Second Quarter Reading Roundup - 2023
Some great things I read last quarter with Bookshop links where available.
Shirlene Obuobi's On Rotation was a great story of a med student trying to balance the first gen pressures on being the best at med school along side the pressures of also finding and balancing love and friendship.
Malia Maunakea's Lei and the Fire Goddess is such a great adventure of a Hawaiian middle schooler who lives in Colorado, coming to Hawai'i to spend the summer with her tutu, and balancing all the expectations of having a cool summer when tutu doesn't live on a resort or have a pool. And what happens when you accidentally piss of Pele.
Charish Reid's I'll Come Back for You (ebook link) is like snowed in with your ex and a ghost! I thought it might be too scary for me, but I actually just loved this story. The ghost hunting show that maybe isn't actually accustomed to dealing with ghosts, the snow, the ghost, the sexual tension.
Chencia C. Higgins' Janine: His True Alpha was a shifter story that is also about inclusive versus repressive packs, and the grief of parental loss, and stepping into leadership and also just meeting someone and going, oh them, that is totally the one.
Jeremy Whitley's The Dog Knight is a super adorable middle grade graphic novel about a non-binary kid who discovers they might be the Dog Knight.
Samantha Irby's Quietly Hostile is - as you might expect - just a fabulous collection of humorous essays about life.
Emma Straub's This Time Tomorrow was a fascinating look at time travel and the moments we want to hang onto, especially a we grapple with a parent who is dying.
Tre'vell Anderson's We See Each Other was an interesting trip through trans characters in pop culture.
Maurene Goo's Throwback was a wild journey as someone who is, ahem, of an age that a high schooler traveling back in time to their parent's school might be at my high school. And it was an interesting look at what being Korean American in high school in the 1990's versus now, and how that creates generational clashes. And you know, helping your mom win homecoming queen. Because of course.
Kristina Forest's The Neighbor Favor was a delight of secret pen pals, and like will you teach me to date, and other fun things.
Stephanie Foo's What My Bones Know was a tough read, but also a fascinating look into what and how childhood trauma can permeate adulthood and the processing of undoing those connections.
Sacha Lamb's When Angels Left the Old Country was sort of like sitting in a coffee shop (or perhaps library) and listening to two men bicker about something and finding yourself increasingly fascinated at this angel and demon who decide they need to find out what happened to someone from their village who went to the States and then didn't write back.
Have you read any of these?
Also, as a reminder, my next story, Troubled by Love is currently being released in serial form on Ream. And is available for preorder if you want to wait until it is complete.