Read a Book (or a Bunch of Them) part 2

Goals Update:

Books read: 45

Words on WIP:12,500

Submissions: 2 rejected, 1 accepted, 1 outstanding
Words on spangly new secret project, part 1: 6,000/8,500

Events: Rocket CityAuthor Event July 21, Huntsville, AL VBC

Last time, I recommended books where we were the monsters and books where characters navigate the complexity of grief. For this set of recommendations, I want to dig into types of characters that I love reading 

I’m still open to suggestions for types of recommendations you’d like to see. If there’s a type of book you want to pick my brain about, drop me a line in the comments to let me know.

But let’s get to those book recs.

HEEL-FACE TURN/FACE-HEEL TURN

Admittedly, this one is a little difficult to give recommendations based on—revealing a heel-face turn or its reverse is often spoilery. But I’m going to do my best to keep these recs as spoiler-free as I can. Each book has several characters who struggle with their loyalty.

This struggle—what side am I really on? Have I been making things worse or better? Why am I so bad at being good?—is one of the most interesting types of conflict. This ties in with my overall greater interest in bad guys who think they’re the good guys. I’d rather read about a villain who thinks they’re a hero than about someone who just wants to watch the world burn.

My recommendations

My first recommendation is LABYRINTH LOST. The heel-face/face-heel turn in this book isn’t necessarily a huge part of the story, and it’s a little difficult to put the character doing the turning solidly on one side or the other, but conflicting loyalties is a pretty major part of the book.

Alex comes from a family of brujas, and she herself is the possessor of some powerful magic—but she doesn’t want it. When she tries to get the Deos to take her powers back, things go off the rails and she has to rely on Nova, a brujo she’s not entirely sure she can trust to help her navigate the world of the Deos so that she can get her family back. A companion novel to this book, BRUJA BORN, just came out this summer, so this is really two recommendations for the price of one.

CHILDREN OF BLOOD ANDBONE has been pitched as what you’d get if Avatar: The Last Airbender was based on African culture rather than Asian culture—and we all know that A:TLA had one of the best heel-face turns of all time. Put another way, this book is Black Panther with magic. This novel uses multiple points of view to show different sides of the world’s power structure. Magic disappeared one night, and since then, people that bear the mark of that lost magic have found themselves crushed under the monarchy’s heel. Zelie has a chance to bring magic back, but the powerful who wish to keep things the way they are will do whatever they have to to stop her. This is also a good one if you like heroes with complicated feelings toward their antagonists. This book is also part of a series, but I don’t think the release date for the next installment has been announced yet.

QUEER GIRLS FIGURING OUT WHO THEY ARE

Identity is complicated, and folks who grew up when I did didn’t get much chance to see their journey’s reflected in books at the time. Thankfully, this is a trend that’s changing. This category is one that I wish someone had been able to give me books for when I was a teen. (As an interesting note, both of these books also take place in the south, which, for me, is another nice layer of representation.)

My recommendations

In RAMONA BLUE, the titular Ramona’s life has been unsteady since Hurricane Katrina hit. In spite of the tumult, she clings to a few certainties—things like her love for her family, her attraction to girls, and her dreams of something bigger and better than her life in Eulogy, Mississippi. 

Though Ramona’s only a teenager, circumstances have pushed her to take on the role of an adult in her household. So, when her childhood friend Freddie moves back to town, he’s a welcome distraction. And, as their friendship picks up where it left off, Freddie convinces her to give swimming a try—and she loves it. And thinks she might love him. 

Ramona’s journey is one that delves into the fluidity of sexuality, resilience of family, and learning how to adjust to life’s changes.

IVY ABERDEEN’S LETTERTO THE WORLD is actually a middle grade book (meaning that it’s written for preteens, with POV characters on the younger end of middle school). This is a book about a first crush. Ivy’s got a notebook full of secret drawings of girls holding hands. When a tornado rips through her Georgia town and destroys her house, her notebook full of secret drawings goes missing. She’s in a panic that gets worse until her secret drawings start showing up, one-by-one, in her locker. She thinks—or maybe hopes—that the person giving them back to her is her classmate, a girl named Jane that she thinks she might have a crush on. Ivy’s got to decide if her secret drawings—and her secret feelings—need to come out in the open.

Y’all, I’m not a crier, but this little book got me. I seriously can’t recommend it enough.

I’ll be taking a break from recommendations next post to do a recap of the Author Event (tickets available through the link above!), but look for more book recommendations in August.

What are some of the books you keep recommending to your friends? Drop some in the comments! Let’s help build up each other’s TBR piles.