To Read or Not To Read

This novel is absolutely moving and completely heartbreaking. It's the kind of story that sticks with you, long after you've put it down for the final time. It was the kind of book that, while I was reading it, I couldn't put it down - I'm pretty sure I read it during lecture because I physically could not let it go when there was still so many things unresolved. Moriel Rothman-Zecher tackles pretty heavy topics, and accomplishes so much. Moriel Rothman-Zecher is an Israeli-American novelist and poet whose work has been published in The New York Times,   The Paris Review and Haaretz.  Rothman-Zecher says he came across this novel idea almost by accident - that he was trying to write something else, but it wasn't working but then all of a sudden, during a period of fasting, he realized he was writing the wrong book. No matter what brought on this realization, I'm glad it allowed this book to be born. It's definitely the kind of eye-opening novel the wor...

This is not a cancer book. Don't get me wrong, dealing with cancer is a big part of the storyline, but this isn't a book about cancer. Or even how to truly deal with it. Instead, this book is about friendship, and love, and how to find those things when it feels like everything else might just fall apart. Emery Lord is a YA contemporary fiction author who writes books about teenage girls, all different and relatable. Her books include  Open Road Summer, The Start of Me and You , When We Collided,  and  The Map From Here to There . Her books are powerful in their ability to bring difficult situations to the page, with simple yet heart-wrenching prose. Her books have been published in 10 different languages, and have been featured on YALSA and state book lists. You can find Emery Lord at emerylord.com. You can find more of my reviews of Lord's work here .  The Names They Gave Us  is powerful in that way, as well as in how it brings this story of cancer to lif...

In my previous review, of this novel's prequel, I discussed how Carry On  was already breaking some traditional YA fic rules - because in some ways, Carry On  was like published fanfiction (but not really - see my previous review for an explanation).  Wayward Son  extends those boundaries even further, by showing readers what "the end" really means once the prophecy has been fulfilled. And, as anyone might tell you, it's not always smooth sailing. Rainbow Rowell is a critically acclaimed contemporary author of novels Eleanor & Park, Fangirl, Attachments, Landline, Carry On, Pumpkin Heads  (with Faith Erin Hicks), and Marvel's Runaways  comics. If you're interested in more of my reviews of Rainbow Rowell's work, you can find them here . Rowell, who lives in Omaha, Nebraska, takes her knowledge of Western America and puts it to the test with this sequel, where Simon Snow, Baz, and Penny take a road trip. There's disaster, but there's also hea...

Before I start with Carry On , I need to start with where it all began. Rainbow Rowell wrote Fangirl  in 2013, about a fanfiction writer named Cather "Cath" Avery. Cath wrote fanfiction for the Simon Snow universe - which is a fandom closely paralleling the Harry Potter universe. Cath is obsessed with writing her fanfic novel Carry On, Simon, which is her personal take on how the Simon Snow universe should end - half of Fangirl  is understanding Cath's motivations to finish her fic before the actual last book in the series, Simon Snow and the Eighth Dance , comes out. So essentially, there's a fictional writer, Gemma T. Leslie, who is the author of the fictionally acclaimed Simon Snow series, and Cath (main character of Fangirl ) writes Simon Snow fanfiction. It's important to understand this backstory, in my opinion, before delving deep into Carry On, because Rainbow Rowell uses it to show us what's now possible in YA. Rainbow Rowell is our (very real) a...

I will be the first to tell you that I believe WWII literature is vast and sometimes repetitive, but that all the stories are worth sharing. WWII is a vault of knowledge and a cause for a wealth of imagination of authors of all kinds. It is difficult to not be inspired by the true stories of heroes, both male and female, of all religions, races, and ethnicities during this tumultuous point in history. It is only natural for so many authors to find stories they want to share out of this time period, and actually quite heroic for them to want to bring even more visibility to the heroes of WWII in increasingly creative ways. This is why I will also be the first to tell you that I believe Beneath a Scarlet Sky  did a good job bringing the Italian front to life for many readers, even if the writing itself was mundane. I do believe it's true that history focuses on more of the big players and the smallest underdogs. Italy fell somewhere in the middle, and deserves recognition for th...

If you think your life story would make for a page-turning novel, get inspired to submit your own manuscript by first reading Roxane Gay's Hunger, a confessional memoir about the enduring struggles she's had with her body. This new genre of book, nicknamed the femoir , focuses on the experience of people's lives that they first confess to their audience, then generalize to a universal experience. Gay does this by taking her experiences with sexual assault, eating disorders, weight, and publishing, then relating them back to the universal experiences of women of size, color, or disempowerment. Roxane Gay is an author of all trades. She was a New York Times  bestseller for a collection of essays titled Bad Feminist , and a finalist for the Dayton Peace Prize for her novel An Untamed State . She is a contributor to a wide array of media producers, from The New York Times  and the Wall Street Journal  to Buzzfeed  and Bookslut . Before Roxane Gay was any of these thing...