows up in the tapestry of her healing. In this exquisite and raw reflection, Camonghne repossesses herself through the exploration of history she’d left behind, using her childhood “dyscalculia”—a disorder that makes it difficult to learn math—as a metaphor for the consequences of her miscalculations in love. Through reckoning with this breakup and other adult gambles in intimacy, Felix asks the question: Who gets to assert their right to pain?

Dyscalculia negotiates the misalignments of perception and reality, love and harm, and the politics of heartbreak, both romantic and familial.

I was browsing at the local indie bookstore before a reading the other month and spotted a signed copy of Dyscalculia, which I’d been hearing great things about. And what a beautiful examination of a breakup and how treating trauma and getting the correct diagnosis/treatment reframes that breakup (all the villains are victims and all the victims are villains and it’s a vicious cycle) and also helps with healing the author’s dyscalculia (which was never actually diagnosed, but in the end seems to be more of a side-effect of untreated Bipolar II). Stunningly beautiful prose poetry, almost like song lyrics in places. Which, as it turns out, Felix is a song-writer so it makes perfect sense.

CW: childhood sexual abuse, undiagnosed mental health issues, self-harm, effects of a broken mental health care system

Dear FTC: I read a copy of this book that I bought at a local bookstore. Also, #23for2023

Fire & Ice: The Volcanoes of the Solar System by Natalie Starkey

Summary from Edelweiss:

Fire and Ice is the first book to examine the extraterrestrial volcanoes of our Solar System

The volcano – among the most familiar and perhaps the most terrifying of all geological phenomena. However, Earth isn’t the only planet to harbour volcanoes. In fact, the Solar System, and probably the entire Universe, is littered with them. Our own Moon, which is now a dormant piece of rock, had lava flowing across its surface billions of years ago, while Mars can be credited with the largest volcano in the Solar System, Olympus Mons, which stands 25km high. While Mars’s volcanoes are long dead, volcanic activity continues in almost every other corner of the Solar System, in the most unexpected of locations.

We tend to think of Earth volcanoes as erupting hot, molten lava and emitting huge, billowing clouds of incandescent ash. However, it isn’t necessarily the same across the rest of the Solar System. For a start, some volcanoes aren’t even particularly hot. Those on Pluto, for example, erupt an icy slush of substances such as water, methane, nitrogen or ammonia, that freeze to form ice mountains as hard as rock. While others, like the volcanoes on one of Jupiter’s moons, Io, erupt the hottest lavas in the Solar System onto a surface covered in a frosty coating of sulphur.
Whether they are formed of fire or ice, volcanoes are of huge importance for scientists trying to picture the inner workings of a planet or moon. Volcanoes dredge up materials from the otherwise inaccessible depths and helpfully deliver them to the surface. The way in which they erupt, and the products they generate, can even help scientists ponder bigger questions on the possibility of life elsewhere in the Solar System.
Fire and Ice is an exploration of the Solar System’s volcanoes, from the highest peaks of Mars to the intensely inhospitable surface of Venus and the red-hot summits of Io, to the coldest, seemingly dormant icy carapaces of Enceladus and Europa, an unusual look at how these cosmic features are made, and whether such active planetary systems might host life.

Fire & Ice is a dense read but a really interesting one about space volcanoes! Who knew there were ice volcanoes (“cryovolcanoes”) on some of the moons of Saturn and Neptune! And that Pluto, rather than just being a hunk of space rock, has evidence of somewhat recent geologic activity? Since our current instrumentation hasn’t quite let us send equipment down to the surfaces of the more-extreme environments of the planets and moons of the Solar System (we’ve been able to get to Mars, but that’s volcanically inactive at the moment so while it can provide information about it’s past, it can’t provide the same data an a planet with active volcanoes can), Earth volcanoes are used as our model for understanding these far-away places. Starkey takes us through the ways scientists are using Earth geology, chemistry, physics, imaging, etc. and comparing it with data provided from various space missions to learn more about the composition and geologic life outside of our planet. Very interesting.

Dear FTC: I bought a copy of this book for my birthday a few weeks ago.

Chlorine Sky by Mahogany L. Browne

Summary from Edelweiss:

A novel-in-verse about a young girl coming-of-age and stepping out of the shadow of her former best friend. Perfect for readers of Nikki Grimes and Jason Reynolds. “Mahogany L. Browne’s debut YA is an absolute masterpiece. It will leave you breathless.” -Elizabeth Acevedo, New York Times bestselling author of The Poet X

She looks me hard in my eyes
& my knees lock into tree trunks
My eyes don’t dance like my heartbeat racing
They stare straight back hot daggers.
I remember things will never be the same.
I remember things.

Sky had grown used to living in Lay Li’s shadow. Her best friend was the sun, and Sky was more than happy to bask in the glow. But when high school begins, the rules seem to change. Suddenly, Sky is the brunt of the jokes, and Lay Li is the one laughing. And when boys come into the picture, Sky is left behind altogether. With gritty and heartbreaking honesty, Mahogany L. Browne delivers a novel-in-verse about broken promises, fast rumors, and when growing up means growing apart from your best friend.

Our Teen Book Group (which is pretty much adults, despite our attempts to invite actual teens, plus one members preteen kiddo who kind of circulates and inhales book vibes while we chat) picked Mahogany L. Browne’s Chlorine Sky for our August book.

And what a stunning novel-in-verse about a young Black girl and the nature of Being a Teenage Girl in America. Just…what it feels like to be made to feel smaller by your best friend. By your sister. By your (male) basketball coach. By the boys you beat playing ball. The way they try to box you in, make you the butt of the joke. The way my heart just broke for Sky at the beginning of the book when she’s discarded like a stray sock by her best friend. Ooof.

Sky is a fantastic voice in YA literature – a girl with dreams of playing basketball (maybe for the WNBA, one day), who wants to be seen as herself rather than fixed up as someone else’s…project (even if maybe a little attention by a boy might be nice). The huge breath of air Sky takes at the end, in the final few poems, where she figures out how to BE is amazing. I’ve already ordered the follow-up novel, Vinyl Moon, about a secondary character from Chlorine Sky named Angel.

This didn’t quite hit 5 stars for me. I went with 4.5 stars because I wish it was longer or a little more fleshed out in narrative as it related to Sky. Like, while I appreciated the poems about Angel and her situation, I didn’t quite get the tie to Sky or Sky’s story and I would have loved more of Sky herself on page. Even though Sky is the point-of-view character, a good chunk of poems were about other people in her orbit, and I would have liked more Sky-becoming-herself at the end. If that makes sense.

Content Warning: on-page bullying, off-page sexual assault of Sky’s friend

Dear FTC: I bought a copy of this book from my store.

23 for 2023: I’m not sure how I’m going to do this – since I’d already read 42, now 43, books by BIPOC authors this year, I have technically already filled the brief of the initiative. So I’m working on what my participation looks like. It’ll probably be digging out some of the TBR I haven’t got to yet or pushing some galleys farther up the reading list. But, anyway, Chlorine Sky very much fits the initiative. So #23for2023!

Knockout by Sarah MacLean (Hell’s Belles #3)

From Edelweiss:

New York Times bestselling author Sarah MacLean returns with the next Hell’s Belles novel about a chaotic bluestocking and the buttoned-up detective enlisted to keep her out of trouble (spoiler: She is the trouble).  

With her headful of wild curls and wilder ideas and an unabashed love of experiments and explosives, society has labeled Lady Imogen Loveless peculiar…and doesn’t know she’s one of the Hell’s Belles—a group of vigilantes operating outside the notice of most of London.

Thomas Peck is not most of London. The brilliant detective fought his way off the streets and into a promising career through sheer force of will and a keen ability to see things others miss, like the fact that Imogen isn’t peculiar…she’s pandemonium. If you ask him, she requires a keeper. When her powerful family discovers her late-night activities, they couldn’t agree more…and they know just the man for the task.

Thomas wants nothing to do with guarding Imogen. He is a grown man with a proper job and no time for the lady’s incendiary chaos, no matter how lushly it is packaged. But some assignments are too explosive to pass up, and the gruff detective is soon caught up in Imogen’s world, full of her bold smiles and burning secrets…and a fiery passion that threatens to consume them both.

Thoughts and prayers for Tommy Peck, right? Every time there’s an explosion, Lady Imogen Loveless seems to turn up. Whether she set the explosion or is investigating it, it doesn’t matter. She’s a thorn – a very attractive thorn – in Detective Inspector Tommy Peck’s side. When Imogen’s heretofore oblivious older brother shows up to decide that, well, she’s too odd and he needs to marry her off, somehow Tommy inveigles himself into the role of bodyguard. (Ha. What’s Moneypenny’s line from The World is Not Enough – bodyguards are in front or behind, never on top? Hahahahaha.)

This is all very inconvenient for Imogen. Bad people are setting explosions at businesses that front for services used by people (often women) in need – networks to get women out of bad marriages, bad employment situations, medical services, abortion providers, and so on – and Tommy, while delightful for practicing her banter on, the attractively stoic man is, unfortunately, another male person getting in her way. And after he’s depicted in the papers “rescuing” her from a collapsing building, a situation that wouldn’t have been necessary at all had the infuriating man listened to her in the first place, well…her “friends” are all more than happy to “help” her to Tommy’s…you know…because that man has been gone for her since she blew up his jail in Bombshell.

And when it looks like a rogue element within Scotland Yard appears to be behind the explosions and Imogen’s life is endangered…#TOMMYGOBOOM.

SO GOOD. No fucking notes. I basically read this in one sitting as soon as the galleys became available on Edelweiss. Pippa from One Good Earl Deserves a Lover is my forever-fave of Sarah MacLean’s science girlies but Imogen Loveless Does. Not. Fuck. Around. (Oh, my god. Can you imagine the Pippa and Imogen meeting? Pippa would be all “we should repeat this experiment, for science” and Imogen would be like “yes, let’s, because more explosions!!” Ahhhh.) And this is also such a good cross-class romance, with shades of Lisa Kleypas’s Dreaming of You (Tommy isn’t of the born-in-a-drain-pipe-to-casino-owner pipeline (ha) hero mold) and Hello, Stranger (but he does work so hard to keep his family off the streets and rise in the newly formed Scotland Yard).

Look, if you watched Miss Scarlet and the Duke and felt cheated that a) not only did they not kiss at all (I quit watching after Season 1 for that reason) but b) that they did not make any sort of creative use of his massive desk, you will want this book (no desk at the Yard, but there is a table at a party and only one bed and also a spectacular role-play/hide-from-the-villains scene in a brothel that is so hot, whew). Also, you’ll want all the luxurious dress fabrics because Imogen’s frocks are so beautifully described. (And the Epilogue – the epilogue, ahhhhhh. So many ways this could go for Duchess’s book.)

Knockout is out today!!!!

Content warnings: all the inherent misogyny that comes with a historical romance set in the nineteenth century as the Victorian period is getting underway, physical threats to women’s lives

Dear FTC: (I can’t believe we still have to do this for books but whatever.) I read a digital galley of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss. But also had a copy pre-ordered on my nook. And a copy pre-ordered with an indie bookstore so I could have a signed copy.

It’s been awhile…

Hello!

It’s been over a year since I last posted (can you tell?) and I would very much like to try and resurrect this blog. If at least a little bit. With the death of Twitter and the over-proliferation of Twitter-like replacements and the growth of long-form blogging again at places like Substack, maybe blogs are back?

Who knows. But I have a Notion, which I feel like might be more useful than just the Drafts page here. Eh?

And I don’t think I’ll try and backfill the last year or so of posts. Despite the gap that will probably give me hives (fun fact: I’m allergic to substance unknown right now and have had hives for two days, so that’s great! not), it’s almost 200 reviews to write and I’ve done that before when catching up backlogs – it’s not fun and very stressful. Which is why blogging ground to a halt in the first place.

But I’d rather have slightly more ownership over my reviews here than on Goodreads. So, here goes.

I’ll figure it out.

Hope your summer reading has been awesome!