Review of Shut Up, This Is Serious, by Carolina Ixta, read by

Award Winners, Contemporary, Teen Fiction Review 0

Shut Up, This Is Serious

by Carolina Ixta
read by Frankie Corzo

Quill Tree Books, 2024. 10 hours, 19 minutes.
Review written January 22, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
2025 Morris Award Finalist
2025 Pura Belpré Young Adult Author Award

Shut Up, This Is Serious is about a high school senior named Belén whose life seems like it’s falling apart. Her best friend Leti is pregnant, and Leti’s going to love that baby – but she hasn’t yet dared to tell her racist parents that her boyfriend, the baby’s father, is Black.

As for Belén – she stopped caring about classes last year when her father left them and took her mom’s savings. Belén feels like no one even sees her anymore. So when she finds a college guy who’s willing to have sex with her, she doesn’t let herself notice all the things that are wrong with that, because it makes the heaviness lift for a little while.

But when she learns she has to complete one major English assignment in order to save her grade and graduate, she’s also paired with a partner whose hopes of going to the college of his choice are riding on it, too.

And that description doesn’t do justice to all the ways the pressures on Belén are portrayed and interwoven. She does lots of coping in bad ways, but let me say that the story does end with a hopeful note, and it’s an earned hope through the novel.

I was on the Morris Award committee a year ago, so it’s fun to see what they’ve discovered this year. I’ll admit it wasn’t my favorite read – a little too painful to read about the ways she wasn’t coping well. But wearing my committee hat, I do want to say that this is an outstanding debut novel, with nuanced characters and situations, and I hope the first of many more to come from this author.

carolinaixta.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 The Darkness Outside Us, by Eliot Schrefer, read by James Fouhey

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

The Darkness Outside Us

by Eliot Schrefer
read by James Fouhey

HarperAudio, 2021. 9 hours, 49 minutes.
Review written January 10, 2025, from a library eaudiobook
Starred Review

Wow! I’d be very sorry I missed reading this book in its publication year – except for the lovely fact that I have the sequel in my Holds queue already. This is powerful space travel science fiction, with a side of a sweet love story between two young men.

The book is narrated by Ambrose Cusk, the son of the powerful owner of the Cusk Space Travel Corporation and the DNA of Alexander the Great. He’s been training for space travel, and he wakes up on a spaceship on a planned mission to rescue his sister Minerva, who sent out a distress beacon from Titan.

Funny thing, though – he doesn’t remember the launch. The ship’s operating system, which has his mother’s voice, tells him he was in a coma for two weeks. Next he discovers that his ship has been joined to a ship from the one other country on earth, Demokratea, and there is a space traveler on the other side of the ship, named Kodiak. Both of them have been assigned maintenance tasks that the O.S. tells them are urgent to accomplish before they arrive on Titan.

Ambrose works little by little on earning Kodiak’s trust. Unfortunately, at the same time, they lose trust in the operating system. It won’t explain to them why neither of them remembers the launch. Or why some other details don’t add up. And then Ambrose finds some blood and hair with DNA that matches his own, but no memory of such an injury.

Well, solving this mystery is by no means the end of the book. Dealing with what they learn is what makes the book so interesting. And the ins and outs are expertly crafted. I have to say that I can get extremely nitpicky about science fiction, and easily skeptical as to whether things described could actually work. In this case, there was nothing in the book that triggered my skepticism at all, and I loved the way the author thought of repercussions and reactions to what was happening that seemed realistic when they happened – but hadn’t crossed my mind at all. (I hope that’s vague enough to be intriguing without giving anything away!)

This was also a lovely exploration of love during extreme circumstances. Ambrose and Kodiak don’t have anyone else to love, but the book beautifully showed how their love and appreciation for each other grows under duress.

And there’s so much more I wish I could say! In couched terms, I will also say that this is a book that could have gotten repetitive, and I loved the way the author kept the reader guessing and expanded on the ideas in surprising ways. He also had the two teens acting consistently with their characters – but still surprising us and making us think about the emotional and psychological turmoil they were going through – and how we might react in such a case.

Okay, I’ve probably said enough. If you like science fiction at all, read this book!

eliotschrefer.com

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Review of Give Me a Sign, by Anna Sortino, read by Elizabeth Robbins

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Give Me a Sign

by Anna Sortino
read by Elizabeth Robbins

Listening Library, 2023. 9 hours, 21 minutes.
Review written September 23, 2023, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Give Me a Sign is a story about Lilah, a 17-year-old who’s hard of hearing and looking to find her place in both Hearing culture and Deaf culture. Her school friends seem to get tired of repeating themselves when Lilah doesn’t understand, but they also aren’t careful about letting her see their lips when they talk so she can use lip-reading to help. When Lilah lands a summer job at a camp for the Deaf and Blind that she once attended as a camper, she looks forward to increasing her American Sign Language fluency – but when she arrives, she wishes she could pick it up more quickly.

There’s not a whole lot of plot to this book, but there’s enough to keep it going. Will the potential summer romance with that cute Deaf counselor work out? Will the camp get enough funding to continue, or will this be its last year of existence?

What drives the book, though, is Lilah’s interactions with the world around her. And that window into her world is fascinating enough to make this book a great read (or listen). She has some hearing, so she struggles whether she’s even “allowed” to call herself Deaf. And her family never taught her to sign, so can she learn, or should she continue to just try to fit in with the hearing folks around her?

Lilah encounters people from many different backgrounds in this book, and there’s a strong message that people have different responses to their own hearing loss, and each person should get to make their own choice about how they want to live in the world, whether hearing aids or cochlear implants or sign language, or some combination of all of the above. She also learns to speak up for herself and not be ashamed of being Deaf and to tell her friends what she needs.

And all of this is wrapped up in a fun story of summer camp, so its strong message doesn’t feel like medicine, but like an interesting window into someone else’s world. I also imagine that for many Deaf teens out there, it may provide the delightful experience of seeing someone like themselves as a protagonist. The author reminds us at the end that Lilah’s experience isn’t representative of every Deaf person’s experience. But the book itself does a lovely job reminding us that we are all individuals and we should all be able to make our own choices.

annasortino.com

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Review of Icarus, by K. Ancrum

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Icarus

by K. Ancrum
read by Kirt Graves

HarperTeen, 2024. 8 hours, 32 minutes.
Review written January 14, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2024 CYBILS Award Finalist, Young Adult Fiction

Oh my goodness. After the CYBILS Award Finalists were announced, I put all the books on hold (I do a program for other librarians about award winners, and this *probably* gives me a head start for ALA award winners), and this was one of the first audiobooks to come in. And it is amazingly good! If the other Finalists are anywhere close, the second round judges are going to have a difficult time.

This isn’t a retelling of the Greek myth, but it borrows themes from the myth. Our hero is indeed Icarus, a teen who lives alone with his father, but he lives in modern times. He and his father are both expert artists – but they’re also expert thieves. Icarus has been trained all his life to steal objects of art from the mansion of Angus Black and replace them with forgeries. And now that his father’s hands have begun to shake, all the active work falls on Icarus.

At school, Icarus makes a point of having one friend in each class – so that he’s not part of a friend group that expects him to do things with him after school. He’s never had anybody over to his house, and he never can have anybody over to his house. His goal is to stay under the radar.

But then some of those classroom friends start noticing that he can’t stay awake. They seem to care, which Icarus isn’t sure he can handle.

At the same time, Icarus gets spotted when stealing in the Black mansion – Angus Black’s son is there, with no phone and no internet and a cuff to keep him in place. They develop a friendship that looks like it’s going toward romance – and as the reader, I got awfully worried about how it would turn out once it was revealed that the son’s name is Helios. Because I know how that story ends.

So there’s lots and lots of tension in this book, and teens in tough situations – but there are also beautiful portrayals of friendship. Icarus learns how to be a friend and how to accept friendship. And all of the interactions and character growth make this book shine brightly – while keeping up the tension throughout the whole book. And yes, tender romance. Oh, and the audiobook is wonderfully done, too. This book will linger with me for a long time to come.

kancrum.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 Twenty-four Seconds from Now…, by Jason Reynolds

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Twenty-four Seconds from Now . . .

A LOVE Story

by Jason Reynolds
read by Guy Lockard

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2024. 4 hours, 28 minutes.
Review written January 7, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2024 CYBILS Award Finalist, Young Adult Fiction
2025 Capitol Choices selection

Yes, this is a book about a seventeen-year-old boy having sex for the first time. And it turns out to be very sweet.

I was afraid it would go into detail about each second building up to the moment of connection. But no, it’s much more interesting than that. It does open with “Right now” where the teenage boy, Neon, is in the bathroom of his girlfriend Aria’s house, looking at a picture of her dog – a dog he dislikes that is now living in his own house – and feeling extremely nervous about what’s supposed to happen in approximately twenty-four seconds from now.

But instead of going into excruciating detail about those seconds, the story backtracks to 24 seconds before that – when they were kissing in her bedroom, and he had to excuse himself to go to the bathroom, he was so nervous.

But then we look at 24 minutes before that – when he was using the whole note knocker on her front door (made by his family’s door knocker company), bringing her the chicken nuggets that she loves.

And then it switches to 24 hours before that – when he was interviewing other students for their high school’s video yearbook, which Aria also works on. And he was having his sister make a special door knocker for Aria to take to college with her. And his sister has some good advice about what’s going to happen.

And then we move to 24 days before that – when he walks with his Gammy and that same dog to visit his grandfather’s grave and he hears Gammy tell the story of how they met, and gives Neon some advice about love. And he’s talking with Aria because they want to have sex, but they want to make it special. And his mother has some good advice.

And then we see 24 weeks before that – when Neon took the dog off Aria’s hands, because her mother didn’t like his barking – and Gammy fell in love with that dog. And his father has some good advice.

And finally we see what happened 24 months ago, when Neon was at his grandfather’s funeral, and an out-of-control dog interrupted them, and he met Aria, and his life was never the same again.

Before we finally come back to the present and what’s about to happen.

And all of this shows us the story of these two teens and their families. And how much they care for each other and care about each other. And there’s some good advice in what Neon hears.

And no, it doesn’t describe the details. This isn’t a how-to manual. But it shows the thought and care and love that went into the decision these two teens make. A decision that’s ultimately, as it should be, about the two of them.

I don’t think of this as a book that promotes teens having sex so much as a book that promotes teens giving thought and care into their decisions about when and whether to have sex. And it tells a good story, too! The strategy of going backward in time piques our interest and is used extremely effectively.

jasonwritesbooks.com

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Review of Kingdom of Without, by Andrea Tang

Science Fiction, Teen Fiction Review 0

Kingdom of Without

by Andrea Tang

Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2024. 275 pages.
Review written December 19, 2024, from a library book.

I loved the setting of this novel in a future Beijing where society has become literally stratified – the poorest live in the Sixth Ring and have to pass checkpoints to even be allowed to enter the lower rings. The Sixth Ring has a strict curfew, patrolled by androids, and life is difficult. As the book opens, Ning’er has just sold her artificial arm and leg on the black market, because she has a friend who can get her a new one, and she needed cash to make rent on her small place. Her father is addicted to the drug Complacency, and takes any of her money he can access to get more. He is the one who sold her natural limbs long ago to get some cash.

So when Ning’er gets the offer of a job pulling off a heist, she can’t afford to let it go. It turns out the job is from the Red Yaksha, a powerful force of resistance against the current corrupt regime. But when she learns that the person behind the Red Yaksha’s mask is the Young Marshal – the son of a chief minister and an up-and-coming member of the gendarmes – Ning’er has some rethinking to do. If she takes the job, she’ll have to work with a team and break into the biolabs of the corporation that produces Complacency.

So it’s a heist novel with many political ramifications and bad guys who control the lives of the powerless and make those lives worse and worse. I wanted to love the book, but as the heist went down, I’ll just say that some details got murky for me. I very much hope there will be a sequel, and that will make it more clear what actually happened at the end.

All the same, I am a fan of Ning’er, a scrappy girl with a prosthetic arm and leg, scratching out a living – but beginning to hope maybe that changes can be made and that the powers that be aren’t invulnerable.

AndreaTangWrites.com

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Review of My Throat an Open Grave, by Tori Bovalino

Paranormal, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

My Throat an Open Grave

by Tori Bovalino

Page Street YA, 2024. 301 pages.
Review written December 30, 2024, from a library book.
Starred Review

Based on the cover, not being a horror fan, I honestly didn’t expect to even like this book. I expected I’d give up after about twenty pages, deciding it’s not for me. I did not at all expect to read it avidly and to be sorry I was finished at the end because I loved it. I didn’t expect to recognize shades of my own upbringing in its pages and to have my heart go out to the girl telling the story.

Now, I also don’t like books where religious people are the bad guys – except, well, when they deserve to be. This book portrays a rural village in a forest – where the church is the center of the community and it’s all about purity culture. The girls are given a “Love Waits” ring and told that if they “give themselves” before marriage, they will be broken and worthless.

But they’re also told about the Lord of the Wood. Sometimes he comes into the village and takes babies. And then the villagers send a girl to the Lord of the Wood to get the baby back. Only no babies or girls have ever returned.

And now it’s Leah’s turn. She’s convinced that because she was worn down by her baby brother’s cries and wished for respite – that must be why the Lord of the Wood took him away. And her mother is convinced it’s Leah’s fault, too. So the whole village gathers in the church. Her mother brings her forward, the pastor marks her with a bloody hand print, and together the whole village sends her across the river to the Lord of the Wood.

And then she meets the Lord of the Wood, and he’s not what she expected at all. In fact, that part is what made me love the book. There’s a whole community on the other side of the river. They’re kind, compassionate, and patient with Leah, and she begins to be able to see herself more clearly.

There’s magic in this book, and magic in the Lord of the Wood and the community living in the forest. But it’s not the sinister magic Leah was led to believe in, and the people she meets there win her heart, as well as winning over the reader.

But she also has to reckon with what she learned about her home village. And about herself.

This isn’t so much a book for horror fans as it is a book shining light on the damage that purity culture can do and celebrating self-determination and the beauty of young lives – rising above judgment.

Trust me! It’s a wonderful book!

toribovalino.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 We Mostly Come Out at Night, edited by Rob Costello

Award Winners, Paranormal, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

We Mostly Come Out at Night

15 Queer Tales of Monsters, Angels & Other Creatures

edited by Rob Costello

Running Press Teens (Hachette Book Group), 2024. 364 pages.
Review written December 30, 2024, from a library book.
Starred Review
2024 Cybils Finalist, YA Speculative Fiction

I don’t read a lot of short story collections, because there are too many opportunities to put down the book and move on to something else, but when my fellow Cybils Award panelists had shortlisted this book not long before our discussion was due, I read it all within a couple days, and ended up loving it.

The subtitle tells you what’s going on. We’ve got queer authors writing about magical creatures. In a fun bonus, every story has a “Monster Reflection” afterward, with that author talking about how they feel about monsters.

Something I particularly liked about this anthology was how often the teens featured had been taught to think of themselves as monstrous – and in the story, they get the chance to discover their own beauty. There were a lot of stories where the monsters are the characters you like best.

Here’s a bit from the wonderful Introduction by the editor:

But that’s what stories do. They prepare us to face the unknown. They arm us with possibility. They enable us to apply some semblance of order and meaning to a universe that is otherwise indifferent to our existence. Telling a monster story is a powerful act, not least because such a story gives a shape and limmit to an otherwise amorphous anxiety, making it seem less scary, less immense, less baffling and unconquerable. Stories change our perspective on our own strengths and vulnerabilities. They alter our perception of what threatens us most. They provide us with comfort and reassurance — even in the face of tremendous loss — and in so doing, they offer us the hope that we can conquer our worst fears and take back control of our fate.

There’s a huge amount of variety in this collection. I’m not a monster movie or a monster book fan – but I loved the creativity and insight and imagination in this set of tales. The stories were consistently good, and so many of them get you thinking. I’m proud this is on our Cybils list.

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Review of The Thirteenth Child, by Erin A. Craig

Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Thirteenth Child

by Erin A. Craig

Delacorte Press, 2024. 497 pages.
Review written December 24, 2024, from a library book.
Starred Review

The Thirteenth Child is wildly popular at my library – so many holds on the audiobook, I decided to read the print book – and the hype is completely deserved.

The set-up is that Hazel, the thirteenth child in her family, was given away by her desperate parents to the god of Death. However, he didn’t care for her right away, but came and took her on her twelfth birthday. And from there, he’s got a long life set out for her. She’s going to be an amazing healer. In fact, she has a gift that when she touches a sick person, she gets a vision of how to heal them. But sometimes, instead she sees a Deathshead – and then she’s supposed to kill the person to avert catastrophe – for example, a person with the plague who will spread it to thousands of others if she doesn’t act.

This reminded me of two of my favorite young adult novels: Little Thieves, where the protagonist is also a thirteenth child and is given away by her parents to gods; and Grave Mercy where a whole convent of nuns serve the god of Death as assassins and see a mark on the people they are supposed to kill.

As in Grave Mercy, the protagonist can’t help but wonder what will happen if she doesn’t kill the person with marked for death. In both books, there are consequences if she doesn’t.

Eventually, Hazel becomes a healer at court with the ear of the king, but that means that her actions are all the more weighty.

This book pulled me in as much as those other two favorites did, though by the time I finished, it hadn’t won my heart quite as completely. (Still really good, though!) There’s an odd chapter in the middle that’s a very sexy dream, right after she’s met the prince. At first, I thought maybe the author was trying to tip her hand that this is a romantasy, since there hadn’t been much sex yet, so this was to get us warmed up for what’s to come – but no, this was the sexiest chapter in the book, and didn’t feel at all warranted by the encounter with the prince so far. If it was to show she was attracted to him, it felt out of place at that point. (And I’m sorry, but I rolled my eyes so hard when his hands found “parts of me I never even knew existed.” It’s a dream. It’s all coming from your subconscious. You knew those parts existed.)

One other nitpicky detail is that there’s no way, chemically speaking, that an ill human body can produce a glittering golden discharge. If it’s a magical illness, it’s not going to be solved by some special herb. However, I did love the way Hazel, despite her gift, has to study healing and is able to use logic and knowledge to determine a cure when her gift fails her.

Despite those two small quibbles, I loved this book. It’s long, but I read it quickly because it was so immersive. I didn’t really notice the quibbles until I was done and thinking over the book, because I loved the character so much. The plot gets a tiny bit convoluted toward the end of the book, but nothing it can’t sustain. And I absolutely loved the tender and beautiful Epilogue that shows us what happens for most of our beloved characters many years down the road. It answered the question as to whether the author is going for a sequel – no, this is definitely a stand-alone, and a good one.

erinacraig.com

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Review of When the World Tips Over, by Jandy Nelson

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Teen Fiction Review 0

When the World Tips Over

by Jandy Nelson
read by Michael Crouch, Alex McKenna, Briggon Snow, Caitlin Kinnunen, and Julia Whelan

Listening Library, 2024. 17 hours, 16 minutes.
Review written December 17, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.

When the World Tips Over is a family saga for teens, with a strong dose of magical realism. Our main characters are the three siblings Wynton, Miles, and Dizzy Fall, all named after their missing father’s favorite trumpet players, as well as a mysterious rainbow-haired girl who joins the story later along the way.

As the story opens, 12-year-old Dizzy has had a terrible day, with a disgusting boy farting in her face and her former best friend joining in the laughter about it. So she climbed over the fence and walked blindly away from the school, but she wasn’t paying attention when she stepped into the street, and that was her first encounter with the rainbow-haired girl, who pushed her out of the way of the truck barreling down upon her. But she didn’t see the girl afterward, so Dizzy is convinced she’s an angel.

Miles is the next sibling to see the rainbow-haired girl. His siblings call him “Perfect Miles,” but not fondly. What they don’t know is that he’s quit track, the math club, academic decathlon, volunteering at the animal refuge, and even going to school altogether. He’s been intercepting notes to his mother. On top of that, he’s gay but hasn’t dared to come out to anyone. Oh, and he can have conversations with dogs. The next-door neighbor’s dog is his best friend.

And then he meets the rainbow-haired girl, when he should be in school. They drive around in her vintage orange truck, and he can open up to her like nobody he’s ever met before. He can feel hope returning.

Then there’s Wynton, the oldest brother. He’s been kicked out of the house after driving under the influence and knocking the head off the statue of their ancestor in the town square, and after stealing their mother’s wedding band to pawn for money to buy a new bow for his violin. Wynton has his big chance coming up – he’s going to perform in front of a scout that could bring him into the big time. But his mother has heard it before, and nobody’s paying attention. And he runs into the rainbow-haired girl after the concert, when he’s again under the influence. But she’s not able to get him out of the road in time.

That’s all just the beginning. As the story winds on, we learn more about the rainbow-haired girl, and how she grew up driving around northern California with her mother in an RV named Sadie May. We also learn about the history of the Fall family and their ancestors who came to Paradise Springs from Europe, bringing magical vines. We learn the identity of those ghosts Dizzy’s always been able to see, where their mother got her gift for baking food so good it makes you fall in love, why their father left and never came back, and how that rainbow-haired girl turns out to be connected to them.

There are lots of coincidences in this book, but they’re explained by magic and destiny – which ended up being a little weak for me, but that’s the grinchy part of me, and it makes a nice story.

But there’s also lots of abandonment and betrayal in the back stories, and that’s where it was just a little too harsh for me, along with the Cain-and-Abel curse on the family. I’ve been abandoned and betrayed myself, so that hit me a little too hard to be completely outweighed. And this covers not only romantic partners, but children as well – so it’s not quite a feel-good story for me.

Though I do completely love the explanation at the end for the title:

I do believe now that when the world tips over, joy spills out with all the sorrow.

But you have to look for it.

That’s a message I can get behind.

jandynelson.com

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