Love, Lies, & Cherry Pie (CBR16 #16)

I make a habit of reading Jackie Lau books when I can, and being able to read Love, Lies, & Cherry Pie as an ARC was something I just couldn’t pass up, particularly when the logline for the book is a Pride and Prejudice retelling having a good time with some tropes (Lau tends to always have more than one in her work). The tropes in question are fake dating, forced proximity, and enemies to lovers, and I think Lau did a good job with them.  

Our fake daters are Emily Hung and Mark Chan. Emily’s mom has been chatting up Mark non-stop so when they finally meet at Emily’s youngest sister’s wedding she is immediately closed off to him and what he represents to her as the perfect Asian boyfriend and comes away with the impression that he thinks he’s too good for her, since she’s an author who works part time at a coffee shop to make ends meet and he’s an engineer. At their next meet cute – which Emily’s mother tricks her into – Emily suggests they get their parents off their backs by fake dating. As the kids used to say, hijinks ensue.  

Fake dating has its pros and cons, but I really enjoyed Lau’s spin that her leads have to ‘real’ fake date to keep everyone believing that they are dating, and it is this forced proximity that gets Emily to reevaluate her position on just who Mark actually is. The emotional beats of the story lean hard into the characters senses of self-worth and ways in which our assumptions about others are a form of self-sabotage. The first half of the book is told exclusively from Emily’s point of view which worked well (although the end of the first half did drag a bit for me) because in a romance we care about who the characters are and why they (think) they cannot be together, Emily had lots and lots of reasons.  I was excited to get Mark’s POV because as is often the case in my favorite fake dating books, he was the half of the equation who agreed to the shenanigans because he thought there was something there with Emily from the beginning.  

This is a Lau book, so the Toronto and food details are excellent. As was the publishing meta commentary of Emily dealing with industry issues. Lau also name drops my favorite children’s book that I swear no one else has ever read, All-of-a-Kind Family so bonus points there.  

Perma Red (CBR16 #11)

When I was looking for a historical fiction written by an indigenous author I knew right where to go because back in 2021 the Indigenous Reading Circle was featured in a Reading Women Podcast Reading Challenge, and I’ve been following them on Instagram ever since. This year they are highlighting native women in fiction and Perma Red by Debra Magpie Earling, a complicated coming of age set on the Flathead Reservation in the 1940s, was their February selection. 

The story follows Louise White Elk as she approaches adulthood. Louise dreams of the freedom to live life on her own terms and an improved future for her family, especially her sister and the grandmother they live with following the death of their mother. But her life is dominated by the institutions that dictate what she is supposed to be doing at any given time. Louise’s dreams for herself also run against the desires of three men who have their own plans. Louise has been pursued by Baptiste Yellow Knife for years. He is feared by many, and Louise’s grandmother tells her to keep away from him and his family even as Louise feels drawn to him, knowing the dangers. Baptiste’s rival is his cousin, Charlie Kicking Woman who is caught between his duty and his preoccupation with Louise. And then there is Harvey Stoner, the white real estate mogul whose promises come at a cost. Perma Red was originally published in 2002 and won a slew of awards (American Book Award, 2003, Washington State Book Award, 2003, Spur Award for Best Novel of the West, 2003, WILLA Literary Award for Contemporary Fiction, 2003) but within a year of its publication the publisher was out of business and the novel was out of print. It was reissued in 2022 by Earling’s new publisher Milkweed, which is the edition I read.  

Earling is doing a lot in this book, and it is easy to see why it won the awards it did, and why it remained so firmly in literary conversation to call for its reissue. Earling, a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, has transformed her family history – Louise is based in part on Earling’s aunt – into a narrative which explores all the ways in which a woman, especially a native woman, could be too much, and the dangers that come with being a woman at all, and the variety of perspectives that exist in any given moment. Louise’s adolescence becomes a pattern of flight, always moving away from something and towards something – or someone – else. But the someones are never healthy and that feeds the forward momentum of the story. One of the things that stood out to me about Perma Red is that the chapters shift POV between Charlie in the first person and Louise and Baptiste in the third. Even in this small way Earling reminds us of the agency removed from young, native women.  

Juniper Harvey and the Vanishing Kingdom (CBR16 #10)

As I mentioned in my review of The Carrefour Curse there are two tasks in the 2024 Read Harder Challenge that are specifically about middle grades books. Juniper Harvey and the Vanishing Kingdom is my selection for task 6: read a middle grade book with an LGBTQIA main character. Right off the bat, this is a good book, in fact Nina Varela can write better than most authors I’ve come across in the past year or more. I just wish Middle Grades was an audience demographic that worked for me more reliably as a reader, it is where I most clearly feel the “this book is not written for me” gap between children’s/YA and Adult literature. I think I would LOVE the adult version of this story, and even really enjoy the YA one. But the MG version left me forcing myself to pick it back up, which is why I eventually went ahead and granted myself a DNF for my birthday.  

What we have here is a retelling of the Pygmalion/Galatea myth set in a modern Floridian middle school. From Goodreads: “When Juniper Harvey’s family moves to the middle of nowhere in Florida, her entire life is uprooted. As if that’s not bad enough, she keeps having dreams about an ancient-looking temple, a terrifying attack, and a mysterious girl who turns into an ivory statue. One night after a disastrous school dance, Juniper draws a portrait of the girl from her dreams and thinks,  I wish you were here.  The next morning, she wakes up to find the girl in her room…pointing a sword at her throat! The unexpected visitor reveals herself as Galatea, a princess from a magical other world. One problem—her crown is missing, and she needs it in order to return home. Now, it’s up to Juniper to help find the crown, all while navigating a helpless crush on her new companion. And things go from bad to worse when a sinister force starts chasing after the crown too.” 

While I picked this one up based on its queer representation, it was the anxiety representation that really stood out to me. Both are incredibly well handled but the way Varela crafts Juniper to show her readers ways in which to deal when they are feeling overwhelmed felt truly excellent to me and something I would have loved to have seen more of when I was a much younger reader. So, if fantasy middle grades adventuring sounds like your kind of thing, I really hope you pick this up and have a better time than I did – because I’m like 98% sure I’m the problem in this book relationship. 😊  

The Art and Life of Hilma af Klint (CBR16 #9)

While perusing the Arlington Public Library’s List of Books You May Have Missed Last Year I spotted The Art and Life of Hilma af Klint written by Ylva Hillström and illustrated by Karin Eklund. I vaguely recognized af Klint’s name and popped it onto my list since a YA non-fiction was on my to read and this one struck my fancy, especially once I found out that Hillström is a curator at the Modern Art Museum in Stockholm. Woohoo for museum people writing books outside of the stuffy halls of academia! 

What I neglected to catch on to was that this was for younger readers than I thought. In fact, its Goodreads description opens with the fact that it is, in fact, a picture book. (Look at that, I went from not reviewing any I could remember in over 12 years to two in the same month!) What we get is a biography introducing readers to the life and art of Hilma af Klint (1862–1944), and she’s a bit of a standout character even if she never attained the notice she should have in her own lifetime since she began painting abstract art as early as 1906, before the accepted birth of modern abstract art with artists such as Wassily Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich.  

The Art and Life of Hilma af Klint aims to tell the whole story of af Klint, from her growing up years, to the loss of her sister and how that opened her up to the spiritual side of the world, to her time at art school and the women who she formed “The Five” based on their theosophy beliefs with and the art she created both before and after she decided to open herself up to what she described as instruction from the spirit world. I thought the work did a nice job of explaining her beliefs and how they impacted her work, but a less good job of explaining her queerness or even really acknowledging it outside of one illustration. But that said, Karin Eklund’s illustrations, as well as the reproductions of af Klint’s works, are great and will really help pull the reader in, as this is a much wordier picture book than Hardly Haunted.  

For Never & Always (CBR16 #1)

I’m feeling a little rusty in my reviewing skills and kicking myself for not getting this specific review written when I finished the book because I had thoughts and now, I have fewer. I should probably start by saying that I really, truly enjoyed For Never & Always by Helena Greer in much the same way I did reading her previous book Season of Love. For Never & Always is also a queer romance which unpacks big emotions, specifically grief and trauma responses and like its predecessor it’s also a very Jewish story told around several holidays. This book is populated with rich, multi-faceted characters who are going through it in major ways. 

For Never & Always is a second chance/secret marriage/marriage in trouble romance.  Which is a lot right off the bat. The book’s main couple is Hannah and Levi, and they must deal with the fallout of knowing that the love they share was not enough to make their relationship work, but also knowing what four years without the other one feels like. With this knowledge they must decide if they can rebuild their relationship in a healthy way that acknowledges each of their truths, and do they want to? Levi does, from the outset. He is back at Carrigan’s, a place he ran from for very understandable reasons, to do just that. But Hannah isn’t sure. Carrigan’s is both her most treasured safe place, but also where she is literally trapped thanks to her anxiety (she’s working on it).  Levi calls a Shenanigan (basically a bet that must be honored) and negotiates with Hannah that he has five dates and working at Carrigan’s for three months for a major wedding booking, to convince her to stay married. If at the end of those dates Hannah isn’t convinced, they’ll get divorced. 

Something I appreciate so much in Helena Greer’s writing is that she has her characters reckon with their choices. We are all where we are in the world on any given day based on the accumulation of choices, decisions, and happenstances that led to right now. For the characters inhabiting the greater Carrigan’s All Year environs there’s a lot of emotional baggage in both the place and its previous owner Cass, and everyone had a different experience with her, and importantly Greer acknowledges that even if we loved someone, and they loved us, they can have done damage that must be reckoned with. Each of the book’s lead and main supporting characters took Cass Carrigan’s worldview and pronouncements as gospel – to some extent – in their lives and For Never & Always really unpacks what processing that kind of outsized impact is like. This one is also chockful of representation that really matters to me that I don’t exactly want to get in to because I think discovering some of those details in real time with the book is important.

Do read this, and not just because of that beautiful Leni Kauffman cover – but it does help!  

Class Act (CBR15 #26)

My last Cannonball Read Banned Graphic Novels book review. 🙂

Class Act reminded me of The Hate U Give, in that we have a protagonist who is attending a predominantly white, privileged classmates. Our main characters are Drew and Jordan (Jordan was the focus on Craft’s previous book in this universe, New Kid) as they deal with being scholarship student eighth graders at Riverdale Academy.  

But what’s this story about, you ask? From Goodreads: “Eighth grader Drew Ellis is no stranger to the saying “You have to work twice as hard to be just as good.” His grandmother has reminded him his entire life. But what if he works ten times as hard and still isn’t afforded the same opportunities that his privileged classmates at the Riverdale Academy Day School take for granted? To make matters worse, Drew begins to feel as if his good friend Liam might be one of those privileged kids. He wants to pretend like everything is fine, but it’s hard not to withdraw, and even their mutual friend Jordan doesn’t know how to keep the group together. As the pressures mount, will Drew find a way to bridge the divide so he and his friends can truly accept each other? And most important, will he finally be able to accept himself?” 

While you do not need to read New Kid to read Class Act (I didn’t) it would have been helpful in getting the lay of the land at Riverdale and the various friendships the for the core of the book. This one is a 3.5 rounded up for me. There were some pacing issues in the middle. But Jerry Craft adds a lovely layer of specificity in the neighborhood, pulling from his personal history in Harlem and Washington Heights. The sections showing Jordan’s original comics also did a nice job of letting the reader into the mind of our protagonist and helping to spell out some things for the younger readers.  

Gender Queer (CBR15 #24)

I haven’t often re-read books in the past decade. But sometimes I revisit an old favorite, or earlier books in a series before continuing with the newly published. Due to my personal commitment to reading banned and challenged books it has also meant that our Banned Book Week book clubs at Cannonball Read have included re-reads. I try to review the re-reads on their own merits – what was the reading experience this time. But in the case of Gender Queer my experience is so tinged with watching a book I loved when I first read it in 2019 turn into the most challenged book of the past two years, that I never really left this book. I’ve been thinking about it, and suggesting it, and following its author for the past four years.  

Both times I took a copy out of the library. I smiled when I spotted the cover of the copy I borrowed this time – the Stonewell Honor sticker prominently placed on the blue background instead of the golden yellow I had last time. Settling in this time I still found Kobabe’s deeply introspective journey illuminating and relatable, if from a different angle. I was reminded how brave Kobabe had been in sharing what eir body dysmorphia is like and how it had empowered me to speak up for myself more when I was physically uncomfortable.  It is also still visually my Goldilocks’ porridge of graphic novels – it was just right for me. Kobabe’s style is beautifully vibrant without being overwhelming. Kobabe achieves such balance in eir work that I was able to slip into the work and devour it in one sitting, which is still a rarity for me.  Read this book, won’t you?

This One Summer (CBR15 #23)

https://www.jilliantamaki.com/thisonesummer

This One Summer is a re-read for me. It is also the book I have read in the past few years specifically from the Banned Book List put out by the ALA that makes me scratch my head the most. It is because this is the book that hit #1 most challenged in 2016 and was why I read it in 2017. It then came back to the top ten in 2018. It did not make sense to me then, and it makes little sense to me now.  

Not that challenging and banning books makes a lot of sense to me anyway, but sometimes it is easier to follow the logic people are deploying. It was banned and challenged because it includes LGBTQIA+ characters, drug use and profanity, and it was considered sexually explicit with mature themes.  

This book is what it says on the tin: the story of one summer with two preteen girls, Rose and Windy, as they navigate their understandings of the world and relationships around them. They are on the edge of the next phase, constantly peeking over the barrier and trying to understand what they are seeing and hearing. The Tamakis (cousins Mariko and Jillian) capture the mood of this time in our lives beautifully, showing the reader using the art but also obfuscating slightly in the text.  

Whether this book has themes to mature for its audience depends on the audience. I have seen it listed as intended for readers twelve and over and that makes sense. That’s the age of the characters. Children at that age, and those right around it, are experiencing the things that this book tackles. There is some profanity, especially dealing with the older teen characters, there is also a teen pregnancy and the burgeoning questions of sex and sexuality that the tweens experience. 

Literary prizes have their merits and their detractors, but I think it is interesting to highlight that This One Summer was the first graphic novel to receive the Caldecott Honor for “Most Distinguished American Picture Book for Children” and the Printz Honor for “Excellence in Literature for Young Adults” in 2015.

The Sad Bastard Cookbook (CBR15 #22)

When my brain is cooperating, I enjoy cooking. But as a neurodivergent person who lives by herself and absolutely has no idea what is presently in my refrigerator at any time (yes, even immediately after going to the grocery store) keeping myself fed has always been an interesting challenge that I attempt to hide from the world around me. I also tend to get stuck in eating the same thing over and over as many autistic folks do. Add to that the problem that meal planning sucks up the dopamine hit that preparing food should and my ADD has little to no motivation to do the task. That is not even mentioning my texture/preparation aversions.  

Basically, food is a weird thing that I love and can also be an anxiety producing annoyance that I rarely have sufficient spoons to deal with in a way that leaves me satisfied. 

When emmalita reviewed The Sad Bastard Cookbook I thought to myself, this sounds interesting. The ethos of the book is that there is a food preparation available for every taste and energy level. If you have no spoons, eat the peanut butter out of the jar. If you have a few spoons, maybe add some apples to that peanut butter. But the authors (and I) want you to have a set of skills and staples that will get us through a variety of days.  

Did I walk away with huge takeaways? Not so much. A couple of things were unfamiliar to me or were ideas that I had not thought of before. Did I feel seen, much the way I did when I read How to Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis two years ago? Absolutely yes, and that alone is worth spending some time here. The authorial tone and illustrations are funny, wise, and deeply kind. It also helps to mainstream the sort of eating that this book has as its focus. These are struggle meals, many of us eat mostly struggle meals on a day-to-day basis. The idea that this is okay and can be made easier and healthier while remaining struggle meals is not what you find out in the world when trying to do the best with your limited resources. This book is not trying to change or ‘improve’ you; it is trying to change and improve your coping mechanisms – and that is a significant difference to me.  

Oh, and it is available for free digitally if that fits a need for you. The artist collective behind this work (Night Beats) licensed the work under Creative Commons so printing it and keeping it is a totally legal thing you can do if you want. It is also available for purchase.  

Blue Beetle Volumes 1 & 2 (CBR15 #18-19)

One of my friends asked me to go with her to see the new Blue Beetle movie and I agreed, knowing nothing about the character. She knew that, as I’m notoriously not a comics reader, so she handed me two volumes of the comic when we went to see Across the Spiderverse together last month. I put it off until the last minute, but as we’re going tomorrow, I figured I better get to it.

All I can say is that I hope the movie is kinder to its lead than the New 52 event run was.

In Blue Beetle Volume 1: Metamorphosis Jaime Reyes becomes the Blue Beetle (again – ah, reboots). Jaime is a regular teenager dealing with high school, family, and friends. Also, he’s inadvertently implanted with an alien device that can expand to become a blue exoskeleton, turning him into the Blue Beetle. The scarab is in actuality created by an alien race known as the Reach who seek to subjugate planets – or annihilate them. But the scarab was damaged on its way to earth, and Jaime has a chance to figure out how to use these new powers in a way that won’t put everyone he cares about in jeopardy.

Volume 1 grew on me as it went, but I was really put off in the beginning. A lot of it had to do with the facial expressions and how the characters were drawn. It was all a little much. The big problem for me though was that the plot moved in a way where I felt like I couldn’t get a handle on any of the characters. Not a good way to begin. I did appreciate the way that it’s clear that Jaime doesn’t want any part of his new superpowers and is doing his best to figure out how to live with it if he can’t get rid of it.

Blue Beetle, Volume 2: Blue Diamond felt like it should have been two separate collections, the first half tells a very definite story, complete with a good stopping point, as Jaime runs away to New York, meets some other heroes, fights basically everyone (unwillingly in many cases), and finally reunites with friends and family and comes to terms with his situation. Of all the individual issues I read between the two volumes, this arc was the most enjoyable to me. But the second half of volume two left me skimming as Blue Beetle in space battle held little interest for me to begin with. Jaime doesn’t feel like an active participant, lacking a sense of agency and ends the series with a cliffhanger which apparently never got answered as this series was cancelled. I can understand why it ended so soon.