Latitude

This is the first Hannah Swensen book I have read and it was delightful! It's full of well-loved characters from a little small town in Minnesota, Lake Eden, and everyone is sufficiently gossipy. Also the main police officer in the book is a sexist jerk, which I personally appreciate. It Definitely takes place in the early 2000s, especially when someone goes on and on about their new caller ID on their landline. But it's not smothering; it's actually very amusing. I also loved the way that the recipes in the back of the book have a little “flavor” to them, about the character who supposedly “wrote” them. This book really made me feel like I was a part of this town, watching this mystery happen.

Fast facts:
Main character: Hannah Swensen
Murdered: Brandi Dubinski, the new fancy wife of Martin Dubinski, heavily implied to be a gold-digger. Also every is mean about her changing her name from Mary Kay
Police involvement: Sexist jerks!
Location: Christmas potluck in a town called Lake Eden in Minnesota
POV: Third person
Animals: None
Bonus: Recipes!!!

Star rating: 4.5 stars (basically perfect except for them being mean about Brandi's old name, which felt too close to deadnaming for me)

I received this e-book at no cost in exchange for an honest review. The last book of poetry I read was ZigZag Girl by Brenna Twohy. Wait, actually, I lied; it was The Age of Discovery by Alan Michael Parker, but that was for school. The last time I listened to any of Andrea Gibson's poetry was when I was in my senior year of high school, and also sometimes when it comes up on my Spotify, but that's involuntary. My favorite poem is “Sorrow is Not My Name” by Ross Gay, and most of my poetry reading comes from either poetry I have to read in school or screenshots that my friend Noor sends me through Discord DMs, or tucked into the body of a letter.

Andrea Gibson was also probably the first person I heard talk about their gender in any way that felt meaningful to me, and it would take me another three years to find pronouns that fit me, even though the year I first heard them speak was the year I found my own name and told other people about it. 

Some poems start off a little silly before they move into heartrending, like “The Museum of Broken Relationships”, some poems start off heartrending and stay that way, like “Time Piece”; all would be better read out loud to me in a little bookshop downtown while I hold a cup of overpriced coffee in my hands. 

The following poems made me tear up: 
QUEER YOUTH ARE FIVE TIMES MORE LIKELY TO DIE BY SUICIDE
EVERY TIME I EVER SAID I WANT TO DIE
WHAT LOVE IS
MY GENDER IS THE UNDOING OF GENDER
THE NIGHT SHIFT

If you're looking for a queer book of poetry, you can't go wrong with the hundred and twenty-eight pages that belong to YOU BETTER BE LIGHTNING. You can buy it here from Bookshop.org, or borrow it from your local library. (4.25 stars)

This review is copy+pasted from my blog at Latitude's Library: find it here geographreads.wordpress.com.

This is a slice of life graphic novel about four different best friends! The theme connecting theme of the stories, hair care, is woven into each story. The art style is both cozy and expressive, with each woman having her own color scheme. These stories take place mostly during the summer, and it really feels like a summery story! Unfortunately over the course of the story, one friend tells another that she shouldn't get antidepressants and gives her a crystal instead, and we see the depressed friend simply crawl back into bed afterwards. While this story is slice of life and we don't really follow up on any of their individual stories, this was the least cozy story that I wish had a better ending, and knocks the rating down a quarter star. 4.75 stars. Find this review and more at my blog, geographreads.com!

Queer, YA, mystery, thriller
Publishes: February 8th, 2022

Dual-POV YA murder mystery partly from the perspective of the victim? Yes! Are the characters well-rounded? Not really! Is that okay? Yeah, pretty much! This book is not good because of the characters, but because of the twisty plot and the layers that this story uncovers. I enjoyed this book more than I enjoyed The Taking of Jake Livingston, a similar book that I read last year. Content warnings for homophobia and some intense toxic masculinity. Four stars

Love & Other Disasters, Anita Kelly
384 pages, contemporary, nb/f
publishes January 25th, 2022

If I knew that romance novels could be just as cozy as cozy mysteries, I would have picked this one up a lot sooner! This story involves a nonbinary POV character dating a girl (also POV) at a cooking competition! Their romance is hot and heady and there are some sex scenes, which I wasn't expecting at all but was very pleased by (they're all good!). Something that I didn't like about this book is that I was really worried about the cooking competition and the main characters kind of ignored that for a while, and then it was suddenly a problem! Also there is a transphobic character which was :/ but the book dealt with it really well. 5 stars! 

At the End of Everything, Marieke Nijkamp
Apocalyptic fiction, young adult
400 pages, published January 25th, 2022

I love love LOVED “Even if We Break” by Marieke Nijkamp so I was VERY excited to receive AT THE END OF EVERYTHING from NetGalley at no cost which thus resulted in this review. I downloaded this the instant I got it, read a few chapters, took a break to have dinner and hang out with my roommates, and then it was 3am and I was finishing it. It follows the pattern of one of my other favorite books, LIFE AS WE KNEW IT by Susan Beth Pfeffer, where a huge event happens (in that book, when an asteroid hits the moon and the tides change completely) and it changes everything, and the government isn't doing anything so it's up to the characters to continue to figure out how to live. It's basically LIFE AS WE KNEW IT smash cut with THE SOCIETY, but it takes place at a juvenile detention center, and the huge event that happens is a pandemic that's much worse than the one we are currently living through. The feeling of dread that surrounds the entire book reminds me of WILDER GIRLS, which is also about girls surviving in a remote location while terrible things happen.

This story is told through first-person narration of three main characters interspersed with phone conversation transcripts. It's extremely effective and evocative, especially as more of the characters and residents of the facility succumb to the pandemic. I loved all three of the main characters in this book: Grace, a headstrong girl who just wants a future, Emerson, a nonbinary teen who plays violin, and Logan, who is a nonverbal autistic character, something that I have literally never seen in a book.

Was it rough reading this book during a pandemic, as cases are getting worse and worse? Yeah, a little. But it's worth it. This ranks as one of my favorite books this year. Five stars.

This is a contemporary light science fiction novel, and when I say “light” I mean really light - it feels like it has barely any substance. The pacing of this book is exhausting; it feels at various points like it's going too slow or too fast, but you know what? The gay scene deserves some mediocre mildly sci-fi YA romances too. Also, the characters in this book are 16, but I would recommend the age range as being 13+ — perfectly acceptable for middle-graders as well as young adults. It's fine! I wouldn't write home about it! Three stars. Read this review and more over at my blog, geographreads.com!

Publishes: February 8th, 2022
Queer, contemporary, YA

This is one of my favorite reads of 2022. Now, is it February 1st? Yes. However. This book's got everything you want in a YA novel:
1) Incredible characterization
2) The voice! Excellent use of voice!
3) It's here, it's queer, it's fantastique
4) Also the main character is a botanist and really intensely into roses and I've never been more delighted about this??

This book is like the experience of reading a really really good short story in a Dahlia Adler anthology and then it goes on for the FULL NOVEL EXPERIENCE. I'm in love with this book. Five stars. 

Real Easy, Marie Rutkoski
historical fiction (1990s), mystery, slice of life
320 pages, published January 18th 2022

I received a copy of this audiobook at no cost in exchange for my honest opinion.

Well I loved THE MIDNIGHT LIE by Marie Rutkoski and this book has an intersex main character (it sounds like she has XXY chromosomes and she refers to her variation as “her syndrome” and is super embarrassed about it, but it is the 90s and I was personally not around to bake her a cake about it!) so obviously I HAD to read this. It's absolutely incredible as a book; it's gritty but also full of heart, it's queer, it's about dancers at a strip club, there's cute kids in it who are written well. It's ALSO a murder mystery! It's literally all my favorite things wrapped up in a book!

HOWEVER. I don't think you should read this on audiobook. This is a many-multiple perspectives book, and I think that it would be a lot easier to follow were it not on audiobook. I feel like at some point I stopped paying attention for thirty seconds and I lost the thread of it, and I, personally, just would have preferred to read this via print. The narrator is excellent, but she _is _the same narrator for all of the perspectives, so that didn't help me get back into it. I ended up re-listening to a big chunk of it, which was frustrating, but this is almost certainly my problem and not something you're likely to encounter if you read it As A Book. I think I will probably check it out of the library in print and re-read it later this year!

–

I got approved for this ebook unexpectedly after reviewing the audiobook back in January! My main problem with the audiobook was that all the characters are voiced by the same (excellent!) narrator and there are many many different perspectives. I... unfortunately had the same problem with the ebook. Also I found myself uninterested in some characters' perspectives and started skipping their chapters. It reminded me of reading My Sister's Keeper as a Youth and I always skipped the dad's chapters because I thought he was annoying. (And I was right!) Unfortunately, this brought down the review to three stars. But also an intersex perspective! I just think there should have been more intersex perspective and less everything else. I'm not biased at all. Published on January 18th, 2022. Bookshop link here.

Serendipity: Ten Romantic Tropes, Transformed
Edited by Marissa Meyer with stories by Marissa Meyer, Elise Bryant, Elizabeth Eulberg, Leah Johnson, Anna-Marie McLemore, Sandhya Menon, Julie Murphy, Caleb Roehrig, Sarah Winifred Searle, Abigail Hing Wen
384 pages, released January 4th, 2022

I received a copy of this audiobook at no cost in exchange for an honest review.

I loved this book of short stories! This is a book of YA short stories, and they've taken ten romantic tropes and transformed them in new ways. My favorites were Fake Dating, Stranded Together, Best Friend Love Epiphany, and The Makeover. Best Friend Love Epiphany was the first writing I'd ever read by Caleb Roehrig, and I was not disappointed. I read this on audiobook so I read most of this one in the shower and I maybe cried a little bit while reading it. There's a lot to love in this collection – I didn't dislike any of the stories in it!

“Bye, Bye, Piper Berry” by Julie Murphy focuses around the fake dating trope, and this is one of my favorite tropes of all time and I loved this one. The love interest of this story, Gabe, is explicitly described as chubby in this one, and one of the quotes is “You're fat, but who cares? That's not even a bad thing anyways!” which I found very good.

“Anyone Else but You” by Leah Johnson has the “stranded together” trope and it's fantastic, Leah Johnson has my whole heart, she's so funny and such a smart writer! It's about two co-presidents who get trapped in a store together overnight and one thing leads to another — this is a really really good f/f story.

“Auld Acquantance” by Calebe Roehrig, which features the “best friend love epiphany” trope, was possibly my favorite short story in the collection; my heart swelled with worry and fondness for these two boys figuring out love and who will kiss whom at midnight.

“Shooting Stars” by Marissa Meyer is about the “Only One Bed” trope. I've also never read anything by Marissa Meyer but I've heard a lot of good things! It's about Misty who goes on a senior class trip and she keeps getting into situations with her crush, Roman, where there's only one bed between them. It's super super cute and sweet.

“Zora in the Spotlight” by Elise Bryant is about the “grand romantic gesture” trope, and it does involve someone popping out of a large pink cell phone. To say anything else would be a spoiler; but I will say that this story uses Instagram and social media in a way that feels Actually Correct and not weird in the way that most literature often is.

“In the Blink of an Eye” by Elizabeth Eulberg is the trope “trapped in a confined space” together. I really liked this one because it's not a romance story between the two main characters – and they're both autistic or autistic-coded; the main character's special interest is London and she finally gets to go to London but then her least favorite person is there, her best friend's boyfriend and her former crush! He's explicitly stated to “be bad at social cues”, and I am just saying, their instant first chemistry is because they are both autistic. There's a lot of twists in this one and each of them delighted me.

“Liberty” by Anna-Marie McLemore has “The Makeover” trope, which is about Ximena using makeup to force herself into “popular” (white, Eurocentric) beauty standards to fit in on the cheerleading team until her favorite beauty YouTuber joins the team and MAYBE THEY FALL IN LOVE? You'll have to read it to find out! (It's very good.)

“The Surprise Match” by Sandhya Menon with the trope Matchmaker, and its protagonist is Rosie, who is working on a matchmaker app to match up her friends. It's really really cute, and I love the representation of Girls In STEM where it's not explicitly called out or made out to be a super weird thing. “It's just Duolingo, threatening me with bodily harm because I haven't worked on my Spanish for four days.”

I received an audiobook copy of this book, and every story has a different narrator – some of the stories with multiple POVs have multiple narrators! My favorite narrator is Kristen Sieh, who narrates “Anyone Else But You” by Leah Johnson. She also narrated “An Absolutely Remarkable Thing” (and its sequel) by Hank Green, and I think she did fantastically here.

This is a really diverse collection of short stories, very much in the vein of a Dahlia Adler anthology collection. If you've liked her anthologies before, you'll like this one (although it is edited by Marissa Meyer, not Dahlia Adler, to be clear). Five stars!

Find it on Storygraph here, or on Bookshop here.

I got approved for this really close to publish date so here is my lightning-fast review!

• The enemies to lovers seemed REALLY fast and also kind of tame!
• I arbitrarily wanted this book to be more like The Foxhole Court and it was not, but also that's the only other sports romance I have ever read!
• The voice in this was super strong!
  I barely have any thoughts because I read it so quickly! It comes out this Tuesday! I'll probably check this out of the library and read it again then! Four stars!

Have you ever wished that An Absolutely Remarkable Thing was more like Snow Crash or Neuromancer, or that it was entirely drenched in pink and sparkles? If you have, BATTLE OF THE LINGUIST MAGES is for you. I would die for Scotto Moore. Five stars. I also read this on audiobook, and the narrator was great. (Five stars for her also.)