Lasagna Means I Love You - Kate O'Shaughnessy

Initial Draw: ☆☆☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆☆☆
Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆☆☆

Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Nan was all the family Mo ever needed. But suddenly she's gone, and Mo finds herself in foster care after her uncle decides she's not worth sticking around for. Nan left her a notebook and advised her to get a hobby, like ferret racing or palm reading. But how could a hobby fix anything in her newly topsy-turvy life?

Then Mo discovers a handmade cookbook filled with someone else's family recipes. Even though Nan never cooked, Mo can't tear her eyes away. Not so much from the recipes, but the stories attached to them. Though, when she makes herself a pot of soup, it is every bit as comforting as the recipe notes said.

Soon Mo is asking everyone she meets for their family recipes. Teaching herself to make them. Collecting the stories behind them. Building a website to share them. And, okay, secretly hoping that a long-lost relative will find her and give her a family recipe all her own.

But when everything starts to unravel again, Mo realizes that if she wants a family recipe - or a real family - she's going to have to make it up herself."

📚📚📚 

This is one of the books on a nominee list for one of the book award committees I joined. I feel like I'm super behind reading through the list, so I checked out a whole stack of books, grabbed this one with zero idea of what to expect, and I was blown away. It's a gorgeous story, nothing at all like I expected. The cover is so playful, I expected something very lighthearted and silly, which it was at times, but it was emotional, sometimes heartbreaking, and it was so full of heart.

Immediately, something I appreciated about this story was that it centers around grief and foster care. There are so few books that touch on these topics (more now than there used to be, but still), and I have SO many students navigating losing a parent or other loved one, living in foster care, group homes, etc...I want them to be able to see that experience reflected in the books they're reading, to have that little boost of "I'm not alone in this." 

I will say, my students in foster care likely have a different experience than Mo, and this is something that the story touches on. It warmed my heart that this was something that stuck with Mo and that, when presented with an opportunity to try and do something about the inequity in this system, she takes it. Mo has a big heart, and you can see throughout her journey that she's trying to do the best she can to leave the world around her a brighter place.

One of my favorite things about this book was the sense of community it created. Mo's best friend, Crystal, Crystal's family, and many others rally around her to embrace and support her. I swear, I'm a little dehydrated after reading this from crying at so many beautiful moments. I don't want to spoil anything, but appropriately, the scene where the book gets its title from was one of my favorites of the whole book. I felt like I was there, experiencing things with Mo, and it filled my heart in the same way it did hers.

I feel like I've barely said anything of substance about this book, but my brain and heart are still overflowing from the experience of reading it. I loved it so much that as soon as I finished reading it, I ordered a copy for my school library. I hope my students enjoy it as much as I did.

One of the Good Ones - Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite

Initial Draw: ☆☆☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆☆☆☆
Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆☆☆
Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover: 

"When teen social activist and history buff Kezi Smith is killed under mysterious circumstances after attending a social justice rally, her devastated sister Happi and their family are left reeling in the aftermath. As Kezi becomes another immortalized victim in the fight against police brutality, Happi begins to question the idealized way her sister is remembered. Perfect. Angelic.

One of the good ones.

Even the phrase rings wrong in her mind - why are only certain people deemed worthy to be missed? Happy and her sister Genny embark on a journey to honor Kezi in their own way, using an heirloom copy of The Negro Motorist Green Book as their guide. But there's a twist to Kezi's story that no one could've ever expected - one that will change everything all over again."

 📚📚📚

Well, already talked a tiny bit about this, since it's my June mystery read, but now I've read it, so I'm going to talk about it some more. As predicted, it was very emotional. Heartbreaking, frustrating, and intense. It clocks in at 330 pages, and there is so much packed into each of those pages that I wanted more. I thought it was excellent, but with such nuanced content (and so many details to get into), while it was handled well, I think it would have been even better with more time to develop everything.

My one gripe, possibly born out of the fact that I finished the last half of this in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep and was therefore very scared reading it alone in the darkness, is how the last few chapters played out. I don't want to spoil anything, but there were opportunities seeded that never came to fruition, and I thought doing more with those opportunities would have built toward a more satisfying conclusion than the abrupt ending we got. Other than that (and even with this gripe, the ending was mind-blowing), incredible writing. I can't do half stars...maybe I could figure it out, but I haven't...but this would be a solid 4.5, maybe a 4.75, from me.

The Kingdom Over the Sea - Zohra Nabi

Initial Draw: ☆☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆☆☆☆☆
Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆☆☆
Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"'My Own Yara,

If you are reading this, then something terrible has happened. And you are on your own. To return to the city of Zehaira, you must read out the words on the back of this letter...Good luck, my brave girl.'

When twelve-year-old Yara's mother passes away, she leaves behind a letter and a strange set of instructions. Yara must travel from the home she has always known to a place that is not on any map - Zehaira, a world of sorcerers, alchemists, and simmering magic. But Zehaira is not the land it used to be. The practice of magic has been outlawed, the Sultan's alchemists are plotting a sinister scheme, and the answers Yara is searching for seem to be out of reach. Yara must summon all her courage to discover the truth about her mother's past and her own identity...and to find her place in this magical new world."

Could this be the start of a Middle Grade Mega Awesome Super Fantastic Massive Review Spree? It's possible! Prepare yourselves for an imminent onslaught, just in case. Batten down the hatches, cover your windows with planks of wood, hide in the bathtub. Whatever it is people do in inclement weather. It's a middle grade monsoon! (See, this works because it could be torrential rain that leads to flooding, or it could be a Phoenix monsoon where this whole paragraph is the humidity building up, and then...no rain. Just this lone review. Guess we'll see which it is.)

Anyway, this book was solid! It went by sneakily fast - I was really surprised when I realized I was coming up on the last few chapters - so this will probably be a brief review, since it was such a whirlwind of a read. I enjoyed the world, but we got such a small glimpse of it and so little detail into why some things were the way they were that rather than feeling invested in it, I was left wanting more detail. Not a bad thing, I would read more books set in the world to get that detail! But I wish there was a touch more time spent on the worldbuilding.

For me, the strongest part of the book was the characters. Yara was determined, clever, and stubborn, her relationships with some of the secondary characters she comes across (trying not to give spoilers or I would be more specific!) develop so well and tugged at heartstrings. Some of these relationships also did a great job of building suspense and making me want to keep reading so I could figure out what was going on. And even minor characters drew me in so immediately that I was excited for any mention of them. Very impressive character development! They were the best part of the world, for sure.

As for the plot...solid. It's hard to get more into it without spoilers, but if you like magic, battling evil, and unraveling mysteries, this might be up your alley. Check it out!

(Also, the cover is very pretty, had to throw it out there.)

We Deserve Monuments - Jas Hammonds

Initial Draw: ☆☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆☆☆☆☆
Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆☆☆☆
Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"When her family moves to Bardell, Georgia, on the cusp of her senior year, Avery Anderson is uprooted from DC and thrust into the hostile home of her terminally ill grandmother, Mama Letty. The tension between Avery's mom and Mama Letty makes for a frosty arrival and reveals a decades-old conflict they refuse to talk about. Every time Avery tries to look deeper, she's turned away, leaving her desperate to unearth the secrets that divide her family. 

While tempers flare at home, Avert finds friendship in unexpected places: with Simone Cole, her captivating next-door neighbor, and Jade Oliver, a member of the town's most prominent family, whose mother's murder remains unsolved.

As the three girls grow closer - and Avery and Simone's friendship blossoms into romance - the sharp-edged opinions of their small Southern town begin to hint at something insidious underneath. Avery soon discovers her family's roots are deeply entwined with Bardell's racist past. With Mama Letty's health dwindling every day, Avery must decide if digging for the truth is worth toppling the delicate relationships she's built - or if some things are left buried."

WOW, this book is incredible, in so many ways. I don't even know where to begin, there are so many layers woven together to create this amazing story. I suppose we start with the title and the cover.

I don't know how anyone looks at this cover and doesn't get chills. I got it in my Melanin in YA book subscription box and added it to the "for real, read these right now" book pile that I keep separate from my regular TBR shelves. Which you would think would mean I read it immediately, but "read these right now" really means "read this in the next six months or so, hopefully." I mean, show me a person who sticks to their TBR plans and...I don't know, maybe they're telling the truth and maybe they're not, but either way I don't trust them. Anyway, fortunately my sister read it and was like "hey, you have to read this" so I was like "okay, let's read it right now, FOR REAL!" And I'm so glad I did.

Avery's family has to move from Washington DC to a tiny town in Georgia partway through her senior year of high school after they learn her grandma has terminal cancer. She's disappointed to be uprooted and unsure about living in this small, clearly racist town after spending so long in DC pushing toward her college and career goals and being surrounded by people who are much more accepting than most of the people she'll encounter in Bardell. What's more, she doesn't know her grandma, Mama Letty, at all, and she's not sure how to react to the surly older woman who doesn't seem to like her and clearly does not want them there.

Then Avery starts getting to know her grandma and learns that there's a whole lot more going on with Mama Letty than she could ever have realized. And she becomes friends with Simone and Jade and realizes the history of the town, and her growing relationship with her new friends, are much more complicated and tangled than it would have been possible to predict. As it all twines together, this multifaceted, beautiful story coming together in ways that had me tearing up almost every chapter. 

The present day story is interspersed with short flashback chapters, pulling back the veil on Mama Letty's history with the town and reminding the reader that the past is not as distant as many of us try to convince ourselves. The heartbreaking moments in the story are buoyed up by shining moments of hope and joy. Like I said before, there are so many pieces of this story, and they are woven together so beautifully. I'll read anything by Jas Hammonds, their storytelling is masterful.