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

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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

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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

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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!

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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

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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.

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Review of Imposter Syndrome and Other Confessions of Alejandra Kim, by Patricia Park

Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Imposter Syndrome

and Other Confessions of Alejandra Kim

by Patricia Park

Crown, 2023. 294 pages.
Review written March 4, 2023, from a library book
Starred Review

Well, today I learned a lesson that I also learned when I was on the Newbery: Read the author bio *first*!

Here’s the thing: I’m on the Morris Award Committee this year. Our mission is to find the best Young Adult Debut book of the year. The trouble is, our definition of “debut” is different from the publishing industry’s definition of “debut.” It can’t be just an author’s first young adult book — it has to be their very first published book.

So, I was reading this book on a Saturday off, and I’d turned down an invitation so I could spend my day at home reading. I was three-fourths of the way through and was thinking that the book is excellent and might be worth nominating for the award (This means the entire committee will read it.), and then I glanced at the author’s bio on the back flap and read the words, “and the author of the acclaimed adult novel Re Jane.” Oops!

But my time wasn’t wasted — this was an excellent book, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, and, yes, I finished it. And now, since it’s not eligible for the Morris Award, I can tell you about it.

The narrator catches your attention with her opening paragraph:

When you have a name like Alejandra Kim, teachers always stare at you like you’re a typo on the attendance sheet. Each school year, without fail, they look at my face and the roster and back again, like they can’t compute my super-Korean face and my super-Spanish first name. Multiply that by eight different teachers for eight periods a day, and boom: welcome to my life at Quaker Oats Prep.

We learn in her “Origin Story” first chapter that Alejandra was born in America, but both her parents were born in Argentina, and all of their parents were born in Korea. So she’s from Latinx culture, with Korean appearance.

She’s a scholarship student and a senior at a Quaker-sponsored prep school. Her father died eight months ago, and her mother is working extra jobs to help pay 10% of Alejandra’s tuition. Now that she’s a senior, Ally just wants to get into a good college (she has one in mind) and get away from New York City.

Then a big name author comes to teach their Creative Writing class, and when he sees Alejandra’s name, makes a veiled racist comment. Later, when Ally’s best friend hears about it, she takes up her friend’s cause — without asking Ally — and makes a big issue out of it.

Meanwhile, her best friend in the neighborhood has returned from visiting his grandmother in the Dominican Republic — and he has somehow gotten much more attractive while he was gone. But Ally keeps her two worlds apart and doesn’t know how much to tell him about what she’s dealing with at school.

None of that sounds as interesting when I summarize it as it did when I was reading it. If you like books about contemporary teens at all, this one pulls you into the story of an Argentine Korean American who’s missing her dad, and thinking about how she wants her life to go beyond high school in a world that doesn’t know what to make of her.

patriciapark.com
GetUnderlined.com

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Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

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 Himawari House, by Harmony Becker

Award Winners, Contemporary, Cross Cultural, Graphic Novel, Teen Fiction Review 0

Himawari House

by Harmony Becker

First Second, 2021. 380 pages.
Review written February 26, 2023, from a library book
2023 Asian/Pacific American Youth Literature Award Winner

This graphic novel was creator by the illustrator of George Takei’s graphic memoir, They Called Us Enemy. It’s about three Asian girls in Japan from other countries, staying in a home called Himawari House.

As the book opens, we follow Nao, who was born in Japan, but grew up in the United States. She doesn’t remember much about Japan, especially not the language, but it’s the background for her dreams, and she decided to spend a year in Japan after high school, before going to college.

She learns that her housemates are from Korea and Singapore. As the book goes on, we learn what things in their past made them decide to come to Japan. At the start, Nao is simply overjoyed that they both speak English. And there are also two boys living in Himawari House. One of them seems rude, but maybe he’s just shy because he doesn’t speak English very well?

This story has a lot of depth to it. I liked the way the author put in Japanese characters along with English in the speech bubbles when they were speaking in Japanese — or didn’t put the English where Nao didn’t understand the Japanese.

Taken all together, the book gives the feeling of the challenges of living where you don’t speak the language, as well as bonds that form and deep moments of connection. I thought the graphic novel format with speech bubbles in different languages was extra effective for this story.

harmonybecker.com
firstsecondbooks.com

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Review of Holy Terrors, by Margaret Owen, read by Saskia Maarleveld

Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Holy Terrors

by Margaret Owen
read by Saskia Maarleveld

Macmillan Audio, 2025. 16 hours, 15 minutes.
Review written April 11, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I’ve said how much I like the recent trend of duologies – but this trilogy conclusion to the story begun in Little Thieves reminds me just how grand and wonderful a trilogy can be. Yes, you definitely need to read these books in order. If you haven’t started yet, do it! You are in for a treat! I want to reread them to freshly appreciate all the nuances built into the story, and if I read the print version (I’ve purchased my own copies.), I know I’ll hear Saskia Maarleveld’s voice in my head – she’s become the voice of these characters I love.

This book opens more than a year after what I thought was a terrible choice Vanya made at the end of the last book. But something fun about this book is that each section begins with a story of what would have happened if Vanya had made a different choice – and the first story told is about that one. Things don’t exactly turn out better.

But in her actual life, Vanya has been living as the Pfennigeist – robbing the rich to help the poor, or at least helping people get justice who are otherwise overlooked and oppressed. She’s dated some men, but is single right now.

And then someone starts murdering powerful people – and leaving Vanya’s calling card behind – a red penny. So of course the prefects come after her. And wouldn’t you know it, Emeric Conrad is the prefect in charge of the investigation – and he’s engaged to be married, to someone Vanya can’t help but like, much to her chagrin.

That’s the beginning. When more deaths happen, it’s obvious Vanya didn’t do them, but she’s starting to gain powers because of what the people believe about the Pfennigeist. And when the actual assassin begins stopping time to carry out their murders, it doesn’t work on Vanya because of her time as a child with her godmothers, Fortune and Death. So Vanya becomes an important part of the investigation as Electors gather to choose a new Emperor – but more and more keep dying.

The book continues to explore past choices Vanya has made – so you really do need to have read the earlier books (You’ll be glad you did!). And those books also laid the groundwork for how low gods gain power from what people believe about them.

The final crisis is a bit confusing, because besides magic, gods, and time manipulation, alternate universes are involved (and the different lives Vanya would have had with different choices). I’ll be honest – Normally that would have been a dealbreaker for me, but I’m too crazy about this series to let that stop me here – I just want to read it again. And it turns out, that all helped to explore questions about identity and how that’s affected by our choices, and what it takes to make a great relationship, too.

I was also delighted with characters coming back that I loved, and not as delighted about several coming back whom I’d hated – but that history added all the more power to the story.

And it all reminds me how truly great a trilogy can be.

margaret-owen.com

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Review of Kings of B’More, by R. Eric Thomas

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Teen Fiction Review 0

Kings of B’More

by R. Eric Thomas
read by Torian Brackett

Listening Library, 2022. 9 hours, 58 minutes.
Review written January 25, 2023, from a library eaudiobook.
2023 Stonewall Honor Book

Kings of B’More is a story of two friends on an adventure. Harrison and Linus are two black gay boys, who’ve just spent every day together in the summer before their junior year of high school. And then Linus tells Harrison that he and his dad are moving from Baltimore to North Carolina on the very next weekend.

Harrison is devastated. It’s not a friendship he wants to lose. When his father chooses “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” for Family Movie Night, Harrison gets an idea. He’ll plan a Ferris Day for Linus! They’ll take off from their jobs and go off and have an adventure, doing things that scare them and things they’ve always wanted to do. It will be a grand gesture that will make sure Linus doesn’t forget him and cement their friendship forever.

Of course, there’s a catch. Both Harrison’s and Linus’s parents use an app that tracks their movements. So they’re going to need someone to take their phones as a decoy to the places where they’d normally spend the day. They find an app and an old ipad to use in place of phones.

Harrison makes elaborate plans and sets his heart on making Ferris Day a grand success. Of course, it turns out that his plans start going awry from the very beginning. But could it be that the adventure turns out even better than he’d planned?

This is a refreshingly lovely story of friendship. Oh, and it made me resurrect my intention of visiting the Museum of African American History in Washington, DC, which I’d put aside when the pandemic started. I did enjoy the way the book is grounded in real places, even if I only recognized the DC ones.

rericthomas.com
PenguinTeen.com

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Review of Girls Like Her, by Melanie Sumrow

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Girls Like Her

by Melanie Sumrow
read by January LaVoy

Clarion Books, 2024. 9 hours, 4 minutes.
Review written April 2, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2025 Odyssey Award Honor Audiobook

Wow. Odyssey Award Honorees are always worth listening to. Every time. This one had me riveted from the moment it started.

It starts off telling about a prominent citizen who’s been murdered. And that police have arrested a suspect. Then we meet the 15-year-old girl who killed him, already in juvenile hall for months, meeting with a new social worker before a hearing where the prosecution wants to have her tried as an adult.

The prosecution gets its way in that hearing, so Ruby is moved to a women’s jail. And she knows that if she doesn’t win her case, she will be in prison for life. The book uses multiple formats to tell the story – some news clippings (with a news show sound effect), some court transcripts from her trial, some notes from the social worker, some letters Ruby writes to a friend on the outside, but the bulk of the book is Ruby’s meetings with Cadence, the social worker, as she tries to get Ruby to open up and tell her story.

And it’s a hard story. Ruby was kicked out by her mother when she was 13. She fell in with someone she thought loved her (still thinking that in prison), but was sex trafficked by him. (I don’t think I’m giving too much away here. The reader/listener has the idea much sooner than Ruby does.) But we don’t find out what happened the day of the murder until the end of the book.

The production quality of this audiobook is excellent, with plenty of sound effects to give you cues about the different types of material used. The narrator’s voice adjusts to the different materials and speakers so much I thought there was more than one person reading until I looked it up at the end.

It’s a powerful story, but sad. The author has worked as a lawyer, so it all has the ring of truth, and she has listed some resources at the back. May our justice system do better for girls like her.

melaniesumrow.com

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