I who have never known a better read !
40 women locked up until the day they flee. This story tells womanhood, love and death and questions the value of knownledge. I Who Have Never Known Men is a haunting story that tackles the big questions, but provides no answers. I still think about it everyday !
Solène
Yellowface is a thriller full of irony and cynicism about the publishing and, overall, the literary world. The way we follow June as our main character, with her condescension, her racism and her (white) gaze through a success that doesn't belong to her, makes everything deeper and more nuanced about the critics that are being made against literary agencies, publishing house and systemic racism.
Though the middle part was maybe a bit too long and a bit too dramatic for me, I was not once bored, just waiting to know how all of this will unfold and explose. Tension is everywhere, well dosed and extraordinary well written.
Camille.
Yellowface is a thriller full of irony and cynicism about the publishing and, overall, the literary world. The way we follow June as our main character, with her condescension, her racism and her (white) gaze through a success that doesn't belong to her, makes everything deeper and more nuanced about the critics that are being made against literary agencies, publishing house and systemic racism.
Though the middle part was maybe a bit too long and a bit too dramatic for me, I was not once bored, just waiting to know how all of this will unfold and explose. Tension is everywhere, well dosed and extraordinary well written.
Camille.
An intense novella about giant birds haunting monsters, friendship and failure.
Inspired this time by beasts from the Middle East and Persian mythology (the Roc and the Manticore), Fonda Lee excels, through her -maybe too short- coming of age novella of a young ruhker and and her roc, at depincting complicated and nuanced ways of learning, feeling but also failing.
Untethered Sky is an intense story about humans, beasts, wilderness, and the fatality of disaster coming plunging from the sky, and sometimes, the great beauty of it.
“Of course Shara gave her this instead of an explanation. Of course she cast herself as the main character of her own personal John Green novel.”
After Red, White and Royal Blue and One Lost Stop, Casey McQuinston tries themselves into their first YA novel and it's a complete success !
Chloe Green goes looking after her highschool nemesis Shara Wheeler, after she mysteriously disappeared before graduation. For this, she has to team up with Rory, Shara's neighbor, and Smith, Shara's ex-boyfriend, who like her, got curious pink letters addressed to them. Follow unlikely alliances, growing feelings, and a lot of perfumed puzzles to solve.
I Kissed Shara Wheeler is a funny and uplifting coming of age story with complex and messy teenagers, academic rivals to lovers and surprising and moving friendships. The story itself takes place in the south of the US, in a small town in the Bible Belt, where it can be hard to be queer and out. But the force of McQuinston's novel is that they show with a lot of nuance how queer youth succeed in growing around it, hopeful and proud.
It's the perfect choice if you're looking for queer positivity, quirky banter between friends and teenage complex feelings about themselves !