Category Archives: Read This

Read This!: MOXIE by Jennifer Mathieu

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I did a lot of reading over the summer, but I am a little behind on my reviewing! Over the next few weeks, I will be sharing my reviews of my favorite recent reads. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did. First up: a feminist YA read that pairs nicely with my most recent book, She Spoke: 14 Women Who Raised Their Voices and Changed the World:

MoxieMoxie by Jennifer Mathieu
Summary: Vivian Carter is fed up. Fed up with her small-town Texas high school that thinks the football team can do no wrong. Fed up with sexist dress codes and hallway harassment. But most of all, Viv Carter is fed up with always following the rules. Viv’s mom was a punk rock Riot Grrrl in the ’90s, so now Viv takes a page from her mother’s past and creates a feminist zine that she distributes anonymously to her classmates. She’s just blowing off steam, but other girls respond. Pretty soon Viv is forging friendships with other young women across the divides of cliques and popularity rankings, and she realizes that what she has started is nothing short of a girl revolution.

I loved this book! Vivian was a such a fully-fleshed out character, with all the hopes and fears and internalized insecurities of a girl growing up in small-town America. I loved the way Viv was inspired by the zines of her mom’s Riot Grrrl past, but what I loved best about this book was how it showed that all it takes is one voice, one spark to bring out the light in others. Viv may be the one writing and distributing the Moxie zine, but the movement she starts soon develops a life of its own, and it doesn’t belong to her, or to any of the individual girls who start speaking up – it belongs to all of them, together, and what they have created is bigger than any one person or single action. Inspiring, empowering, and downright fun, Moxie is a must-read.

MOXIE is out now.

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Read This!: A QUESTION OF HOLMES by Brittany Cavallaro

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A Question of Holmes (Charlotte Holmes #4)A Question of Holmes by Brittany Cavallaro

Summary: Charlotte Holmes and Jamie Watson think they’re finally in the clear. They’ve left Sherringford School—and the Moriartys—behind for a pre-college summer program at Oxford University. A chance to start from scratch and explore dating for the first time, while exploring a new city with all the freedom their program provides. But when they arrive, Charlotte is immediately drawn into a new case: a series of accidents have been befalling the members of the community theater troupe in Oxford, and now, on the eve of their production of Hamlet, they’re starting all over again. What once seemed like a comedy of errors is now a race to prevent the next tragedy—before Charlotte or Jamie is the next victim.

Anyone who has been in my orbit in the last three years knows how much I adore the Charlotte Holmes series. So I was prepared to love this final entry in the series without reservation, but I didn’t expect how much Charlotte’s hard-fought journey would resonate with me as a reader, and how wonderful it would be to see Charlotte, so often the star in someone else’s starry-eyed dream, take the lead and tell her own story. She’s a long way from the rough-edged, vibrant, damaged girl of the first book, and yet she’s not. Seeing her grow and change and start to understand how she can love and need someone and yet need to be apart from them…it was heartbreaking in the best way. I worried that Jamie would be less endearing when so little of the story was from his point of view, but no risk of that; no one appreciates Jamie like our Charlotte. How could such a series with such a heroine come to a fitting conclusion? Cavallaro gives us an answer that is the perfect mix of heartwarming, hilarious, moving, and deeply, viscerally satisfying.

A QUESTION OF HOLMES is out now.

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Read This!: TRANSFORMED: THE PERILS OF THE FROG PRINCE by Megan Morrison

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Transformed: The Perils of the Frog Prince (Tyme #3)Transformed: The Perils of the Frog Prince by Megan Morrison

The third book in the Tyme series is a slam dunk from beginning to end. In GROUNDED and DISENCHANTED, Morrison turned familiar fairy tales on their heads; in this outing, she goes one step further and upends readers’ understanding of the first two books. That’s because Prince Frog, Rapunzel’s small green companion, turns out to be none other than Prince Syrah of the Olive Isles, a loathsome, selfish lad who made the wrong wish on a well. While roaming the land of Tyme with Rapunzel and Jack, Syrah has tried desperately to get home, to someone who might be able to help him turn human again, and the All Tyme Championships in Yellow Country are his chance. But when a mysterious illness cuts the competition short and the governor lapses into a coma, Syrah has to become the world’s smallest detective to figure out what’s happening and how to be a decent human being to break the curse.

There is so much I love about this book. I love that Syrah is a royal jerk. I love that, just as she did with Rapunzel, Morrison has given us a protagonist who is not immediately likeable but is definitely relatable, and then plops us right into his perspective and shows how he justifies everything to himself. I love everything about the ending, which I won’t give away, but just trust me, READ IT. I love how much we learn about Jack and Rapunzel, even though this isn’t their story. I love how badass and awesome Deli, the object of Syrah’s affections, and her grandmother both are, and how nuanced the relationship between them is. I love how Syrah learns how he must transform to be transformed. And I love how Morrison pulls in real-world issues like GMOs, election politics, and women’s rights with the lightest touch, weaving a spell that will have readers demanding more tales from the land of Tyme.

TRANSFORMED is out now.

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Read This!: IMMERSE by Tobie Easton

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Immerse (Mer Chronicles #3)Immerse by Tobie Easton

Summary: Lia can’t wait for her parents’ coronation. Now living in the sparkling palace beneath the waves, she sneaks off to Malibu whenever possible to see Clay. Tucked away in an abandoned seaside mansion, Lia and Clay devise a plan to ensure they can stay together forever. But when an old enemy resurfaces and Lia is restricted to the palace for the safety of all Merkind, she and Clay are ripped apart once more. She fears not only for Clay, but for her best friend Caspian, who seems to be swimming down a dangerous path. He has invited the conniving Melusine to the coronation ball, convinced she’s capable of change. And no matter how hard Lia fights it, showing up on Caspian’s arm is just the start of Melusine’s insidious return to her life. With threats Below growing more ominous by the day and a powerful ancient ritual looming, soon the two girls can’t escape each other. As their fates grow increasingly intertwined, Melusine might be the only one who can help Lia find the answers she desperately needs to save everyone she loves and to achieve her happily ever after. But can Lia trust her? 

EMERGE gave a thrilling love story; SUBMERGE let us delve deeper into Tobie Easton’s meticulously built underwater world. Now, with IMMERSE, the triumphant conclusion to the Mer trilogy, Easton challenges the reader’s assumptions, letting us see Lia, the great heroine who saved the Mer, from the perspective of her enemy, Melusine. As the two characters play off one another in alternating point of view chapters, the strengths and flaws of both are thrown into sharp relief, reminding us how easy it is to dismiss what we don’t understand. Despite all they’ve been through, they face their greatest challenge when the two of them – one impulsive, warm, and sheltered, the other cool, distant, and calculating – must come together to stop a plot that would destroy the human world. This is a series finale that has it all: sigh-worthy romance, nail-biting adventure, and a gripping story of two very different girls navigating the shifting tides of family and societal expectations.

IMMERSE is out now.

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Read This!: THE TRUTH ABOUT LEAVING by Natalie Blitt

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The Truth About Leaving by Natalie Blitt

Summary: Lucy Green thought she had her senior year in the bag. Cute boyfriend? Check. College plan? Check. But when her boyfriend dumps her the week before school starts and she literally stumbles into Dov, the new Israeli transfer student, on her first day of school, Lucy’s carefully mapped-out future crumbles. Determined to have a good senior year, and too busy trying to hold her family together while her mom is across the country working, Lucy ignores the attraction she feels to Dov. But soon, Lucy and Dov’s connection is undeniable. Lucy begins to realize that sometimes, you have to open yourself up to chance. Even if the wrong person at the wrong time is a boy whose bravery you admire and who helps you find your way back to yourself.

Here’s the truth about The Truth About Leaving – this book broke me in the best way possible. Lucy is such a caring, open-hearted character, a girl who, as many girls are taught to do, takes care of everyone else’s needs before her own. So it’s perhaps inevitable when she falls for handsome, damaged Dov. Blitt gives us a portrait of two young people with a strong sense of responsibility and honor – and their romance both honors that in both of them and helps each find their own path, even when that means finding the courage to stand up for their own needs. I was honestly not sure how Blitt would be able to pull a satisfying ending out of their predicament, but oh yes, she did, and I’ll be thinking about Lucy and Dov and this gem of a book for a long time.

The Truth About Leaving is out now.

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