Review of Kween, by Vichet Chum

Contemporary, Teen Fiction Review 0

Kween

by Vichet Chum

Quill Tree Books, 2023. 343 pages.
Review written November 4, 2023, from a library book.

Kween is about Soma, a Cambodian teen born and brought up in Lowell, Massachusetts, dealing with things and learning to process it all and express herself. A poem she writes and performs online goes viral, but the essay she didn’t write, telling the teacher she was sick of writing about history from the perspective of colonizers got her an F.

Meanwhile, her father got deported back to Cambodia after decades in the U.S. and a green card. And her mother went to Cambodia to be with him, supposedly only for a visit, but she keeps pushing back her return date. They left her in the care of her much-older sister, and Soma resents Dahvy acting like her parent. But Dahvy’s planning her wedding to Ruben, and both of them are teachers at Soma’s school and get in her business. They encourage her to enter a poetry contest in which the finalists will perform their poems.

So Dahvy’s buzzing with things to do for the wedding, and Soma wants to wait until Ma gets back. Though at the same time, there’s this girl she’s had a crush on forever who finally notices her.

The book is narrated by Soma, who’s named after the first queen of Cambodia, and it’s full of teen slang, which put me off at the beginning. But I did get used to it as I went along (and will trust the author to know better than me what’s authentic), and I was pulled in to the many things Soma was juggling – missing her father while dealing with her stressed-out sister and trying to find her voice as a performance poet.

The many different threads are woven together seamlessly and keep you interested and I loved seeing Soma learn to be a Kween. (I can’t use the slang right and shouldn’t even try.)

vichetchum.com
EpicReads.com

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Review of Good Dirt, by Charmaine Wilkerson, read by January LaVoy

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

Good Dirt

by Charmaine Wilkerson
read by January LaVoy

Books on Tape, 2025. 11 hours, 27 minutes.
Review written August 22, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Good Dirt, from the author of Black Cake, is another sweeping saga that shows us a person in extraordinary circumstances in the present and weaves a tapestry of history around that person.

In Good Dirt, Ebony Freeman has fled to France in order to get some time to herself, nine months after the man she was supposed to marry didn’t show up for the wedding.

This wasn’t Ebbie’s first brush with notoriety, and the first time was even worse: When she was ten years old, her fifteen-year-old brother was shot in their Connecticut home when some thieves were trying to steal their family’s historic old jar. Ebbie was with her brother when he died and saw the jar in pieces on the floor.

The family was proud of that jar, and loved to tell stories about its history. It came to New England when Ebbie’s great-great-grandfather brought it along when he stowed away on a ship and made his way to freedom. Moses, the enslaved man who made the jar, carved an inscription on the bottom of the jar, at a time when it was illegal for enslaved people to read or write. That inscription has inspired the family for generations.

But now Ebbie’s managing her friend’s guesthouse in France – and the first people to show up are her ex-fiance and his new girlfriend, Ashley. It’s not as big a coincidence as it seems – Ashley had picked up an ad Ebbie’s friend had placed in a neighborhood cafe when she was in the area for Ebbie’s planned wedding. But the awkward situation forces Ebbie to think through a lot of things she’d been avoiding.

And that’s the situation that fuels the book. Ebbie decides to write the stories of the jar, and we learn its rich history while watching Ebbie deal with her own history and what this all means for the present with the man she’d planned to marry in front of her on the other side of the ocean.

As in Black Cake, Charmaine Wilkerson gives us multiple perspectives on events. I, for one, didn’t care what the ex-fiance thought about things – but she uses even that to help us get to know the whole family – all still dealing with the loss of Ebbie’s brother, and trying to go on with dignity in the present.

This is another powerful story that completely enthralls.

charmspen.com

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Review of Kismat Connection, by Ananya Devarajan, read by Reena Dutt and Vikas Adam

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Teen Fiction Review 0

Kismat Connection

by Ananya Devarajan
read by Reena Dutt and Vikas Adam

Harlequin Audio, 2023. 8 hours, 41 minutes.
Review written October 7, 2023, from a library eaudiobook.

Kismat Connection is a sweet romance about two Indian American seniors in high school who have been best friends since childhood. We get the story told from both their perspectives.

Arjun is a lacrosse star who wants to be an aerospace engineer. His mother has traveled often for work since his dad left, and he’s learned not to count on her. Instead, he spends time with Madhuri’s family, who welcomes him as if he’s their own. He has long been in love with Madhuri, but doesn’t dare tell her because he doesn’t want to mess up their friendship.

But when Madhuri’s mother reads both their astrological charts for the upcoming year and Arjun’s forecasts great success but Madhuri’s outlines trouble – Madhuri thinks of a way to fight against fate. She devises a plan to date Arjun for their senior year – but plan in advance to break up the day after graduation. She thinks of course it will work because neither of them will ever have romantic feelings for their best friend.

Well, it surprises no one but Madhuri when things get more complicated than that.

This book is a delightful rom-com with thoughts about free will and destiny as well as finding who you truly are and following your heart.

ananyadevarajan.com

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Review of Too Small Tola Makes It Count, by Atinuke

Beginning Chapter Books, Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Starred Review 0

Too Small Tola Makes It Count

by Atinuke
illustrated by Onyinye Iwu

Candlewick Press, 2024. First published in the United Kingdom in 2023. 90 pages.
Review written March 17, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

I love Too Small Tola! Here are more adventures for children ready to read chapter books. You don’t have to have read the earlier ones to enjoy this one, but I do recommend them, and characters return.

I like the way these books give younger children a window into other people’s lives without any need to feel sorry for them and showing lots of love.

Too Small Tola lives in Lagos, unbelievable Lagos.

In Lagos there are children who live in mansions. Mansions so big, their parents have to call their children’s cell phones to find which room they are in!

And in Lagos there are children who sleep on cardboard boxes under bridges where people step over them both day and night.

Tola’s family is lucky. They do not own a mansion or even an apartment. But they do not sleep under bridges either. They are lucky enough to have the roof of one room over their heads.

Tola lives with her Grandmommy and an older brother and older sister. We’re getting to know some of the other people in their building.

In past books, Tola was able to solve some problems using Math. In this book, there are some life problems to solve, which can be trickier. Tola is able to solve problems for her neighbors, but she can’t get her school classmates to believe that she worked for a famous rock star’s family during the lockdown – until they get a nice comeuppance in the last chapter.

Other problems involve helping Mrs. Shaky-Shaky, who can no longer go up the stairs, and traveling to the beach to escape the heat, and watching her neighbor’s baby, who makes an escape.

It all involves everyday life for Tola, and we get to enjoy the kind and wonderful people she interacts with every day, as well as appreciate Tola’s ingenuity.

These books always make me smile.

atinuke.co.uk
onyinyeiwu.com
candlewick.com

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Review of Holding Up the Sky, by Rebecca Alasdair

Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Holding Up the Sky

by Rebecca Alasdair

Southscript Press, 2022. 334 pages.
Review written March 14, 2023, from a library book.
Starred Review

Holding Up the Sky is a coming-out story, and one that is tough. We’re following Carter, who’s got so many burdens in his life as a senior in high school, it feels like he’s holding up the sky.

He used to have a big brother looking out for him, but his brother and his father were killed in an accident that happened the afternoon of his brother’s graduation dinner. Since then, Carter knows he’s a disappointment to his mother. She has to work long hours so they can stay in their home. And Carter works to keep his grades up so he can be a doctor one day and make his mother proud of him.

And then one day, as Carter is trying to hold things together, a new boy comes to school who is flamboyantly and proudly gay. Carter doesn’t dare admit how much he’s attracted to him. Because if his mother finds out, she’ll be horrified.

We get a warning at the very front of the book that Carter’s going to end up turning to suicide to find freedom. All the plot points from there on out are predictable – but they still had my heart aching along with Carter.

I don’t usually cry over young adult novels any more, unlike when I was a teen myself. But this one had me in tears. I figured out what was coming, but it still seemed all too much. Why couldn’t this kid see how precious he was? How dare a parent treat him like that? Yet I read this book after having just learned about the suicide of a young transgender woman after her parents forced her to detransition. It was all too easy to believe this story.

I will say this: The story does end both hopefully and realistically. In many ways, it’s a message book (with a good message), but it also had me absorbed and invested in the story.

rebeccaalasdair.com
southscriptpress.com.au

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Review of As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow, by Zoulfa Katouh

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow

by Zoulfa Katouh
read by Rasha Zamamiri

Hachette Audio, 2022. 12 hours, 16 minutes.
Review written August 13, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Wow. This is a book about ordinary people who become extraordinary during wartime.

Salama is 18 years old and working in a hospital in Homs, Syria, in 2011. She got to attend two years of pharmacy school before people had enough and rose up against Assad. Her father and brother were taken to prison to be tortured after a protest, and her mother died when a bomb struck their home. Now Salama volunteers every day at the hospital and has learned to do surgery such as removing bullets and sewing up wounds.

Salama’s been through trauma, and she knows it. She knows that the man she sees named Hawf is someone created in her brain that no one else can see. He is relentlessly trying to get her to leave Syria before her 8-months-pregnant sister-in-law Layla gives birth. She’s torn because she’s needed at the hospital. And what about the cost? And will they even survive the journey?

In the middle of all these hard things, she meets a boy a little older than herself, who brings in his little sister with an injury. It turns out the boy was the same one her mother was arranging for her to meet just before the revolution started and their lives blew apart. He, too, feels he is doing important work in Syria – posting YouTube videos of the protests and the response. As their attraction for each other grows, they both need to decide at what point the risk is just too great and when staying alive is simply the most important goal.

The characters speak eloquently of their love for Syria. There is plenty of horrific violence in this book, including a chemical attack on children. Salama is badly traumatized, and she knows she’s traumatized – but she still wants to help people.

The author tells us at the end that she was trying to show ordinary people in wartime, trying to show the beauty of Syria – that was crushed by the regime in power. And that people are still people.

The romance in this book is wonderful. I appreciate that when the characters are Muslim, the romance isn’t focused on physically getting together – and to me, it makes the attraction all the stronger. The author said she was trying to copy Jane Austen’s romances, and she did a wonderful job. We can watch these two fall in love on the page – even while horrific things are happening around them and they each fear for the lives of those they love.

It does leave me wondering: When will humans stop doing this to one another? Until that day comes, this book is an amazing look at some young people who manage to find love and beauty even in the middle of war.

zoulfakatouh.com

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Review of Downpour: Splish! Splash! Ker-Splash!, by Yuko Ohnari and Koshiro Hata

Contemporary, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

Downpour

Splish! Splash! Ker-Splash!

by Yuko Ohnari and Koshiro Hata
translated by Emily Balistrieri

Red Comet Press, 2025. Originally published in Japan in 2018. 36 pages.
Review written July 3, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

The onomatopoeia in the subtitle of this book foreshadows much to come. This is a picture book about a torrential rainstorm. The pictures and the wide variety of onomatopoeia used are incredibly evocative. As is the emotion on the boy’s face who’s caught in the rain.

And that’s what this story covers: A boy is caught in the rain. But this wife-husband pair of creators makes the book so much more than that.

It starts with burning hot pavement and a looming cloud. Then big, fat drops fall, bringing their own music and their own smells.

Then the sound of the rain takes over the book – except the boy doesn’t let that be the only thing, first noticing his umbrella is a drum, but then putting the umbrella aside to run, kick, and jump in the abundant puddles.

I love the way every picture takes a different angle on the boy and on the rain. We have how it looks as it hits, how it looks falling, and how the drops bounce off the child. We see everything sopping wet – and feel the great delight the boy feels in the whole experience.

This is one you need to pick up and see for yourself! A picture book about a joyful storm.

RedCometPress.com

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Review of Ever Since, by Alena Bruzas

Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Ever Since

by Alena Bruzas

Rocky Pond Books (Penguin Random House), 2023. 277 pages.
Review written July 13, 2023, from a book sent to me by the publisher.
Starred Review

This book isn’t exactly pleasant reading, but it is powerful, and it made me care deeply about characters I didn’t even like at first.

The book has a short Content Note at the front: “Please be advised that this book contains depictions of sexual assault, CSA, and suicidal ideation.” So that gives you an idea of what you’re in for.

But the book begins with five teenage girls, all good friends, who are happily looking forward to the summer. I like the first paragraph:

Once there were five princesses. No, I mean five witches. Actually, they were goddesses. Anyway, whatever they were, they were friends.

This opening foreshadows the senior project Virginia’s going to start thinking about this summer, looking into the story of Medea. Which echoes her own story.

The book begins with a road trip out to the coast. Virginia is our viewpoint character. Poppy and Thalia and Paz and Ro are the friends along with her, and there are plenty to meet them at the coast, including Thalia’s boyfriend Edison and Poppy’s boyfriend Rumi.

But something’s up with Virginia and Edison…. She thinks Thalia doesn’t know yet and maybe she can stop, but Edison calls her over away from the crowd….

And then the next day Poppy disappears. She doesn’t turn up for her job coaching soccer. She doesn’t answer calls or texts. Poppy’s house was the only place where Virginia felt safe at night. And then she starts getting close to Rumi. But she can’t betray Poppy, too. But it feels like Rumi actually sees her.

So by this time, I wasn’t crazy about Virginia. But as we see her go through the summer, we get strong hints that there’s something going on under the surface. And we begin to care deeply. And things build up and something with Rumi’s little sister triggers a whole lot of trauma – and I don’t want to say any more, because the author does a great job of weaving this story together so that the revelations aren’t exactly a surprise for what they are – but they’re definitely a surprise about who is involved. And it’s told in such a way that you come to better understand Virginia’s behavior all along – that since she was deprived of consent as a young child, she no longer really understands that she’s allowed to withhold consent. (And that’s a much more simplistic way of putting it than the book gives.)

Like I said, it’s not a pleasant book. But it has a wonderful, I-wish-it-weren’t-necessary message. And makes you care about this girl you might have condemned. So wow. Just read it already.

alenabruzas.com
PenguinTeen.com

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Review of This Book Won’t Burn, by Samira Ahmed

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

This Book Won’t Burn

by Samira Ahmed
read by Kausar Mohammed

Hachette Audio, 2024. 10 hours, 23 minutes.
Review written July 29, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I loved this audiobook so much! I’d been meaning to read it pretty much since it came out, so when it accumulated enough NotifyMe tags in Libby to order for the library, I placed a hold – and I was completely charmed. (Yes, it’s gotten to where I am more likely to read audiobooks than print books. This is a drastic change.)

It’s the story of Noor Khan, a senior in high school. She’s just gotten an acceptance to the University of Chicago, close to home. The book begins on the day her life fell apart, when her father left their family – including her mother and younger sister. He left the house and never came back. Later, they found a note in his briefcase saying he couldn’t do this any more. Noor even references Vikki Stark’s work on Runaway Husbands, so I related to that part all too much, but Noor was somewhat resentful that the website focuses on the wives who get left suddenly – when it also includes the children.

A few months later, Noor is facing the last quarter of her senior year at a new school in small-town Illinois, where her mother moved them to give them all a new start. Noor’s not happy about that.

But she does make friends quickly. The one Desi guy in the school volunteered to give her a tour, and she quickly makes friends with his lesbian friend. And then a cute white boy makes overtures.

However, when Noor gets to the library, she sees the librarian pulling books off the shelves because of a new school board policy that one challenge from the public gets books removed until they can be “reviewed.” The next day, Noor wears an “I Read Banned Books” t-shirt, which gets her called into the principal’s office.

When some of the books being banned show up in Noor’s locker, she decides to read them aloud in the park across the street during lunch. But then the principal retaliates by taking the privilege of going off campus for lunch away from juniors and seniors, letting everyone know she’s to blame.

Meanwhile, Noor’s mother, who together with her father taught Noor that silence is defeat, is upset with Noor for making waves in their new town. And she’s confused about her feelings for the two guys in her life. As Noor stands up for the freedom to read, she gets more and more pushback and even violence.

As a librarian, I found this book completely realistic and completely timely. The situations were pulled directly from current headlines. Yay for standing up for free speech and our Constitutional rights! I also appreciated the call-out of many excellent books that are widely banned by groups such as Moms for Liberty. (The book called them “Liberty Moms,” but I know the real-life group.) It showed their hypocrisy in trying to “protect” kids from books by excluding books by diverse authors.

So the cause, of course is wonderful. But the story was wonderful, too. I related to Noor’s pain from being abandoned by her father, her difficulties in her relationship with her mom, and enjoyed reading about her setbacks and triumphs with her new friends. This one doesn’t even have an kisses, but there are a couple of sweet romances going on, and the conflict between Noor’s head and heart at times was portrayed in a completely relatable way. Listening to this book had me smiling all day.

samiraahmed.com

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Review of Doodles from the Boogie Down, by Stephanie Rodriguez

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Graphic Novel 0

Doodles from the Boogie Down

by Stephanie Rodriguez

Kokila, 2023. 204 pages.
Review written June 28, 2023, from a library book.

This graphic novel is reportedly not exactly an autobiography, but tells about an eighth-grader named Stephanie who lives in the Bronx and wants to go to a high school for the Arts in Manhattan rather than continuing in Catholic school, as her mother wants her to.

Trying to talk with her mother about it when she got the idea didn’t go far. So Steph does some lying to get to work with the art teacher on her portfolio.

Meanwhile, she’s having adventures learning more about art, enjoying activities with her friends, and navigating middle school. But what will happen when her mother finds out about her schemes?

I still think that graphic novels are the perfect form for middle school memoirs. The author says this isn’t quite a memoir, but it does come with all the emotion of living it.

stephguez.com
Penguin.com/kids

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