Review of The Goose Girl, by Shannon Hale

Audiobooks, Fairy Tale Variant, Fantasy, Stand-outs, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Goose Girl

by Shannon Hale
read by Cynthia Bishop and the Full Cast Family

Blackstone Audio, 2012. 10 hours, 16 minutes.
Review written June 3, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
Original review written November 24, 2003.
2003 Sonderbooks Stand-out: My favorite book of the year

In honor of #Sonderbooks25, my 25th year of writing Sonderbooks, I’ve been revisiting my earlier reviews. My plan was to reread one book from each year’s Sonderbooks Stand-outs, and I’d decided to reread one for 2003 that I hadn’t read again in all that time – and then I did a search of the library’s eaudiobook collection – and found I simply had to give this favorite a listen. I’m also writing new reviews for the ones I reviewed before my “new” format in 2006 and when I added the blog.

And what a treat! This audiobook is a lavish production of a wonderful story. Every character who speaks gets their own voice actor, and there are musical cues throughout, reflecting the mood.

I’ve always loved fairy tale adaptations, and this is one of my all-time favorites. It makes sense of the original fairy tale and answers some questions. Why did the princess allow her lady-in-waiting to steal her identity? Why did they hang her horse’s head over the city gate? How did she make the wind drive the goose boy’s hat away so he wouldn’t bother her?

I love the way Shannon Hale shows growth in the princess Ani’s character. She starts out overawed by her mother and all too aware of her own inadequacies. Both Ani’s mother and her lady-in-waiting have a magical gift that helps them persuade people – a gift that Ani completely lacks. But over the course of the book, Ani learns the gifts she does have and the power she holds. When out of necessity she lives as a goose girl – she gets to know the working people of her new country – and gains a reason beyond herself to speak up and win back her crown.

This book began a whole series of the Books of Bayern, and so many reviews of Shannon Hale books that I gave them a webpage of their own. It still has a special place in my heart as the book that helped me discover the magic of Shannon Hale’s writing.

shannonhale.com
fullcastaudio.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/goose_girl.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.

What did you think of this book?

Review of If Tomorrow Doesn’t Come, by Jen St. Jude

Science Fiction, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

If Tomorrow Doesn’t Come

by Jen St. Jude

Bloomsbury, 2023. 406 pages.
Review written May 29, 2023, from my own copy, sent by the publisher.
Starred Review

If Tomorrow Doesn’t Come begins on Avery Byrne’s nineteenth birthday morning. She’s walking to the river on campus, where she plans to drown herself. She’s written good-by letters and is ready to go.

But she’s interrupted by the news that a giant asteroid is going to strike the earth in nine days. It’s looking likely that not just Avery, but everyone she loves is about to die. That wasn’t how it was supposed to work.

Avery’s at an ivy-league university in New Hampshire, but she gets a call from her best friend Cass – at Pratt Institute in New York City – to meet in Boston. And Avery can’t help but promise to be there. She ends up traveling in a van with her roommate, Nigerian-born Aisha, and the professor who failed her first semester, along with his dog.

After some adventures meeting up with Cass in Boston, most of the book is set in Avery’s home town of Kilkenny, where her parents think they can make a bunker in the basement and survive the catastrophe. The asteroid is going to hit in Arizona, so it’s possible they might make it, if they can stockpile enough supplies.

The story plays out in the days leading up to the asteroid strike. And no, we don’t find out if they survive – not knowing and how you would live not knowing is what the book is about. The stories of the present are interwoven with stories of the past and what led to Avery’s deep depression.

Part of that is she’s long been in love with Cass, but wasn’t able to come out to herself as lesbian, let alone her family and friends. When the future is uncertain, somehow that seems more important.

The characters are nineteen, and there’s a somewhat detailed lesbian sex scene, so this isn’t necessarily for younger teens. This book is primarily about depression and seeing all you have to live for, as well as the importance of living for yourself, and not simply for others.

There are no pat answers in this book, but it’s beautifully expressed. I have to say that the writer shows Avery’s emotions so effectively, the book was a little sad to read. But it also realistically showed Avery coming to terms with her own attitudes that helped lead to her depression. And we believe in her plans to get a therapist and maybe take medication – if they all survive.

But I can’t express how beautiful and uplifting this book is despite all that. Avery does find joy and reasons to live. I was reading this book for the Morris Award, but my first time through, was so immersed in the book, I didn’t take much time to think critically about it. Whatever our committee ends up deciding, I highly recommend this book.

jenstjude.com
Bloomsbury.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/if_tomorrow_doesnt_come.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.

What did you think of this book?

Review of My Mechanical Romance, by Alexene Farol Follmuth

Contemporary, Mathematical, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

My Mechanical Romance

by Alexene Farol Follmuth
read by Amielynn Abellera and Christopher Salazar

Recorded Books, 2022. 8 hours, 46 minutes.
Review written December 14, 2023, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2024 Mathical Book Prize Honor Book, ages 14-18

My Mechanical Romance is a super fun high school romance tale about a new girl named Bel who turns out to be good at robotics. After her thrown-together egg drop project is the best performer of her class, her teacher says her grade won’t get docked if she tries out for the robotics team and joins AP Physics.

Teo is captain of the robotics team and captain of the soccer team, too. He begrudgingly allowed auditions for the team, even though they already have enough seniors. When Bel wows them with an again thrown-together project, she gets a spot on the team, even though the only other girl on the team doesn’t think she knows what she’s doing.

Bel and Teo start getting to know one another in a lovely slow-burn romance. Bel’s switched schools her senior year because of her parents’ divorce. Teo’s dad is a high-powered software developer, and Teo takes for granted the weight of their expectations.

I did not like the voice the narrator used for Bel’s best friend, a Valley girl accent. But since the book takes place in the San Fernando Valley, where that accent came from, I probably shouldn’t complain.

I loved the portrayal of what women in STEM are up against. I didn’t like, though, that a couple times Bel called herself “not a math person.” Usually I’d think math and robotics go together, and Bel’s taking Calculus, so I wish she’d gotten a little pushback for that. Bel’s portrayed as learning about robotics from tinkering with machines in her dad’s workshop and building and welding things since she was small, so it’s more of an intuitive sense of mechanics. Not to give spoilers, but I loved the way the book ended, too, and the portrayal of adjusting future plans with an epilogue set two years later.

I listened to this book on a Sick Day when I was getting obsessive about a jigsaw puzzle and listened to the whole thing in one day. Completely delightful. And go, women in STEM!

alexenefarolfollmuth.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/my_mechanical_romance.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.

What did you think of this book?

Review of East, by Edith Pattou

Audiobooks, Fairy Tale Variant, Fantasy, Sonderbooks25, Stand-outs, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

East

by Edith Pattou
read by a Full Cast

Listening Library, 2005. 10 hours, 48 minutes.
Review written May 21, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Original Review written December 6, 2003.
Starred Review
2003 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #2 Young Adult Fantasy

As part of #Sonderbooks25, celebrating my 25th year of writing Sonderbooks, my plan was to choose one book to read from each year’s Sonderbooks Stand-outs. But then reading all the reviews, I remembered how much I love these books… And then I discovered several of my favorites available or with a short wait as eaudiobooks with my library… And I’m rereading a lot more than one book per year.

And I love East as much as ever! It’s still a weird fairy tale – “East of the Sun, West of the Moon” – but I love the way the author fills the book with family and friends who help Rose along the way. It ends up being a book about relationships with family and friends and about not giving up despite impossible odds.

I’m also pleased that after I finished this, I’m able to start right into listening to the follow-up, West, for more about Rose and her White Bear. I read West the year I was on the Newbery committee, so I didn’t have the luxury of rereading East before I did. This time, I get to read them one after the other.

I’m not going to write new reviews for every book I reread during #Sonderbooks25. But I like having a pretty new review in place of the ones I wrote before 2006, before I made the new format and added the blog. So here’s a new review for East, but I’ll let the old one stand for West.

If you love fairy tale retellings, as I do, pick up this atmospheric tale about a girl who’s prone to wander, and who goes with a white bear to help her family. After her curiosity causes disaster to strike, she’s determined to make things right for the white bear – and ends up helping other people, too.

Oh, and this is a lovely Full Cast production audiobook, with separate voices for each character who gets viewpoint chapters – Rose, her brother Neddy, her father, the White Bear, and the Troll Queen.

edithpattou.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/east.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.

What did you think of this book?

Review of The Blue Sword, by Robin McKinley

Audiobooks, Award Winners, Fantasy, Old Favorites, Sonderbooks25, Stand-outs, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Blue Sword

by Robin McKinley
read by Diane Warren

Recorded Books, 1992. 12 hours, 16 minutes.
Review written May 13, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Earlier review written July 2002
Starred Review
2002 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #1 Young Adult and Children’s Fantasy Rereads
2010 Sonderbooks Stand-out: Wonderful Rereads
1983 Newbery Honor Book

(I’m writing new reviews for the books that had reviews in the old not-phone-friendly format, and that don’t have a blog post. After 2005 in my #Sonderbooks25 celebrations, I may just add to or repost the original reviews.)

I’m cheating just a little bit in my #Sonderbooks25 plan, celebrating 25 years of writing Sonderbooks. My plan was to choose *one* book from each year’s Sonderbooks Stand-outs and reread them. Having reread this book in 2010, for my 2001 choice, I picked Gillian Bradshaw’s The Sand-Reckoner to reread – but then my eaudiobook holds queue was filled up, and I found an available copy of this book – and I simply had to try it in audiobook form.

And yes, I still absolutely love the story. Horses! Magic! Slow-burn Romance! (And, okay, I’m afraid it’s apparent I like books where the heroine gets abducted by a king – an honorable king with good reasons for it.)

I’m afraid I didn’t like the narrator. (But I love the book so much, I listened anyway.) She reads it with a motherly voice as one talking about children, rather than as the young adult teenage girl our main character Harry Crewe is. I also wish they’d used a narrator with a British accent, since the “Homeland” of the story mimics British imperialism, in a fantasy world setting. What would the British have done if the “natives” had magic? You find out in this book.

Speaking of that, the use of the word “native” and the attitude toward them stung my ears a little, reading in 2025 – but it is reflective of the time it was imitating – and Harry definitely learns there’s a deep and rich culture – and magic – among the Hillfolk.

Listening to it now from a writer’s perspective, I hadn’t noticed before how often Robin McKinley flits into other people’s thoughts. It works in this case, as she shows King Corlath’s worries that he has done a cruel thing by kidnapping Harry and perplexity as to why his magic had him do that. She shows us both of their thoughts hovering around the other – both slow to realize they’re falling in love. But it’s a testament to how much I love the story that this perspective-jumping (other characters, too) doesn’t bring it down.

For decades now, I’ve said that The Blue Sword and The Blue Castle are my two favorite books, and that still may be true, though if pressed, I know by now I’d come up with a dozen more titles on any given day. But I do know this: revisiting the story was an absolute delight. And yes, this will always be a book I will highly recommend.

robinmckinley.com
robinmckinleysblog.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/blue_sword.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.

What did you think of this book?

Review of All Better Now, by Neal Shusterman

Audiobooks, Science Fiction, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

All Better Now

by Neal Shusterman
read by Greg Tremblay and Neal Shusterman

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2025. 14 hours, 10 minutes.
Review written May 9, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Neal Shusterman knows how to write epic dystopian series. I still think the Arc of a Scythe series is unmatched, but All Better Now is a promising beginning.

The scenario: In the near future, there’s another pandemic. This one is deadlier than COVID-19, but for those who recover – all their problems are over, as far as they’re concerned. They’re happy and content and they care about others.

This gets people in power concerned. The Recoverees aren’t motivated by fear or greed. They get things secondhand, give things away, open their homes to strangers. Economies across the world will collapse if this happens to too many people. Another downside: If a Recoveree sees someone in trouble, they rush to help – forgetting to check if they are actually capable of helping. This results in multiple deaths if the situation is dangerous enough.

The main characters of the book are three teens. Mariel has been living in her car with her mother. When her mother catches the virus, nowhere will take her except a community of Recoverees at the Pier, and Mariel becomes a part of that community. Rón is the son of a billionaire with a pretentious accent in his name. He’s always been prone to depression and has survived suicide attempts, so when his father wants to cloister their family to protect them from the virus, he decides getting the virus is the right choice for his mental health, whether his father likes it or not. And Morgan has always been ruthless, doing what it takes to get ahead. So she’s recruited by the head of a charitable foundation who has gotten the virus. The woman is afraid she’ll give all the money away – so she gives Morgan charge of the money and a commission to work on a vaccine and change the world. Sure enough, when the woman recovers, she wants to thwart those plans. But Morgan’s in control now. Or is she?

The greater forces at work in the world of the novel are certainly going to change humanity. Recoverees have found peace and happiness – and they want to pass those things on. But powerful folks have too much to lose, and they’ll take drastic steps to stop the virus, ethical or not. Meanwhile there’s plenty of tension and danger as our three main characters interact in this scenario. And I won’t say how the book ends – but let’s just say the story isn’t finished.

I read Book 2 of The Arc of a Scythe, Thunderhead, the year I was reading for the Newbery Medal Committee – and I still maintain that book had the best plotting of any book I read that year. (It’s not really a book for children in my opinion, which is another discussion. But the plotting is incredible!) This book also had a set up of many different threads in a grand tapestry.

I did have a caveat that held me back from complete enjoyment – I couldn’t bring myself to believe that every single person who recovered from the virus would have the same exact effect. I’m willing to buy the premise that some kind of brain damage could do that to you – maybe – because some stroke victims have reported feeling one with all mankind – so maybe? But after seeing COVID-19 have so many different effects on so many different people – it’s hard to believe that a new coronavirus would affect everyone who recovers from it in the same way. Also, nothing was said about variants, and people were sure they couldn’t get it a second time – and that all was harder for me to believe after coming through our last pandemic.

I also didn’t really believe in the idea of an alpha spreader – someone who could still shed virus after they’ve recovered. And never stopped shedding the virus, in fact. The existence of this possibility makes the book more interesting – but it’s still hard to believe.

But given the premise, the book presents an intriguing situation. What would happen to humanity if we all became happy and altruistic? Would our current governments and economies collapse? But might it not be true that something better would arise to take its place? If it happened, would you want to get the virus, despite the 4% fatality rate? Recoverees say that at least those who die, die happy.

I definitely believed the part about people stirring up propaganda against the Recoverees and starting conspiracy theories against them. And it was funny when ruthless folks trying to stop the virus got thwarted by the kind, altruistic folks. Because after all, what they have is good for humanity! I also felt like the author realistically showed people’s motivations changing – but their keeping their main personality and still being able to make choices, sometimes against their new instincts.

So as usual, besides an entertaining ride, Neal Shusterman gave me plenty of philosophical questions to mull over. Now the only problem is waiting for the next book to come out.

storyman.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/all_better_now.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.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Enter the Body, by Joy McCullough

Audiobooks, Historical, Teen Fiction Review 0

Enter the Body

by Joy McCullough
read by a full cast,
including Joy McCullough, Valerie Rose Lohman, Annie Q, and Victoria Villarreal

Listening Library, 2023. 4 hours, 23 minutes.
Review written April 23, 2023, from a library eaudiobook

Joy McCullough’s debut novel, the amazing Blood Water Paint was published the year I was on the Newbery committee, so when I hear she’s written another book, I make sure to read it. This one has more of her innovative work, looking at history in a completely new way. Of course, in this case, it’s invented history — invented by Shakespeare.

The book is centered in a trap room beneath a stage. We’ve got Shakespeare’s tragic heroines spending eternity there. All of them died horribly.

Most of them go off into corners, but Juliet, Ophelia, and Cordelia get to talking. They tell their stories from their own perspectives. All of them died tragically, because of men.

But then the part I like is where they decide to make their own choices and rewrite their stories as they want them told.

I listened to this book, and the audio production is very well done, using separate voices for the different girls. But I suspect I would have enjoyed it more reading the print version, because it’s easier to notice the author’s craft — such as when the lines start going in iambic pentameter.

In the Author’s Note she mentions that Shakespeare was known for taking established work and making it his own, so she feels she’s following in his footsteps with this book.

joymccullough.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/enter_the_body.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.

What did you think of this book?

Review of The Inheritance Games, by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Mystery, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Inheritance Games

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
read by Christie Moreau

Hachette Audio, 2020. 10 hours, 45 minutes.
Review written March 24, 2023, from a library eaudiobook

Thanks to my friend Lisa for recommending this series to me. I’d seen the hype about the fourth book coming out this summer.

The Inheritance Games begins a series about a billionaire who died and who left puzzles for his family after him.

The biggest puzzle of all is why he left his entire multi-billion dollar estate to Avery Grahams, a teen who’d been living in her car before she got the news, in order to avoid her sister’s abusive boyfriend.

But Avery gets called to the reading of the will of Tobias Hawthorne, along with the whole family. She’s never met any of these people before. So she’s as shocked as anyone when she learns he’s left the bulk of his estate to her, passing over his grandsons, the four Hawthorne brothers.

There is a condition: She has to live in Hawthorne house for one year. It’s an enormous place, so it shouldn’t be difficult. But then someone apparently tries to kill her. And there’s the question of how she feels about the Hawthorne brothers. And she’s warned about the last girl at her new private school who lived at Hawthorne house and turned up dead.

Along with all that, the Hawthorne brothers tell her that their grandfather was always setting puzzles for them, and the letters left to them are obviously another puzzle. Avery thinks the solution to the puzzles may explain why he picked her to inherit.

But the question is: Is Avery’s existence at Hawthorne House just a part of the puzzle, or is this amazing inheritance due to something special about her?

This puzzle novel is fun, though I was a little disappointed that the clues weren’t such that the reader could really play along. Fun to watch them get solved, though. And I’m proud to say that I saw a twist at the end coming long before it happened.

And although they did solve a major puzzle in this book, the ending hints that there are more puzzles to come. The series was originally advertised as a trilogy, but book four is coming out this summer. I think I have been enticed into reading more books. And who doesn’t like a Cinderella story where a worthy but poor heroine comes into great wealth?

jenniferlynnbarnes.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/inheritance_games.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.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Kill Joy, by Holly Jackson

Audiobooks, Mystery, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Kill Joy

by Holly Jackson
read by Bailey Carr, Raymond J. Lee, and Bruce Mann

Listening Library, 2023. 2 hours, 37 minutes.
Review written March 12, 2023, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Kill Joy is a prequel novella to A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder. It is just plain fun. I was relieved about that, having recently finished Holly Jackson’s utterly terrifying Five Survive. This one is actually not scary.

What we’ve got is the story of how Pip chose her senior capstone project that led to her investigating the murder of Andie Bell, which started the events in the A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder trilogy.

It all begins with a murder mystery party.

The party happens toward the end of Pip’s junior year. Her friends are there — friends whose names I recognize from the series. It happens at Connor Reynolds’ house, and his big brother Jamie runs the mystery and plays the part of a Scotland Yard detective.

I was waiting for the mystery party to turn sinister, and, well, I won’t tell you about that. But let’s just say that unlike any other Holly Jackson book I’ve read, this one was more fun than scary.

So that’s why I think this is a good book to read after you’ve read the whole trilogy. It’s fun to get more insight into the characters and have some fun with them and understand how it all began. If you start with the prequel, you’re going to be very misled about the level of tension in the later books. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Oh, and the audio version has the same excellent production as the trilogy, with multiple voice actors and the same theme music at the beginning and end. A great listening experience!

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/kill_joy.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.

What did you think of this book?

Review of An Ugly World for Beautiful Boys, by Rob Costello

Contemporary, Teen Fiction Review 0

An Ugly World for Beautiful Boys

by Rob Costello

Lethe Press, 2025. 376 pages.
Review written May 1, 2025, from an Advance Reader Copy sent to me by the author.

Toby Ryerson is flamboyantly gay in a small town that doesn’t know what to make of him. This book is written as a letter to his dead mother, who died of an overdose when Toby was a little boy. At the time, Toby’s big brother Jimmy put his life on hold to take care of Toby. Now that Toby is seventeen, he’s convinced that Jimmy doesn’t really see him. Toby’s sure he’s just like their mother – destined for meaningless sex with lots of people. Jimmy dreams of sending him to college, but Toby dreams of moving to New York City and becoming part of the party scene.

And then in a gas station convenience store, Dylan, the boy Toby loves and secretly has sex with at the Marsh Trail – he says terrible things about Toby’s dead mother to his tough-guy friends. Toby decides a fitting response is to tell those thugs what he and Dylan have been up to. And when they in turn start beating Toby up, a tall handsome stranger comes to his rescue – but it turns out he’s not such a stranger after all.

And that all starts a chain of events that rapidly gets way out of Toby’s control.

I read this book because the author sent it to me after I loved the anthology he edited, We Mostly Come Out at Night. And I’ll be honest, it’s not a book I would have picked up otherwise. Toby makes a whole lot of bad choices in the course of the book, and the “gritty” description on the cover is apt. It comes to be clear that Toby feels responsible for his mother’s death and many other things as well. So when bad things happen, he feels like that’s what he deserves.

However, Rob Costello is a good writer, and he makes me care deeply about Toby, even while reading about his bad choices. It convicts me, because in real life I might have dismissed Toby as deserving what he got – but by reading his perspective, I understood better how it could happen, I really cared about what was happening, and was super thankful for the appropriately hopeful ending.

Here’s an excerpt from an Author’s Note at the back of the book that explains why this book is important, with all its grit:

Teenagers need and respect truth, even when it’s upsetting. Even when it makes adults uncomfortable. At a time when there are growing calls for censoring even the most innocent of queer books, queer teens urgently need stories that address the specific traumas many of them still face. When we shy away from telling such stories, we reinforce the terrible message of the censors that certain queer experiences are shameful and should be kept hidden. That the queer teens who endure them are problematic and don’t matter.

In this book, Toby deals with homophobia, bullying, outing, sexual predation, and assault. His world includes pervasive alcoholism and substance abuse, promiscuity, homophobic slurs and violence, and even suicide. Toby’s story is not for everyone. Ultimately, however, he discovers his inner strength, leading him to a place of family and forgivenss, self-respect and love. He learns that it’s never too late for hope. He finds his way.

This is a book for readers who need it, and who need it for that classic reason: to know they are not alone. I want those readers to draw their own strength from Toby’s story. I want to say to them, “I see you. I love you. I honor your struggle, and I know that you will find your way.”

Even though I would have said this story wasn’t for me, I feel the richer for having read it, more empathetic, and more caring about lives very different from mine – lives full of value.

cloudbusterpress.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/ugly_world_for_beautiful_boys.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.

What did you think of this book?