Ramona Blue - Julie Murphy

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Ramona was only five years old when Hurricane Katrina changed her life forever.

Since then, it’s been Ramona and her family against the world. Standing over six feet tall with unmistakable blue hair, Ramona is sure of three things: she likes girls, she’s fiercely devoted to her family, and she knows she’s destined for something bigger than the trailer she calls home in Eulogy, Mississippi. But juggling multiple jobs, her flaky mom, and her well-meaning but ineffectual dad forces her to be the adult of the family. Now, with her sister, Hattie, pregnant, responsibility weighs more heavily than ever.

The return of her childhood friend Freddie brings a welcome distraction. Ramona’s friendship with the former competitive swimmer picks up exactly where it left off, and soon he’s talked her into joining him for laps at the pool. But as Ramona falls in love with swimming, her feelings for Freddie begin to shift too, which is the last thing she expected. With her growing affection for Freddie making her question her sexual identity, Ramona begins to wonder if perhaps she likes girls and guys or if this new attraction is just a fluke. Either way, Ramona will discover that, for her, life and love are more fluid than they seem."

This book was nothing like I expected, but everything I needed. On the surface, it's a pretty straightforward story of every day life for a high school senior. But it's also a story about challenging our self-assumptions and not placing too much stock in the things we feel define us. Ramona is pretty sure she knows who she is, what she wants, and where her life is going, but when her childhood friend Freddie moves to Eulogy, everything she thought she knew gets turned upside down. She resists admitting to herself that things have changed because if they do...what does that make her? Where does it leave her? With all the upheaval in her life, Ramona has to decide if sticking to the plans she made and staying true to the labels she has assigned herself is worth sacrificing things she'd never let herself consider within her reach. 

Orleans - Sherri L. Smith

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"After a string of devastating hurricanes and a severe outbreak of Delta Fever, the Gulf Coast has been quarantined. Years later, residents of the Outer States are under the assumption that life in the Delta is all but extinct… but in reality, a new primitive society has been born.

Fen de la Guerre is living with the O-Positive blood tribe in the Delta when they are ambushed. Left with her tribe leader’s newborn, Fen is determined to get the baby to a better life over the wall before her blood becomes tainted. Fen meets Daniel, a scientist from the Outer States who has snuck into the Delta illegally. Brought together by chance, kept together by danger, Fen and Daniel navigate the wasteland of Orleans. In the end, they are each other’s last hope for survival.

Sherri L. Smith delivers an expertly crafted story about a fierce heroine whose powerful voice and firm determination will stay with you long after you’ve turned the last page."

What happens when you replace racial differences with differences in blood? Blood type becomes just another thing that drives people apart. This book is something else. From the first page, it's intense and heart-wrenching. A lot of dystopia is set in places I'm familiar with, but most of the time those places have become unrecognizable. In this case, there was something about the ways Orleans had stayed the same that made the post-fever world feel like it was really happening. Reading descriptions of places like the Superdome especially got me. It made everything seem so chillingly realistic. What's more, in the current political climate, it really hit hard that the tribes were basically waging war with each other because of something as trivial and out of people's control as blood type. I wish that idea felt more farfetched than it does, but it truly drives home that any difference can be used as a wedge to separate people and spur them to hatred.