What have I read since The Start of Me and You?
Verdict: WOW FEELINGS, this worldbuilding does a lot with a little and I had such a hard time finishing this but at the same time I found it so impossible to put down — such terrible things are done to Nathan but I needed to see it through until the end. I really like Nathan as a narrator and main character; some of the other characters call him simple, and he's functionally illiterate, but that doesn't mean he's not still very smart. I don't usually gush over first-person pov, but in this case I don't think it could have been written any other way, and I liked Nathan's thought patterns.
Half Wild, by Sally Green
Verdict: God, ducklings, I just really like Nathan. I love him. I love Gabriel. I like Nathan's complicated relationship with his father and I may have screamed a little over Gabriel's passionate but undemanding devotion? I would like them to actually have a little bit of peace in their lives. Do not read this book unless you can handle a ton of violence and an interminable wait for the sequel, because the last chapter comes like the freaking asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, which is to say: fast and catastrophic.
None of the Above, by I.W. Gregorio
Verdict: Some of the bits sounded a little like a pamphlet about being intersex, but I'll grant Gregorio that there's a ton of misinformation out there and I'm assuming she wanted to make sure that everyone was on the same level. A super sweet story about figuring out yourself and the things that matter, even if you don't have all the answers — although there were a few more people I wanted to be punched in the face, who weren't punched in the face?
Fun fact: this is a movie. Funner fact: this is a GREAT movie. Funnest fact: this movie stars MIKHAIL BARYSHNIKOV as a Russian ballet dancer who ESCAPED THE SOVIET UNION but ends up back there through a terrible series of events and ends up in the care of traumatized, tap dancing American defector GREGORY HINES and his Russian wife ISABELLA ROSSELLINI, who are originally very dubious about him but eventually learn to trust him? And then they collaborate with each other and Mikhail's former lover HELEN MIRREN in order to try and get to the American embassy and escape the Soviet Union. Have you seen Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gregory Hines dancing a BALLET-TAP-MODERN DUET together? No? Watch this movie.
Verdict: One of my coworkers described this as "sort of like Quantum Leap, except for high school," which I suppose isn't inaccurate, although I'm working off a very basic knowledge of Quantum Leap. A doesn't have a body; every day, they wake up in the body of someone new — always someone of the same age, and generally within a few hundred miles of where they went to sleep the night before. And then A falls in love. It was an interesting book and I felt hella bad for A — because wow, that's really taking "the center cannot hold" to a new level — but also? A was sort of a dick. Which I'm okay with, because they're 17 and haven't been allowed to be selfish pretty much ever, so it made a lot of sense character-wise. I just wanted some more narrative acknowledgement that just because A loved Rhiannon and Justin was a dick didn't mean that Rhiannon was obligated to like A back, and it was shitty of them to keep pressing the issue. A's been girls before; surely some of them must have dealt with Nice Guys.
Except, of course, the thing about switching bodies — and the thing that made me make a little bit of a face at A's whole "we're all 90% alike!" thing — is that you might not have a sense of how wearing certain things get, day after day. Which is sort of the point, I guess, but it was acknowledged more for other things like friends and family than this particular issue.
I wanted A to be happy, though, even if my idea of happiness is all tied up in ideas of stability. I'm a linear person, what can I say? I found myself wanting to know what happens to Rhiannon after the book ends, too. What do you do when your ex was an impossible person?
Levitating Las Vegas, by Jennifer Echols
Verdict: SCREW THIS BOOK. SCREW IT. THE WORLDBUILDING MAKES ABSOLUTELY ZERO SENSE AND EVERY SINGLE DECISION MADE BY ANY SINGLE CHARACTER IS TERRIBLE AND MAKES NO SENSE. DON'T READ THIS BOOK.
Fever: How Rock'n'Roll Transformed Gender in America, by Tim Riley
Verdict: I'm going to rant about this book in its own post. The short version: THE TITLE IS FULL OF LIES.
Verdict: YES PERFECT. Princess Adrienne, the second-youngest of seven sisters, finally decides that enough is enough and she's going to rescue herself — and, if she can get her act together, her six sisters, who have all been locked away by their cruel father. Plus she picks up a teenage half-dwarven sidekick! Some meta-commentary about cycles of ruthlessness and female warrior's costumes ensues. Also Adrienne, who's black, gets to start the story by viciously tearing into the concept that "fair" = "beautiful." HERE FOR ALL OF IT.
Princeless: 2, Get Over Yourself, by Jeremy Whitley
Verdict: STILL HERE FOR ALL OF IT. I especially dug meeting Angelica, and how Adrienne's sisters are clearly going to have their own motivations — and some of them might be more into this "rescue" gig than others. Shhh, no spoilers, GO READ.
Just Like the Movies, by Fiore Kelly
Verdict: Honestly, I wasn't expecting too much from this one? Which meant that it ended up much better than I expected. You've got the expected life lessons about how trying to make movie moments happen in your life and solve all your problems can't really work because real life is messier than a fictional narrative, but I thought that Marijke's revelation at the end was actually a really great moment. Plus, I am a sucker for things that understand the true importance of ladies being friends.
Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant, by Tony Cliff
Verdict: It turns out that I actually read this as a webcomic years ago — I was hoping that there would be new bits, but alas, not so much. I still feel approximately the same as I did the last time I read it, more or less.
Verdict: I found this one at the same time that I found Just Like the Movies, and they both have the "girl decides to make semi-radical change to her lifestyle, life lessons ensue" thing going on — in this case, Mallory finds an old list of her grandmother's from junior year and decides to go all 60s nostalgia to deal with her boyfriend cyber-cheating on her. Obviously she was going to find out that her grandma's life wasn't all apple pie and flouncy dresses, blah blah, and I admit that I had to push to get myself through the middle of the book. What really pulled the book together for me, though, was the way that each character clearly has their own motivations — that's not often something you see in a coming-of-age novel, when it sometimes feels like all the characters are just there for the educational development of the lead. Mallory's sister Ginnie has her own reasons for helping Mallory out with her project; Mallory's grandmother is dealing with some serious shit, and Mallory's parents arc isn't a life lesson at all. And then it goes and ends with Mallory admitting that she does still need a little more time to get over Jeremy, but she's getting there, and I was won a little despite myself. I love books that end in kissing, but sometimes the promise of kissing is okay, too.
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