Review of One Perfect Couple, by Ruth Ware, read by Imogen Church

Contemporary, Fiction Review, Mystery, Starred Review, Suspense 0

One Perfect Couple

by Ruth Ware
read by Imogen Church

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2024. 14 hours, 25 minutes.
Review written January 31, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Okay! With this book I’ve read all of Ruth Ware’s existing work – and this one felt like something new and had me hanging on every word.

Yes, this one is a thriller like all the others, and it’s going to end with the female main character in great danger. There’s always some question about who she can trust and where the danger lies, though in this case, that came to be obvious before the dangerous confrontation – it was more a question of would she survive the confrontation. (Though I will put it in “Mystery” along with the others.)

The book sets up with Lila, a research virologist, fretting over data that doesn’t give the results she wanted. And then her actor boyfriend Nico gets a big opportunity and wants her to come with him on a new reality TV show called “One Perfect Couple.” Five couples are going to be taken to a tropical island and given tasks to achieve. People will get eliminated after each task, and the producers will be encouraging some remixing of the couples.

Lila isn’t thrilled about the whole thing. But Nico is very much hoping it will be his big break as an actor. Their plan is that Lila will get knocked out early, and if Nico’s encouraged to spend time with other women, he assures her it will purely reflect his acting abilities – only for the camera.

But during all this set-up, the book begins each chapter with a radio distress call of someone from the island in the future, not too far ahead. They’re stranded, their water is running out, and people are dead and injured – so we’re fully warned that things are going to go terribly wrong.

And they do go terribly wrong. The island hosts a resort in construction and not yet open to the public. Their first night – after one person is eliminated – an enormous storm takes out power and the desalination plant. The boat where the staff of the show were staying had left to take the eliminated contestant back to the mainland – and it doesn’t return.

The storm kills a couple people, and then the group has to figure out how to survive until a boat comes – but that turns out to be much longer than they hope. So they need to ration food and medicine – and let’s just say there are power struggles and more people start dying.

And my goodness it had me avidly listening! Perhaps it’s not the most pleasant story to spend my time with, but I did like the characters and there were even some interesting insights into toxic relationships. But mostly, it was a thrilling story that got me wondering what I would do in that situation – and tremendously glad I’ll never get in that situation.

[It’s probably just me, but does anyone else wonder why someone on a tropical island wouldn’t try to make their own small desalination scheme by trying to evaporate sea water and catch the condensation? I understand you probably wouldn’t get a lot, but every little bit would help, and it seems easier than scaling coconut trees. Why didn’t they even try? That was my only niggling question – but I also had it when reading a different book about drought in California, so it was a persistent thought.]

ruthware.com

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Chooch Helped, by Andrea L. Rogers, illustrated by Rebecca Lee Kunz

Award Winners, Contemporary, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

Chooch Helped

by Andrea L. Rogers
illustrated by Rebecca Lee Kunz

Levine Querido, 2024. 48 pages.
Review written February 5, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review
2025 Randolph Caldecott Medal Winner

Chooch Helped wasn’t on my radar except to order library copies – until it won the Caldecott Medal. The Caldecott Medal is given to the artist for the illustrations, but it’s an award for the picture book, so the story is always wonderful, too. It’s not hard to see why this book was chosen this year.

The story is about a big sister and her baby brother. Here’s how it begins:

This is the baby.
We call him Chooch.

The word for boy or son in Cherokee is atsutsa (ah-choo-ja)

However, the plot thickens on the next page, when we read:

Chooch isn’t really a baby, anymore.
We just celebrated his second birthday.

Still, whenever Chooch makes a mess, everyone says,
“He’s just usdi (oos-dee). Let him help.”

It seems to me, Usdi Chooch
just gets away with everything.

From there, each spread shows Chooch “helping” another member of the family. Each family member’s name is given in Cherokee, and most of the time, we can see that Chooch’s help is distinctly unhelpful. At the back of the book, the author tells how the different tasks they are doing are part of Cherokee culture.

Finally, when Chooch messes up the clay pot Sissy is making, she yells at him. So he cries, and her parents yell at her, “Shouting is no help!”

But when Sissy goes to her room and cries, Chooch helps her feel better. He really does help! And the parents apologize before the end, too. And there are lessons about how when she was usdi, her help was a lot like Chooch’s. And it all ends with Sissy helping Chooch to make his own pinch pot.

The two spreads of back matter (not too common in a picture book) reveal the Cherokee traditions woven throughout the story and art of this beautiful book, as well as instructions for making a pinch pot, and more on the Cherokee words used.

So this book ends up being a beautiful tribute to Cherokee culture – but also a classic story of a “helpful” younger sibling that any big sibling in the world will be able to relate to. Truly a distinguished picture book. (And wow! I see from the back flap that this is the illustrator’s debut picture book. You go! Awesome!)

treeoflifestudio.net
andrealrogers.com

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?

Review of How the Boogeyman Became a Poet, by Tony Keith Jr.

Audiobooks, Biography, Starred Review, Teen Nonfiction 0

How the Boogeyman Became a Poet

by Tony Keith Jr.
performed by the Author

Katherine Tegen Books, 2024. 5 hours, 4 minutes.
Review written February 4, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2025 Odyssey Award Winner, Young Adult

I try to listen to all Odyssey Award winners and honor books, because they’re specifically given for the best audiobooks, and the quality is always outstanding. This book was no exception.

How the Boogeyman Became a Poet is a memoir from a Black poet and spoken word artist about his years in high school and starting college when he was coming to terms in his own heart and mind with being gay.

And he tells the story himself, with many poems included and performed. There are sound effects adding to the production, and this is a powerful audiobook.

The story starts his senior year of high school. He’s missed deadlines to apply to college and is taking the SAT for the third time, but gets a chance to apply. He’s got a girlfriend, but somehow is never in the mood to “do business” with her, and he doesn’t dare tell anyone that he thinks he might be gay – that fear is a boogeyman that he sees in the mirror and hiding in his closet – but he works out a lot of his thinking and feeling by writing poems and playing with language.

He was known as a poet in high school, writing love poems for his friends to give to their girlfriends on Valentine’s Day to make a little money, and performing in the student talent show. In college, he found that open mic nights with all their acceptance were better for him than competitive poetry slams. But always, poetry was where he turned with his feelings that he didn’t always understand.

I think my favorite poem was about the joy he got out of singing in youth choir. Yes! It’s a lovely expression of what singing in a choir can be. Unfortunately, it was also at church that he was taught that being gay would send him to hell, and why he resisted so hard admitting what was going on inside.

This book is a true coming-of-age story, told in an award-winning audio package. When I looked up the author’s website, I was delighted to learn that he went on to earn a PhD. Not bad for the first person in his family to go to college! Listeners are honored to get to share in his journey.

tonykeithjr.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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#Sonderbooks25 – 2001 Sonderbooks Stand-outs

Sonderbooks25, Stand-outs 0

I’m celebrating my 25th year of writing Sonderbooks with #Sonderbooks25! Tonight I’ll be looking at my 2001 Sonderbooks Stand-outs.

I already talked about my plans for #Sonderbooks25. I’m afraid it’s going to take longer than I thought, especially the first five years, before I switched formats. I’m redoing the format and now the 2001 Sonderbooks Stand-outs page takes you to a phone-friendly page. Here’s the original version. Though I’m afraid all the reviews are still in the original format, better read on a computer.

Now, my plan was to look at all the Sonderbooks Stand-outs reviews and choose one book to reread from each year’s Stand-outs. For 2001, that’s got to be The Sand-Reckoner, by Gillian Bradshaw, from my very first issue of Sonderbooks, and what may have motivated me to finally start writing Sonderbooks because I wanted to tell people about it.

(It’s going to take me a couple weeks to get to read it. I’m doing a program about this year’s book award winners for other librarians on February 19th, and I’m trying to cram as many more award winners as I can before that program.)

But I didn’t realize I’d be compelled to read *all* my reviews and pages from 2001. That was the year I turned 37, so I also reread my Project 52 posts from the year I was 36 and the year I was 37. Yikes! That’s exactly the age my oldest kid is now, in 2025! My kids then turned 13 and 7 in 2001. I was reading to Timothy’s 1st and 2nd grade classrooms every couple weeks, so the picture books I read were more geared to that age. I was still very much in love with my husband, and we were reading books to both kids at bedtime. I was then a big fan of J. K. Rowling – before she revealed herself to be a transphobe.

I began writing Sonderbooks on August 4, 2001 – so the 25th anniversary won’t happen until August 4, 2026 – which gives me time to complete this project! But 2025 is the 25th year I’m choosing Sonderbooks Stand-outs, so it seems good to start celebrating!

Sonderbooks began as an email newsletter – an “ezine” I called it. Based on the fact that all the early pages have “Copyright 2003” at the bottom – I think I didn’t make it a website until 2003.  I was working half-time at Sembach Base Library in Germany, while my husband was stationed with the USAFE Band.

So because it was an ezine, I’d write five or six reviews all at the same time, every week or two (Really! I was only working part-time then and working at a library got me reading a lot. No TV because we only got German TV.) – and the reviews were a lot shorter than what I write now, each for their own page. Here’s a page of all the Back Issues of Sonderbooks. In 2001, beginning in August, I wrote the first 18 issues.

Some interesting things about those early issues:

On Sonderbooks #7, I started posting an Old Favorite with every issue. Now that I was writing about books, I wanted to mention the books I’d come back to time and time again. I didn’t necessarily reread them for the issue, but it looks like posting about them usually got me to go back and reread them. But there were so many great books I reread in 2001 because of that, I gave them separate listings in the 2001 Sonderbooks Stand-outs.  [And I want to reread them ALL again now!]

I also posted a Picture Book Pick every issue – but wasn’t as careful about designating which were favorites I’d been reading to my kids for years and which were new. The 2001 Sonderbooks only listed new picture books from 2001 – so I didn’t honor the beloved books The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig, Rainy Morning or Clever Cat.

Reading through the back issues, I do think I did a good job picking Stand-outs – as those are the ones that still stand out in my mind 25 years later. I had forgotten that of course, shortly after beginning Sonderbooks, September 11 happened. So there were some books about that, and a book about Saddam Hussein and a book about the Taliban.  Little did we know what was to come.  I don’t find myself wanting to reread those.

Something I miss from the old ezines is that starting with Sonderbooks #9, I put a Quotation of the Week at the end of each issue, a quotation from that week’s reading. (This later evolved into my Sonderquotes blog.) By far my favorite from the first batch of Quotations is the one from Sonderbooks #17:

“Always my days have seemed to me too short to achieve my desire.”
–Aragorn, in The Return of the King, by J. R. R. Tolkien

I keep chanting that to myself as I’m staying up too late – and I feel suddenly noble of purpose instead of just someone who’s trying to do too much.

For the Stand-outs – there were so many “Old Favorites” that I still love so much! I want to reread them all! (Though most I’ve read again sometime since 2001.)

And there were some new favorites that I didn’t remember I’d discovered in 2001 – notably The Thief and The Queen of Attolia, by Megan Whalen Turner; Enchantress from the Stars, by Sylvia Louise Engdahl; and Dark Lord of Derkholm and Year of the Griffin, by Diana Wynne Jones.  Yes, I’ve read those again in the time since.

That was when I loved reading memoirs about moving to a place with another culture, and I gave those books their own section on the 2001 Sonderbooks Stand-outs page, beginning with Extra Virgin, by Annie Hawes. I want to read more of those again! And that reminds me – many of my favorite books from 2001, I’d read before I started writing Sonderbooks, so they never did get reviews, and the link just goes to their Amazon listing. Now I’d love to read all of those and give them a review!

A nonfiction book that stuck with me all those years and I still think about frequently is Suburban Nation. It explains why your typical suburban neighborhood, built for cars instead of people, doesn’t feel inviting to pedestrians (and why places built like German villages do – though they didn’t use those words).

And probably still the best travel book I’ve ever read is For the Love of Ireland. That was the year we got to spend three weeks and traveled all around Ireland – and for me the trip was accompanied by stories and essays from each region, thanks to this book. It made me feel like I was going deeper. I want to read the book again – though then I may be compelled to go back to Ireland.

I did reread all the picture books listed in the Stand-outs – they are all still available in my library. And they all still bring me a smile. Well, except maybe The Three Golden Keys. Maybe I was in too much of a hurry when I read it this time? I suspect I loved it in 2001 because that was also the year I got to hear Peter Sis speak at a writer’s conference in Paris. So I was well-disposed to love his book. My favorite picture book this time around was probably The Three Pigs – and I’m proud that we discovered it before it won the Caldecott Medal, so our family copy has no medal on the cover.

So yes!  Those are my thoughts on celebrating my 25th year of writing Sonderbooks by revisiting the reviews I wrote in 2001 and my 2001 Sonderbooks Stand-outs.

What were you reading in 2001?  Have you read any of my Stand-outs?

Review of The Great Mathemachicken: Hide and Go Beak, by Nancy Krulik, illustrated by Charlie Alder

Animal Characters, Beginning Chapter Books, Children's Fiction Review, Mathematical, Starred Review 0

The Great Mathemachicken

Hide and Go Beak

by Nancy Krulik
illustrated by Charlie Alder

Pixel + Ink, 2022. 88 pages.
Review written May 6, 2022, from a library book
Starred Review

Here’s a silly and fun book about a chicken named Chirpy who wants to go beyond the coop. When she gets the chance to sneak out, she follows the children Randy and Andy onto the big yellow bus to go to school. Once there, she catches a ride on a rolling backpack.

Chirpy rolled into a room full of kids.
Which made her wonder:
At home kids stayed outside the coop.
Chickens stayed inside the coop.
Could school be a kid coop?
If someone saw Chirpy in a kid coop, would they make her leave?
Hmmm. . . .
Chirpy needed a hiding place, just like when the chicks played hide and go beak in the coop.

While Chirpy is hiding in the classroom, she learns basic principles of simple machines.

And when she goes home, those principles may be exactly what the chickens need to catch a fox!

The author and illustrator weren’t going for plausible in this book, but it sure is fun to read. Chirpy the curious chicken, excited about learning everything she can, earns her title of Mathemachicken.

At the back of the book, there are instructions for making your own simple machine, a Whirly-Swirly Wheel-and-Axle Toy. While following Chirpy’s adventures, kids may learn things themselves. The book is marked as Book One, so I’ll be watching for more.

realnancykrulik.com
PixelandInkBooks.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/great_mathemachicken.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of The Calculus of Friendship, by Steven Strogatz

Mathematical, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

The Calculus of Friendship

What a Teacher and a Student Learned about Life While Corresponding about Math

by Steven Strogatz

Princeton University Press, 2009. 166 pages.
Review written September 9, 2021, from a book ordered via Amazon.com
Starred Review

This book is the story of the correspondence the author – a professor of Mathematics at Cornell University – carried on with his high school calculus teacher for over thirty years.

Here’s how he introduces the book:

For the past thirty years I’ve been corresponding with my high school calculus teacher, Mr. Don Joffray. During that time, he went from the prime of his career to retirement, competed in whitewater kayak at the international level, and lost a son. I matured from teenage math geek to Ivy League professor, suffered the sudden death of a parent, and blundered into a marriage destined to fail.

What’s remarkable is not that any of this took place – such ups and downs are to be expected in three decades of life – but rather that so little of it is discussed in the letters. Instead, our correspondence, and our friendship itself, is based almost entirely on a shared love of calculus.

It never occurred to me how peculiar this is until Carole (I’m happily remarried now) teased me about it. “You’ve been writing to him for thirty years? You must know everything about each other.” Not really, I said. We just write about math problems. “That is such a guy thing,” she said, shaking her head.

This Prologue is more honest than the subtitle. This is a book about awesome insights into and about calculus – clever, insightful, and challenging problems – and the beauty of math. It doesn’t say a whole lot about life lessons – and yet their friendship and personalities do shine through.

And there’s some lovely mathematics here, well-explained – at least I think so. I am sad to say that in many places, the math went over my head. I’m a former math major with a master’s degree in math who taught college math for ten years – but I didn’t remember things about infinite series and infinite integrals and other things discussed here. And I’m a little appalled with myself that I didn’t have the desire to go look up what I didn’t understand.

I am, however, wishing that this book existed when I was a young hot-shot calculus student. It would have showed me that math is not a finite subject and that even lofty math professors still find plenty of ideas to play with, going far beyond textbooks.

And yes, there are some lovely insights about the friendship between a teacher and his student. The correspondence began when Steven Strogatz started sending interesting math problems to his former teacher and then explained them. He shares an insight at the back of the book about what his teacher gave him:

He let me teach him.

Before I had any students, he was my student.

Somehow, he knew that’s what I needed most. And he let me, and encouraged me, and helped me. Like all great teachers do.

Hmmm. I do know of a young math major who just started at Virginia Tech. I think he’d be among the ideal audience for this book – reading about how, for those who love it, math never runs out of fascinating beauty.

Oh, and full disclosure: I was disposed to like this book because the author found my mathematical knitting posts and talked about them on Twitter. So now I’m happy to promote his book – both things are about the beauty of math.

stevenstrogatz.com
press.princeton.edu

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of Celestial Monsters, by Aiden Thomas,

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Teen Fiction Review 0

Celestial Monsters

by Aiden Thomas
read by André Santana

Macmillan Young Listeners, 2024. 12 hours, 36 minutes.
Review written January 25, 2025, from a library eaudiobook

I finally got the sequel to The Sunbearer Trials read. It’s been a while, but it didn’t take too long to remember what happened at the end of the other book before those dread words “To Be Continued.” Let’s just say that their world is on the brink of the apocalypse, and Teo needs to save it, with the help of his best friend and the semidios boy he’s in love with.

I still enjoy the world of this story – a modern world, but it’s ruled by gods, which I think are mostly from Mayan mythology. There are quite a few transgender characters, one who switches to gender neutral pronouns in this book, which everyone is agreeable to – and it’s awfully refreshing.

The story itself is a bit too much like an older Rick Riordan book (older because more swearing) for me to get hugely invested. I have trouble with the mythology that requires human sacrifice – or any sacrifice – and I can’t quite understand how any world could get by a couple weeks without the sun. Ummm, how does that work, even if the sun is really the sun god? It’s best not to ask and try to immerse yourself in the story.

Other than that, there were lots of fights with the powerful “Celestials” released by the failure at the end of the last book. And an overarching plan to make things right that left a lot to chance. There were relationship things going on, and one of the viewpoint characters was the person who caused all the trouble, and they were beginning to get an inkling that was probably a bad idea. Our main character figuring out that sacrificing a child of the gods every ten years was a bad idea didn’t hit me too hard, I’m afraid, because, Duh? (I know, it’s what they grew up with. But I wasn’t super satisfied with what the alternative was, either.)

All that said, it’s a fantasy story with a main character who has wings and can talk to birds – which may not be as good in a fight as the powers the other demigods have, but it seems like it’s a lot more fun.

aiden-thomas.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Listening to Trees, by Holly Thompson, pictures by Toshiki Nakamura

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Listening to Trees

George Nakashima, Woodworker

words by Holly Thompson
pictures by Toshiki Nakamura

Neal Porter Books (Holiday House), 2024. 48 pages.
Review written January 29, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

Listening to Trees is a picture book biography of American George Nakashima. He was of Japanese descent, and his family was imprisoned during World War II because of that, but the focus of this book is his approach to working with wood, bringing out the beauty of the trees themselves.

The story is told in haibun, and explanations at the back tell us that this is a combination of haiku and prose. So it’s more deliberate than the fact that there’s a haiku on each spread.

The book covers his learning years traveling around the world as an architect and then even learning more about Japanese furniture-making techniques from a carpenter in the prison camp. Then it shows how he developed a style that used the shape of the wood and the patterns in the grain to decide what to make, culminating in giant Peace Tables for each continent of the world.

Back matter gives a timeline of his life as well as an explanation of what goes into the process of woodworking, and finally a spread of beautiful photographs of his work. The pictures throughout the book make me want to run my hands along the wood. And that’s starting from a place of never having heard of this artist before.

hatbooks.com
HolidayHouse.com
artoftoshi.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Buried Deep, by Naomi Novik

Fantasy, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

Buried Deep

And Other Stories

by Naomi Novik

Del Rey, 2024. 428 pages.
Review written February 3, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

I don’t read a lot of short story collections, because I have a hard time getting through them. It’s so easy to stop after finishing a story. But once I started this one, I knew I wanted to read every single story.

There are thirteen stories, of various lengths, with at least one from the worlds of Temeraire, the Scholomance, and Spinning Silver – that story was actually the original version of the book – but a different negotiation on the part of the miller’s daughter keeps it to story length.

My favorite was definitely the one in the world of Temeraire that retells Pride and Prejudice with Elizabeth Bennet the captain of a Longwing dragon. But this is not a proper occupation for a gentleman’s daughter. I love the way Naomi Novik works key scenes from Pride and Prejudice into that situation. And I love how Captain Bennet has learned to wield authority!

The title story is about the Minotaur and his sister Ariadne. The final story is in the world of an upcoming novel, currently titled Folly. I can’t wait!

Another favorite took place in the Scholomance after the events of the trilogy, so supposedly students are safer there – as long as their roommate doesn’t try to kill them.

Many of the stories are simply from some other fantasy world out of the mind of Naomi Novik – and she’s good at intriguing world-building. I loved the one about the woman who was a talented sculptor and who gets the commission to work with the magical clay – that tends to kill the sculptors who are permitted to work with it. (And there’s way more to it than that, which she skillfully communicates while telling you a fascinating story.)

This might be a good introduction to Naomi Novik’s magical writing, but it’s also a great way to keep her devoted fans patient while waiting for the next novel. Whichever you fall under, if you like fantasy at all, read this book!

naominovik.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?

Review of On the Bright Side, by Anna Sortino

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

On the Bright Side

by Anna Sortino
read by Jesse Inocalla and Elizabeth Robbins

Listening Library, 2024. 8 hours, 41 minutes.
Review written January 17, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2024 CYBILS Award Finalist, Young Adult Fiction
2025 Schneider Family Honor Book, Teens

This is now the third Young Adult Fiction CYBILS Finalist I’ve read and oh my goodness, the second-round judges are going to have a difficult decision. I read Anna Sortino’s first book, Give Me a Sign, in 2023 for the Morris Award, and although it wasn’t a Finalist, let’s just say that I remembered it and wouldn’t have guessed it was a debut if I hadn’t been specifically reading debut novels.

That first one was about a group of deaf kids. This one features one deaf girl, Ellie, and begins when her boarding school that had immersive American Sign Language is being shut down – right before her Senior year of high school.

Ellie had gone to that school since she was twelve, and she’d been dating her boyfriend since then. But now he’s moving to the other side of the state, and he doesn’t want to try to keep things going long distance. So Ellie has to go to a school with hearing kids, and she’s been torn away from everything she’s used to.

And her home isn’t a refuge. Ellie has a hearing aid and cochlear implants and she reads lips, so her parents never bothered to learn sign language. Her hearing sister is heading off to college, so her parents are stuck with her, and it feels to Ellie like they’re obviously settling for the less preferred daughter. So she’s got a lot she’s not happy about that first day of high school.

Our other narrator is Jackson. He was on the soccer team last year, and just as he was about to kick the ball and win the state championship, his leg went numb and crumpled on him. He was fine afterward, so everyone thought he just choked. But more and more weird things happen to him. His parents are both health nuts who urge him to work through anything.

And he’s a nice guy, involved in lots of things at the high school. So the guidance counselor asks him to help make the new deaf student comfortable and give her a tour of the school.

The book is about their budding relationship, but meanwhile, Jackson is having more and more weird things going on with his body – numbness, vertigo, fatigue, and more. On a day that he’d planned to go to a museum with Ellie for extra credit, he ends up with severe vertigo and vomiting. His parents take him to Urgent Care, where he’s given a CT scan, which is normal. By the time the doctor sees him, the vertigo has passed. So they tell him it’s probably benign positional vertigo and give him some exercises to do.

My goodness I wasn’t prepared for how hard that scene would hit me! The thing is – back in 2011, when I was 47, I had severe vertigo and vomiting – and the E.R. did a CT scan, but by the time I saw the doctor, I felt better. They told me my migraines had changed and sent me home – and it turned out to have been a stroke, which we learned when I had another worse one a couple days later. So I was just cringing for Jackson when I heard this scene. No! Don’t send him home!

And Jackson continues to have strange symptoms – and in the present day, I’ve been having a set of strange symptoms – not exactly like Jackson’s, but including vertigo – and that part just built tension in me. Especially with his parents urging him to “shake it off” and not be lazy.

I won’t tell you his diagnosis, but it’s all described so vividly that I wasn’t surprised when the author said in a note at the end that this is a condition she shares.

The book is an excellent story about two teens getting to know each other and dealing with some hard things – but it’s also a great look at disability and how it’s not obvious when you’re looking at someone that they have a disability. And it’s also not their fault. Sometimes life throws hard things at a person, but you keep your identity. Ellie is good at giving Jackson perspective on his new disability, and it all unfolds in a realistic way as they navigate what it means for their relationship.

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