Felix Ever After - Kacen Callender

Initial draw: ✰✰✰✰✰

Character development: ✰✰✰✰✰

Plot/Writing style: ✰✰✰✰✰

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Felix Love has never been in love - and, yes, he's painfully aware of the irony. He desperately wants to know what it's like and why it seems so easy for everyone but him to find someone. What's worse is that, even though he is proud of his identity, Felix also secretly fears that he's one marginalization too many - Black, queer, and transgender - to ever get his own happily-ever-after.

When an anonymous student begins sending him transphobic messages - after publicly posting Felix's deadname alongside images of him before he transitioned - Felix comes up with a plan for revenge. What he didn't count on: his catfish scenario landing him in a quasi-love triangle...

But, as he navigates his complicated feelings, Felix begins a journey of questioning and self-discovery that helps redefine his most important relationship: how he feels about himself.

Felix Ever After is an honest and layered story about identity, falling in love, and recognizing the love you deserve"

Oh my god, this book. So many emotions. I've wanted to read this for quite some time, and once I picked it up, it didn't take me long to finish. The synopsis does a pretty good job of breaking things down - Felix is taking summer art classes at school, and an anonymous asshole targets him with their disgusting transphobia. While he navigates the fallout and ensuing emotions, he's also dealing with cruel comments from an ex, another student being a dick for seemingly no reason, and on top of these interpersonal struggles, he desperately needs to finish (ahem...start...) his portfolio for college applications. It's a lot for a seventeen-year-old to deal with, but fortunately he has a very supportive best friend to keep him moving forward. Which brings me to...

The characters. Whom I loved. Felix is a little uncertain, a little insecure, but ultimately unapologetically true to himself. Ezra, the aforementioned best friend, is lovely and wonderful and Felix's fiercest supporter. And Kacen Callender does an amazing job developing Felix's high school friend group. His situation, with one close friend and then a group of people he hung out with by extension but didn't know quite as well or feel as comfortable with, felt very familiar to me, and I loved the way each member of the group's personality and voice developed a little more as the story went on. Finally, there were some amazing examples of people not being what they seemed, which I really appreciated. So often in YA, an antagonist can become a little one-dimensional or a frustrating parent is just a frustrating parent. I appreciated that there was some added depth and nuance to some of the characters that Felix didn't initially mesh well with.

And finally, the plot and writing style. This book is not a light read. There are some difficult situations tackled, and the genuine emotion and openness throughout Felix's experiences is incredible. In the acknowledgements, it says that this book was deeply personal, and I feel that in every page. I aspire to create something as honest and raw as Kacen Callender has - everything felt so real. I feel like Felix is someone I could have gone to school with and become friends with, and I'm so happy that this book exists. Felix's story is beautiful.

This Adventure Ends - Emma Mills

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Sloane isn't expecting to fall in with a group of friends when she moves from New York to Florida - especially not a group of friends so intense, so layered with private tragedies and secret codes, and so all-consuming. Yet that's exactly what happens.

Sloane becomes closest to Vera, a social-media star who lights up any room, and Gabe, Vera's twin brother and the most serious person Sloane has ever met. When a beloved painting by the twins' late mother goes missing, Sloane takes on the responsibility of tracking it down, a journey that crosses state lines -  and pulls her ever deeper into the twins' lives.

Filled with powerful and important friendships, a wonderful warts-and-all family, shiveringly good romance, and sharp, witty dialogue, this story is about finding the people you never knew you needed."

Sloane has never really had close friends...people she hung out with when convenient, sure. But people you spent all day texting, slept over at each other's houses, and developed inside jokes with? Never. Then she moves to Florida, meets Gabe and Vera at a party, and finds herself immediately incorporated into their world. Their friends become her friends, their jokes become her jokes, and before she knows it...there are people she cares about. People who care about her.

She isn't sure what to make of it, but they're important to her. So when she sleeps over at Vera's one night and discovers that Gabe's step-mom accidentally gave the painting his mother specifically painted for him and Vera right before she died to a gallery to be sold, she makes it her life's mission to get it back. This quest stirs up some rumors, drama, and speculation, and eventually even some heartache, and at times this leaves Sloane wondering if she's making a mistake. Maybe going through life solo, keeping things at a distance, is the way to go.

Obviously that's not the way to go, and no spoilies, but I'm sure Sloane will eventually come to recognize that. 😉 On the way, she'll have some great adventures with her new friends, often featuring the laugh-out-loud dialogue I have come to appreciate from Emma Mills (sweaty babies. They got me over and over). This book, and most of her others (I have to qualify that with "most" because I haven't read all of them yet) are the perfect light read when you want to dive into some fiction for a break from the doom and gloom of real life (hellooooo, pandemic!). It might make you a little emotional, but it will also crack you up, and by the end of the book, if you're anything like me, you'll have a strong case of the warm fuzzies. Need to press pause on all the Covid panic? Grab this book!

Love, Life, and the List - Kasie West

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Seventeen-year-old Abby Turner’s summer isn’t going the way she’d planned. She has a not-so-secret but definitely unrequited crush on her best friend, Cooper. She hasn’t been able to manage her mother’s growing issues with anxiety. And now she’s been rejected from an art show because her work “has no heart.” So when she gets another opportunity to show her paintings Abby isn’t going to take any chances.

Which is where the list comes in.

Abby gives herself one month to do ten things, ranging from face a fear (#3) to learn a stranger’s story (#5) to fall in love (#8). She knows that if she can complete the list she’ll become the kind of artist she’s always dreamed of being. But as the deadline approaches, Abby realizes that getting through the list isn’t as straightforward as it seems… and that maybe—just maybe—she can’t change her art if she isn’t first willing to change herself."

For me, Kasie West books are a great palate cleanser after reading heavier books. They're like the sorbet of the book world. You can always count on them to have a small amount of drama but overall be fluffy and end happily. If you're looking for something fast, light, and fun to read, this book is a great option. That being said, I did have a few gripes.

Gripe numero uno: It was hard to feel invested in their friend circle when there was ZERO character development for the two that were on vacation the entire book. I know whole point of the book was that Cooper and Abby were going to be alone all summer, but it's a weird decision to establish that this friend group is like the end-all-be-all of friend groups without including two members of the group in the book. Gripe two: Could have done without Iris's presence in the book. It rubbed me the wrong way primarily because she ended up actively pitted against Abby, which is just...such a tired storyline...but it also bugged me because throwing her in the mix kind of made Cooper come off like a d-bag at times, particularly toward the end of the book. 

And, drumroll please...my final gripe...

I know I said above that you can always count on these books to end happily, but truth be told I was kind of excited at the prospect of a Kasie West book where in the end the main character learns to be fine being by herself and expands her social circle beyond the one guy she's ever really socialized with (aside from the other guy friend who, again, is absent the entire book and also has a weird arc where he's sending Cooper texts but not Abby), but noooooo. Honestly, with this book, the ending almost made the entire book feel pointless. There were all these realizations from Abby and character growth and revelations about how she could have other friends and rely on people outside of her little group, and then it was like "jk, Cooper does like me! We're together now!" Fine, if that's how you're going to end it...but at the very least if they were going to end up together don't have him totally blow off her art show because that made him completely irredeemable in my eyes.

All American Boys - Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Rashad is absent again today.

That’s the sidewalk graffiti that started it all…

Well, no, actually, a lady tripping over Rashad at the store, making him drop a bag of chips, was what started it all. Because it didn’t matter what Rashad said next—that it was an accident, that he wasn’t stealing—the cop just kept pounding him. Over and over, pummeling him into the pavement. So then Rashad, an ROTC kid with mad art skills, was absent again…and again…stuck in a hospital room. Why? Because it looked like he was stealing. And he was a black kid in baggy clothes. So he must have been stealing.

And that’s how it started.

And that’s what Quinn, a white kid, saw. He saw his best friend’s older brother beating the daylights out of a classmate. At first Quinn doesn’t tell a soul…He’s not even sure he understands it. And does it matter? The whole thing was caught on camera, anyway. But when the school—and nation—start to divide on what happens, blame spreads like wildfire fed by ugly words like “racism” and “police brutality.” Quinn realizes he’s got to understand it, because, bystander or not, he’s a part of history. He just has to figure out what side of history that will be.

Rashad and Quinn—one black, one white, both American—face the unspeakable truth that racism and prejudice didn’t die after the civil rights movement. There’s a future at stake, a future where no one else will have to be absent because of police brutality. They just have to risk everything to change the world.

Cuz that’s how it can end. "

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor." -Desmond Tutu

I wish this book wasn't so necessary, but god damn. It might as well be non-fiction. Rashad stops by the corner store on a Friday after school to get a bag of chips. When he bends down to get his cell phone out of his bag, a woman trips over him. When the shop owner and a police officer see a bag of chips fly out of his hands, they assume he was shoplifting, so naturally the police officer cuffs him and then proceeds to beat the shit out of him, landing the teenaage ROTC student in the hospital with broken ribs, a broken nose, and internal bleeding.

Quinn is waiting outside the corner store to score some beer for a party when he sees his best friend's older brother, a police officer, beating a black teenage boy outside the store. At first, Quinn can't come to terms with what he's just witnessed. Paul has been like a father to him since his own father died, and he wants to believe there was a reason for what went down. But what reason can there be that would explain what he saw? As much as he wants to support his best friend's family, Quinn has some difficult decisions to make about what he believes and what kind of person he wants to be.

This book might make you cry. Honestly, it probably should, for all the people who are #absentagaintoday.

Love and Gelato - Jenna Evans Welch

My rating: ⭐⭐

From the cover:

"“I made the wrong choice.”

Lina is spending the summer in Tuscany, but she isn’t in the mood for Italy’s famous sunshine and fairy-tale landscape. She’s only there because it was her mother’s dying wish that she get to know her father. But what kind of father isn’t around for sixteen years? All Lina wants to do is get back home.

But then she is given a journal that her mom had kept when she lived in Italy. Suddenly Lina’s uncovering a magical world of secret romances, art, and hidden bakeries. A world that inspires Lina, along with the ever-so-charming Ren, to follow in her mother’s footsteps and unearth a secret that has been kept for far too long. It’s a secret that will change everything she knew about her mother, her father—and even herself.

People come to Italy for love and gelato, someone tells her, but sometimes they discover much more."

I waited a long time for this book, and I really wanted to love it. I mean, teenage girl loses her mother to cancer and goes to Italy to spend the summer with the father she never knew existed...yes, please!

As it turns out, this was more of a "meh.Take it or leave it."

I get that Lina was grieving, but she wasn't very likable. She was pretty selfish, kind of bratty, and made some questionable decisions. Not my favorite protagonist. She was shitty to a lot of people, most notably Howard and the poor, forgettable British dude she liked because he was hot and then suddenly didn't like but still led on, until he conveniently ended up being a total dick after seeming perfectly fine for 95% of the book. While we're on the topic of things suddenly changing very suddenly...

Someone please do Jenna Evans Welch a favor and teach her how to use the thesaurus feature in her word processor. Things happened "suddenly" so many times that it started to give me a twitch. There were occasions where something suddenly happened and then suddenly something else happened in back to back sentences. There are so many words! Pick a different word! Also, while I can appreciate that she was trying to be creative, soooooooooo many weird metaphors. I'm all for clever descriptions, but when your descriptive comparisons start to pull the reader out of the story, that's not great. 

Finally, let's talk about Mimi and Ren. So many questions. Did he just like her because she was hot? If so, gross. That doesn't endear him to me. Was she nice to other people, or did she treat everyone the way she treated Lina? Why is it that in love triangle situations the non-protagonist in the triangle is always a douchebag? Sometimes people aren't right for each other. What's wrong with showing that in literature? Why does the reason for main character 1 choosing main character 2 always have to be "well, their other option was a total jerk, so..." Guh. Maybe if books did a better job of showing that sometimes you try to date someone and the two of you simply don't jive real people would be better at navigating relationships.

Anyway...yeah. Not my favorite read. It could have been worse, but it also could have been way better.