2021 was a long year. With even longer end-of-year book lists. The rise of various digital proponents of peak literacy (see: booktok, influencers) has led to more public interest in reading than I’ve seen in a while. Maybe this is because people got bored while trapped inside, or maybe literature is improving in regards to a popular lean towards the masses! I’m going to stick with the former.
As I detailed in a previous review roundup (our most viewed of the year), I’ve been refining my reads and prioritizing them as well. Hate-reads don’t really do much for me, and I consider the act of reviewing them to either yield opportunities for the bad kind of spotlight press I don’t want those titles to have, or the good kind of pressure on consumers, publishers and authors alike. This list aims to fulfill the latter, although I do have some five-star reads on this list. Each title may not correspond to its numbered month of the year, but all have thoroughly enriched, inspired, inflamed or nurtured my mind in the last 12 months. In no particular order, let’s begin!
The Cruelty/The Greed by Scott Bergstrom
I give this duology one whole category because of (1) how intrinsically tied together both books are and (2) it's more convenient than writing two reviews. These books feed off of each other like parasites, weaving catastrophic levels of international emergency and the faintest hint of YA romance as it should be: reaching through Tor servers and forging a mutual partnership involving unnumbered Swedish bank accounts. Despite the various, copious ignorant reflections Bergstrom has made public regarding his views on young adult literature (the genre he wrote these books for) and teenage female protagonists and readers (the people he wrote this book about/for), this duology sits at a very neat intersection of YA fiction and mystery. The problem lies with the fact that this intersection includes the good, bad and ugly of both genres.
The plot of this duology can be succinctly described as follows: Gwendolyn is not like other girls because she’s a redheaded polyglot, and her father is a federal agent. When he goes missing after embarking on a need-to-know mission to Paris, Gwen is left to chase after him with little aid from the government willing to let him die as a scapegoat, soup and blankets from the upstairs neighbors and a token black boyfriend who just so happens to have coding skills of Penelope Garcia proportions. After sneaking away to begin her training to gain the spoons she needs to find her father, Gwen is thrust into a world that revolves around the Polish mob, Belgian hookers and Israeli confidants, none of which Gwen’s 17 year old heart is prepared for. Without revealing too much about the ending, a whirlwind of spy montages and close brushes (and blunt crashes) with death pack out the rest of the duology, both books ending on devastatingly cynical notes that leave you slack-jawed and without much hope for Gwendolyn, or anyone at all.
You may be thinking, Leah, this is sounding a little bare-bones. I’d say, you’re right, but the magic of these books lies within some of the most satisfying details that merge the story with the heart of the storyteller. A Mary Sue protag quickly became a compelling driving force of the story, once it was revealed that she too had vital stakes in the fights she started and quite literally had to beg to stay alive for all 500 something pages. That fight is an it factor I believe all good mysteries should have, and believe even more strongly that all good young adult fiction should have. I’m glad that by the end of it all, these books found it!
I’ll Give You The Sun by Jandy Nelson
There’s a lot of pretense and hullabaloo surrounding popular titles that feel like they’ve blown up so quickly that EVERYONE must have read them by now, and though that may not be the case for this book, I still see it everywhere. YA hasn’t forgotten. Fiction hasn’t forgotten. Booktok, apparently, also hasn’t forgotten. And neither have I.
Beyond the obvious compliments on how well Nelson’s form and style suit the story she tells of Noah and Jude, two California siblings navigating various storms and saints (literally, not just the FATM song) through adolescence, love and loss. Yes, I am also acknowledging that this feels like what HBHBHB was meant for as a concept album, with all due apologies to Miss Welch. Her characters are real and her narration is viscerally magical and the exceedingly long chapters that divide the book into a number of segments I could count on both hands create breathless strings of plot that keep readers hooked, and for good reason. I vividly remember starting this book at 1AM, and finishing it around 4AM. This book left ringing in my ears. Not many things or books did that for me this year, to be honest!
However. There is the whole crux of Jude and Oscar to be dealt with, the core romance of the novel and conductor of some of the largest lessons and plot resolutions the readers are told to reckon with. Jude is a 16 year old girl, and Oscar is a 19 year old man. Beyond the sketchy (and very much illegal) metrics there, a very graphic and traumatizing moment for Jude was her sexual assault, which occurred when she was 14 years old, by the hands of a boy three years older than her. Jude is inherently introduced to both the readers and Oscar as severely emotionally stunted, walled off by childish layers of standoffishness and stubborn wildness, and needs to be loved and reached out to in literally any other way than the way Oscar does. No matter how earnest and heartfelt Nelson wants me to feel about them as the greatest love story of all time, I can’t stop feeling like I’m looking at a trainwreck. Or the trolley problem. Even in the closing pages of the book, Nelson writes the following:
‘I’m three years older than you, which is a lot now but won’t always be.’ I think how much less the three years between him and me seem than the years between Zephyr and me seemed when I was fourteen. I feel like Oscar and I are the same age…‘You’re still in high school,’ Oscar’s saying. ‘You’re not even sodding legal, which didn’t occur to me until Guillermo pointed it out a few hundred times last night. We can be great friends…’ There’s hesitation, frustration in his voice, but then he smiles.
‘I’ll wait for you. I’ll live in a cave. Or become a monk for a few years, wear a robe, shave the head, the whole bit. I don’t know, I just really need to do the right thing here.’
‘And the right thing is turning our backs on what might be the love story of our lives? The right thing is denying destiny, denying all the forces that have conspired to bring us together, forces that have been at work for years now? No way…And for the record, a sixteen-year-old girl and a nineteen-year-old guy are probably at the exact same maturity level. Furthermore Oscar, no offense, but you’re frightfully immature.’
This conversation is the literal climax of this character relationship, of both character’s arcs, and the most stressful chapter of the novel. It’s not a throwaway. It’s deliberate. Clearly, Nelson is aware of how icky this is. The reader knows. And yet almost every review and perspective I see on this romance is overwhelmingly positive. For the fact that I woke up from my honeymoon phase to zoom out and say, wow, that really soured much of my understanding of the novel, when it seems many others haven’t, I feel that I’m not going crazy. I find it reductive that such beautiful writing (and such a fragile moral balance in a story that is very much about the lies of love) was ripped to shreds and rendered basically void on that page. Frankly, the age gap is unnecessary! Age tweaks could have happened in copy editing ages ago and the simplest problems could have been solved, and we could have had a relationship not unlike every other typically unhealthy YA romance. Alas, JudeScar persists, and haunts me to this day. Docking a star and a half for that. With that exception, this is a beautiful story beautifully written, and I recommend it with caution and a watchful eye.
Any Place I Hang My Hat by Susan Isaacs
A while ago I kind of gave up on liking books on the basis that I could relate to them, and decided to try and approach them by how well crafted the story they told was. At the time of reading this book, I was in the latter stage out of the two, and I was able to recognize it for both its strengths and weaknesses despite the fact that it was a bit of an out-of-the-comfort-zone read. I was unfamiliar with Isaacs, I tend to stay away from the rich-people-in-New-York-2000s-chick-lit-core plot mirrored in this book, but by the end it had thoroughly both warmed my heart and won it over!
Amy, the protagonist and narrator of this novel, guides the reader through her past and present dysfunctional family and identity, all while following the (fictional) 2004 election as a journalist and assistant editor working her way up the rungs of a stuffy journal in Manhattan. Her relationship is slowly but surely falling apart due to her inability to let people in, and she decides that in order to confront some long standing faults within herself, she must search for her birth mother who walked out on her as a baby. Using wonderfully detailed and brilliantly paced first person narration, Isaacs delivers an up-close study in character and how the people in Amy’s world operate around her, a process that almost reminds me of a stage play. Even though it got a little fluffy, this book never seemed cheesy or emotionally disingenuous. Overall, it was extremely entertaining and satisfying by the end, as all good chick-lit should be.
Radio Silence by Alice Oseman (by technicality)
It’s rare that a book you enjoyed in middle school holds up to stand the test of time, and that is very much the case with this novel. I first read it probably in 7th grade or so, but revisited it around Christmas of this year, curious to see what I remembered and what had compelled me about it upon first reading. Needless to say, I came up disastrously empty.
The first issue I have with this book is how vastly empty it is. Like a sitcom or a poorly written Wattpad social media au, each character is propped up by the worst case of tell-not-show introductions I’ve seen in ages, and their actions rarely veer from that label. There’s absolutely no complexity in Frances, the token (half) black character in her own story with a chronic studying habit and the burden of the worst fashion sense Britain has seen since Skins, or Aled, the soft white boy with an awful home life and apparently no regard for the effects of his actions on others. Side characters and brief love interests are caricatures: the fun one, the childhood best friend, the supportive mom. I can’t remember most of their names, because they faded away so quickly after reading.
The second, and probably greatest complaint I hold about this novel is its lack of direction. Like, completely and totally. Frances and Aled cross paths at a party in their junior year, or whatever the British equivalent of that is. They somehow hit it off immediately, and become best friends (for no reason other than the fact that they are both lonely) and Frances reveals that she is the biggest superfan of the podcast Aled anonymously records, called Universe City (a Night Vale ripoff). They launch a long-time collaboration that, when exposed to the public, effectively shatters Aled’s plan for anonymity and precarious mental state. There’s a lot of back-and-forth and poor Aled, how will he handle the fame and money, as one can imagine. Also, by no causal connection, Aled’s mother becomes increasingly abusive. Since Aled’s sister ran away a year ago, the spotlight of pet-killing and hair cutting has fallen upon the Golden Boy himself. Note that throughout the entire plot, nothing of significance is actually happening to Frances, the main character of this book, besides sitting by Aled’s side and being in her flop era academically.
The imaginative idea that there is a slight possibility that conceptually, this book could have presented some thoughtful concepts on fame and the Internet, is promising. But the reality is that it is wave after wave of “Aled gets hurt, Frances feels bad, Aled gets mad, Frances feels bad” with no resolution, reconciliation, or real plot for Frances at all just makes it unbearable to read. Aled is a villain, a real menace, a plagiarising irreverent inconsistent terror, and yet until the very last page of the book the reader is told to consider him through a glorified lens. Everything Frances does, thinks or says comes second to him, to the point where she could be eliminated entirely because her presence in her own book only exists to push Aled in the right direction. Frances thinks she can fix him, but the reader sure as hell doesn’t. Showing how the woes of gaining Tumblr followers and major creative recognition slowly torture the most sensitive blonde boy in the UK is not the serve Oseman thought it was, and we are all worse for it.
Permanent Record by Mary H.K. Choi
I find that this book falls in a similar category to the last, in that it bites off more than it can chew in regards to a media-centric approach to modernity in a way that only young people experience, but ends up overpromising and underdelivering. This is also following another supremely bad read from Choi (“Emergency Contact'')so I was not exactly surprised.
First, I feel that this book would have suited being pushed as a romance, given the fact that this was definitely only Pablo’s (the protagonist) coming of age story, despite what the cover and synopsis would have you believe. The love interest and other (in theory) protagonist- Lee, a pop star with soulful roots- was present for maybe 40 percent of the book. For at least the last third of the novel after a plot climax of an argument, she was completely absent save 3 pages. It’s giving “Let It Shine”. I usually wouldn't mind this gap because it felt necessary to pause for some space and character development for Pablo, but it was a drastic shift that burst the preconceived genre bubble (not in a great way) and it seemed as if Lee was forgotten and cast to the wind.
Pablo himself was an unreliable narrator, one whose narration was inconsistent and obtuse, but I suppose he gains some brownie points for his desperation of poverty when portrayed in contrast to Lee's excess of wealth. On the other hand, Lee was a shell of a character whose only defining trait was being famous. To write a Cinderella story set in New York about two creatives from conflicting backgrounds and ethnic identities is not entirely a bad idea, but I found that Choi’s penchant for microaggressions and wholly unlikeable characters got in the way. I saw the same problem with “Emergency Contact”, a novel that felt like for every bit of romance the reader absorbed, we were sucked dry of 3 chapters worth of progress in character or plot. The book plugs on with nowhere to go, and leads to an ultimately unsatisfying end that left a bad taste in my mouth.
Embassy Row Series by Ally Carter
Back to the spies. If Ally Carter is gonna write one thing, it’s gonna be espionage. And I fear that I eat it up every time! While “Embassy Row” is by no means as well crafted nor entertaining as “Gallagher Girls”, it remains engaging in a way only Carter books are. This means I also recognize the formula Carter employs for many twists, one of which falls along the lines of the love interest’s mom happens to be institutionalized for knowing too much and also fatally trained with a bend for revenge, so she’s going to sing a lullaby then kill all of you (on that note, Alexei will never compare to Zach. Sorry). I am a few years past the target age demographic, but in my heart anyone can be a Gallagher Girl, or in this case, an Embassy Kid.
Grace Blakely is a teenage girl with a family that runs deep in the roots of bureaucracy, with her grandfather currently serving as the HDIC (head diplomat in charge) at the US embassy of Adria, a fictional European island country. With her brother away at military school, father virtually absent and mother dead in a fiery accident three years prior, Grace’s mental health has devolved into psychosis and a frenetic state. Naturally, she is sent to the seaside to stay with her grandfather on Embassy Row, a neighborhood that stands as the most powerful concentrated neighborhood of diplomatic power in the country. This becomes an environment that proves to do more harm than good.
Over the course of a fairly short trilogy of fiction novels, Grace makes out with a Russian diplomat, fakes the death and innocence of said Russian, becomes an honorary princess, becomes a real princess, incites war negotiations between Iran and Adria, gets shot, joins a secret society of women who have changed the course of history, attempts to assassinate three (3) diplomatic figures, makes friends, and solves the death of her mother. She can do it all! Somehow, she still doesn’t have many definitive traits beyond “crazy” and “thinking she is crazy”, but I’m willing to look over some of those bland spots to appreciate the variety in plot.
I’ve never seen an author write herself in and out of so many sticky plot holes, twists, turns and climaxes, and I’m also pretty sure I never caught my breath once while reading these books. Even when the dialogue and narration got a bit teeny-boppery or melodramatic, I was still gasping over the next absurdity Grace and the gang managed to narrowly escape. This trilogy is truly a warning against weak and repetitive narration, but a reminder that shock sells. A lot. It sold to me, anyway.
Social Creature by Tara Isabella Burton
For fans of Caroline Calloway’s Instagram stories, the RGWF pandemic and, well, “Thoroughbreds”, I recommend this book. Not necessarily because it’s the most beautiful book written, or because the characters clutch your heart, but because it is so niche. All of the realms I mentioned previously may be blissfully obsolete or unknown to 80% of my readers, but IYKYK, and what YK will make reading this book even sweeter.
The twisted tale of Lavinia and Louise- both twenty somethings living in NYC- begins with a late night, a snagged thread and broken promises, all of which pile up and pack on and snowball into a whirlwind of sugaring/friendship/romance that sufficiently pads Lavinia’s social wallet and drains Louise’s. Both girls lock onto one another because of their deep loneliness and desire to mean something to someone else, both faults that eventually clash and lead to the argument in which (SPOILER ALERT!) Louise accidentally kills Lavinia.
Is this to say that the world as we know it may be very different if Natalie bashed Caroline’s skull against a club bathroom counter, or if Amanda didn’t take the blame for Lily? No. But the following charade and coverup Louise manages is an impressive feat that keeps readers’ hearts racing and rewrites the ages old tale where the ugly, poor girl gets the brunt of punishment and consequences for the stainless princess’ actions. This diversion from the usual tortured toxic best friends narrative thoroughly interested me, and made up for any overly sentimental monologues or boring stretches of Louise’s wallowing. Just sell the Yale plates to pay rent, girl!
The Girls I’ve Been by Tess Sharpe
The funniest thing about this book being one of my favorites of the year is it being recently announced as one of the best YA novels at my local library this year, probably in due part to the amount of times my sister and I checked it out. My Libby history will tell the tale. This early underdog January 2021 release quickly grew as a sensation in YA lit, Netflix boardrooms and heaven forbid, Tiktok. I’m just glad I got on the train when I did, and am now personally considering workshopping a fan chapter called “Sharpies”.
This book differs from “The Cruelty” in that while they are both mystery thrillers about teenage girls, this one has the grit and engaging narrator that the latter lacks. Nora O’Malley is a sardonic, smart and devoted protagonist, who must preserve her secrets as well those of her loved ones when caught in a bank robbery with her ex and current girlfriend. Of course, her skills as a former con-artist (dutifully passed to her by her mother) and damn near professional liar will come in handy, as she ties the incarceration of her final stepfather to the lackeys threatening to shoot her at the bank. Her past and present merge, and at a neck-breaking pace Nora is faced with the sins she’s committed to save herself and her sister Lee, as well as those dealt to her by her own mother and the company she kept.
One of the things I admire most about the character work in this book is the fact that the portrait the reader assumes of each character is delightfully clear. Wes (the ex and best friend) is lanky, lovable and loyal. Iris (the girlfriend) is charming, chirpy and cunning in her own way. Sharpe’s cast doesn’t fall into tropey waters, but instead serves the plot by drawing on their own strengths and weaknesses to supplement Nora’s.
Besides an inventive take on the con-woman number, this novel also offers rich side plots that manage to connect to the core themes of the story without detracting from them. Wes’ abuse at the hands of his father, the mayor of Nora’s sleepy California mountain town, is explored and equally ceased with the same efficiency Nora would afford her mother’s sleazy marks (and also gave us some “Thoroughbreds” coded scenes, to which I am forever grateful). Each former identity Nora has assumed gets its own section, interspersed between increasingly stressful vignettes of the robbery scene. The pacing is delicious, each chapter building upon the last with seamless transitions. All of these elements of the texts make me even more excited for the film adaptation, coming to Netflix both produced by and starring Millie Bobby Brown. Miss Eleven herself is going to kill it, I know this in my heart. This is just an obligatory book-came-first reminder, and an unpaid advertisement for Tess Sharpe’s work. Get into it!
Those Who Prey by Jennifer Moffet
This was a breezy summer read for me, and I also inhaled it in about 2 hours so I’ll keep this review brief on the basis that I’m running off of limited long term memory. From what I best remember, I grabbed this book for a beach read with the right amount of twists and turns, and a literary fiction debut about a 90s college student who gets sucked into an international cult seemed to fit the bill.
One detail I really loved about the structure of the novel was that it was written in the style of a recruiter’s manual, like an omniscient commercial narrator hovering over Emily, the book’s protagonist. Her isolation in a new environment, insecurity and inability to exist on her own, desire to climb the ranks of a new hierarchy and fragile mental state that allowed for further manipulation and double crossing all fall in line with common markers of cult recruitment strategies, which pick off the weaklings and rely on pyramid style horizontal referrals to bolster numbers on campus. The detail and sensitivity dedicated to Emily’s journey and deprogramming process was a breath of fresh air, and presented a realistic ending that wasn’t too sappy or too nihilistic. Overall, a great topic specific read, for those who enjoy a culty moment!
Off the Record by Camryn Garrett
The more I think about this book in retrospect the madder it makes me. For brevity’s sake, let’s simplify.
PROS:
- Fat black girls written by actual fat black girls! Love to see it.
- Said black girl is THEE protagonist, with focused career ambitions and opportunities, and aims for excellence!
- Her whole family is black and attended an HBCU. Okay, I’m listening (hesitantly)!
CONS
- At about 60 pages, the story stops being about Josie's independence and evolution as a journalist and starts being about the romance. Entirely.
- I’m not kidding, maybe I missed the romance label but every professional event she attended, she was rendered speechless or incapable because THEE Marius Canet was in the same general vicinity. There’s nothing I hate more than seeing a protag reduced to shambles because of a crush.
- The direction of this story was everywhere. Is this book about Josie’s coming of age? The press tour she’s following for a story? Blackness in film? Me Too stories and their complexity? Fatphobia and how it permeates relationships? I honestly couldn’t tell you, because it seemed like all of the above. I don’t have a problem with complex themes, but this novel consistently bit off more than it (or I) could chew.
- Also. The involvement of Twitter as a literal medium for Josie’s journalism was insufferable. Her bite-sized tweets that began each chapter and mentions of her mutuals were so heavy-handed, and the novel could have done completely without them. It made the novel seem written by somebody entirely Too Online and laughable to actual teenagers. I would never plead to my parents that my Twitter mutuals are my “real friends”, heaven forbid. Log off, babe!
- Side gripe: Josie's professionalism was awful. I'm not referring to her genuine disability and mental illness interfering with her work, but the fact that she repeatedly abandoned deadlines, drank on the job, and broke various other boundaries makes her seem flimsy and unprofessional. As a black teenager who writes freelance for magazines- a literal mirror for Josie save the chronically onlineness- none of this would slide. Overall, I found this novel to be a big miss. We can do better.
Monday’s Not Coming by Tiffany D Jackson
Speaking of, I wrote the following for a freelance review this summer: As a part of my recreational summer reading and frequent trips down memory lane, I decided to reread “Allegedly” and “Monday’s Not Coming” by Tiffany D Jackson. These highly acclaimed young adult books have been praised for their dexterity of handling black female leads, and representing the realities of how society fails black girls every day. To say the absolute least, I find such acclaim misplaced and fundamentally errant.
In a stumbling exploration of juvenile tone and fragmented narration, this book depicts a tale of two best friends, Claudia and Monday. Monday goes missing, and as Claudia tries to uncover the truth, many grisly details come to light as Claudia’s mental state deteriorates. The matter of my disdain for this book doesn’t lay entirely in its style or form, but both elements certainly contributed to my overall opinion.
The main problem for me is that this book (as well as many others by Jackson) end on a bleak note that leaves more to be desired; In “Allegedly”, Mary is revealed to be a lying sociopath, and in this case Claudia’s acquired memory loss and dyslexia masked the fact that Monday and her younger brother were abused and murdered by their own mother. I don’t find these plot twists particularly inventive or illuminating, and neither is supported by any sort of clues or subtext earlier in the book. With narration that rivals that of a nine year old for each teenage girl (14 or older) and character descriptions that don’t go deep enough to penetrate the reader’s interest, both novels fall flat for me.
Beyond my frustrations with plot holes and prose for Jackson’s works, I take real offense at the way topic matters are handled in each book. Similarly, “Monday’s Not Coming” tries and fails to breach issues of gentrification in black DC communities, all the while enforcing stereotypes that worsen the effects of gentrification itself. Claudia resides in a well off family with a good home, strict and steady church attendance and a mother who cooks custom meals. Of course, these parents despise the housing projects and “ghetto neighborhoods” that Monday lives in, and turn their noses down at attempts to intervene when such housing is eliminated in their community. Depictions of Claudia’s developmental and learning disabilities are used as flashback plot devices, instead of tools that bring to light the inequity in diagnoses for black girls with dyslexia, ADHD and more. With such a bestselling platform and monumental issues being written about, room for error must be airtight- especially coming from a Black woman who is no stranger to such realities.
These books and the discussion surrounding them raise greater questions about how Black girls are treated in media such as books and movies- even by our own. If such acclaimed and praised novels with high visibility depict (poorly written) tragedy, darkness and pain for Black female leads, where can girls like me turn to see themselves represented in the fullness of their light? Should we support these authors regardless of the content they produce, merely on the merits of standing behind authors similar to us? I’ve had many years of reading and exploring young adult fiction, and I've been able to answer these questions only after much growth and contemplation in regards to my own literary tastes and sense of identity. My current greatest hope is that the other black girls reading this will be equipped by their own intelligence and merit to discern the same answers for themselves.
Dare Me by Megan Abbott
Finally, the crowning jewel of this year. I read this book on January 6th, and it hasn’t left my brain since. Who else is doing dialogue like this? Character? Setting and core understanding of genre, even? Nobody, I fear. This glistening, popping tornado of teen girls presents a case for coming of age in thrillers and surrealism, with bites of romance and betrayal, just for some flavor. Of course a high school cheer squad in a small town is the optimal playground for exploring the pitfalls and missteps of human nature, and of course a murder mystery? Where else would you go?
I feel like my little synopses can’t really do this book justice, so I’m asking you to read it on a trust fall here. My admiration for this story is also in large part to the tv adaptation, which personally satisfied me like no other. The way USA Today adapted the novel was so spot-on cinematically and verbally, all because Megan Thee Abbott was a core creator! She was on board from day one, and brought a visually and thematically rich story to the screen in a way only she could. Plus, endlessly expressive performances from Herizen Guardiola and Marlo Kelly that like, physically increased my life span. I owe it all to Willa Fitzgerald as Colette French, and that’s just that! Whether snappy prose or emotional character work is your thing, I assure you this book has something for you. The gift that keeps on giving.
Whew. We’ve made it, folks! I’m truly so grateful that you’ve tuned in to hear me over the last half(ish) of 2021, and I can sense so much love and good works and good words ahead of us in 2022. Until next week, I love you!