contemporary

On The Come Up by Angie Thomas

November 2, 2019 Leave a Comment

447 pages | Contemporary | Balzer & Bray | Release Date: 2/5/2019

I don’t know what this says about me but when a book or author has a lot of hype I tend not to read it until it quiets down. Angie Thomas was an author like that. I’d been following her ever since she announced her deal on Twitter and I’m happy to see the success she’s gained. I’ve still yet to read The Hate U Give because I’m not in a place to read Black trauma stories but when I was taking a bus trip I saw this on Overdrive and picked it up.

Now, this book exists in the same place as The Hate U Give and does spoil some of the outcomes of that book so be warned if you haven’t read it.

In On The Come Up 16-year-old Brianna “Bri” Jackson is an aspiring rapper from the hood who lives in the shadow of her deceased father’s rap fame. She’s ready to have her come up but injustice, poverty, and complicated family dynamics stand in her way.

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Hot Dog Girl by Jennifer Dugan

October 8, 2019 Leave a Comment

408 pages | Contemporary | Putnam | Release Date: 4/30/2019

16-year-old Elouise doesn’t love being the dancing hot dog at the dilated amusement park Magic Castle Playland but the park is her second home and she plans to make her summer working there her best one yet. But as summer commences absolutely nothing goes as she plans.

From the cover, I assumed Hot Dog Girl was a quicky romantic comedy but it feels more like a CW-style romance drama as we watch this group of teens navigate their relationships to each other. I thought the friendship between Elouise and her best friend, Seeley felt genuine and lived in. Elouise is bisexual and Seeley is a lesbian and their identities are part of the story and friendship but not the entire story.

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Ordinary Girls by Blair Thornburgh

August 23, 2019 Leave a Comment

368 pages | Contemporary YA | Harper Teen | Release Date: 06/04/2019

This book is made for every teenager who loves Jane Austen and the Brontë Sisters. Ordinary Girls is a send-up of Sense and Sensibility (you know….that Austen book our blog is named after and neither of us have read). It tells the story of the two totally opposite Blatchley sisters and their mother as they trt to save their old Victorian house.

Fifteen-year-old Plum Blatchtly is the most sensible of the group, she’s a dreamy introvert who often finds herself taking charge in her unconventional family and develops a sweet romance with the roguish boy from down the street. As a character, you can tell she idolizes the women of Austen’s time and her speech and cadence reflect that.

The Blatchley women are quirky, free-spirited and not above a humorous situation. From furniture-less dinner parties, broken water pipes and small fires they endure quite a year. Ordinary Girls is a well-meaning and earnest YA novel made for fans of the Jane Austen aesthetic.

Check out the audiobook review at AudioFile Magazine

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

September 24, 2018 Leave a Comment

368 pages | Washington Square Press | Contemporary | 07/15/2014

Along with Ikea, The Skarsgard family and fish-shaped candy, Fredrik Backman is the newest Swedish export making money moves in the U.S.

Ove is best described in the novel as “a man with his hands perpetually in his pockets”. He is the human equivalent of the Old Man Yells at Cloud meme. At 59-years old he has a fondness for the way things used to be and fights progress with indignation and a solid hurmph. Ove has a plan for what should come next in his life, a plan that gets turned upside down by the boisterous family that moves in next door, a mangy old cat and a community of unlikely neighbors.

Backman writes with a capricious tone with an infinity for in medias res. This book is translated from Swedish and there were only a few times where I felt like something wasn’t translating

I’m not sure what I expected from this book but it as a lot more fun than I was anticipated. Ove truly becomes an endearing figure, and I really like stories that explore life in all its stages a la The Curious Case of Benjamin Button or Big Fish.

A quaint, heartwarming story that is satisfyingly earnest and has universal appeal for fans of contemporary fiction.

Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zappia

December 6, 2017 Leave a Comment

Release Date: 05/30/17 | Contemporary | 385 pages | Buy Now !

At school, Eliza Mirk is the weird girl with no friends who never talks. At home she’s the black sheep among her athletic-obsessed family. She doesn’t think anyone can truly understand her until she meets the new boy in school, Wallace Warland. They bond over their love of Monstrous Sea, a popular fantasy webcomic. He’s the first person who gets what it means to have internet friends and be apart of an active online fandom–Wallace and his friends are BNF fan creators in the Monstrous Sea fan community. But what Wallace doesn’t know is that she’s not just any fan, she’s LadyConstellation–the anonymous creator of Monstrous Sea.

This book absolutely captivated me, I devoured the whole thing in in one day and I haven’t done that in years. Zappia (who I believe used to be a book blogger) has this amazing handle on the importance of online friendship, what it means to negotiate your online self with your IRL self, the inner workings of rabid online fandoms while also incorporating important themes about mental illness and self care for creative people.

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The Sun is Also A Star by Nicola Yoon

December 6, 2016 Leave a Comment

Release Date: November 1, 2016
Pages: 384
Genre: Contemporary
Publisher: Crown (Random House)

Tasha Kingston’s family is 24 hours away from being deported to Jamaica after her father drunkenly tells a police officer they’ve been in the country for over a decade on expired travel visas. Tasha isn’t ready to leave America, she has a fake social security number and was prepared to go to college and become a data scientist. She resolves to spend her last day doing everything she can to find a way to delay the deportation. What she doesn’t plan on is meeting Daniel Bae, the idealistic aspiring poet who believes their meeting was an act of faith. Tasha is pragmatic and doesn’t believe in fate or soul mates but as they spend the day together Daniel starts to change her mind and get inside her heart. But what does any of it mean when in 24 hours she won’t be allowed back in the United States ?

Honestly, I was kind of lukewarm on the romance, I just have a hard time investing in romances in such a condensed timeline. To me the most interesting thing about this book is how the story is structured. Not only do we get Daniel and Tasha’s POVs we also get these mini sections called “brief histories” that give you a minor characters past and future or give you a history on a certain subject. I liked the way these sections broadened the 24 hour timeline a little bit.

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