Review of True True, by Don P. Hooper

Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

True True

by Don P. Hooper

Nancy Paulsen Books (Penguin Random House), 2023. 368 pages.
Review written October 20, 2023, from my own copy, sent by the publisher.
Starred Review

True True is the story of Gil, a Black teenager from Brooklyn with Jamaican roots, who transfers for his senior year to a prep school in Manhattan to be on the robotics team. But once there, he gets confronted by racism – a football player and two teammates start a fight with him, and Gil is the only one who gets suspended and put on probation.

On probation, he’s not supposed to work with the robotics team for a month. But he knows he can help – is it worth doing if he can’t take any credit?

The racism is quite blatant, but still unacknowledged. Gil fumes and figures out how to get those opportunities his grandma and mother sacrificed for, while still showing his friends in Brooklyn that he cares about them. The sensei at his dojo has a copy of The Art of War, and Gil tries to use the principles found there to battle the racism so strong at school.

It’s all portrayed in such a way that it feels real, and we are with Gil as he tries to juggle friends, family, classes, martial arts, robotics, all while trying to battle racism in the most savvy way. He makes many mistakes along the way, which gets us all the more firmly on his side.

This book has so much heart, it doesn’t feel like an issue book. It’s a book about a teen trying to deal with what life throws at him.

DonHooper.com
PenguinTeen.com

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Review of Legendary Frybread Drive-In, edited by Cynthia Leitich Smith

Paranormal, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Legendary Frybread Drive-In

Intertribal Stories

edited by Cynthia Leitich Smith

Heartdrum, 2025. 7 hours, 46 minutes.
Review written December 20, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Seventeen authors and seven narrators have created this delightful work of art. Here’s how editor Cynthia Leitich Smith describes the magical place at the center of these stories:

Sandy June’s Legendary Frybread Drive-In is a liminal (or in-between) space that feels like home, welcoming Indigenous young heroes and their chosen kin. It’s a refuge, a place of reconciliation, of romance, a warm meal, an Elder’s hug, and artistic inspiration. The grandparents who run it offer happiness, hope, and healing with frybread on the side.

The list of seventeen authors who collaborated on this book is impressive. The four I’d already read award-winning young adult novels from – Darcie Little Badger, Jen Ferguson, Byron Graves, and Angeline Boulley – did not disappoint, but neither did any of the other authors.

The idea behind the book is that Sandy June’s Legendary Frybread Drive-In is a place outside regular time and space. And indigenous people – teens in these stories – can find their way to Sandy June’s from wherever they are in Turtle Island. The path will open up for them when it’s needed. And the food is the best anyone’s ever tasted.

The stories bring together people across generations, show us teens finding true love, grappling with loss, and finding self-confidence and direction.

I probably should have read the book instead of listening (and I still may some day) – but it was easier for the book to get to the top of my audiobook queue than my visual reading queue. But I may have to visually read it again to catch more of the characters who show up in more than one story – and to appreciate it from the beginning as I understand better how the paranormal drive-in works. Or just for the fun of reading it again! This is a set of feel-good stories from a bunch of stellar indigenous authors.

cynthialeitichsmith.com

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Review of The Princess and the Grilled Cheese Sandwich, by Deya Muniz

Fantasy, Graphic Novel, Romance, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Princess and the Grilled Cheese Sandwich

by Deya Muniz

Little, Brown and Company, 2023. 250 pages.
Review written June 20, 2023, from a library book
Starred Review

The Princess and the Grilled Cheese Sandwich is a delightfully fun and light-hearted graphic novel about a young noblewoman named Cam who must pose as a man in order to inherit her father’s estate. She moves to the capital city to be far away from the people who knew her before her father’s death – and catches the princess’s eye.

The two of them do many things together, including enjoying grilled cheese sandwiches. (Everyone in the capital city has a name that’s a type of cheese.) As they fall in love, Cam realizes she can’t take things any further because she needs to keep her secrets. And nobody likes to find out the one they love has been hiding who they really are.

I was rather amazed this is a debut. The drawings are wonderful – I especially loved all the outfits. Cam keeps her hair long but wears fake sideburns and nice suits when posing as a man, and it wasn’t too hard to believe that she could have fooled people. (Maybe a little hard. But not too bad, because she did look like a well-dressed young man.) There’s variety in the panel sizes, and the story keeps moving at a nice pace. It only took me about an hour to read, and left me smiling.

I’m writing this before discussing anything with the Morris committee, so my opinions are entirely my own, and I’ll have to wait to publish this review until after we’ve made our decision. But I am looking forward to more from this author, and I think teens are going to love her work.

lbyr.com
theNOVL.com

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Review of The Love Match, by Priyanka Taslim

Contemporary, Romance, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Love Match

by Priyanka Taslim

Salaam Reads (Simon & Schuster), 2023. 386 pages.
Review written February 10, 2023, from my own book, sent to me by the publisher.
Starred Review

The Love Match is a light-hearted rom-com novel set among the Bangladeshi Muslim diaspora community of Paterson, New Jersey, where the author grew up.

Zahra Khan has recently graduated from high school and is sad that she’s going to have to let go of her acceptance to Columbia, but with her father’s recent death, she needs to keep the family going. Her best friends are happily making college plans, while she keeps working and setting aside money. Her mother doesn’t respect Zahra’s dreams of being a writer and wants to find a nice Bangladeshi boy to marry Zahra and take care of her.

When her mother sets her sights for Zahra on a Bangladeshi boy from a rich family, neither Zahra nor the boy, Harun, are excited about the idea. But neither wants to disappoint their parents. So instead, they make a plan to convince their parents that this match can’t possibly work.

But while they are doing their fake dates, a new Bangladeshi starts working at the shop where Zahra does. He seems to understand her dreams in a way Harun doesn’t. But he doesn’t have any money or family, so how can Zahra ever get her family behind that romance?

The cover means we’re not surprised by the love triangle. It all plays out in happily predictable ways – a completely fun ride, with all the details about Bangladeshi culture making it all the more interesting. Zahra’s a character readers will be happy to root for. I enjoyed every minute I read this novel.

priyankataslim.com
simonandschuster.com/teen

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Review of Dan in Green Gables, by Rey Terciero and Claudia Aguirre

Contemporary, Graphic Novel, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Dan in Green Gables

A Modern Reimagining of Anne of Green Gables

by Rey Terciero and Claudia Aguirre

Penguin Workshop, 2025. 252 pages.
Review written October 9, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

You know I had to read this book because of what an L. M. Montgomery and Anne of Green Gables fan I am!

This is not a retelling of Anne of Green Gables – it didn’t have very many parallel incidents or try to stick to the storyline (which is honestly pretty episodic, anyway). But the set-up parallels Anne’s situation:

Red-haired and freckled, 15-year-old Dan has been moving from place to place with his mother all his life. One day without warning, she takes him to the Tennessee home – complete with green gables – of his dead father’s mother and father – his Mawmaw and Pawpaw. Mawmaw is warm and welcoming, but his grandfather is immediately put off by Dan’s obvious queerness.

When his mother leaves without warning the next morning before Dan wakes up – Dan has to find his place there. Like Anne, he asks a lot of questions at church. Like Anne, his flamboyant presence at school makes a stir. Like Anne, Dan is rather dramatic in expressing himself. Though the details for all those things are quite different with a queer kid in 1995 small-town Tennessee instead of an orphan girl in 1800s small-town Prince Edward Island.

But like Anne, the beauty of the story comes in watching Dan settle in, make friends, find a home, and win the love of his two elderly caretakers – even the cantankerous one.

This is a graphic novel, so it’s a quick read – but packs a heart-warming punch.

rexogle.com
PenguinTeen.com

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Review of The Eternal Return of Clara Hart, by Louise Finch

Science Fiction, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Eternal Return of Clara Hart

by Louise Finch

Little Island, 2023. First published in the United Kingdom in 2022. 260 pages.
Review written August 7, 2023, from a library book.
Starred Review

The Eternal Return of Clara Hart, no surprise, is a time loop book. And yes, it seems that every time Spence goes through that momentous day over again, it begins with Clara Hart hitting his car in the high school parking lot and ends with Clara Hart dead. But then Spence wakes up, again having spent the night in his car, and it happens all over again.

It wasn’t a day that Spence even wanted to live through once – it’s the anniversary of his mother’s death. His rugby friends don’t remember it’s a rough day for him. And he decides to get through the party they end the day with by drinking himself into oblivion. The first time, at least.

There are little changes, though. And then Spence decides to see if he can make changes himself. And get through the day without Clara dying. Surely, she must be the key. If he can save her life, maybe he can get to the next day of his own life?

To add to the fun, his philosophy class professor is talking about Nietsche’s thought experiment about eternal return: “the idea that this universe and our lives recur in an identical form an infinite number of times.”

This is not a truth, of course, but a thought experiment. If this were true, would we react with joy or despair? Would we affirm life or not? And if we had to live our lives over and over again, what implications would there be for our moral choices?

I didn’t like Spence at the start of the book. A character drinking himself into oblivion while his friends mistreat girls isn’t the way to win my heart. But by the end of the book, I liked him very much. He shows lots of character growth as the book goes on. The book has a lot in common with the film “Ground Hog Day,” but in a high school, as the character takes his repeated days to grow to care about others and examine what he took for granted.

The book warns the reader that there’s sexual assault in its pages. There’s also repeated death. But the author takes those situations and shows a high school boy learning to care about others and be a better person.

louisefinch.co.uk

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Review of When We Ride, by Rex Ogle, read by Ramón de Ocampo

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

When We Ride

by Rex Ogle
read by Ramón de Ocampo

Recorded Books, 2025. 3 hours, 28 minutes.
Review written July 11, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I’ve come to know and love Rex Ogle’s writing from his award-winning memoirs about growing up in poverty and his recent Printz Honor book about being homeless as a teen after he came out as gay.

When We Ride is equally heartrending. This time a novel in verse. Fair warning: Like the others, it’s not exactly pleasant reading. But the novel is worse than the memoirs because now we have absolutely no guarantee the main character will get through it and come out okay. And here’s a heads’ up without being too spoilerish: The ending does not at all leave me feeling happy.

However, reading this short novel will build your empathy. I heard the author speak at ALA Annual Conference, and he said he wrote it in verse to give it lots of white space, since that’s the only kind of book his best friend from high school would ever read.

And the book is about two best friends in their senior year of high school. They live across the street from each other, and they’ve been friends since elementary school, so close they call each other Brother. Benny is the one telling the story. He’s working hard to go to college and get funds to pay for it. His mother is a drug addict who’s gotten clean, and she wants nothing more than for Benny to make a success of himself. And be nothing like her. She gave Benny her own car and rides the bus to her two jobs. And she works hard to provide for Benny, who also works at a diner in a job he hates, but works to help out his Mom.

Benny’s best friend Lawson, though, has taken another route to make ends meet. He’s dealing drugs. It starts as only weed, but things progress over the course of the year. Lawson doesn’t have a car, and most of the poems in this book begin with Lawson calling and saying, “I need a ride.”

Since Benny is Hispanic, it’s all too easy for him to imagine being pulled over by cops when Lawson is carrying drugs and Benny’s entire future being ruined. Lawson tells him if Benny doesn’t know he has drugs, there will be no problem. And as his brother, isn’t he supposed to be there when Lawson needs him? So Benny goes back and forth with guilt and anger and fear.

All the adults in Benny’s life tell him that Lawson is bad news and he needs to stop spending any time with him. But the reader (or listener) comes to understand how deep that tie of brotherhood runs and to see the great things about Lawson that keep Benny’s loyalty. But none of that makes Lawson’s path any safer.

This book is short, but hard-hitting. These characters will live in my head for a long time. It made me care about someone I would have otherwise dismissed – helping me understand more deeply my own belief that all people are made in the image of God. Yes, even drug dealers. When you know someone’s story, it’s so much easier to see their humanity.

rexogle.com

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Review of The Davenports, by Krystal Marquis, read by Joniece Abbot-Pratt

Audiobooks, Historical, Romance, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Davenports

by Krystal Marquis
read by Joniece Abbott-Pratt

Listening Library, 2023. 12 hours, 2 minutes.
Review written April 29, 2023, from a library eaudiobook
Starred Review

The Davenports reminds me of a Jane Austen book – a wealthy family trying to get their kids married off – only this one is set in 1910, and the family are successful Black Americans in Chicago. The father of the Davenport clan was born enslaved, but after escaping, ended up making a fortune with a carriage company. And he’s happily giving his family a much better life – maybe sheltering them a little too much.

Now the two daughters and one son are at an age to be married – but nobody falls in love with the person their parents want and expect them to marry. And it’s quite fun watching it happen.

There are four viewpoint characters: Olivia Davenport is getting ready for her second season and really needs to find a husband this time around. When Jacob Lawrence shows up from England, everyone thinks she’s found one. But then she stumbles into meetings of activists when she’s doing charity work and learns the plight of her people in the South.

Olivia’s friend Ruby has been in love with Olivia’s brother, John Davenport, since they were kids. Her father is running for mayor of Chicago, and her parents want Ruby to go ahead and get him to propose. Maybe if she makes him jealous….

Younger sister Helen Davenport is never happier than working in the garage on the modern horseless carriages. Maybe she can help John convince their father to expand the business to automobiles. But instead, her parents hire an etiquette tutor to bring Helen into line.

The final viewpoint character is Amy-Rose, long time friend and maid to the Davenport girls. She’s been saving her money, and now she’s almost ready to start her own business and open a salon.

I thought I knew where this book was going, but all the romances run into snags toward the end of the book, and the author’s note hints at a sequel. So I’m looking forward to more time with the Davenport family in the future. The author’s note also tells us that the family was based on an actual family led by a formerly enslaved Black man who got rich in the carriage business. She wondered what life might have been like for his daughters. And her wondering gave us this delightful book.

krystalmarquis.com

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Review of If Looks Could Kill, by Julie Berry

Audiobooks, History, Paranormal, Teen Fiction Review 0

If Looks Could Kill

by Julie Berry
read by Jayne Entwistle

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2025. 15 hours, 24 minutes.
Review written November 14, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

This brilliant novel is Medusa vs. Jack the Ripper! But not a Greek Medusa. Instead, Medusas are something like vampires, getting created by a kind of infection. But then they stand against those who would prey on vulnerable women.

The setting of the book is the Bowery in New York City in 1888. Jack the Ripper, the Whitechapel Killer, is fleeing London after a very strange encounter with his last victim. Meanwhile, in New York, 18-year-old Tabitha Woodward is adjusting to her new life in the Salvation Army and her annoying partner, Pearl. Tabitha and Pearl visit the saloons and bars, selling the Salvation Army’s newsletter and coaxing people to come hear the preaching. They meet the people in the city and see a girl get pulled into the orbit of a notorious madam.

And I don’t want to give anything away, but yes, the story ends up being Medusas vs. Jack the Ripper. With the innocent and earnest Salvation Army girls in the middle of it.

I appreciated the long historical note at the back reflecting the author’s deep research. She chose a likely suspect for Jack the Ripper who actually came to New York after the murders. She even gave him a plausible motive, using the theosophical teachings popular at the time to use almost-living organs to try to cure his own illness. She honored his victims, who may not have been prostitutes at all. And I especially love the way she also researched the early Salvation Army and showed Tabitha and Pearl’s deep faith and desire to help people in trouble in the slums of New York. I was afraid when they showed up that they’d be a caricature, but they were the opposite of that.

And I do love a story where the helpless become powerful! But these Medusas don’t blindly use their power. It’s not a matter of one look turns the viewer to stone – they have to mean it. And they grapple with the meaning of that power. There are scary moments, and a few in-the-nick-of-time rescues, but it all adds up to a fascinating historical story with lots of suspense. There’s even a developing sweet romance.

I heard about this book at ALA Annual Conference last June, but wasn’t able to get an Advance Reader Copy, so I was looking forward to its publication ever since and got on the holds list for the audio the first day I purchased it for the library. I knew to expect good things from Julie Berry, and I was not disappointed.

julieberrybooks.com

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Review of The Alchemy of Moonlight, by David Ferraro, read by Will Watt

Historical, Paranormal, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Alchemy of Moonlight

by David Ferraro
read by Will Watt

Dreamscape Media, 2023. 9 hours, 44 minutes.
Review written September 16, 2023, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Is it just me, or does anyone else get a crush on eaudiobook narrators with dreamy voices? As soon as I heard the first few sentences from Will Watt, I was hooked on listening to this book – never mind that he was talking about a young marquis discovering a severed hand next to the path on the estate where he was hiding out as a servant.

This book riffs off the gothic classic The Mysteries of Udolpho, except with a gay man named Emile as the protagonist instead of a young lady named Emily. (I’ve never read the original, but I have read Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey that spoofed it, and I checked Wikipedia for the basic plot after a castle called Udolpho was mentioned.)

There’s a love triangle in this version involving our marquis and the local doctor’s apprentice, as well as a count attached to the estate where Emile is serving. But Emile’s pose as a servant must not be found out, because his aunt is in charge of his own estate until he comes of age. If he doesn’t give up his fondness for men and marry, she will have him committed to an asylum.

And things get even more complicated. The reader will be much quicker than Emile to figure out the connection between body parts on the path and the fact that family members send almost all the servants away once a month, but those who remain administer injections all night long as they suffer and writhe in their beds.

I won’t say much about the plot. It’s based on a gothic novel, and yes, it’s over-the-top. But I think it helped to listen to a skilled narrator (with a dreamy voice) reading about the events completely in character, completely startled when supernatural things happen. Hearing his skepticism – but inability to discount the evidence of his own eyes – helps the listener keep their own skepticism at bay. I was with them every step of the way.

This book is an adventure with many gruesome moments, but if you’re in the mood for some melodrama at all, you’ll have a great romp with this. Not having read the original, I’m still quite confident that the ending in this version is quite different. And it certainly surprised me.

I do recommend listening to this one. (Is it just me? That voice!)

davidferraroauthor.com

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