Category: Read This Book

As the title says, the common thread in this collection is Black girl magic, resistance, and hope; however, we Black girls have a wide range and so, too, do the stories in this anthology. In fact, the variety is one of the things that makes this collection so incredibly wonderful. They span so many genres from high fantasy to science fiction, from westerns to vampire fiction to historical fantasy. I got whiplash from changing gears so frequently but I am not complaining. Each story was a new thrilling adventure that I had no idea where it was taking me.

There are also so many badass characters I fell in love with. We meet an enslaved girl who can manipulate metal and another who makes a deal with the gods of the desert. A vampire-obsessed teen who meets her match. The daughter of a mermaid and a young woman who becomes a goddess. We learn of folk magic to repair and replace hearts. And an auntie whose hair braiding skills are not what they seem. A teen who can stop time.

One of my favorites is the story by Justina Ireland, “Melie,” about a girl who desperately wants to be a sorcerer and keeps getting the run-around. Another of the stories I really enjoyed was Patrice Caldwell’s “Letting The Right One In.” It is a story about a Black girl who loves vampires and honestly, I can’t get enough stories about Black girls who love vampires because I am one (a Black girl who loves vampires, not a vampire). And also stories about Black vampires. Give them all to me.

This collection was such a delightful, fun, empowering read. There are a few stories I return to again and again when I need a mood boost. It’s definitely one to have on the shelf.

Kareena Thakkar started practicing Muay Thai as a kid, in part because she needed an outlet for the stress of her father’s terminal illness diagnosis. Now she’s in high school and at the top of her game. When she receives an invite to the Muay Thai US Open, she’s ecstatic. Winning could mean incredible things for her career as an athlete, and it could even mean a shot at the Olympic team when Muy Thai is officially incorporated as an Olympics sport. But there are a few problems: Her family can’t afford the cost of her competition, her dad’s health is worsening, their Indian community has pretty much abandoned the family, and in order to keep her grades up, she’s agreed to tutor Amit Patel, the model Indian guy she’s falling for. No pressure.

I was a huge fan of Patel’s adult romance, The Trouble With Hating You, so I was super excited to check out her YA debut, and I was not disappointed. This is such a great novel about not only the physical intensity of being an elite athlete training for a big competition, but also the mental toughness that is required. Kareena can’t help but worry about her parents and their family’s financial burden, even though she’s told not to let it distract her from her training. Add on top of that the social pressure and the alienation she feels from her Indian community because she isn’t considered ladylike or proper since she takes part in an intense contact sport, and Kareena has a lot of mental and emotional challenges in addition to the physical challenges of training constantly, eating right, and getting her head in the competition. I can’t help but think that this nuanced focus on an athlete’s mental and emotional wellbeing is more important than ever, especially given how Simone Biles made the brave choice to value her mental health over a competition.

The book is also really swoony, and I love that Patel never puts Amit in direct opposition of Kareena’s aspirations. She keeps her sport a secret from him at first because she’s worried about the judgment she might face, from him and his parents, but when she tells him about her sport and her big competition, he’s so supportive and he lets her set the pace of their relationship. That was so wonderful to see, and I loved that their relationship is very considerate and healthy, and Amit is supportive of Kareena and respectful of her wishes and boundaries when it comes to training.

At its heart, this is a book about an elite athlete who has what it takes to go all the way to the top, but her emotional journey is about learning to accept support from the people who are enthusiastic about giving it…and drawing boundaries between herself and those people who aren’t supportive or whose support is conditional. And that’s why Kareena is such a strong and admirable protagonist, and why we root for her!

Bonus: I listened to the audiobook narrated by Soneela Nankani, and it was excellent, as all of her audiobook narrations are!

This book is nonfiction self-help/self-improvement with a heavy dose of humor. It’s divided into three sections, Be, Say, and Do, and each section has a wealth of insight and advice.

The author begins by talking about the internal work we need to do if we are going to be successful in fighting our own fears. This ranges from dealing with our own insecurities to managing (and stopping) our self-sabotage and unpacking our loads of baggage.

One of the things I love so much about this book is that it is an ode to her grandmother, who sounds like an incredibly fierce, amazing, powerhouse of a woman. Jones brings in many anecdotes about her grandmother as well as many Nigerian cultural traditions that can, in turn, help all of us to fight our fears.

I appreciated when Jones wrote about how so many of us are told that we’re too much. Too loud. Too aggressive. Too passionate. Too intimidating. Too sensitive. And that when people are saying you’re too this or too that, what they’re really saying is, “Can you be less? Can you be less than you are? Can you make yourself small for me?” And surprise, the lesson here is that it’s not our job to shrink ourselves to make other people comfortable unless our too muchness is actually harming someone or hindering our own growth.

So much of this book is about owning your own awesomeness, fighting imposter syndrome, and doing things even if you are scared. There are two chapters in particular that I think are worth the price of admission: the chapter on asking for more and letting loved ones help you and the chapter on money and asking for what we are worth.

This book was funny, inspiring, and empowering and definitely one I’ll read more than once.

When Julie goes missing, everyone is devastated–her friends, family, and her brand-new husband. Everyone except her best friend, Elise. Elise isn’t sure how she knows this, but she’s convinced that Julie will return. Their other friends Molly and Mae think that Elise is in denial and needs therapy…until Julie does come back, exactly two years to the day she went missing, her memory completely gone.

Everyone is overjoyed, of course. When the friends decide to have a reunion at a boutique hotel, they think it’ll be the perfect chance to reconnect. The second Elise sees Julie, she’s shocked at how emaciated and unhealthy she looks, and alarmed by her weird appetites and mood swings. Things get worse when, as the weekend progresses, odd things start happening and tensions begin to rise. And once the thought takes hold in Elise, she can’t shake it: What if this isn’t really Julie?

This book creeped me out in dozens of small, unsettling ways, which is my favorite brand of horror. The little incongruences, small chills, and downright weird things are easy enough to brush off at first, but when they start stacking up it creates a terrifying situation pretty quickly. That’s definitely this scenario, and you can’t even blame Elise, Molly, and Mae for ignoring the warning signs because they want so badly to be thrilled that their friend returned. Interspersed throughout Elise’s narrative are flashbacks and memories to the years when Julie was gone, which adds great insight into her emotional state and her faith that Julie would return. This adds some nice emotional heft to the story, and readers can understand why her friends are so important to Elise when every other area of her life is a mess.

I also love a good creepy setting, and Harrison did an amazing job with the boutique hotel here. This is no Overlook Hotel or Bates Motel setting, but a trendy, chic spot that is so over-the-top in its design that it leaves the friends feeling isolated and unsettled. The design elements (including that screaming hot pink of the cover) add great tension to the weekend, and I found myself both wishing I could see this hotel in person and also adamant that I wouldn’t get within fifty miles of the place. The story is a slow build, but when shit gets real, it’s very scary and this book goes in a direction I didn’t expect! If you want a creepy book that explores the nuances of female friendship and you aren’t creeped out by a bit of body horror, I highly recommend this one!

Picture it: London, turn of the 19th century, and the Royal Society of Unnatural Philosophers aka the Magician Club. As you can imagine, it is a bunch of stuffy old white men. Sir Stephen Wythe is the Sorcerer Royal, the man in charge. He has a Black child, Zacharias, who he “rescued” from slavery because he saw magical talent in him. The men of the Royal Society of Unnatural Philosophers doubt that any “lesser beings” have worthwhile magical capabilities, but Sir Stephen, through training Zacharias, has proved them very wrong.

Flash forward many years. Sir Stephen dies and Zacharias becomes Sorcerer Royal, quite against his will. But the staff of the Sorcerer Royal will only be wielded by someone who is worthy and the staff chose Zacharias. A curious thing is that a Sorcerer needs to have a familiar. Sir Stephen had a familiar, but Zacharias does not, and it is one of the many things that the Society is holding against him.

While racism is one of Zacharias’s main problems, he is also being blamed for the lack of magic flowing into England from Fairyland. Magic can only be performed in England because of this flow of magical energy and it seems to be dying out. People are blaming Zacharias for it and he is determined to figure out what is truly going on. The Sorcerer Royal serves England, not the crown, but there is a lot of pressure for Zacharias to get political.

Because of this pressure, he escapes from London for a bit to go to the entrance of Fairyland to see what is going on with the flow of magic. But his cover story is that he is going to give a talk at a magical girls school. Girls and women, though magical, are not supposed to use magic. Proper ladies are taught to suppress their magical abilities and these girls’ schools teach them how to do that. When Zacharias arrives to the school, he is in absolute awe of the magical abilities of some of the girls. Particularly, a brown-skinned girl named Prunella Gentleman.

When Prunella insists that she go to London with Zacharias, under his tutelage, the real excitement begins.

If you’re looking for something magical to break your reading slump, this book may be the ticket.

Jessa-Lynn Morton has been trying to maintain her grip on her family ever since her father died by suicide, and it’s not going well. Jessa steps up and takes over her family’s failing taxidermy business, struggling to keep it afloat and find new clients even while her mother seems to be sabotaging Jessa’s efforts by rearranging the animals in erotic scenes every time her back is turned. Meanwhile, Jessa’s brother grows more and more distant, and Jessa’s niece and nephew are largely unsupervised after the sudden disappearance of their mom, Brynn. Jessa is struggling to come to terms with Brynn’s absence as well: Jessa was in love with her, and she and Brynn carried on a sexual relationship both before and after her marriage to Jessa’s brother. As things get dire for the Morton family, Jessa will need to learn that the key to keeping them all together is to cede control.

Arnett’s writing is very sharp, funny, and unexpected. She moves back and forth between the present and Jessa’s past with Brynn to tell the story of a very dysfunctional family trying their best, and how Jessa’s preconceived notions about herself and those closest to her are sometimes her biggest adversary. It’s hard not to feel for her as she tries to do everything “right” in the wake of tragedy and tremendous guilt, and it takes a while for her to understand that her process of grieving is not the same as others, and that’s okay. She makes inadvisable choices while mired in her own grief and frustration, and she is hopelessly hung up on a woman who has never treated her well, but she also cares deeply. Her love is what made me root for her, even when she said or did things that I couldn’t get behind. This is a deeply-felt, strange book about love, grief, and family that will certainly stick with you.

Nubia is a Black seventeen-year-old with superpowers that she does her best to keep hidden and under control for obvious reasons: she is Black with superpowers! Racists already think normal Black people are dangerous, how do we think they’d treat a Black girl with super strength? Yes she has powers, but she is not invincible so she lays low with her two moms. In fact, because of a few incidents, they’ve already had to pick up and move towns multiple times in order to keep Nubia safe. They’ve finally lived in a place long enough where she’s been able to plant some roots and make some really good friends.

Nubia’s two best friends are Quisha and Jason. At the beginning of the book, Nubia, Quisha, and Jason are outside the corner store, having slushies and talking about their summer plans. Nubia’s moms are kinda strict so it’s likely she won’t be doing much of anything, though Quisha wants her at least to come to the upcoming march against police brutality. Quisha and Jason leave, and Nubia goes into the shop to get a refill. Her crush, Oscar, happens to be in the shop. While they are in there, there’s an attempted robbery and Nubia has no choice but to use her powers to stop them.

You know, her powers she is supposed to be keeping secret.

This comic is fantastic. Nubia’s story, though fantasy, is still the very real story of Black women being at the forefront of fights for justice. How much do we all, as people, need to risk in order to protect others? And how can we keep up the fight for a society that views us as less than human? Not gonna lie, I cried through most of this comic. Not because it’s bad, but because it is so incredibly good. Nubia is the hero I didn’t know I needed.

I highly recommend this comic, even if you’re not into superhero comics, you need to read this one.

Ada is about to head out on a week-long Hawaiian vacation with her parents and two sisters when she catches her boyfriend cheating. Considering Ada just decided she was ready for sex, this is a pretty big blow. But things go from bad to worse when her step-father bails on the trip at the last minute, and then on their first day in Hawaii, Ada walks in on her mom having sex with someone who definitely isn’t her step-dad. With this explosive secret eating her from the inside out, Ada navigates a week in Hawaii with her over-eager five-year-old sister, her know-it-all older sister, and a potential crush.

I am a sucker for a good family drama, and the idea of a teenage girl knowing her mom is cheating without being able to let on that she knows to her sisters or parents sounds like torture if it were happening to me…but reading about it happening to someone else was super engrossing, with many cringe-worthy moments. The backdrop of a gorgeous Hawaiian vacation just adds to the tension, as does Ada’s complicated relationship with her older sister, Afton, who is acting odd and distant during the trip.

What made this book an instant must-read recommendation for me was that this story was full of surprises, and even though Ada feels helpless and caught up in circumstances beyond her control, it’s how she responds to these situations that facilitates her growth. At first, her reaction is essentially, “Eff it, if everyone is having sex, I’ll do it too!” This attitude leads her to a connection with Nick, who is sensitive and kind, and becomes Ada’s unexpected confidant in her family drama. When he and Ada agree to have sex and make a plan, it doesn’t go quite the way they imagine, but it does force Ada to confront the root of her problems and actually talk to her family about what she saw, even if she does go about it in an incredibly awkward way. This is a sex-positive YA novel that speaks frankly about the considerations of having sex for the first time, both physical and emotional, and takes a nuanced approach to relationships. I highly recommend this to anyone who likes books about complicated relationships of all types, and characters learning how to navigate them with humor and grace.

In a long list of fae-based YA fantasy novels (and it really is a long list, and getting longer, and I am not complaining), Wintersong is uniquely beautiful. The first magical duology that is unapologetically and lovingly inspired by Jim Henson’s Labyrinth, Wintersong is both historical and fantastical, split between 18th century Bavaria and the magical Underground of the Goblin King and his court. Liesl grew up on tales of the Goblin King and his strange, alluring kingdom. But her connection to him does not end with fairy stories. When Liesl was small they were playmates. Then she grew up, and came to think of him as only her imaginary friend, someone she had dreamed up to escape her everyday life as it grew increasingly difficult. Until the day he stole her sister.

Abduction is a common trope in tales of the fae. You see it in old stories like Tam Lin, and in new ones like Labyrinth. And, as in Labyrinth, the abduction of Liesl’s sister in Wintersong serves as a means of drawing the heroine of the story into the realm of the fae, in this case the Underground, in search of what was lost. It’s a journey that never goes smoothly for the quester, but Liesl’s trip into the Underground is more than usually fraught with danger. The deeper she goes the more she realizes how tangled up her entire family is with the magic of the Underground, because it’s family that really drives Jae-Jones’ novel. Yes the Goblin King is a fascinating character, but it is Liesl and her siblings, and her love for her siblings, that form the heart of Wintersong. Everything that she does, even the bargain that she strikes with the Goblin King and its inevitable end, is for her siblings.

If you’re looking for a new fantasy series to sink your teeth into, one with gorgeous world building, a dark and compelling romance, and a deeply emotional, family-driven plot, you want Wintersong.

Barker does such a phenomenal job of distilling the information down into concise sections that give you enough to have a general understanding and to also, at least in my case, generate a whole lot to have conversations about. There are a plethora of definitions of terms in this book, including starting with what we mean when we use the word “gender.” Spoiler: it’s a whole bunch of different things! And these things can change depending on geographic location, time in history, and culture.

It’s important to know that you cannot have a discussion of gender without also discussing patriarchy and white supremacy and capitalism and colonialism and everything else. This book makes that very clear and it goes beyond the “we can’t talk about gender without discussing these things” to explain the why behind the necessity of discussing these things as well.

There is so much about this book to love. The art is representative of a diverse range of people. There are a ton of pull quotes from scholars, celebrities, and activists that also make a way for us readers to then explore topics on our own and believe me, you will want to go down many rabbit holes. There are also plenty of pop-culture references to help give examples and context to a subject that can feel overwhelmingly academic. Note that it is a graphic guide but still leans toward the academic, and this is not a book that is accessible to children for that reason.

Gender can be such a complicated topic and this book is a great, unintimidating way to dive in. I enjoyed it immensely and learned a lot and I hope you will too.