coming of age

Tidesong

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by Wendy Xu
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Content: There’s some bullying/strict parenting on the part of parents, which might be triggering. It’s in the Middle Grade Graphic novel section of the bookstore.

Sophie comes from a long magical line of women who have taken care of the island and communicated with the dragons in the sea. Sophie wants to make her mother and grandmother proud, and get into the magic academy. So she s shipped off to live with her Great Aunt and learn how to refine her madic for her aplication process. She’s not great at magic though and keeps messing up, which makes her Auntie Lan irritated. Sophie is attempting some magic, which goes wrong, and accidentally gets her magic entangled in with a young water dragon, Lir. He’s human, without memories of who he really is, and they can’t get their magic detangled.

I’m not making this sound anywhere near as good as it really is. It’s a little bit learning to make your own path in the world – Sophie learns that it’s not the wishes of her elders that she needs to follow but her own hear – and a little bit learning how to be a good friend – which means not remembering that other people’s wishes are valid as well your own. It’s a solid coming-of-age story, one where Sophie really learns to shine, but in her own, special way.

Xu is an excellent storyteller, and this is no exception.

The Knockout Queen

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by Rufi Thorpe
First sentence: “When I was eleven years old, I moved in with my aunt after my mother was sent to prison”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Release date: April 28, 2020
Content: There is a lot of swearing, including many f-bombs, and some graphic sex. It will be in the adult fiction section of the bookstore.

When Michael moved to North Shore, California, he moved in next door to Bunny Lampert and her father. Bunny was the star of North Shore, tall, blonde, beautiful (even at eleven) and talented at volleyball. Even though Michael was none of those things — being, rather, a tortured, deeply in the closet gay teenage boy — he and Bunny became best friends. Not the sort of friends that hung out at school (or even after, really) but the kind that stays up late at night doing face masks and talking about all sorts of things. While they were not inseparable, they were devoted.

So much so, that Bunny is willing to go to bat for Michael when a girl on the volleyball team starts badmouthing him. Go to bat, in the sense that she beat the other girl into a coma. From there, Michael’s and Bunny’s paths irrevocably diverge.

This story is all told through Michael’s reflections as an adult, as he tries to figure out who he is, and why society is so deeply unfair to those who don’t have the money to make a decent life for themselves (his mother was sent to prison for defending herself against and abusive husband). He gets into abusive relationships because he’s deeply self-loathing, as is Bunny, and maybe this self-loathing is what ties them together? It’s not a happy narrative, but it is one that has made me think. About perceptions — did Bunny become the person everyone thought she was, or was she always that way — about class, about the things in our lives that affect us.

I’m not entirely sure I liked this book, but it is one that will stay with me for a while, and perhaps that’s worth something, in the end.

The Knife of Never Letting Go

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knifeofneverby Patrick Ness
First sentence: “The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don’t got nothing much to say.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There’s the anxiety factor plus a lot of violence plus the f-bomb a couple of times (though the main character says “eff” a lot). It’s in the Teen (grades 9+) section of the bookstore.

Todd is the last boy in Prentisstown in the New World. He’s waiting for his thirteenth birthday, which will come soon, and then he will become a man and join the other men in the town (and there’s only men). It’s an interesting place, this New World — there’s a virus that makes men’s thoughts (and only men, not women) audible, so not only is there no secrets, it’s chaotic hearing everyone else’s thoughts. But, as Todd is out gathering apples in the swamp, he encounters something he’s never experienced before: silence. Quiet. A gap in the Noise which turns out to be a girl.

Viola is part of a new wave of settlers to the New World, on the initial scouting ship. Her parents died in a crash, and when she finds Todd, she’s on the run from Aaron, who is Prentisstown’s fanatic religious leader. Then Todd is sent into exile and he and Viola are on the run, one step ahead of not only the insane Aaron, but the controlling mayor of Prentisstown and his army of fanatics.

There’s way too much to unpack in this novel in a blog post. Seriously. I’m glad I’m reading this as part of a book group, because I don’t think I could even begin to process it on my own. It’s a weird sort of mix between old-timey (the book is in a sort of dialect) Western and science fiction-y futuristic. It’s a survival story with a hint of dystopian. It’s weird and wild and gave me anxiety over and over again (!) and I practically read the whole 480 page book in two sittings. It’s engrossing and there’s so much to discuss. And even though it was written eight years ago, it’s still so very relevant.

My only complaint? The cliffhanger ending. ARGH. I’m just glad I can pick the next book up and read it right away, and I don’t have to wait for it to come out.