What I've Been Reading: June Edition
I’ve been thinking a lot about this little Substack of mine and what I want to do with it. I know writing an essay type post every week is too much for me as I’m trying to focus on my novel and generally taking care of myself like an adult. So I’m going to try to start doing one essay-type post a month, one craft-type post a month, one reading roundup, and a fourth post that will depend on my general mood.
I’d love to know– do you all want all of those? Should I separate them out so that you can opt in to only the ones you want? Let me know.
So! Anyway! Here is what I’ve been reading and loving lately.1
Not Quite a Ghost by Anne Ursu
Everything seems to be changing all at once for Violet Hart – moving into a new house, starting middle school, having a new baby sibling after her mom remarried. And then, after moving into their new, slightly creepy house, Violet falls ill—and does not get better. As days turn into weeks without any improvement, her family growing more confused and her friends wondering if she’s really sick at all, she finds herself spending more time alone in the room with the yellow wallpaper, the shadows moving in the corners, wrapping themselves around her at night. And soon, Violet starts to suspect that she might not be alone in the room at all.
This middle grade book is many things. It’s a genuinely creepy ghost story. It’s a book about growing up. And it’s a book about living with an invisible chronic illness. As someone with an invisible chronic illness (though one very different from Violet’s), I don’t know if I’ve ever felt so seen as I did reading this.
Anne Ursu is one of the absolute best middle grade authors out there, and the thing she does best is put the reader right in the feels of being twelve years old. I could viscerally feel how BIG everything seems at that age. How friends turn on you and it legitimately feels like the end of the world. But there is always also hope and in this book it comes from new friends and unwaveringly supportive parents. 10/10 no notes.
Ariel Crashes a Train by Olivia A. Cole
Ariel is afraid of her own mind. She already feels like she is too big, too queer, too rough to live up to her parents' exacting expectations, or to fit into what the world expects of a “good girl.” And as violent fantasies she can’t control take over every aspect of her life, she is convinced something much deeper is wrong with her.
Then a summer job at a carnival brings new friends into Ariel’s fractured world, along with a name for what she struggles with—Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. For the first time she dares to imagine that she’s not broken, and not alone.
This is a novel in verse and I really loved some of the narrative devices that Cole uses to show when Ariel’s intrusive thoughts take over her world. It drew me in right away, and I loved how Ariel and her friends talk about gender. It’s important to have books about characters who conclude that they’re trans or non-binary, and I think it’s equally as important to have books where the character feels like Ariel does - that she’s fully comfortable being a girl, she just wishes the rest of the world accepted her version of girlhood instead of insisting she change either herself or her labels.
Another thing I think was really important here, is that while her friends help her cope with her OCD and intrusive thoughts, it’s made very clear that they’re not ‘fixing’ her, and that she needs professional medical help as soon as she’s able to access it without parental interference.
It’s a bit of a heavy read, but beautifully done.
The Bad Ones by Melissa Albert
In the course of a single winter’s night, four people vanish without a trace across a small town. Nora’s estranged best friend, Becca, is one of the lost. As Nora tries to untangle the truth of Becca’s disappearance, she discovers a darkness in her town’s past, as well as a string of coded messages Becca left for her to unravel. These clues lead Nora to a piece of local folklore: a legendary goddess of forgotten origins who played a role in Nora and Becca’s own childhood games...
This is a ghosty/horrory book that I found the exact right amount of creepy for my generally scardey-cat brain. It’s the perfect pacing of puzzle that the reader unravels as Nora does, a few twists I figured out right before they happened (which I like! It makes me feel smart!) but also some I never saw coming.
The backstory of the Goddess Game is so convincingly presented that for a moment I wondered if it was a real thing that my little corner of Iowa had just managed to miss (it’s not, the game is fully invented for the book). And my favorite thing is that, while there is a romantic sub plot, the friendship between Nora and Becca is the focus of the book.
Right Here Right Now by Shannon Dunlap
There are infinite universes in which Elise never dies. Her best friend, Anna, never has to mourn her or choose between the weight of her grief and the weight of her ambition. Her cousin, Liam, never has to lose another loved one or fight to find purpose in a life that already doesn’t feel like his own.
But Liam and Anna do not get to choose the universe in which they live. Across multiple worlds, their paths collide as they wrestle with what it takes to save someone else and how to face love and loss on a quantum scale.
I’m a sucker for a multiverse novel and I think this one was done very well. We bounce back and forth between the universe where Elise dies (narrated by Liam) where Anna and Liam bond over their grief, and the one where she lives (narrated by Anna) where Anna joins an elite orchestra and has to deal with the competitiveness and misogyny of the classical music world, while occasionally running into Liam and finding him basically insufferable.
With two fairly minor exceptions, the classical music element earns my I-Have-Two-Music-Degrees stamp of approval, and I love how Anna and Liam fully act like real teens occasionally making just the worst decisions for reasons that make total sense in their heads at that moment.
I also think this book does a great job of showing that we are who we are at our core, shaped by circumstances, certainly, but that any number of choices could lead us to happiness. Which I think is a particularly good message for young people being asked to plan the entire rest of their lives.
This Day Changes Everything by Edward Underhill
Abby Akerman believes in the Universe. After all, her Midwest high school marching band is about to perform in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City, making it the perfect place for Abby to finally tell her best friend Kat that she’s in love with her (and, um, gay).
Leo Brewer, on the other hand, just wants to get through this trip without falling apart because he’s about to be outed to his very Southern extended family on national TV as the trans boy he really is.
But when fate throws Abby and Leo together on the wrong subway train, they soon find themselves lost in the middle of Manhattan. As they scramble to get back to their respective school groups and find themselves on a Ferris Bueller Style adventure instead, their expectations for the trip—and of each other—begin to shift.
This is a one-day whirlwind rom com that had even my cynical heart melting. I mean… marching band nerds from small towns running around NYC? Count me in. And as someone who has personally chaperoned high school trips to NYC, I read the entire book nodding and going yup, I buy that. Which, let me tell you, is very rare.
I really enjoyed Underhill’s debut last year Always the Almost, and one of the things I like best about both books is the way he portrays parents of a trans teen who really are trying. They’re not getting everything right, but they genuinely love their kid. I find that in YA we tend to see parents who are perfect or evil with nothing in between, and I love seeing a book acknowledge that it is hard for parents and that’s not the teen’s problem but also maybe everyone can give everyone some grace, huh?
There’s also a hilarious scene in The Strand with a group of local queer teens that made my heart grow three sizes, and also some Ace rep that I really enjoyed. If you’re looking for a delightful beach read, this is for you.
There are two other books I read this month that I absolutely adored but they don’t come out until later in the year so I’ll save my big review until then. But! I can’t resist putting these on your radar.
Maureen Johnson’s new book Death At Morning House is another delightful mystery – not a Stevie Bell mystery, but I think Stevie would approve of this book – narrated by the most adorably awkward queer girl, like, ever. Maureen Johnson is an autobuy of mine and I devoured this in a single day.
The Brightness Between Us by Eliot Screfer is the sequel to his queer, YA sci-fi book The Darkness Outside Us. And, listen, Darkness is one of my top five favorite books, like, of all time. It is flawless on so many levels. And so when I found out there was a sequel I was like HOW?
You know when a sci fi (or sci-fi esque) tv show has a first season that focuses on a really small group of people in a closed setting and it’s this stunning character exploration and you love it? And then the second season opens the world up and you get to see the past or the future or how other characters’ lives are affected by this thing?
This book feels like that. And it’s amazing and devastating and beautiful and everything I’d expect from the absolute genius that is Eliot Screfer.
You can find all these books in one place here. Full disclosure: I make a small commission when you buy through my Bookshop Affiliate site, but I will never recommend a book I don’t genuinely support.
Happy Pride, Happy Summer, Happy Reading.
Forewarning that a big part of my job is reading the new Young Adult books that come out, so that will be the bulk of my recommendations.