Geekerella, by Ashley Poston

This is a modern day retelling of – you guessed it – Cinderella. The classic fairytale about an orphaned girl who is left with her Wicked Stepmother and stepsisters after the death of her father. The stepsisters relentlessly taunt her and make her life difficult, while the stepmother treats her as a servant instead of as a daughter.

Geekerella is no different, except that in modern day Charleston there are no princes to woo. Danielle – Elle, for short – has grown up as a megafan of the series Starfield and the announcement has just been made that a reboot is coming. Normally, this wouldn’t involve anyone from her family, as they all look down on her “fandom,” however, it is revealed that teen heartthrob Darien Freeman will be playing the lead role. Elle’s Darien obsessed step-sisters decide to enter the cosplay contest that has been announced for a chance to win a meet-and-greet with the actor, as well as a trip to the premiere of Starfield in Los Angeles.

On the other side of the story, Prince Carmindor himself, Darrien, finds himself as young Hollywood royalty but lacks the normal life of an eighteen year old that he longs for. He doesn’t want to attend the convention as a celebrity, missing the days when he was able to go as a fan. He’s talented, good looking, and rich, but he is terribly lonely.

Meanwhile, Elle gets a text from a Prince Carmindor cosplayer who would like to cancel his appearance at Excelsicon, the convention where the contest will be held. Elle and the stranger text daily. It is clear that they are both true fans of the show and this is the first time since her father’s death that she’s been able to connect with someone over it the series. Elle decides to enter the contest as well, figuring that she can make a run for it and stay in L.A. if she wins and finally be rid of her stepfamily. With the help of a fairy co-worker named Sage and the Magic Pumpkin (a vegan food truck), Elle is Atlanta-bound for the convention and hopes to meet her Prince Carmindor in person.

The story is derivative and predictable, but that doesn’t make it any less fun. It was a quick and satisfying read that left me with a smile on my face, as most happy endings do.

Check the PPLC Catalog for Geekerella, by Ashley Poston.

The Sun is Also a Star, by Nicola Yoon

The Sun is Also a Star, by Nicola Yoon

Nicola Yoon, author of Everything, Everything, returns with a new novel! The Sun is Also a Star tells a story from multiple perspectives. There are the main characters, Natasha and Daniel, as well as some of the minor players in their story that they encounter along the way.

When the story begins, Natasha is  fighting to stay in America. Her family is facing deportation back to Jamaica. Daniel, who’s family immigrated from South Korea, is on his way to an interview for an Ivy League university.

After a serendipitous meet-cute, Natasha and Daniel strike up an unlikely friendship – and perhaps more – on what is to be her last day in America. Natasha doesn’t believe in fate or destiny, and not even in God, really, so she is not going to let herself focus on Daniel and give up her fight.

Daniel, a poet, has his head filled with romantic ideas about how this day would be the story that he tells his future children when they ask about how their parents had met. The two part ways and are drawn back together multiple times throughout the day, each time with Daniel asking himself if that meant that they were meant to be together.

Yoon’s writing is realistic and wonderful. Daniel and Natasha, along with the cast of supporting characters who lend their voices to the story, are fully fleshed out with backstories, hopes, dreams, and dilemmas. As adorable as it sounds, remember that this is NOT a fairy tale! The Sun is Also a Star has a wonderful stream of conscious style to it that draws you in and will not let you go until the last page has been turned.

Check the PPLC catalog for The Sun is Also a Star.

 

The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas

The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas

Starr Williams is 16 years old and has seen two of her best friends die from gunshot wounds. Starr Williams is 16 years old and has seen two of her best friends die from gunshot wounds.

Starr and her family – her father, mother, older half-brother, and younger brother – live in Garden Heights. Despite the name, there’s not much beauty to be found there. Weeds spring up from the sidewalk and drugs can be found on almost any street corner. Starr’s parents send her and her siblings to a private school 45 minutes away. When their spring break ends, Starr’s best friends talk about their vacations to summer homes in the Bahamas, a trip to Taipei, and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

Starr saw her oldest friend shot to death by a police officer after being pulled over for a broken tail-light.

Starr faces pressure in her neighborhood to speak up and be a voice against the violence, but is hesitant. She is fearful of retaliation by the members of the local gangs, the police, and worries about how she’ll lead a normal life once everyone at her school finds out.

When Starr returns to school after break, after the reader has been introduced to “Garden Heights Starr,” we quickly meet “Williamson Starr.” Williamson Starr does not use curse words. She says ‘no sir’ and ‘yes ma’am.’ She is also one of only two black students in her junior class. Her best friends, Haley and Maya, face little difficulty in their lives. They don’t know “Garden Heights Starr.” They have been friends for years, but the relationship seems strained as they grow older.

Outside of Williamson, Starr must learn to find and develop a voice strong enough to raise in defense of herself, her family, her fallen friends, and her community. By the end of the novel, Starr is a force to be reckoned with and is so much more than “the witness.”

I urge you to check out The Hate U Give, which has been a stunning debut novel from Angie Thomas. You will not put it down until the last page has turned and the last name has been read.

Check the PPLC catalog for The Hate U Give. 

The Ables, by Jeremy Scott

The Ables posits a world in which superheroes are real. They call themselves Custodians and live secretly among us. Their powers manifest around adolescence and they live in cities comprised of other Custodians. Phillip Salinger is in the awkward position of having superpowers as well as a physical disability. In Phillip’s case, he can move objects with his mind but cannot see. The Ables tells the story of a group of young people with extraordinary abilities who are limited by their physical and mental disabilities. Or are they?

The author does an admirable job of creating a world of amazing super people and explaining how this society works. He even creates a fairly complicated history for this world that goes back thousands of years. Some bullies use derogatory words such as “cripple” and “freak” but it’s clear from the text that this is not acceptable behavior. The characters are fairly complex and portray a wide range of personality types, and the interactions between them are believable. There is a community of special education kids and they all use appropriate language when referring to each other’s disabilities.

I would recommend this title for anyone. I think it’s great that kids with disabilities can read a story in which people like them are front and center. The message of the book is that everyone is different and each person faces a unique set of challenges in their lives. The superpowers act as a metaphor for the talents that everyone has, and the book tells us that by working together we are all stronger as a whole rather than being merely the sum of our parts.

Check the PPLC Catalog for The Ables.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie

There are a lot of things you should know about Junior Spirit. He lives on the Spokane Indian Reservation, he plays basketball, he speaks with a lisp (and a stutter), his best friend is named Rowdy, his grandmother is the nicest Indian on the reservation, and he has big dreams of becoming a cartoonist. Dreams, he realizes, that will never come true if he stays on the reservation.

To help him realize his dream, Junior has enrolled in a school in Rearden: the mostly white upper-middle-class town twenty miles away. He is nervous about what his neighbors will think of it, he is nervous about what the white kids will think of it, and he is very worried that Rowdy won’t like it, but Junior knows that if he ever wants to be a famous artist in the White world, he needs a White education.

There are two things that I love about this book: one is that Junior’s experience is completely relatable to high schoolers everywhere, and two is that Junior’s experience is not at all relatable to anyone who isn’t Indian. In True Diary, Alexie manages to perfectly capture the primal feelings that every young adult experiences. In this way any reader will understand and love Junior’s story.

Nevertheless, Alexie never lets the reader forget that Junior is a Indian from the reservation. True Diary examines not only common teen experiences, but ones that were true for an author who grew up on the real-life Spokane Indian Reservation. Partly biographical, True Diary details what it is like to live in real poverty in a country that seems to have forgotten you, and your people.

True Diary is an amazing story that I would recommend to pretty much everyone. Thought-provoking and heartfelt, Alexie has created a masterful YA novel that examines differences and creates empathy.

Check the PPLC Catalog for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.

Blackbirds, by Chuck Wendig

As a reader, I often range wide in getting my reading fix, and find myself following many authors’ blogs. Ones that are clearly creations of a publisher’s marketing department I quickly unfollow, but there are many authors whose unique voice resonates on their blogs as in their writing.

Which brings me to Chuck Wendig, an author whose blog I’ve followed for years. He writes about politics, his son, food, games and the gaming industry, but, mostly, about writing. He is irreverent and funny and, occasionally, not safe for work (visit his blog terribleminds.com with that in mind).

Having read his blog and followed him on Twitter for years, I was talking with another reader about how I liked reading author blogs, and recommended Chuck to him. Then I got the question: “What has he written?” I was stumped, and more than a little horrified that this talented author’s works had slipped past me.

Which brings me to Blackbirds. It is the first in the Miriam Black series, which follows the main character through her trials and tribulations in Mockingbird, Cormorant, and Thunderbird.

Miriam Black is in her early twenties and she knows how everyone dies. With skin-to-skin contact, she gets a vision of the death of anyone she touches. Whether death comes by car crash, suicide, heart attack, the lingering death of cancer or illness, Miriam need only touch a person to see their end. As you can imagine, this messes with Miriam’s head, and she wanders through America, surviving by dead-end jobs, scamming and hitching rides, and generally scraping along the fringes of society.

When she is picked up by a trucker named Louis, she shakes his hand and discovers to her horror that he will die a horrible death in thirty days while calling her name. The thing is – she’s tried to affect outcome of her visions in the past, and those interventions have led directly to the outcome she foresaw.

Careening between trying to avoid Louis and trying to help him, shadowy, evil figures act against her until fate, hope, love, greed, and evil come together in the final scene.

Wendig’s writing is crisp without being wordy, moving the story along quickly. The story flashes from the past, where the narrative takes place, to an interview Miriam Black is giving about her gift in the present. Miriam describes the events as a way to explain both her gift and its implications.

Miriam, as a character, has an excellent back story that reveals itself over time in intense scenes scattered throughout her young life. The other characters are well-drawn, and some are frightening in their amorality and approach to conflict. This is a gritty read and sometimes very violent. Wendig’s plotting and dialogue are tight, and you read from scene to scene with an impending sense of doom for all involved.

So, now I’ve read a book by Chuck Wendig, and I think you should too. Blackbirds is a great read from beginning to end, and the author makes you are about the characters, despite their flaws and baggage. As always with a series, if you like the character, you have more to read and watch the character evolve.

Check the PPLC Catalog for Blackbirds.

Find this title at your local library via WorldCat.

The Girl With All the Gifts, by M. R. Carey

There’s a small problem with zombie novels: besides the zombies, you just have people with problems. That can get stale quickly, especially when graphic novels like The Walking Dead and books like The Passage have covered just about every problem that people in a zombie-infested world can have. The zombies themselves, as metaphors for our inevitable deaths and barely repressed predatory natures, make great extras in horror stories, but don’t necessarily make a great plot—unless a good writer can breathe some life into them. As paradoxical as it sounds, zombies with life in them is what makes The Girl With All the Gifts worth a read.

Melanie is 10 years old and lives in a prison cell. Every day wary armed guards strap her down a wheelchair and then wheel her into a classroom for lessons with the other students. There they learn geography, history, literature, advanced math, and all about the holdout of Beacon, where the last of humanity lives walled away from the “hungries” that prey on them. School is the one bright spot in Melanie’s bleak existence, especially when Miss Justineau teaches. But now Melanie’s classmates are disappearing one by one, taken away by the guards at the command of callous Dr. Caldwell. As Melanie wonders how long it will be before she’s taken, the guards talk in hushed voices about a perimeter breach.

Zombie fans will find a lot to like here, but so will anyone who wants a more nuanced science fiction story about the nature of humanity and the folly of thinking we’re the pinnacle of evolutionary perfection. Plus, the original, imaginative details concerning the zombie infection were fully absorbing.

There is a movie based on the book starring Glenn Close as Dr. Caldwell. The screenplay was written by the author. Have you seen the movie? What did you think?

Check the PPLC Catalog for The Girl With All the Gifts.