The Chismosas Only Book Club - Laekan Zea Kemp

Initial Draw: ☆☆☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆☆☆☆

Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆☆☆

Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Cat, Sofia, Ana, and Mari are best friends. Nothing, nada, can break the special bond they share. And after Cat's mom chides the girls to quit their loud cackling at the bookstore as they carry on like a bunch of chismosas, the name sticks - Cat creates The Chismosas Only Book Club, so the girls can stay connected throughout their first year of high school, even when their class schedules and club activities rip them apart.

But ninth grade is harder than any of the girls predicted, and it seems that no amount of conchas y libros y riendo at Milagro's Books, founded generations ago by Cat's great-great-grandmother, can repair the ever-growing cracks in their friendship. But maybe the spirit of Milagro herself can."

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I'm working on getting back into reading and reviewing ARCs (advanced reader copies) from NetGalley so I better keep up with new releases for school, so here we are, the return of the ARC reviews!

For my first review, The Chismosas Only Book Club by Laekan Zea Kemp caught my eye. I've read some of her books before, have a bunch of them already in our school library, and this book seems like one that many of my older students would be drawn to. Preparing for a big change like high school and worrying about what will change is super relatable - it definitely called to me, and I know many of my sixth graders, preparing to go to a new school for middle school next year, will see themselves in Cat, Sofia, Ana, and Cat.

Outside of this initial appeal (and a huge bonus for my school population), I really appreciated that not only were the characters centered in the book all Latina, their culture also features pretty heavily in the story. I loved this inclusion of traditions big and small, and I know my students will be thrilled to see themselves and some of their own traditions reflected in the characters of this book. I thought the character development, particularly with some of the secondary characters, was one of the strongest parts of the story. I loved the interactions between the four Chismosas, and obviously the story revolves around them so it makes sense that they were featured most heavily, but I would have taken sooooo much more of Cat's sister, Sofia's dad, and Ana's grandma in particular.

My one big gripe with this book was the pace. This is a four-star review, so obviously I enjoyed the book, but I wish things had progressed more quickly so we could have had more of a sense of conclusion at the end. It's possible that this was intentional, but instead of your typical rising action, climax, resolution, the end structure, this story was rising action, more of the same drama, more of the same drama, more of the same drama, climaxtheend. The things that happened with each of the quartet in the last couple of chapters felt like things that should have been happening maybe three quarters of the way through the book so then we could see where those actions ultimately took them, but instead it was like "YES, Ana is finally standing up for herself and Sofia is speaking up about how her mom makes her feel! Good for h--oh, it's over?" Like I said, maybe this was a deliberate choice, but it was the one thing about this otherwise wonderful book that felt dissatisfying to me. Otherwise, love it, it's a 100% have to buy for my school's collection.

Now, what shall I pick for my NEXT ARC review?!

Oh my god, I'm out of puzzles

But this last one was a real doozy! Tell me, if you heard the words "all edge pieces" puzzle, what would your reaction be? Mine was "ooh, fun!"

And it was. Mostly.

It was also, believe it or not, incredibly difficult. The pieces were very unique shapes, and with all of them looking so similar you really had to scrutinize for the most minor differences. Shout out to Yetch, though, because the differences were there! This had so many unique little details, it was a blast spotting them all. Overall, this is a solid, time-consuming perfect ten for me. And now the question is...where do I go from here?

January Read Harder progress

Already time for the first Read Harder update of the year! I technically read my first challenge book in 2025 because I needed a book to read on December 31st, but I don't care, I'm counting it. I finished My Dear Henry (that was the 2025) book, which I thought was overall okay, although somewhat monotonous. Probably should have gotten to the Hyde reveal earlier and then had more of a wind-down after that, but still, it was a decent read. I also read The Year of the Witching for that challenge, which makes me feel better about counting the first book. That one was heavy, but oh so good. Very dark, upsettingly relevant to present day.

A Proper Young Lady and Trans Liberty Riot Brigade were my other two challenge books, and they have the very dubious honor of being my first two DNFs of the year! I try not to DNF books - I've got eight DNFs in my entire reading history, at least since I started using an online tracker - and I swear I tried with these two, but it got to a point where I was dreading reading them, and that's not what you want from a book. 

A Proper Young Lady was frankly poorly written with a very stilted writing style, and on top of that the story was terrible and weird, and I've never read a book by a queer author that was so openly queerphobic. It was bad. Trans Liberty Riot Brigade was an intriguing concept, and I really wanted to like it, but the author used a custom future-dystopian-world slang SO HEAVILY, from the very first sentence. It made for a jarring start to the book, it was hard to get into the narrative because of it, and it finally got exhausting enough trying to parse it that I gave up. If you can get past the slang, maybe it's a great story, but we're in the midst of a fascist takeover here and I only have so much brain power to devote to reading, I can't spend it trying to learn a weird invented slang, especially one that uses "faggin'" as their version of the f word. Didn't do it for me.

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For February, my two challenges are #8, read a classic from the Zero to Well-Read podcast and #16, read a queer picture book. 

For challenge eight, ignoring my feelings about this being a bummer of a prompt, there are only eighteen episodes of the podcast and I've already read a lot of them, so I ended up choosing Midnight's Children by Salmon Rushdie and The Secret History by Donna Tartt. I was able to get both of these from the library, and my hold for the audio of Midnight's Children came in way earlier than I expected it to, so hopefully I finish them both quickly.

For challenge sixteen, I got copies of Circle of Love by Monique Gray Smith and Chloe and the Fireflies by Chris Clarkson. Hooray for picture books, I already read them AND added them to my library collection. 💖 Both were lovely, and I teared up reading Chloe and the Fireflies. Picture books can be pure magic, I tell you what.