4.5 stars To everyone who knows her, Waverly Camdenmar appears to be pretty much perfect. She is intelligent, successful, one of the most popular girls in school (thanks to her Machiavellian scheming on behalf of her best friend, whom she’s pretty sure she doesn’t even like anymore). Said best friend keeps referring to her as a robot or android, but thanks to her, Waverly fits in. No one knows that nearly every night, Waverly battles insomnia and runs until her feet bleed. She also fears […]
I read this book in one sitting
But I’m not really sure why. But there must have been something I liked to read it all at once. So why the 3 star rating? Well friends, in this house we deduct major points for a book that spends all of its time queerbaiting its readers. But I’m getting ahead of myself, and as glaring as it is this isn’t my only problem with the book. So let’s start at the beginning. Our story opens with Abby Rivers, now a successful adult with a […]
Topping the list of things I do not miss: Being a teenager.
I came home from work sick today and thought that a nice quick little read while curled up on the couch would be just the thing to make me feel better. That might have worked if I had picked a happier book. While this book has been around for a while, and I had heard of it, I somehow had managed to escape any prior knowledge about the plot; I was going in blind. Something about teenagers? One is a wallflower? Maybe? It’s set […]
The saddest book you could ever read going into the Trump administration.
Brooke Hauser follows the goings-on at International High School at Prospect Heights for a school year. International High School accepts recent immigrants with or without documentation. Their admissions requirements are that they must be recent immigrants (I want to say within a year?) and they have to take an English test and fail. It roughly follows about 10-20 students of varying nationalities and a few teachers. The year she follows is at the very beginning of the Obama administration and it’s truly heartbreaking to juxtapose […]
I went to the library and checked out a book because I was getting scared.
I just reviewed Becky Albertalli’s “Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda” and I’m not going to lie, I was reading “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” at the same time, and sometimes I had trouble telling the difference between them. And I mean that with every compliment, because, as I wrote in my “Simon” review, there’s a strong and important tradition of novels that normalize the alienation of adolescence, and the millions of forms that it can take. “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” is […]
People really are like houses with vast rooms and tiny windows
This book is a goddamned delight, and everyone should read it. The end. No, just kidding. But I am really glad I picked it up (on the recommendation of basically the entire CBR community, amirite?), even though lately I’ve been trying hard to balance my male protagonists and authors with the underrepresented lady brains that are at large and largely ignored (axe grinding alert!). I’m glad I picked it up because it’s incredibly sensitive, and thoughtful, and nuanced. It’s also a little bit self-conscious and […]
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