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 Drown Me with Dreams, by Gabi Burton

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Drown Me with Dreams

by Gabi Burton
read by Dami Olukoya

Bloomsbury YA, 2024. 12 hours, 52 minutes.
Review written August 17, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Let me say again that I love the new trend in fantasy books of publishing duologies instead of trilogies. Drown Me with Dreams completes the duology begun in Sing Me to Sleep (a 2023 Sonderbooks Stand-out), following the siren Saoirse, who’s the only one of her kind in the kingdom of Keirdre, after the king slaughtered them all as monsters. (An advantage to listening to the book is now I know how to pronounce that.)

Things have changed for Saoirse in this book – I don’t want to give too many details and give away the first book, but now Saoirse is living openly as a siren, and she finds a way to cross the barrier to leave Keirdre. But she won’t be able to come back if Hayes doesn’t bring the barrier down – and that could have terrible consequences.

In this book, besides doing some sleuthing and plotting for the good of the kingdom, Saoirse also learns not to be afraid of her power – and that she doesn’t have to use it to kill.

In the first book, I got a little bogged down with the world-building – a kingdom enclosed by a barrier that not even birds can get through? I have trouble believing it. But in this book, I was used to the idea, and the focus was more on how could they bring it down without starting multiple wars. There was also speculation about what makes a good ruler. Can a good man be a good ruler to a kingdom that was founded to reward ruthlessness?

I’m also a little skeptical of Saoirse’s ability to taste other people’s emotions. Because how does it get in her mouth instantly? I mean, if it were a smell, it could waft in the air, but these were described even as tastes in the back of her throat. Again by this time, I was used to the idea, and the descriptions were so creative, never mind details like that. The emotions weren’t described as simply salty or spicy or sweet, but through a wide range from cinnamon to orange to old stew going rancid. It turns out that with this power, Saoirse can tell when someone is lying, which did make sense.

For most of the book, Saoirse is across the barrier from the one she loves – but she can dream walk to see him. There’s another world-building detail that was a little hard for me – they can touch and feel each other, but it’s only a dream. So when Saoirse talks to Hayes in the dream walk – what is her actual body doing? Apparently nothing. It’s all a little murky – but the romance is beautifully done, and questions of trust are explored. And then the beads she uses to dream walk stop working exactly when it causes the most possible misunderstanding. (Which is precisely how coincidences should work in fiction – cause problems, and we’ll believe it. Solve problems, and it feels way too convenient.)

So – without giving details, this second book made me love the whole duology more. The first book was a debut novel I read when on the Morris Award Committee – and this second book is even stronger – full of tension and intrigue, and finishes off the story in a satisfying, but not predictable way. The author has already grown in her writing in just one book. I look forward to seeing what she will do next.

gabiburton.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 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 For Girls Who Walk Through Fire, by Kim DeRose

Paranormal, Teen Fiction Review 0

For Girls Who Walk Through Fire

by Kim DeRose

Union Square & Co., 2023. 307 pages.
Review written May 17, 2023, from an advance reader copy.

For Girls Who Walk Through Fire features Elliott, a teenage girl who’s attending a sexual assault survivors’ support group, but who hasn’t managed to talk about her own experience yet. And it all seems so pointless. What good does talking about it do?

When a member of their group who has anonymously taken her rapist to trial has the guy let off with a slap on the wrist, it just all seems too much for Elliott. At the same time, she finds a book in her dead mother’s things. The book promises to offer the spell she needs if Elliott can bring together a coven.

And so Elliott brings some girls together from the support group, and they begin casting spells for vengeance, because how else will justice be done? But there are some alarming results and the girls need to come to terms with what actually constitutes justice, and is the blowback worth it?

I won’t say how it ends except that the book does rise above a simple quest for justice. Some of the magic was a little murky in how it works, but this was an enjoyable read about a heavy but way too common topic.

If girls who have experienced this read this book, even though they may be sorry they don’t have a magic spellbook, I think they’ll be uplifted by the story of the power of having friends by your side.

kimderose.com
unionsquareandco.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 Catfish Rolling, by Clara Kumagai, read by Susan Momoko-Hingley

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

Catfish Rolling

by Clara Kumagai
read by Susan Momoko-Hingley

Clipper Audiobooks, 2023. 9 hours, 17 minutes.
Review written October 19, 2023, from a library eaudiobook

Catfish Rolling is an intriguing speculative fiction debut novel set in Japan after a series of earthquakes that also were timequakes.

Sora and her parents were visiting family in Japan from Vancouver when the first timequake hit years ago. They lost her mother in one of the zones where time was faster or slower and stayed in Japan to try to find her. Sora’s father is a scientist and made his career out of studying the time anomalies, but now he often seems confused, and traveling into the time-disrupted zones can’t be good for him.

That doesn’t stop Sora from traveling there herself to keep looking for her mother. Can people survive there? Sometimes she sees shadows. After graduating from high school, she sticks around their village to watch over her father but also to keep searching herself. She’s better than anyone at feeling the difference in the rate of time flow in the zones, and starts a black market business of taking people into the zones.

Now, I got hung up on some of the details occasionally. Seasons are caused by the tilt of the earth’s axis. So how could there be a zone on the same planet where in one place it’s Spring while nearby it’s Winter? They’re all on the same planet.

But Clara Kumagai’s skill was such that most of the time I could suspend my disbelief as Sora and her father took a scientific approach to the zones, trying to learn how they worked. They approached it as a serious scientific phenomenon, so as a reader it was easy to go along with that.

This book was engaging and fascinating, looked at as a dangerous scientific phenomenon that was hard to understand. So it’s a speculative fiction book about dealing with the unknown, but all bound up in grief and risk. I am looking forward to seeing more from this author.

clarakumagai.com

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Review of Under the Same Stars, by Libba Bray

Audiobooks, Historical, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Under the Same Stars

by Libba Bray
read by January LaVoy, Jeremy Carlisle Parker, and Major Curda

Macmillan Young Listeners, 2025. 16 hours, 31 minutes.
Review written June 10, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Under the Same Stars is a skillfully crafted historical novel about resistors in three time periods – 1941 Germany resistance, 1980s divided Berlin punk bands, and the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement. As the three stories progress, we learn that the stories are intertwined and there are returning characters.

One of those returning characters shows up early – the Bridegroom’s Oak, a tree in the forest outside Kleinwald Germany known for its magical matchmaking powers. We’ve also got a fairy tale about the tree, with forest magic woven through the tales.

Dear friends Sophie and Hanna start out by sending their own letters through the tree – which makes a cover for later using the tree to pass along forged documents to rescue people from Nazi Germany.

In 1980s West Berlin, Jenny, the young daughter of a diplomat isn’t at all happy about spending her summer away from her friends in Dallas. But when taking pictures of the city, she meets some punks and starts playing with their all-girl band, behind her parents’ back. And then she starts falling in love with her band mate, which would also horrify her parents. This girl is originally from East Berlin, and Jenny learns that the band’s music is an act of resistance.

And then in 2020, Miles is in isolation while one of his mothers got stuck overseas and the other is working around the clock in a New York City hospital. When his friend Chloe – who hadn’t been speaking to him – gets in touch, he starts working on the mystery of her grandmother’s partial story about a magical tree. Thinking about resistance helps him break out of isolation when the Black Lives Matter protests start up.

As usual, my summary doesn’t convey how well these stories are interwoven and the strong message that resistance is a loving and hopeful act. It’s something you do not for yourself, but because you have hope of a better world. It also conveys the message that the need for resistance is unfortunately very common.

I wish that message weren’t as timely as it is.

Even without the powerful message, this is a set of three gripping stories of folks who put their lives on the line.

libbabray.com

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