Book 7: The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert

This was one of those books where I knew nothing about it or the author, but I found the cover really compelling and it had a blurb from one of my favorite authors and I love fairy tale retellings and when contemporary urban fantasy works for me, it really works for me. So I gave it a shot, and it ended up being one of those books that I was uncertain about for the first 95% of it, but the final chapter somehow managed to pull it off.

Alice and her mother are basically a mother-teenage daughter version of Sam and Dean from Supernatural, constantly moving from place to place and never putting down roots. But instead of hunting demons, they’re running from them, of course. The demons or monsters or darkness seem to originate from Alice’s grandmother’s estate, the Hazel Wood, and as soon as something Very Bad happens to wherever they’re living, they pack up and flee for the next life. They’re also running from the legacy of Alice’s grandmother, who wrote one book of fairy tales and then became a hermit on her estate, a sort of old Hollywood Grey Gardens situation. The book of fairy tales is clearly also related to the darkness, because Alice’s mother forbids her from reading it or even having a copy, and there’s an obsessive internet fanbase devoted to both the book and the stories behind it. The novel starts with them in New York, where Alice’s mother has gotten married and so Alice has, rather than an evil stepmother, a fairly evil and rich stepfather and stepsister. But the story really starts when Alice's mother is kidnapped by the Hinterland, i.e. the setting of Alice's grandmother's book of fairy tales, and Alice needs to rely upon the help of her classmate Ellery, who's one of the internet superfans, to help her get to the Hazel Wood and figure all this out.

The book is set up to be a mystery, and it is, but it also exists in this weird world where things are clearly a bit bonkers in general and that’s not really commented upon. Alice isn't a real girl, and Alice's stepsister and stepfather aren't real in that way that exceedingly rich people aren't real, and Ellery also exists in that world of wealth, too. But the characters are supposed to believe that they don't live in a world where supernatural or fairy tale stuff really exist, and none of that actually makes any sense. The book has a tone and a place issue at times; it was very unclear to me just how off their universe is supposed to be from ours, and I found it a bit difficult to get invested in as a result. The revelation about who and what Alice is should be more of a shock, and instead it feels like it's the only thing that would actually make any sense, and I still didn't actually fully care about anyone because no one feels real.

Having said all that, I was surprised at how much the ending did actually affect me, given how neutral I had felt about the story for most of the book. I was prepared to be righteously grumpy about it, and then it managed to both wrap everything up very quickly, and do so in a way that felt satisfying and narratively correct, and there's something really lovely about discovering that the weird pacing of a book is intentional and pays off in the end, rather than it being a flaw that hadn't been corrected in the editing stage. Overall, I'm glad I read it.

Grade: B 

Book 6: Abroad by Liz Jacobs (Book 2)

Note: I know the author of this book socially.

This is the continuation of Abroad Part I, which you have to read first in order to have any understanding of what's happening. If the first book was about Nick internally coming to terms with who he is and what he wants, the second book is all about him discovering how to be that person out in the world, both within a relationship and also as an individual. That journey is paralleled by Izzy's own exploration of how to express what's going on in her life, and her need to create something out of her past in order to grow into the future. And then there's Dex, who has to balance his own needs and insecurities with caring for someone whose struggles are similar to his own but also wildly different. There's a lot going on, in other words!

The first part of the book feels like the reader finally gets to exhale for a bit after all of the drama in Part I, at least when it comes to Dex and Nick. After Part I set up the attraction and interest between the two of them so beautifully, Part II pays that off right off the bat, both in terms of the sex and also the emotional intimacy between them. It just feels a bit like a blanket fort in the middle of all the craziness, which I liked a lot. It mirrored how a lot of young queer relationships can feel: as long as it's just the two of you in your own secret space, it's not so scary. But it can be much harder out in the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, Izzy is having a bit of a disaster of her own, trying to figure out what to do about both her friendship with Nat and her own sense of her identity. I have to admit, I was genuinely surprised by where this plotline went! I was definitely expecting Izzy to realize that she had always felt something more for Nat than she had recognized, because she hadn't known she could feel that way about women. That is a thing that happens quite frequently, both in fiction and in life, but this story went in a slightly more painful and, because of that pain, more believable direction. Nat hadn't been the thunderbolt for Izzy's realization because she genuinely was separate from it, and as neat and tidy as it would have been for the two of them to end up together, it wouldn't actually have felt right. At one point in the novel Izzy reflects on how much she hates feeling feelings and how much easier it would be if we didn't have to, and I definitely understand and empathize with that. Izzy still gets a romance, which I won't reveal for fear of spoilers, and I really liked how her entire journey was handled.

The rest of the book deals with how these two sets of characters manage to get out of their own heads and into the world, and the pitfalls they face. Dex and Nick finally get on the same page with each other, but they're in wildly different places in terms of how they are in the world as gay men. It's the classic university relationship that on the one hand is moving far too quickly, given the circumstances, and on the other hand, that's how these things happen sometimes. But being in a relationship doesn't automatically ease outside anxieties, and that's especially true when Nick's reluctance to come out to his mom feels to Dex like a commentary about how seriously Nick feels about him and their relationship. I found myself frustrated with Dex during this section, both because neither one of them were actually communicating with each other (in an all-too-realistic way) and also because while six or eight months of emotional entanglement feels like a long time when you're twenty, in the context of coming out it's not very long at all. But Dex's fears were also understandable, and that's part of what makes all of this a struggle for people--queer people aren't just dealing with their own coming out experiences, but often the experiences of their partners as well, who may have radically different circumstances to deal with.

I really liked how the story ended, too. It wasn't too neat and easy, but it was still the happily ever after that you want from this kind of romance, with a nod to the specific challenges that they would have. It's the happy ending you want for them that sometimes happens in real life, but doesn't always. I think these novels toe the line beautifully in telling a realistic-feeling story with the conclusions we don't always get in reality, which is the perfect balance in a contemporary queer romance, for me. It never feels too easy for them, but it also never feels hopeless, because it's not. There's a future for them all.

Grade: A 

Book 5: Christmas at the Wellands by Liz Jacobs

Note: I know the author of this book socially.

As is probably clear from the title, this is a holiday romance in the form of a (free!) short story. It involves a whole bunch of fairly heavy themes (death of a parent, depression, racist and homophobic relatives), but at its heart it's about two friends discovering that maybe there's more than friendship there.

Kev and Andrew are college roommates and best friends, and Andrew invites Kev home with him for Christmas the first year after Kev's mom died of cancer. Kev is out of his element on multiple fronts: Andrew's family is large, and white, and lives in the heart of suburban WASPy Connecticut, and Kev's family had consisted of himself and his mom in Queens, and he's black. He's also gay, and out to Andrew, but he feels completely at sea during this holiday even when it's only Andrew and his immediate family. Things get much worse when Andrew's racist and homophobic Uncle Mike joins the gathering, and more confusing for Kev when he discovers Uncle Mike's homophobia as a result of Andrew coming out as bisexual, which Kev hadn't known before this visit.

Parts of the story are stressful simply because of how accurately they nail the tension and simultaneous boredom and insane busyness of large family gatherings at the holidays, but the friendship between Kev and Andrew is so strong and clear that you never lose the way. It's a classic Christmas romance about two friends finding comfort and love with each other, and well worth reading even in the spring.

Grade: B

Book 4: The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley

Somehow I had made it all the way to 2018 without having read anything by Robin McKinley, and I decided that this was the year that would change. This was the book I had heard mentioned the most, so I thought I would start here.

The story is the (at least now) classic tale of the young daughter of the king who can't lead her people becoming the person who can lead her people. Aerin is an absolute delight of a character, and the first part of the book gives the backstory of how she secretly learned how to brew a potion that would protect her from dragon fire, and rode her father's old warhorse who was injured in battle but still had enough life left in him to be her trusty steed, and how her cousin Tor trained her in swordplay while also falling in love with her. She is feared by the people of the kingdom because she resembles her mother, and there are rumors that her mother bewitched the king, and so Tor is the heir to the throne rather than Aerin. But the kingdom has been without its hero's crown for ages, and is therefore vulnerable to attacks. Aerin's father and Tor and the entire army is about to go North to deal with a demon attack, and while they go off to do this, Aerin goes to fight a massive dragon, Maur. Will she find the hero's crown? Who can say???

All of this is great! I really liked the first half of the story, and it hits tropes super well, and I love Aerin being completely oblivious to Tor's feelings for her, and all that. The pacing of the book started to concern me right at the midpoint, because the first time Maur is mentioned early on as a myth, you know Aerin is going to have to defeat him, but she does so at just about the halfway point, which feels too soon. And then in order to recover from her wounds from the fight, she finds Luthe, who's immortal and knew her mother who wasn't exactly a witch but wasn't NOT a witch, and they train and she goes and fights the final big bad of the book in a confrontation that is far more metaphorical and symbolic than I want from my fights, magic or not. Plus Luthe healing her made her immortal too, which is great but also makes her less of the world than I want her to be, and the relationship and love she has with Luthe is great, but then she goes back and marries Tor, and I'm fine with BOTH of those things happening but I want them each to have more weight than the book gives them. I love the idea of Tor being her human love and Luthe being her immortal love, but Tor ends up being much less of that, and it makes the entire narrative unsatisfying to me in a way that it didn't have to be. Basically: I understand why there would be fanfic about this universe (SORRY, ROBIN).

The book definitely feels like a early novel in a writer's career, and also some of the subplots and themes feel quite dated: Aerin has a girl cousin named Galanna who she's constantly sparring with, which is fine, but that character more or less fades away when her husband (yet another cousin) dies in the final battle, and it feels very out of nowhere and a disservice to Galanna, who should be more relevant in general. The deepest and most emotionally consistent relationship throughout the whole book is between Aerin and her horse Talat, which is great, but I would have liked to have seen that with other characters as well. The book becomes more uneven as it goes, which is a shame, because I was completely on board with the start of it. I still enjoyed the story as a whole, but it definitely lost its way for me toward the end.

Grade: B 

Book 3: Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

I read this book as part of my book club, which normally reads YA or middle grade award winners, but we're shifting at least temporarily to award-winning adult novels. One thing this book has in common with YA is that it's a coming of age story about a 13 year old boy, but the way it tells the story of his family is definitely aimed at an adult reader.

The story starts out in the POV of Jojo, who lives with his grandparents, his mom and his three year old sister Kayla near the Mississippi coast. Jojo's mother Leonie is black, and his father Michael is white and from a family that doesn't recognize his biracial children. Michael is up in the state penitentiary in the Mississippi Delta, and the narrative of the book really begins when we learn he's about to be released and Leonie takes their children on a road trip to pick up him.

The POV switches back and forth between Jojo and Leonie and one other character midway through the book, and it's an incredibly effective way of describing a family and an existence that is ruled by extremes. I found Jojo to be a very sympathetic narrator and Leonie to be a challenging one, because her choices are so easy to censure from the outside and yet from within her experience it's hard to know what other choices she had.

The subjects and themes of this book were difficult to deal with. The story lays out with crushing clarity the direct line between slavery and mass incarceration, and the cycles of oppression and hurt that play into every aspect of Jojo's family and life. One of the main strengths of the book is how beautiful the writing is, so the reader really feels the hurt and injustice and hopelessness of it all. It's the story of America few people want to hear, and it must be heard, and I hope this book becomes a part of high school curriculums like The Grapes of Wrath is. I doubt it will, for exactly the reasons you would expect, but it should be. The writing is harsh and visceral and necessary, and it's a story that will stay with me for a long time.

Grade: A

Book 2: Take Your Eye Off the Puck by Greg Wyshynski

In the past year or so, I started watching hockey again. It had been a sport I watched with friends in high school (and I played street hockey very badly with the same friends), but last season I started watching it again much more frequently and intensely. At a certain point, I realized that while I knew the basic rules of the game and had a pretty good idea of what was bad vs. what was good, I was missing a lot of the nuance. So I started listening to podcasts and reading articles on tactics and hockey stats, and that was how I heard about this book.

Greg Wyshynski is a hockey sportswriter, and his style is very much of the old school sportswriter genre--there's not a simile in the world he hasn't met and loved. But I found his book to be very well organized and provided a structure for understanding aspects of hockey that I had observed but hadn't necessarily understood just from watching games. I've found myself relying upon how he laid out various points when trying to explain rules or what have you to friends who are new to the sport, and I really like having that sort of vocabulary at hand instead of flailing around for how to describe a thing I understand instinctively but don't have the words for. He's also someone who grew up about thirty miles from where I did and is only a couple of years older than I am, so I get all of his cultural references and in general there's something about him that makes me feel home again in a way that few things have since My Chemical Romance or seeing Clerks for the first time. Most people probably won't have that sort of fondness for him baked in the way I do, but even without that, if you're a newish hockey fan (or even an old hand at hockey who wants a refresher course on certain topics), I really recommend his book.

Grade: A

Book 1: Abroad by Liz Jacobs (Book 1)

Note: I know the author of this book socially and read and provided feedback on an early draft of this novel.

As is probably implied by the above, I am too close to this book to claim objectivity about it. But man, I love this book. It's the story of a college student during his year of studying abroad in London. Nick's family emigrated to the U.S. from Russia when he was young, and he's been an outsider for all of his life. But when he goes to London, he finally finds his people in the form of a queer social circle, which is not the most emotionally comfortable way for him to find belonging, since the idea of being gay terrifies him. That terror isn't enough to kill off his attraction to Dex, though, or to prevent him from opening up for the first time to Izzy, who's having a bit of her own sexual identity crisis.

The story alternates between the POVs of those three characters, so you really get a sense of the entire world of their social circle, and all of the various personalities and emotional entanglements that exist within it. Part of what I love so much about this book is that there's a gay romantic relationship that isn't the only gay thing in the story--Nick and Dex aren't the token queers of their friends group, and it's not comprised solely of gay guys, either. There's an authenticity to both the complications of friendships and sexual relationships in college and the specific realities of queer social circles, and it's so nice to read a story and recognize the people and the conversations and what matters to them.

The same is true of the examination of Dex's experience as a black British gay man, which feels fully integrated into both the character and his emotional arc, and Nick's as a Jewish Russian immigrant who feels out of step no matter where on the globe he is. Following him as he gradually finds a way to inhabit himself fully is very emotionally satisfying. And Izzy's shock at discovering something new and unexpected about herself also rings true, as does the subsequent fallout she has with an unexpected person. 

I'm about halfway through the second part of this story, and I cannot wait to discover what happens to all three of them and the rest of their friends. With a lot of romance writing, gay or straight, you have a pretty good idea of how everything will end up, even if you don't know how they'll get there. I honestly don't have any idea how the story ends in this case, but I have complete confidence I'll be satisfied by it.

Grade: A