Me on Queens of Geek

Title: Queens of Geek
Author: Jen Wilde
Release Date: March 17, 2017
Publisher: Swoon Reads (Macmillan imprint)

When BFFs Charlie, Taylor and Jamie go to SupaCon, they know it's going to be a blast. What they don't expect is for it to change their lives forever. Charlie likes to stand out. SupaCon is her chance to show fans she's over her public breakup with co-star, Reese Ryan. When Alyssa Huntington arrives as a surprise guest, it seems Charlie's long-time crush on her isn't as one-sided as she thought. While Charlie dodges questions about her personal life, Taylor starts asking questions about her own. Taylor likes to blend in. Her brain is wired differently, making her fear change. And there's one thing in her life she knows will never change: her friendship with Jamie—no matter how much she may secretly want it to. But when she hears about the Queen Firestone SupaFan Contest, she starts to rethink her rules on playing it safe.

Queens of Geek is smart and honest, expressive and openly diverse. It's a great look at how people with so many vast differences can come together because of similar interests, and a great look at what can happen when you take risks.

Charlie is kind and expressive. Explosive, personable. SupaCon means furthering her acting career, it means fan interaction, but it also means spending time with her ex and co-star Reese while nursing a serious crush on fellow actress and YouTuber Alyssa. She's torn between getting to know Alyssa and being forced to spend time with Reese becasue both the studio and the movie's fan base want it so much. Taylor is smart and supportive, creative and focused on the fantastical. SupaCon is her chance to meet her favourite author, her chance to tell her how much the books mean to her, how much she's inspired her. But then the signing ends early and Taylor's only chance to meet the author is a fan contest, which means being up on stage in front of hundreds of people, which might be too much of a change for her to handle. Especially on top of her growing anxiety in terms of change and college and possibly not being with her other best friend, and crush, Jamie.

I like the back and forth between Charlie and Taylor's points of view. Their stories, their journeys, are rather different. Which is great to see. There's no one way to be a teen girl, there's no one way to interact with the world and work to make your mark on it, and there's no one way to fall in love. There isn't a specific gender you have to fall in love with. You don't even have to fall in love if you don't want to. Taylor and Charlie aren't perfect, they still get anxious, get worried. They panic and say the wrong things. They don't want to get hurt and make decisions that upset and hurt others. But they do learn. It can be really hard to let go of your neuroses and your worries, to stand up to the people who hurt you. It can be hard to ignore the hate. But friends and family, other support structures, are always there to help you.

This book brings up so many current topics, important topics, like intersectionality and feminism, like body-shaming and mental health, like sexuality and internet fame. I hope teens read this and feel empowered, especially teen girls. Do what you want, like what you like or who you like, and don't let anyone take that enjoyment from you. I would recommend this to fans of Fangirl and All the Feels, those looking for diversity in contemporary YA, and those who love being part of a fandom that gives you the chance to breathe and express yourself.

(I received an advance copy of this title to review from Raincoast Books.)

Me on The Girl from Everywhere

Title: The Girl from Everywhere
Author: Heidi Heilig
Release Date: February 16, 2016
Publisher: Greenwillow Books (HarperCollins imprint)

Nix's life began in Honolulu in 1868. Since then she has traveled to mythic Scandinavia, a land from the tales of One Thousand and One Nights, modern-day New York City, and many more places both real and imagined. As long as he has a map, Nix's father can sail his ship, the Temptation, to any place, any time. But now he's uncovered the one map he's always sought—1868 Honolulu, before Nix's mother died in childbirth. Nix's life—her entire existence—is at stake. No one knows what will happen if her father changes the past. It could erase Nix's future, her dreams, her adventures... her connection with the charming Persian thief, Kash, who's been part of their crew for two years. If Nix helps her father reunite with the love of his life, it will cost her her own.

The Girl from Everywhere is full of adventure, intrigue, danger, and magic. It's a story of searching and hunting and racing across the seas, a story of hope and fear and impossibility.

Nix is rough and opinionated. Her relationship with her father is ragged and jagged around the edges, a constant battle of love and distrust and fearful arguments. For a girl with her whole life in front of her, she fears the past and the future. The past, when her mother birthed her and died. The past her father is desperate to return to, to save her mother. But is Nix continues along with his plans, if they return to a point in time before her mother died, what will happen to Nix? What if she makes plans of her own?

The history here is rich and detailed. The Temptation travels through time, yes, but with an old world magic and glamour to it. Maps have always been the key to travel, the ways we plot out our journeys. Our adventures. In this book, to this captain, they're a way to travel across space and time, gliding across the page and into the seas themselves. Towards distant countries and mystical islands. And the detail in which 19th century Honolulu is portrayed is wonderful. It's so rare to see a book set in this place at this point in American history, mostly because it's largely ignored and often forgotten.

This is a book of possibility, of regrets and hopes and tension, of mistakes and second chances. This is a book about obsession, about how we cannot let go of what we crave. Who we love. Nix's father cannot let go of her mother, of his love for her, and Nix cannot let go of her desire to live. To continue. To be a real girl and not an accident or mistake. This book is filled with adventure and danger, of treasure-seeking and home-searching, of impossibility and mortality. How wonderful it was to find a book with a diverse heroine, a complicated and sometimes angry heroine, and multiple characters of colour. And have it be genre fiction! As I turned the last page, I couldn't help but wonder about whatever could happen next. What's coming in the next book?

(I downloaded an e-galley of this book from HarperCollins through Edelweiss.)

Me on The Night Parade

Title: The Night Parade
Author: Kathryn Tanquary
Release Date: January 5, 2016
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky

The last thing Saki Yamamoto wants to do for her summer vacation is trade in exciting Tokyo for the antiquated rituals and bad cell reception of her grandmother's village. Preparing for the Obon ceremony is boring. Then the local kids take an interest in Saki and she sees an opportunity for some fun, even if it means disrespecting her family's ancestral shrine on a malicious dare. But as Saki rings the sacred bell, the darkness shifts. A death curse has been invoked... and Saki has three nights to undo it. With the help of three spirit guides and some unexpected friends, Saki must prove her worth - or say good-bye to the world of the living forever.

The Night Parade is rich with mythology and magic, with mystery and problem-solving.

At the beginning of the book, Saki comes across as a spoiled 13-year-old girl. She's more worried about her friends in Tokyo and what fun she's missing out on than her grandmother's health, than the customs and rituals that come with the Obon ceremony. Than the shrine in the mountains behind her grandmother's house. She's hard to like because of her dismissive, apathetic attitude. She's also confusing in that she wants to be back in Toyko with her friends but acknowledges repeatedly that she's tired of them, that they're really bullies. She skated the line between annoying and normal teen girl trying to fit in with friends and not spend her school days alone and bullied.

The story itself is filled with Japanese customs, mythology, and magic. Of spirits and witches, of shrines and spirit guides and curses. It's so dense with story, with situation and situation that Saki is pulled into because of her initial mistake, because of her carelessness. But one thing bugged me. I loved how the tanuki was called a tanuki, how the tengu was called a tengu, how the Japanese names for a number of spirits and items were used, but not all of them. The kitsune was called a fox and the orge with its large club wasn't called an oni with a kanabo. The inconsistency bothered me (as this is a review of an e-galley, I wonder if this has been changed in the final copy).

I like how this book is set in Japan with, while written in English, the characters speaking Japanese. The Japanese words weren't in italics, which was surprising to see. For a book about a Japanese girl in Japan falling in with the local spirit world, the lack of italics made the book feel more authentic. But there were some inconsistencies, like with the use of fox instead of kitsune, and why Saki would refer to her parents as Mom and Dad instead of the Japanese terms. The story itself also felt rather long for a middle grade book. I would recommend this to those looking for more middle grade set outside of North America, for those looking for magic and fantasy but set in the real world, and those looking for more diverse middle grade stories.

(I received an e-galley of this title to review from Sourcebooks through NetGalley.)

Me on Waiting on Wednesday (254)

Waiting on Wednesday is a bunch of weekly fun hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine. :)

Title: On the Edge of Gone
Author: Corinne Duyvis
Release Date: March 6, 2015
Publisher: Amulet Books (Abrams imprint)

From Goodreads:

January 29, 2035. That’s the day the comet is scheduled to hit—the big one.

Denise and her mother and sister, Iris, have been assigned to a temporary shelter outside their hometown of Amsterdam to wait out the blast, but Iris is nowhere to be found, and at the rate Denise’s drug-addicted mother is going, they’ll never reach the shelter in time.

A last-minute meeting leads them to something better than a temporary shelter: a generation ship, scheduled to leave Earth behind to colonize new worlds after the comet hits. But everyone on the ship has been chosen because of their usefulness. Denise is autistic and fears that she’ll never be allowed to stay. Can she obtain a spot before the ship takes flight? What about her mother and sister?

When the future of the human race is at stake, whose lives matter most?

So excited for this book! Yay to more Corinne books, which means yay to more diversity in YA and yay to more genre fiction. I'm really looking forward to this futuristic survival in a European city with an autistic, biracial heroine. :)