February 2023

Vol. 2 No. 6

INSIDE:

Read-alikes:
Black Lives and Art
Book and audiobook recommendations for all ages under Jim Crow and
Beyond
Read-alikes:
New Royals in Romance
Listen-alikes:
Teen Romance in Two
Voices
Featured Review:
Anna-Marie McLemore’s
Self-Made Boys:
A Great Gatsby Remix
Cover art by Jeff Östberg, from
Melt with You, by Jennifer Dugan
Booklist Reader
February 2023
Spotlight on
Historical Fiction
Volume 2, Issue 6 & Romance

Adult Books Books for Youth

3 Top 10 22 Top 10
Historical Fiction Historical Fiction for Youth
4 Read-alikes 23 The Essentials
Black Lives and Art under Jim Crow and Beyond Medieval Times
by Donna Seaman by Julia Smith
6 Read-alikes 24 Navigating Newbery
Russian Lies and Nuclear Roulette Adding Context with Read-alongs
by Donna Seaman by Books for Youth Editors
8 Top 10 26 Featured Review
Historical Fiction Debuts Anna-Marie McLemore's Self-Made Boys:
9 Top 10 A Great Gatsby Remix
Romance Fiction by Alaina Leary

10 Trend Alert 27 Top 10

Love On and Off the Set Romance Fiction for Youth
by John Charles 28 A Conversation
12 Read-alikes Telling the Right Story with Dahlia Adler
New Royals in Romance by Maggie Reagan
by John Charles 30 Authors Recommend
14 Top 10 Dahlia Adler Wants You to Read
Romance Fiction Debuts by Dahlia Adler

15 Reserve These Reads 31 Trend Alert

Adult Love & Sports
by Ronny Khuri
16 LibraryReads
February Picks 32 Reserve These Reads
Children & Teens

Audiobooks
18 Must Listen
Historical Fiction on Audio
by Heather Booth
19 Listen-alikes
Teen Romance in Two Voices
by Heather Booth
On the Cover
20 A Conversation
From Melt with You, by Jennifer
Julia Whelan Dugan, published by Putnam.
by Heather Booth Melt with You appears in this
issue,s Top 10 Romance for
Youth. Cover art © 2022 by Jeff
Östberg. Used by Permission of
the publisher.
From the Editor & Publisher Are you reading Booklist Reader digitally, but want it
in print? Talk to your library, bookstore, or visit us

I
t’s chilly in Chicago in February, which means it’s the
perfect time to warm up with the comfort of books
and reading, especially historical fiction and romance.
February is also Black History Month, which we observe
with Donna Seaman’s outstanding feature “Black Lives
and Art Under Jim Crow and Beyond” (p.4). Highlighting
Black and BIPOC authors is a focus of ours, not just this
month, but year-round in every issue and feature. February
is also a month when many of us, prompted by Valentine’s
Day, celebrate love and romance. So perhaps you’ll want
to stoke the fire with John Charles’ “Love On and Off the
Set” (p.10), or Heather Booth’s “Teen Romance in Two
Voices” (p.19), or Ronny Khuri’s “Love & Sports” (p.31).
Grab the roses, sweets, and great books (and for me, read-
ing glasses!) and have a bright, brilliant, and warm Febru-
ary, filled with romance and learning, all empowered by
reading.
—George Kendall
gkendall@ala.org
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Editor / Publisher
George Kendall
Editorial & Production
Donna Seaman, Editor, Adult Books
Susan Maguire, Senior Editor, Collection Management
and Library Outreach
Annie Bostrom, Senior Editor, Adult Books
Sarah Hunter, Editor, Books for Youth
Maggie Reagan, Senior Editor, Books for Youth
Julia Smith, Senior Editor, Books for Youth
Ronny Khuri, Senior Editor, Books for Youth
Heather Booth, Editor, Audio
Ben Segedin, Production Director
Carlos Orellana, Senior Production Editor
Michael Ruzicka, Operations Manager About Booklist
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Abeje Schnake, Editorial Assistant lished by the American Library Association for more
Marketing than 100 years and is widely viewed as offering the
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Individual pages of Booklist Reader and LibraryReads
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Booklist Reader Adult Books
Top 10
Historical Fiction
From a barrier-leaping African American
woman in the Gilded Age to a military coup in
Guatemala and the woman bookseller who first
published James Joyce’s Ulysses a century ago,
these radiant historical novels illuminate many
lives and times.
The Great Mrs. Elias. By Barbara Chase-Riboud. 2022.
HarperOne.
Chase-Riboud fictionalizes the remarkable real-life rags-
to-riches story of Hannah Elias with a sobering look at
Black female exploitation set within a randy, rollicking
tour of Gilded Age excess, racism, and misogyny.
Harsh Times. By Mario Vargas Llosa. Tr. by Adrian
Nathan West. 2021. Farrar.
Nobel laureate Vargas Llosa dramatizes political turmoil
in 1950s Guatemala, in a tale encompassing covert U.S.
corporate and government operations, the 1954 military
coup, and Martita Borrero Parra, aka Miss Guatemala.
Horse. By Geraldine Brooks. 2022. Viking.
Brooks tells a complexly impactful tale about Lexington,
a Civil War–era champion racehorse; Jarret, an enslaved
groom in Kentucky; an equestrian artist; and, in the
twenty-first century, a Nigerian American art student and
a scientist at the Smithsonian.
The Lincoln Highway. By Amor Towles. 2021. Viking.
Towles’ wildly inventive, thought-provoking novel fol-
lows 18-year-old Emmett Watson after he is released from
a juvenile work camp in 1954 with two stowaways who
www.booklistonline.com
Art from Harsh Times, by Mario Vargas Llosa.
steal his prized Studebaker and all his money, leading to
Emmett giving chase with his eight-year-old brother.
Matrix. By Lauren Groff. 2021. Riverhead.
In the twelfth century, 17-year-old Marie, former child
crusader and “bastardess heir to the crown,” arrives at the
dismal abbey she will eventually transform in this spine-
tingling tale of faith, power, and temptation.
The Paris Bookseller. By Kerri Maher. 2022. Berkley.
Maher has Sylvia Beach, founder of the famous Paris
bookstore Shakespeare and Company and publisher of
James Joyce’s Ulysses, tell her remarkable story, which in-
cludes her relationship with her partner in business and in
life, Adrienne Monnier.
Small World. By Jonathan Evison. 2022. Dutton.
Evison’s masterpiece tells a mid-nineteenth-century tale
involving orphaned Irish twins, a Black man who escapes
enslavement, a haunted Chinese immigrant, and Luyu of
the Miwok nation, while the modern-day story line fol-
lows their respective descendants.
Trust. By Hernan Diaz. 2022. Riverhead.
Diaz’s captivating, multilayered novel creates a searing
portrait of an elite New York–financier during the early
1900s via a novel-within-in-a-novel, two related memoirs,
and journal entries, adding up to a powerful indictment of
economic injustice then and now.
Violeta. By Isabel Allende. 2022. Ballantine.
Born during the Spanish flu outbreak, Violeta addresses her
memoir to a beloved relative, Camilo, during the COVID-19
pandemic a century later, spinning an enchanting, perceptive
account of her long, dramatic life that intertwines personal
experiences with political and social transformations.
Yonder. By Jabari Asim. 2022. Simon & Schuster.
The Stolen—enslaved Blacks on a plantation—should
know better: It is dangerous to even dream about free-
dom. But they must at least try to break free. Asim vividly
captures the daily rhythms of the Stolen’s lives, in which
harshness is punctuated by determination and hope.
February 2023 | Booklist Reader 3
Booklist Reader Adult Books
Read-alikes
Black Lives and Art
under Jim Crow and
Beyond
By Donna Seaman
In Chasing Me to My Grave (2021), a unique and
powerful memoir in words and paintings and a
Booklist Top of the List winner, Winfred Rembert
tells the galvanizing story of his surviving racial
tyranny and violence in Georgia to become an
artist. In his foreword, prominent social-justice
lawyer and activist Bryan Stevenson praises
Rembert as a “gifted” and “brutally honest”
storyteller and “one of the finest and most
original vernacular artists in America.” The books
below address various aspects of Rembert’s
experiences and showcase the work of other
seminal African American artists.
American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey
into the Business of Punishment. By Shane Bauer. 2018.
Penguin Press.
Bauer examines one of slavery’s toxic legacies, private
companies making profits from the labor of incarcerated
people, through a historical inquiry and an account of his
discoveries working as a correctional officer in a for-profit
Louisiana prison.
An American Odyssey: The Life and Work of Romare
Bearden. By Mary Schmidt Campbell. 2018. Oxford.
Romare Bearden is known best for his jazzy collages, in
which clipped magazine images are layered into depictions
of African American lives, creating a dialogue of stereotyp-
ing and its dismantling.
4 Booklist Reader | February 2023
Art from Kerry James Marshall,
by Ian Alteveer and others.
Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America. By
Patrick Phillips. 2016. Norton.
Phillips presents a harrowing chronicle of racial cleans-
ing (police brutality, lynchings, arson, and bombings) in
Forsyth County, Georgia, beginning in 1912, and its long
cover-up.
By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners.
By Margaret A. Burnham. 2022. Norton.
Burnham, director of Northeastern University’s Civil
Rights and Restorative Justice Project, presents a meticu-
lously researched documentation of devastating stories of
Black Americans who suffered racial violence, particularly
in the American South in the mid-twentieth century, in-
cluding accounts of murders committed by members of
the Ku Klux Klan and police officers.
Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans
Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad. By Matthew
F. Delmont. 2022. Viking.
Historian Delmont documents the African American ex-
perience in WWII when soldiers often fought racists in the
U.S. military as much as they waged war against overseas
www.booklistonline.com

Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the
Jim Crow South. By Winfred Rembert and Erin I.
Kelly. 2021. Bloomsbury.
This is a book like no other, from Winfred Rembert’s
unique and uniquely powerful autobiographi-
cal paintings to his disturbing and courageous
life story, frankly told to philosophy professor
Kelly. As a Black man who was born in 1945
in Cuthbert, Georgia, his life was not going
to be easy, but Rembert started out with a
loss: his mother gave him away to her aunt
when he was a baby, causing an abiding psy-
chic wound. His great-aunt picked cotton in
a “slavery-like situation,” and the plantation
owner terrorized Rembert and kept him out
of school. Smart, talented, and irrepressible,
Rembert found work and took pleasure in
basketball and swing dancing at juke joints.
But there is no escaping white hate and
brutality. Rembert recounts diabolical abuse
and violence with rare candor and precision,
including his surviving a near-lynching, incar-
ceration, and chain gangs after participating
in a 1965 civil rights demonstration. By using carved,
tooled, and dyed leather as the medium for vibrantly
patterned scenes from his life, Rembert turned the scars
on his body and soul into artworks of clarion witness
and reckoning. Long and happily married and attaining
fame as an artist in his sixties, he died in March 2021.
With a foreword by Bryan Stevenson and superb color
reproductions, Rembert’s self-portrait in word and image
belongs in every library. —Donna Seaman
enemies, recounting the saga of the Tuskegee Airmen and
the mutiny court martial of Black sailors at Port Chicago
off San Francisco Bay. Now largely forgotten, this cause
célèbre for civil-rights activists led to desegregation of the
Navy.
Just Mercy. By Bryan Stevenson. 2014. Spiegel & Grau.
In this celebrated account, Stevenson tells the story of
how as a Harvard law student he visited death row inmates
in Georgia, witnessed injustices suffered by marginalized
Americans, and founded the Equal Justice Initiative.
Kerry James Marshall: Mastry. By Ian Alteveer and
others. 2016. Skira Rizzoli.
A defining showcase for the work of Kerry James Mar-
shall, who creates masterful and enthralling paintings
depicting Black people in everyday settings on a monu-
mental scale with deeply historical and corrective intent.
www.booklistonline.com
Solitary. By Albert Woodfox and Leslie George. 2019.
Grove.
Growing up in Jim Crow New Orleans, Woodfox helps
his family by committing petty crimes. He ends up in
prison, gets involved in a protest against the inhumane
treatment of inmates, and is
framed for the 1972 murder of a
correctional officer and subjected
to decades-long solitary confine-
ment. Woodfox’s resounding
memoir calls for justice-system
reform.
Stony the Road: Reconstruction,
White Supremacy, and the Rise of
Jim Crow. By Henry Louis Gates
Jr. 2019. Penguin Press.
Gates tracks the vicious back-
lash by white southerners against
the post–Civil War constitutional
amendments that abolished slav-
ery, established citizenship for
African Americans, and ensured
Black men the right to vote, from
white-supremacist propaganda to lynchings and the estab-
lishment of Jim Crow segregation laws.
Street Poison: The Biography of Iceberg Slim. By Justin
Gifford. 2015. Doubleday.
Like Rembert, Robert “Iceberg Slim” Beck wrote a no-
holds-barred memoir about his struggles with racism on
the street and in prison, Pimp: The Story of My Life. Gif-
ford tells the full story behind this incendiary 1967 book
and how Beck went on to write popular crime novels and
speak out against racism, violence, and the exploitation of
women.
White Lies: The Double Life of Walter F. White and
America’s Darkest Secret. By A. J. Baime. 2022. HMH/
Mariner.
Walter Francis White, a leading civil rights advocate,
passed as white to infiltrate Klan groups in the South and
expose perpetrators of lynchings. Although his undercover
investigations put him at great risk, White continued to
fight against white supremacy and racial injustices. Now
Baime brings forward the story of one the most significant
yet overlooked figures in American history.
You Don’t Know Us Negroes and Other Essays. By
Zora Neale Hurston. Edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and
Genevieve West. 2022. Amistad.
Hurston’s wit, literary power, and anthropological
expertise shaped these inquiries into Jim Crow, white su-
premacy, civil rights actions, and Black creativity.
February 2023 | Booklist Reader 5
Booklist Reader Adult Books
Read-alikes
Russian Lies and
Nuclear Roulette
By Donna Seaman
The Half Life of Valery K rekindles awareness of
the appalling consequences of Russian tyranny
and lies and the implicit yet all-too-often hidden
risks of nuclear power. These imaginative and
incisive historical novels explore various aspects
of these themes in different settings and from
different perspectives.
The Atomic City Girls. By Janet Beard. 2018. Morrow.
As the Manhattan Project produced the first American
atomic bombs in Los Alamos, New Mexico, a gated city
sprang up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to produce uranium,
though many working there had no idea what they were
involved in, including young June Walker and African
American construction worker Joe Brewer.
The Big Green Tent. By Ludmila Ulitskaya. Tr. by Bela
Shayevich. 2014. Picado.
This sprawling novel offers a wide-angle view of the stark
realities of Soviet repression from the death of Stalin in
1953 to the 1970s and beyond, portraying literati, sci-
entists, artists, educators, retired generals, apparatchiks,
dissenters, KGB agents, and KGB informants.
The Cassandra. By Sharma Shields. 2019. Holt.
Mildred Groves, poor, gauche, and prone to seizures,
sleepwalking, and prophecy, goes to work at the top-secret
Hanford nuclear-production facility along the Columbia
River in 1944, happily serving as secretary for a high-
ranking physicist until her trances intensify, resulting in a
uniquely audacious approach to the horrors of radiation.
6 Booklist Reader | February 2023
Art from The Cassandra,
by Sharma Shields.
Hannah’s War. By Jan Eliasberg. 2020. Little, Brown/Back
Bay.
Eliasberg’s first novel is inspired by the real-life woman
who discovered nuclear fission, Jewish Austrian physicist
Hannah Weiss, who is at Los Alamos when research secrets
are leaked to Germany.
In the First Circle. By Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Tr. by
Harry T. Willetts. 2009. HarperPerennial.
Written after Nobel laureate Solzhenitsyn’s eight years in
the gulag, bout with cancer, and sentence to “perpetual”
exile in Kazakhstan, this ironic and wrenching novel set in
a secret Soviet prison research facility interleaves the stories
of characters trapped in toxic lies, torturous absurdities,
and stark brutality.
The Nesting Dolls. By Alina Adams. 2020. Harper.
Adams’ mesmerizing historical novel follows three gener-
ations of Russian women, from the 1930s in the USSR to
present-day New York, beginning in Odessa, where Daria
and her husband are condemned as enemies of the state
and deported to a labor camp in Siberia.
The Noise of Time. By Julian Barnes. 2016. Vintage.
Barnes imagines the anguish of Russian composer Dmitri
Dmitriyevich Shostakovich during the soul-shattering So-
viet epoch. For another powerful tale about Shostakovich
and other artists facing repression and war, turn to Wil-
www.booklistonline.com

The Half Life of Valery K. By Natasha Pulley. 2022.
Bloomsbury.
Historical fantasy has been British writer Pulley’s spe-
ciality in her previous novels, including The Kingdoms
(2021), but in this galvanizing tale, the facts need no
such embellishment. Valery, a gracious man of
quiet courage and righteous ferocity, has shrewdly
survived more than half of a ten-year sentence as
a wrongfully convicted political prisoner in a Si-
berian prison labor camp. Suddenly, in 1963, he’s
taken to City 40, a top-secret Soviet compound
containing plutonium-producing nuclear reactors
and a research center ringed by a dying forest.
This is Kyshtym, where unbeknownst to most of
the world, and this is true, a 1957 nuclear-waste
explosion released more radiation than the Cher-
nobyl disaster. Now “prisoner scientist” Dr. Valery
Kolkhanov, a biochemist and radiation expert,
is instructed to keep his head down and do his
assigned work. But when he discovers evidence
of human radiation experiments, he risks all to
investigate. What he can’t decipher are his interactions
with City 40’s head of security, the dashing and terrify-
ing KGB officer Shenkov. Surely it can’t be that, he, like
Valery, is hiding his queerness? From state tyranny and
crimes against humanity to ingenuity and valor under
deadly pressure as well as humor and forbidden love,
Pulley’s brilliantly conceived, vibrantly realized, and
complexly suspenseful tale is all the more resounding in
the glare of Russia’s recklessness at Chernobyl during its
latest, horrific invasion of Ukraine. —Donna Seaman
Art from Oh Pure and Radiant Heart,
by Lydia Millet.
liam T. Vollmann’s National Book Award–winning Europe
Central (2005).
Oh Pure and Radiant Heart. By Lydia Millet. 2005.
Mariner.
Millet dramatizes the daunting paradoxes implicit in the
atomic bomb in a trippy epic featuring librarian Ann and
her gardener-husband Ben, who pro-
vide sanctuary to three unwitting time
travelers, Manhattan Project atomic
physicists Robert Oppenheimer, En-
rico Fermi, and Leo Szilard, who are
bewildered at finding themselves in
twenty-first century Santa Fe, when
the last thing they remember is the
1945 Trinity test.
Red Sky at Noon. By Simon Sebag
Montefiore. 2018. Pegasus.
Set during the summer of 1942,
Montefiore’s historically accurate and
empathic novel finds Joseph Stalin
amassing “penal battalions” of gulag
prisoners, including Benya Golden, a 42-year-old Jewish
writer, to fight a massive German assault.
The Wives of Los Alamos. By Tarashea Nesbit. 2014.
Bloomsbury.
Nesbit’s novel is narrated by the collective voice of the
women whose husbands worked at Los Alamos, telling of
how little control they had over their lives and their reac-
tions to the dropping of the first atomic bombs on Japan,
while raising ever-urgent questions of war and power in
the nuclear age.
Booklist Reader Adult Books
Top 10
Historical Fiction
Debuts
The first-time historical novelists called out
here as the best in a year of many excellent
debut works bring fluency in history, emotional
intelligence, and vivid imagination to tales of
individuals navigating tyranny, war, exile, racism,
and love around the world.
Black Cloud Rising. By David Wright Faladé. 2022.
Atlantic Monthly.
Richard Etheridge, son of a plantation owner and an
enslaved Black woman, proudly joins the Union army only
to face more racism, while remaining deeply conflicted
about the white half of his family.
The Cape Doctor. By E. J. Levy. 2021. Little, Brown.
Levy fictionalizes the remarkable life of the nineteenth-
century physician Dr. James Miranda Barry, who is born
female but assumes a male persona to attend medical
school in Edinburgh, becoming a military surgeon in Cape
Town and conducting a complicated affair with Governor
Lord Somerton.
Daughters of Sparta. By Claire Heywood. 2021. Dutton.
Heywood follows the tragic fates of two of the most fa-
mous women in the ancient world, daughters of the king
of Sparta, Klytemnestra, who expects to be heir to the
throne, and Helen, who is anointed instead.
The Family. By Naomi Krupitsky. 2021. Putnam.
Krupitsky’s decades-spanning saga begins in 1920s
Brooklyn and focuses on daughters of influential Mafiosos,
fiery Sofia Colicchio and her introverted best friend, Anto-
nia Russo, to brilliantly depict Mafia families.
8 Booklist Reader | February 2023
Four Treasures of the Sky. By Jenny Tinghui Zhang.
2022. Flatiron.
Daiyu is kidnapped in China at age 12 and trafficked to
the U.S., where she reinvents herself as a young man, only
to be confronted by anti-Chinese racism and violence.
Silent Winds, Dry Seas. By Vinod Busjeet. 2021.
Doubleday.
After nearly 30 years, Vishnu Bhushan returns to his
native Mauritius to pay respects to his dying father, con-
necting the dots of his extended family’s complex history
on the island nation.
The Sweetness of Water. By Nathan Harris. 2021. Little,
Brown.
The Civil War has just ended when a Georgian white
family takes in two young Black brothers who were for-
merly enslaved, sparking a tale of loss, cruelty, and love in
the wake of devastation.
The Teller of Secrets. By Bisi Adjapon. 2021. HarperVia.
Adjapon’s breathtaking debut, set in politically charged
1960s Ghana and Nigeria, is a coming-of-age story seen
through the eyes of Esi, a naive but feisty Nigerian Ghana-
ian girl.
The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu. By Tom Lin. 2021.
Little, Brown.
In Utah, in 1869, Ming Tsu reckons he has killed some
200 men and is now on his way to killing the five who had
him beaten, stole his wife, and had him sentenced to 10
years of forced labor building the Central Pacific Railroad.
Lin’s Carnegie Medal–winning first novel is a transcendent
epic.
We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies. By Tsering
Yangzom Lama. 2022. Bloomsbury.
After the 1959 Chinese invasion of Tibet, orphaned sis-
ters Lhamo and Tenkyi end up in a Nepali refugee camp,
where an ancient earthen statue of a godlike figure embod-
ies the very spirit of Tibet.
www.booklistonline.com
Booklist Reader Adult Books
Top 10
Romance Fiction
Clever contemporary romances exploring
sensitive issues with wit, charm, and
imagination, along with smart historical rom-
coms, make for a vibrant best list.
Count Your Lucky Stars. By Alexandria Bellefleur. 2022.
Avon.
Of course, the best woman in the wedding, the one
person in all of Seattle who could make or break event
coordinator Olivia Grant’s career, would have to be her
longtime crush, Margot Cooper.
Love, Chai, and Other Four-Letter Words. By Annika
Sharma. 2021. Sourcebooks/Casablanca.
Kiran Mathur, a biomedical engineer from India living
in New York City, and Nash Hawthorne, a pediatric hos-
pital psychologist from Nashville, connect, but will family
objections and trauma keep them apart?
Love on the Brain. By Ali Hazelwood. 2022. Jove.
Snappy dialogue, espionage, tattooed and pierced neu-
roscientist Dr. Bee Königswasser, and engineer Levi Ward
make for a smart, superbly enjoyable enemies-to-lovers
story set at NASA in Houston.
Lucie Yi Is Not a Romantic. By Lauren Ho. 2022.
Putnam.
Lucie Yi is an international tax consultant working in
New York City. Colin Read is a software engineer. They
match through a co-parenting website; commit to raising
their child in Singapore, her home; and face many chal-
lenges on the way to love.
www.booklistonline.com
Part of Your World. By Abby Jimenez. 2022. Grand
Central/Forever.
It will be so easy for Alexis to fall for sweet, sunny Dan-
iel, but she and the younger carpenter and B&B owner
come from seemingly incompatible worlds in Jimenez’s
sensitive, witty, and empowering romance.
The Redemption of Philip Thane. By Lisa Berne. 2021.
Avon.
Charming yet penniless Philip Thane begrudgingly
agrees to go to Whittlesey and deliver a speech on Plough
Day, never imagining that he’ll get stuck there in this clev-
er Regency-romance riff on Groundhog Day.
Remember Love. By Mary Balogh. 2022. Berkley.
Six years after being banished from Ravenswood Hall,
Devlin returns to assume his duties as the Earl of Stratton
and wonders if it might be possible to restore friendly ties
with the woman he abandoned.
The Suite Spot. By Trish Doller. 2022. St. Martin’s/Griffin.
After a celebrity guest at a luxury Miami Beach hotel
molests her and gets her fired, single-mother Rachel takes a
job at a small brewery hotel on a Lake Erie island, only to
discover that the owner has suffered a tragedy.
Sunrise. By Susan May Warren. 2022. Revell.
Pilot Dodge Kingston has returned to Alaska, but not
even his former flame, research guide and dogsledder Echo
Yazzie, can erase the betrayal he fled from years ago, until
they team up to deal with illegal poaching.
A Thorn in the Saddle. By Rebekah Weatherspoon. 2021.
Dafina.
Black equestrian and ranch co-owner Jesse Pleasant is
the grumpiest and most sensitive of his family’s brothers,
and only the hottest and toughest woman will be able to
wrangle him into submission; that woman just might be
tech consultant Lily-Grace LeRoux.
February 2023 | Booklist Reader 9

Trend Alert
Love On and Off
the Set
By John Charles
Whether it’s the romantic tension that develops
into an unscripted romance between two
contestants on a reality television show or a
sexy on-screen kiss that leads to more off-
screen passion, there is something about being
in front of a camera or behind the scenes of a
movie or television production that creates the
perfect setting for romance.
Blitzed. By Alexa Martin. 2019. Jove.
Sassy Denver bar owner Brynn Sterling is reluctant to get
involved with the smoking-hot athletes, like Maxwell Lew-
is, who frequent her establishment, but he hopes to change
her mind as a reality TV show, Love the Player, records the
everyday life of a professional athlete.
The Charm Offensive. By Alison Cochrun. 2021. Atria.
Will television producer Dev Deshpande finally get his
own happily-ever-after romance when geeky tech titan
Charlie Winshaw is cast as the next contestant on Ever After?
10 Booklist Reader | February 2023
Art from Something to Talk About,
by Meryl Wilsner.
Dating Dr. Dil. By Nisha Sharma. 2022. Avon.
Attorney Kareena Mann wants a love match; cardiolo-
gist Prem Verma believes an arranged marriage is better for
the health of the heart, then their intense TV appearance
blowout goes viral.
D’Vaughn and Kris Plan a Wedding. By Chencia C.
Higgins. 2022. Harlequin/Carina Adores.
Kris Zavala and D’Vaughn Miller have different reasons
for agreeing to be contestants on Instant I Do, and neither
imagined they would find true love on a fake dating show.
Eight Weeks in Paris. By S. R. Lane. 2022. Carina.
Actor Nicholas Madden’s long-held dream of bringing
his favorite novel, The Throne, to the big screen could be
in jeopardy when Chris Lavalle, a gorgeous model with no
acting experience, is cast as his costar.
www.booklistonline.com
First Comes Like. By Alisha Rai.
2021. Avon.
To keep the paparazzi at bay and
their respective careers on track,
makeup influencer Jia Ahmed and
Bollywood movie star Dev Dixit
agree to pretend date.
How to Fake It in Hollywood. By
Ava Wilder. 2022. Dell.
To resurrect their acting careers, for-
mer teen soap star Grey Brooks and
washed-up movie actor Ethan Atkins
agree to engage in a fake romantic
relationship that all too quickly turns
real.
I Kissed a Girl. By Jennet Alexander.
2021. Sourcebooks/Casablanca.
Makeup artist and special effects
wizard Noa Birnbaum may be the
key to actress Lilah Silver’s new career
pivot into A-list pictures, but where
does Noa fit into Lilah’s life off set?
If the Boot Fits. By Rebekah
Weatherspoon. 2020. Kensington/
Dafina.
Cinderella has nothing on aspiring
screenwriter Amanda Queen when
she takes her boss’s place at Holly-
wood’s biggest party of the year and
winds up in the arms of sexy Oscar
winner Sam Pleasant.
Lies, Love, and Breakfast at
Tiffany’s. By Julie Wright. 2018.
Shadow Mountain.
Film editor Silvia Bradshaw ends up
doing her well-known boss’s editing
work while also trying to keep him
sober; when things get really dire on
deadline, her colleague Ben steps up
to help.
A Merry Little Meet Cute. By Julie
Murphy and Sierra Simone. 2022.
Avon.
Bee Hobbes hopes starring in a
squeaky-clean holiday film will lead
to more movie roles until her costar,
ex-boy-band member Nolan Shaw,
recognizes Bee as adult film star Bi-
anca Von Honey.
www.booklistonline.com
Something to Talk About. By Meryl
Wilsner. 2020. Jove.
The tabloids declare that Jo Jones, an
actress turned showrunner now writing
a script for a major movie franchise,
is dating her assistant, Emma Kaplan,
although it isn’t true. But is something
going on between them?
Spoiler Alert. By Olivia Dade. 2020.
Avon.
Never in a million years would April
Whittier think she would wind up on
a date with Marcus Caster-Rupp, the
hot star of Aeneas, nor that he would
end up being the secret author of her
all-time favorite fan fiction.
The Stand-in. By Lily Chu. 2022.
Sourcebooks.
Gracie Reed thought being the new
body double for actress Wei Fangli
would be a dream come true until
she finds out how much time she will
have to spend with Wei’s acting part-
ner, Sam Yao.
The Summer of Christmas. By
Juliet Giglio and Keith Giglio. 2022.
Sourcebooks/Casablanca.
Ivy channeled her anger over a
Christmas breakup with Nick, whom
she thought was her soul mate, into
a Christmas screenplay and now
that movie is being produced in her
hometown, where Nick still lives,
instigating this delicious romp by
wife-and-husband screenwriters.
While We Were Dating. By Jasmine
Guillory. 2021. Berkley.
Ben Stephens thinks his new ad
campaign featuring Anna Gardiner is
on track until he finds he can’t keep
his mind on business while being
around the sexy star.
You Had Me at Hola. By Alexis
Daria. 2020. Avon.
Hoping to put her tabloid past be-
hind her, soap opera star Jasmine Lin
Rodriguez intends to stay scandal-free
while on the set of her new big-bud-
get movie, a plan challenged by her
hunky new costar, Ashton Suarez.
February 2023 | Booklist Reader 11
Booklist Reader Adult Books

Read-alikes

New Royals in
Romance
By John Charles
Perhaps it’s the allure of a life of unstinting
luxury. Possibly it’s the idea of having your
every wish be someone else’s command. Or
maybe it’s just the thought of wearing a tiara
at breakfast. Whatever the reason, there’s no
denying the enduring appeal of falling in love
with a royal as so enchantingly demonstrated in
Toni Shiloh’s To Win a Prince and these other Art from The
Royal Runaway,
royal romances. by Lindsay Emory.

American Royalty. By Tracey Livesay. 2022. Avon.
To keep a business deal in play, American rapper Dani-
elle “Duchess” Nelson agrees to participate in a charity
event sponsored by the British royal family, with reclusive
Prince Jameson in a sizzling hot romance inspired by the
real royal romance between Prince Harry and Meghan
Markle.
Duke, Actually. By Jenny Holiday. 2021. Avon.
While in New York City to meet yet another woman his
family wants him to marry, Max von Hansburg falls for
the refreshingly no-nonsense charms of professor Dani
Martinez in a romance full of fairy-tale sparkle and Christ-
mas cheer.
Hate Crush. By Angelina M. Lopez. 2020. Carina.
Princess Sofia Maria Isabel de Esperenza y Santos will do
anything to see her winery succeed, even if it means fake-
dating her old crush, rock star Aish Salinger. Lopez’s red-hot
second-chance romance plays out amidst the vineyards of
the fictional European monarchy of Monte del Vino.
How to Find a Princess. By Alyssa Cole. 2021. Avon.
Makeda Hicks doesn’t think she could possibly be the
long-lost heir to the throne of Ibarania, but the potential
financial windfall investigator Beznaria Chetchevaliere of-
fers her to play along is too good to pass up. Cole puts a
queer spin on Anastasia in this addition to her Runaway
Royals series.

12 Booklist Reader | February 2023 www.booklistonline.com


To Win a Prince. By Toni Shiloh. 2022. Bethany.
After participating in an attempt to overthrow the
current regime ruling the African island
country of Oloro Ile, Ekon Diallo lost
everything: his royal title, his luxurious
penthouse, his position at the family jew-
elry company, and his friends. Now, as part
of his punishment, Ekon must perform
community service by sharing his busi-
ness skills with fledging entrepreneurs like
fashion expert Iris Blakely. While ordinarily
Iris would welcome an expert’s corporate
acumen to help her get her design com-
pany off the ground, being around Ekon
presents something of a dilemma. How can
Iris keep things strictly business in his pres-
ence when she secretly has a crush on him?
Shiloh (In Search of a Prince, 2022) writes
eloquently about the power of faith and
forgiveness in our lives while at the same
time putting an entertaining spin on the
royal-romance trope with a protagonist who is forced
to give up his princely lifestyle and learn how the rest
of the world lives. —John Charles
Playing the Palace. By Paul Rudnick. 2021. Berkley.
New York City event planner Carter Ogden’s unexpected
meet-cute with Edgar, the Crown Prince of England, leads
to a royal romance neither one expected in this fun, fizzy,
fairy-tale-like rom-com by award-winning playwright
Rudnick.
The Princess He Must Marry. By Jadesola James. 2022.
Harlequin Presents.
Prince Akil Al-Hamri’s plans to marry Princess Obatola
only in order to gain his inheritance and his freedom go
awry when he discovers he actually loves his new bride.
www.booklistonline.com
James’ latest contemporary is an excellent example of the
many royal romances to be found among Harlequin’s se-
ries romances.
Red, White & Royal Blue. By Casey
McQuiston. 2019. St. Martin’s/
Griffin.
In order to restore good diplomatic
relations between their countries,
First Son Alex Claremont Diaz and
Henry, Prince of Wales, agree to fake
a friendship, only to discover they ac-
tually have very real feelings for each
other. McQuinston’s debut delivers
royal feel goods in a delightfully fresh
new way.
Royal Holiday. By Jasmine Guillory.
2019. Berkley.
When her daughter, Maddie, is
hired to style a member of the British
royal family, Vivian Forest agrees to
accompany her, only to find her trip
to England upended when she meets Malcolm, the private
secretary to the Queen, providing a wonderful and unusu-
al royal-adjacent romance featuring an older couple.
The Royal Runaway. By Lindsay Emory. 2018. Gallery.
After being jilted at the altar, Princess Theodora Isabella
Victoria of Drieden reluctantly teams up with sexy Scot
Nick Cameron to find her missing fiancé.
The Royals Next Door. By Karina Halle. 2021. Berkley.
What if your new next-door neighbors were a royal
couple who resembled Prince Harry and Meghan Markle?
That is the inspiration for Halle’s romance in which
elementary-school teacher Piper Evans’ life becomes com-
plicated in more ways than one when British Prince Eddie;
his wife, Monica Red; and the couple’s sexy bodyguard,
Harrison Cole, move in next door.
February 2023 | Booklist Reader 13
Booklist Reader Adult Books
Top 10
Romance Fiction
Debuts
The most outstanding debut romance novels
feature endearing protagonists, obstacles to
happiness involving questions of identity and
autonomy, and lots of humor and love.
The Beach Trap. By Ali Brady. 2022. Berkley.
Kat and Blake were BFFs at camp until they discovered
that they share the same father. Fifteen years later, their fa-
ther has died and left them a ramshackle beach house in this
clever nod to The Parent Trap enlivened with dual romances.
Digging Up Love. By Chandra Blumberg. 2022. Amazon/
Montlake Romance.
Alisha Blake is helping her grandparents run their BBQ
restaurant in a small town in Illinois when paleontologist
Quentin Harris discovers dinosaur fossils nearby, leading
to a delightful, unique romance with diverse characters.
The Donut Trap. By Julie Tieu. 2021. Avon.
Jasmine Tran isn’t thrilled to be helping manage her
parents’ donut shop until Alex Lai reappears; attractive,
successful, and Chinese, he’s just what her parents want,
yet things quickly go awry.
Games in a Ballroom. By Jentry Flint. 2022. Shadow
Mountain.
Emerson Latham truly loves Olivia Wilde, but she dis-
misses him as her best friend’s annoying older brother and,
besides, she must marry a man with a title, but Emerson
persists in Flint’s delightfully fun spin on the Regency ro-
mance.
Art from The Donut
Trap, by Julie Tieu.
Art from Digging
Up Love, by
Chandra Blumberg.
Honey and Spice. By Bolu Babalola. 2022. Morrow.
Kiki Banjo is known on the Whitewell University cam-
pus for her female-empowering student radio show and
aversion to campus dating, so when she kisses Malakai Ko-
rede in front of the whole “Blackwellian” student body, her
listeners feel betrayed.
Love & Other Disasters. By Anita Kelly. 2022. Grand
Central.
Self-taught chef Dahlia Woodson is thrilled to be on a
popular cooking-competition show and to meet cute, non-
binary competitor London Parker in a chef ’s-kiss romance
that brilliantly explores the idea of being true to yourself.
Love in the Time of Serial Killers. By Alicia Thompson.
2022. Berkley.
Thompson’s sparkling opposites-attract romance pairs
snarky, distrustful, true-crime-obsessed loner and PhD
candidate Phoebe Walsh with her suspiciously friendly
neighbor, Sam Dennings, an elementary-school music
teacher.
Never Been Kissed. By Timothy Janovsky. 2022.
Sourcebooks/Casablanca.
Wren Roland has been obsessing about the perfect kiss
with the perfect boy since high school, and now he’s man-
aging a drive-in theater where the new social-media intern
turns out to be Derick Haverford, his unrequited love.
A Proposal They Can’t Refuse. By Natalie Caña. 2022.
MIRA.
Kamilah Vega and Liam Kane grew up together in Chi-
cago, where their grandparents started a Puerto Rican
restaurant and an Irish whisky distillery, but they’ve grown
apart, inspiring sneaky matchmakers to scheme.
Savvy Sheldon Feels Good as Hell. By Taj McCoy. 2022.
MIRA.
After her boyfriend dumps Savannah “Savvy” Sheldon,
she decides she deserves better and embarks on an overall
improvement plan that has her wondering if contractor
Spencer Morgan just might be able to renovate more than
her kitchen.
www.booklistonline.com
Booklist Reader Adult Books
Reserve These Reads
Adult
Get your hands on these hotly anticipated
books, all out this month.
Fiction
Arch-Conspirator. By Veronica Roth. Tor.
The superstar author of the Divergent series offers a re-
telling of Antigone in a dystopian future.
Code Name Sapphire. By Pam Jenoff. Park Row.
Inspired by true stories of women in WWII, Jenoff’s lat-
est historical novel follows a woman who works for the
Resistance in Brussels who must save her cousin’s family
from a train bound for Auschwitz.
Every Man a King. By Walter Mosley. Mullholland.
In his second mystery starring Joe King Oliver (after
Down the River unto the Sea, 2018), the PI undertakes the
knotty investigation of a white nationalist who may have
been wrongly accused.
Heart Bones. By Colleen Hoover. Atria.
Get ready to have your heart pierced by Hoover’s latest,
about two young adults from opposite sides of the tracks
who agree to a casual summer fling before they head off to
college.
I Have Some Questions. By Rebecca Makkai. Viking.
When film professor and podcaster Bodie Kane is invited
to visit her old boarding school, she finds herself sinking
www.booklistonline.com
into the unhappiness of her years there and obsessing over
the murder of a classmate and the conviction of Omar Ev-
ans, an athletic trainer.
The Last Kingdom. By Steve Berry. Grand Central.
In the next installment of Berry’s historical thriller/
adventure series (after The Kaiser’s Web, 2021), Cotton
Malone investigates a nineteenth-century Bavarian separat-
ist movement.
Maame. By Jessica George. St. Martin’s.
This funny and poignant late-bloomer coming-of-age
debut follows a Ghanaian British woman as she moves out
on her own, fights for herself at work, and starts online
dating, until a tragedy has her reconsidering everything.
Time’s Undoing. By Cheryl A. Head. Dutton.
In a novel inspired by the author’s own family history, a
Black man and his family in Birmingham in 1929 worry
he may be attracting the attention of the Klan, while
in 2019, a reporter from Detroit looks into her great-
grandfather’s murder.
Victory City. By Salman Rushdie. Random House.
Rushdie’s triumphant latest, his first since Quichotte
(2019), mines Indian history and fantasy to spin an epic
tale of a girl who is granted mighty powers by a goddess
and founds a great city.
Nonfiction
Bad Mormon. By Heather Gay. Gallery.
The star of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City recounts
her family life, her entrepreneurial spirit, and her struggles
with her Mormon faith in a book that is funny and sur-
prisingly relatable.
Paris: The Memoir. By Paris Hilton. Harper/Dey Street.
There was far more going on during heiress Hilton’s
teenage and early adult years than aughts-era gossip blogs
would have readers believe, as the author reveals in her em-
powering and revealing first memoir.
February 2023 | Booklist Reader 15
 FEBRU
FEBRUAR
ARYY 2023
The LibraryReads Hall of Fame designation honors authors who have had multiple titles appear on the monthly LibraryReads list since 2013.

The A
Adv
dventur
entures
es of Amina Al-Sirafi
by Shannon Chakraborty
(Harper Voyager)
"The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi works on multiple levels,
from fantasy and adventure to family and love. Readers who
enjoyed the Daevabad series will be excited to see
Chakraborty start a new trilogy—and it does not
slasher fans everything they could want—and then giving
disappoint. If you like pirates, magical adventure, and strong
female leads, this book is for you."
— Aashna Kinkhabwala, Dover Free Library, Dover, VT
NoveList read-alike: The Rowankind Series by Jaycee Bedford
Don'
on'tt FFear
ear the RReaper
eaper Radiant Sin
by Stephen Graham Jones by Katee Robert
(Gallery Books) (Sourcebooks Casablanca)
"Jade just wants to go home and get back to her life after "Apollo, keeper of secrets for The Thirteen, enlists his
four years in prison, but Proofrock is not done with her as assistant Cassandra to join him on a getaway weekend
another serial killer has come to town. This sequel to My party at a suspicious newcomer’s house to uncover what
Heart is a Chainsaw amps up the action while giving he’s hiding. But they must pretend to be a couple for the
plan to work. Will their fake relationship lead to something
them even more!" real or will secrets destroy everything they've worked for?
For fans of Greek retellings."
—Joseph Jones, Cuyahoga County Public Library,
Cuyahoga, OH —Kari Bingham-Gutierrez, Olathe Public Library, Olathe, KS
NoveList read-alike: The Summer is Ended and We NoveList read-alike: The Hades Saga by Scarlett St. Clair
are Not Yet Saved by Joey Comeau

Feb 23 Bonus PPick

ick::
(Ne
(Neww addition ttoo the rregular
egular list)

Secr
ecretly
etly YYours
ours Someone Else's Shoes
by Tessa Bailey by Jojo Moyes
(Avon) (Pamela Dorman Books)
"Bailey’s latest series starter is a grumpy/sunshine romance a bit "A mix up at a gym forces two very different women to
different from her others. Julian is a buttoned-up professor prone literally walk in each other's shoes, leading to a complete
to panic attacks from suppressed trauma. Hallie is a free-spirited breakdown and reinvention of their current lives and world
Black C
Candle
andle W
Women:
omen: A No
Novvel
gardener who has had an unrequited crush on him since high views. Sisterhood, mental health, a risky heist, romance, by Diane Marie Brown
school and is dealing (or rather, not dealing) with her own regret...this book has everything in perfect proportion and (Graydon House)
traumatic past in a completely opposite way. When he comes is a true page-turner to boot. Readers will love every page
"A dual timeline moving from 1950s New
back to their Napa hometown on sabbatical, she manufactures a of this fantastic book." Orleans to the present, three generations
run-in that doesn't go as she had hoped. Likable and believable —Sharon Layburn, South Huntington Public Library, of strong magical women, a spell book,
characters make this a winner.” Huntington Station, New York and a secret generational curse make for a
—Kaitlin Booth, Cuyahoga County Public Library, OH very entertaining spin on family drama."
NoveList read-alike: To Sir, With Love by Lauren Layne NoveList read-alike: The Switch by Beth O'Leary — Rebecca Vnuk, LibraryReads

Find out more at www.LibraryReads.org Made inLibraryAware - www.libraryaware.com

16 Booklist Reader | February 2023 www.booklistonline.com

 The W
Wrriting RRetr
etreat:
eat: A No
Novvel
by Julia Bartz
(Atria)
"Alex and her ex-best friend, Wren, along with 3 other women are picked for a writing
retreat with infamous author Roza Vallo. They must finish writing their books in a
month's time, and the best one will be published. Roza is a mercurial taskmaster,
becoming stranger while the awe the women have for her turns to fear. This is an
unusual horror story with many twists and turns."

—Judy Gaynes Sebastian, Eastham Public Library, Eastham, MA

NoveList read-alike: The Dark Game by Jonathan Ganz

February 2023 - The top tten

en books published this month that library staff across the country love.
The Crane Husband A Da
Dayy of FFallen
allen N
Night
ight For Her C
Consideration
onsideration
by Kelly Barnhill by Samantha Shannon by Amy Spalding
(Tordotcom) (Bloomsbury) (Kensington Books)
"Fans of The Priory of the "Aspiring screenwriter Nina
"An artist and her children live
on a small farm. The teen Orange Tree will be thrilled to writes e-mails for other people,
daughter manages not only her revisit the intricately detailed including Hollywood darling
mom's business but also the world Shannon has created. Ari Fox. Nina is enamored of Ari
household and care of her little In this standalone prequel, but a bad breakup made her
brother. It is a life she can vow never to date again. This
the stories of four women are
handle until mom brings home rom-com with a queer actress
spun out as the Dreadmount and plus size woman offers
a crane and declares him her erupts and civilizations
husband. A unique fairy tale great representation of realistic
crumble. The large cast of body positivity. Readers will
with a feminist message: don’t characters is deftly handled,
trust a crane to make you root for the characters in this
and readers will enjoy the funny, smart, and
complete. For readers who
enjoyed Juniper & Thorn." fascinating mythology. " heartwarming book!"

—Kimberly McGee, Lake Travis Community Library, Austin, TX —Beth Mills, New Rochelle Public Library, New Rochelle, NY —Andrea Tucci, Glencoe Public Library, Glencoe IL
NoveList read-alike: Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi NoveList read-alike: Beneath the Keep: A Novel of the Tearling by NoveList read-alike: Something to Talk About by Meryl Wilsner
Erika Johansen

The House of EEvve I Ha or

ome Questions ffor
Havve SSome It's One of Us
by Sadeqa Johnson You: A No Novvel by J.T. Ellison
(Simon and Schuster) by Rebecca Makkai (Mira)
(Viking)
"Johnson’s latest historical "JT Ellison has written a
"Engaging story of a boarding beautiful story from start to
features dialogue that snaps school murder being solved 20 finish. Olivia and Park struggle
and settings that perfectly years later by true-crime with infertility. A woman is
evoke 1950s Philadelphia and podcast enthusiasts. Or is it a found dead, and DNA shows
Washington, DC. Readers will story of memories and how the murderer is related to Park.
be captivated by this story of you interact with them, Not only is this a well-done
depending on your stage in life mystery of whodunit, it is
two young women who and your biases, or one about also a drama of what happens
struggle to overcome racism how as a teen you as a couple deals with loss.
and misogyny to have a simultaneously know Another great book from an
family and a meaningful everything and nothing? Or is incredible author. For fans of
it all three? For fans of Jean All the Dangerous Things."
future." Hanff Korelitz."

—Jodi Prather, Bartholomew Cty Public Library, Columbus, IN —Lorri Steinbacher, Ridgewood Public Library, Ridgewood, NJ —Andrea Galvin, Mt. Pulaski Public Library, Mount Pulaski, IL
NoveList read-alike: The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett NoveList read-alike: The It Girl by Ruth Ware NoveList read-alike: The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave

The Last TTale

ale of the The Neighbor FFaavor Tak
akee the LLead:
ead:
Flo
lowwer Br
Bride
ide by Kristina Forest A Dance O Offff No
Novvel
by Roshani Chokshi (Berkley) by Alexis Daria
(William Morrow) (St. Martin's Press)
"Lily Greene needs a date for her
"A husband cannot resist sister’s wedding but doesn’t want "Gina Morales, a professional on
prying into his wife’s past her family’s “help” to find one. a dance competition show, is
when he visits her She ends up asking her hot determined to win this season.
childhood home. neighbor Nick for help instead, However, instead of the
This gorgeously written but complications ensue when Olympian she wanted as a
gothic fairy tale about she realizes he’s N.R. partner, she is paired with
forbidden knowledge and Strickland—the fantasy author survivalist Stone Nielson.
dangerous love is perfect for who ghosted her. The lead Worse, her producer is pushing
fans of Silvia Moreno-Garcia characters who see the best in for a showmance! This is a fun
or V.E. Schwab." each other and help each other and flirty romance with a
grow make for a satisfying wonderful cast of characters.
second-chance romance. For fans Perfect for fans of Dancing with
of The Love Wager." the Stars!"

—Mara Bandy Fass, Champaign Public Library, Champaign IL —Midge Loery, Mark Twain Library, Redding, CT —Tristan Draper, Dekalb Public Library, Dekalb, IL
NoveList read-alike: The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling NoveList read-alike: The Singles Table by Sara Desai NoveList read-alike: Kiss Me, Catalina by Priscilla Oliveras

Read-alik
ead-alikes
es pr
proovided b
byy No
NovveList and the Librar
LibraryR
yReads
eads C
Communit
ommunityy. Find out mor
moree at w
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yReads
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wwww.librar
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www.booklistonline.com February 2023 | Booklist Reader 17

Booklist Reader Audiobooks

Must Listen strangers to the familiarity of warmly intimate friends who

bond over new flavors and experiences.
Historical Fiction Sisters in Arms. By Kaia Alderson. Read by Shayna Small.
2021. 11.5hr. HarperAudio.
on Audio Drawing on a true story of WWII, Alderson portrays
Eliza and Grace as they volunteer in the first Women’s
by Heather Booth Army Corps class of Black women officers. Small, a
These recent audiobooks bring history to life Booklist Voice of Choice winner, is thoroughly powerful
through richly developed and vibrantly voiced throughout.
characters. The White Girl. By Tony Birch. Read by Shareena
Clanton. 2022. 7.5hr. HarperAudio.
In 1960s Australia, the laws allow Aboriginal communi-
ties to be openly mistreated, their movements restricted,
Adult and their humanity denied. Clanton eloquently inhabits
The Cold Millions. By Jess Walter. Read by a full cast. this difficult time.
2020. 11.5hr. HarperAudio.
A full cast of ten practiced narrators brings to life a Youth
tense episode from Spokane’s free-speech riots in the early An Emotion of Great Delight. By Tahereh Mafi. Read by
1900s. The multiple perspectives here come powerfully to Lanna Joffrey. 2021. 6.5hr. HarperAudio. Gr. 10–12.
life. Joffrey delivers a heart-wrenching narration of this post-
Island Queen. By Vanessa Riley. Read by Adjoa Andoh. 9/11 coming-of-age novel featuring Muslim American
2021. 21h. HarperAudio. Shadi, whose family life is crumbling as the world around
Andoh’s voice can carry gravitas or lightness; it can be her becomes even more threatening.
piercing or flirtatious; it always attains perfection in voic- I Must Betray You. By Ruta Sepetys. Read by Edoardo
ing the remarkable life of a wealthy Caribbean merchant Ballerini and the author. 2022. 7.5hr. Listening Library.
and former enslaved woman in the early 1800s.
Gr. 8–11.
The Lincoln Highway. By Amor Towles. Read by a full Ballerini instantly and effortlessly transports listen-
cast. 2021. 16.5hr. Books on Tape. ers to the winter of 1989 in Romania under the brutal
This story set on the road Ceaușescu regime, where Cristian, 17, becomes an unwill-
in 1950s Nebraska is ing spy for the secret police.
told from multiple
Kent State. By Deborah Wiles. Read by a full cast. 2020.
points of view that
2hr. Scholastic. Gr. 7–10.
change between
This Odyssey-winning performance of Wiles’ verse-
third-person and
novel—the story of the 1970 massacre by National Guard
first-person per-
troops—takes on the feel of a stage production and has an
spectives, creating
indelible impact on listeners.
different levels of
intimacy for the lis- The Lucky Ones. By Linda Williams Jackson. Read by
tener. Reginald James. 2022. 5.5hrs. Listening Library. Gr. 4–8.
Inspired by the author’s childhood, this story features a
Love & Saffron. By
young boy in Mississippi, 1967, who is inspired to strive
Kim Fay. Read by a
for more in life. James’ vocal characterizations are moving
full cast. 2022. 4hr.
and authentic.
Books on Tape.
This brief and When Winter Robeson Came. By Brenda Woods. Read
gentle epistolary by Keylor Leigh. 2022. 2hr. Listening Library. Gr. 5–8.
audiobook is a A budding musician relates a family mystery set before
balm. Narrators and during the L.A. Watts Uprising of 1965 in lyrical
move characters on verse. The audio propels the story off the page, making the
from the formality of verse format particularly accessible.

Art from When Winter Robeson Came.

www.booklistonline.com
Booklist Reader Audiobooks

Listen-alikes Bernstein portrays sensitive, misunderstood Marshall with

a quiet strength. Vacker gives Waverly a strong public
Teen Romance voice, but shows softness in personal moments.
Redwood and Ponytail. By K. A. Holt. Read by
in Two Voices Cassandra Morris and Tessa Netting. 2019. 5hr. Hachette
Audio. Gr. 5–8.
By Heather Booth In this Odyssey Award–honored verse-novel, two girls
On paper, a romance told with an alternating find each other and the first stirrings of love in a moving
narration like You Say It First, by Katie Cotugno, back-and-forth love story as narrators Morris and Netting
create a vocal beating-heart rhythm.
helps build suspense around the potential couple
and allows for a view into both sides of the story. The Sun Is Also a Star. By Nicola Yoon. Read by Bahni
On audio, dual narrations treat listeners to a Turpin, Raymond Lee, and Dominic Hoffman. 2016. 8hr.
Listening Library. Gr. 8–12.
delightful interplay of voices. These romantic
Turpin and Lee convey Natasha’s scientific skepticism
YA stories showcase fun, tension, and the heart- and Daniel’s poetic dreaminess, while Hoffman’s professo-
swelling emotion of first love in two voices. rial interludes elevate the intensity of Natasha and Daniel’s
perfect and devastating day.
The Beauty of the Moment. By Tanaz Bhathena. Read by Verona Comics. By Jennifer Dugan. Read by Michael
Soneela Nankani and Neil Shah. 2019. 11.5hr. Recorded Crouch and Taylor Meskimen. 2020. 8.5hr. Listening
Books. Gr. 9–12. Library. Gr. 9–12.
Susan meets Malcolm when her family relocates to Can- Romeo and Juliet informs this romance with a comic-
ada from Saudi Arabia. The narrators bring a compelling book shop setting, diverse representation of teen sexuality,
urgency to their performances of teens navigating bicul- and clearly distinct voices for Ridley and Jubilee, who
tural romance and family expectations. grapple with emotions, mental-health issues, and feuding
parents.
Every Hidden Thing. By Kenneth Oppel. Read by
Whitney Dykhouse and Jake Mate. 2016.
9hr. Brilliance. Gr. 9–12.
A high-stakes fossil hunt frames the ro- You Say It First. By Katie Cotugno. Read by Jorjeana Marie and
mance of Samuel and Rachel. Narrators Kirby Heyborne. 2020. 9hr. Harper. Gr. 9–12.
Dykhouse and Mate build energy and One night while working her volunteer shift at a voter registration
excitement in the characters’ growing rela- call center, Cornell-bound Pennsylvania senior Meg has a disastrous
tionship and the dig. conversation with Colby, an Ohio high-school grad whose father has
recently died by suicide. Though it’s far from
Love from A to Z. By S. K. Ali. a meet-cute, the pair nonetheless find them-
Read by Priya Ayyar and Tim selves drawn to each other, especially after
Chiou, with the author. 2019. Meg confesses some family secrets of her
9.5hr. Simon & Schuster. own. Embarking on a long-distance friend-
Gr. 9–12. ship that has the possibility to turn into
In this #OwnVoices rom-com, something more, Meg and Colby navigate
Ayyar voices Zeynab, suspended their differing political beliefs, family woes,
for standing up up to her Islama- and thwarted ambitions. Alternating narra-
phobic teacher. Chiou is Adam, tive duties throughout, Jorjeana Marie adopts
a college freshman who has just a clipped, no-nonsense tone, perfectly suited
dropped out. The author-delivered to the driven Meg, while Kirby Heyborne
epilogue is a treat. captures Colby’s exasperation at his rudder-
Places No One Knows. By Brenna less life. As the slow-burn relationship progresses, both narrators ramp
Yovanoff. Read by Karissa Vacker and Jesse up the emotions in their performances, realistically conveying the
Bernstein. 2016. 10hr. Listening Library. heady confusion of an opposites-attract romance. The well-matched
Gr. 9–12. narrators and thought-provoking themes will appeal to fans of uncon-
Opposites attract with a dash of magic. ventional love stories. —Kaitlin Conner

www.booklistonline.com February 2023 | Booklist Reader 19

Booklist Reader Audiobooks
A Conversation
Julia Whelan
by Heather Booth
Julia Whelan is a name and voice familiar to
any avid audiobook listener. She has narrated
over 400 books across multiple genres and age
ranges, was the Audie’s Best Female Narrator
of 2019, and narrates many of the high-demand
titles patrons clamor for. Her sophomore novel,
Thank You for Listening, is set in the world
of audiobooks and romance-novel narration.
Whelan’s performance sparkles with energy
and a deep understanding of her subject matter
and her characters—from audiobook narrators
with multiple personas to residents and staff of
a memory-care facility—in this fun, passionate,
and thoughtful treat for audiobook devotees
and romance fans.
Booth: Authors often talk about hearing their characters
speak to them as they write, but few authors could be as at-
tuned to voice as a narrator like yourself. Do you also hear
your characters as their stories unfold?
Whelan: I do, definitely. Though I think voice differentiation
is probably even more important to me. When I’m narrat-
ing, I look for ways to distinguish each character, what makes
one’s speech different from another’s. So I’m keenly aware of
that when I write, especially during revisions. Are the char-
acters sounding alike? Do they just sound like me? How do
they play off each other? Contrast?
Booth: Early in Thank You for Listening, Sewanee bril-
liantly demonstrates to an audiobook listener that she is
the tough cowboy character he was sure had been a man.
I found it to be a delightful moment for you to show-
case the power of skilled narration. Are there particular
scenes in the book that you crafted with their narration
in mind?
Whelan: I gave myself the freedom to write the first draft
without thinking about how it would play in audio. But in
edits, I began to consider how I could use certain scenes to
educate the reader/listener to the peculiarities of this job.
The fact that people often think there are multiple narrators
on a book when there aren’t; the amount of prep work that
goes into a performance; how narrators collaborate; what
recording duet narration is like; even how a studio feels. Yet
somehow, I didn’t really think about what it would be like
to perform those sections until it was too late, until I was in
the booth performing them. I guess my belief was that the
www.booklistonline.com
book should be written as a book, that it shouldn’t require
being heard to make sense. The audiobook should just be an
enhanced version.
Booth: Some audiobook fans may be surprised to learn
that the frequency of pseudonyms in the romance-narrator
community isn’t just a useful plot point, but commonplace
in reality. Do you have thoughts about that practice?
Whelan: Just like many authors, narrators also use pseud-
onyms and often for the same reasons. Sometimes it’s just
a way to keep branding clear: this is my romance line,
this is my YA line, etc. But sometimes there are real-life
safety or privacy reasons for it, which is why we always
ask listeners not to “out” a performer’s pseudonym with-
out their permission. Listeners will think they’re doing
other listeners a favor by letting them know that they
can hear their favorite narrator under some other name,
but what if by doing so you just publicly posted that
information to a stalker, or an abusive ex, or the other
mothers at their child’s religious school? There’s an in-
timacy to this job—a human voice in another human’s
ear—that can create a situation in which boundaries can
be easily crossed. And as the audiobook fandom grows,
this can become unwieldy.
a commute, and at the end of my day—spent prepping
books and recording books and writing books—the last
thing I want is more literary narrative in my head. But if
I have a road trip, then I’m picking an audiobook based
on performers I trust to be exceptional. Hands down. It’s
always about the narrator.
Booth: I loved the book’s dive into audiobook details like
technical aspects, on-screen versus behind-the-mic acting,
and forward-looking conflicts of the audiobook industry. Is
there more you’d like listeners to know about the world of
audiobook narration that Sewanee and company didn’t get
to say?
Whelan: Oh, probably what every person in every profes-
sion wishes: that they’d get more respect. It’s a difficult
job; it’s more difficult to do well. It’s the most underpaid
area of voiceover work and, at the moment, it’s one of
the most profitable areas in publishing. So while I didn’t
want to hit the reader over the head with it, I just ask
that listeners understand what it takes to do this job. And
how important it is. There’s a historical through line,
from sitting-around-a-fire storytelling to this. It’s elemen-
tal human connection.

Booth: What do you look for
when choosing an audiobook as
a listener?
Whelan: This is where I have
to admit that I don’t listen
to audiobooks. I don’t have
www.booklistonline.com
Thank You for Listening. By Julia Whelan. Read by the author. 2022. 11hrs.
HarperAudio.
Veteran audiobook narrator Whelan reads her own creation: the laughter-filled
romance of a romance-audiobook narrator who falls in love. Actor Sewanee
Chester trades film for narration after a freak accident leaves her sporting
an eyepatch. After grudgingly attending a romance conference in Las Vegas,
romance-cynical Sewanee—posing as an editor with a Texas drawl—meets
Nick, a charming Irishman with secrets of his own and
a few hours to kill. When flights are canceled, the two
have a passionate one-night stand that HEA-denying Se-
wanee tries to put out of her head . . . even as, back home,
she’s given an offer she can’t refuse to dive back into the
romance narration that provided her big break. Whelan
is always wonderful, but she shines in this carefully con-
structed, sometimes-steamy romance that manages to be
laugh-out-loud funny. Her male characters (especially
Nick with his Irish accent) are so believably male, and her
take on Sewanee’s old-Hollywood grandmother is right
out of a 1940s movie. Whelan shrieks, yells, laughs, and
sobs to keep the drama high, but she’s also tender, under-
scoring the many dimensions of her characters. Much of
the story is banter via text and email, and Whelan keeps
it flowing. While Whelan pokes some gentle fun at the
genre, romance fans will be delighted, and the insights
into audiobook production and a concluding author’s
note are pluses. This is pure fun, and Whelan’s many lis-
teners will love it. —Candace Smith
February 2023 | Booklist Reader 21
Booklist Reader Books for Youth
Top 10
Historical Fiction
for Youth
Love, danger, adventure, and irascible animals
all have a place in the cream of this year’s crop
of historical fiction.
African Town. By Irene Latham and Charles Waters.
2022. Putnam. Gr. 9–12.
Inspired by the true story of the last American slave ship,
this epic novel in verse follows the kidnapping of 110 Af-
ricans and the free community some of these individuals
manage to build.
The Beatryce Prophecy. By Kate DiCamillo. Illus. by
Sophie Blackall. 2021. Candlewick. Gr. 3–6.
A girl with no memory, a fierce goat, a bright boy, a rebel
monk, and a lost king find their paths intertwined in this
medieval adventure, in which families are made and found
and the power of stories shines bright.
Cuba in My Pocket. By Adrianna Cuevas. 2021. Farrar.
Gr. 4–7.
Cuevas draws upon her father’s boyhood in her intense
account of Cumba, a Cuban boy forced to flee Castro’s
rule by illegally immigrating to the U.S. A moving tale
with still-relevant themes.
I Must Betray You. By Ruta Sepetys. 2022. Philomel.
Gr. 8–11.
As the final months of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s dictatorship
in Romania unfold, the experiences of 17-year-old Cristian
Florescu offer a window into the atrocities, isolation, fear,
and uncertainty imposed upon Romania’s people.
22 Booklist Reader | February 2023
Love in the Library. By Maggie Tokuda-Hall. Illus. by Yas
Imamura. 2022. Candlewick. Gr. 1–4.
Forced into a Japanese incarceration camp, Tama and
George fall in love at the camp’s library, despite the racism
and injustice surrounding them. This picture-book account
of their story is beautifully illustrated and gently told.
Luck of the Titanic. By Stacey Lee. 2021. Putnam. Gr. 7–11.
Valora Luck stows away aboard the Titanic in hopes that
her acrobatic skills will land her a circus job in the U.S.,
thus bypassing the Chinese Exclusion Act. A strong sense
of setting and the ship’s looming fate make for compulsive
reading.
Pony. By R. J. Palacio. 2021. Knopf. Gr. 5–8.
Accompanied by his invisible pal (Mittenwool) and a
single-minded pony, Silas searches for his kidnapped fa-
ther in a rip-roaring adventure that is equal parts Western,
ghost story, and mystery.
So Many Beginnings: A Little Women Remix. By
Bethany C. Morrow. 2021. Feiwel and Friends. Gr. 8–11.
Morrow’s beautifully written, insightful take on Alcott’s
classic retains the original Civil War backdrop, but it
recasts the March sisters as emancipated young women liv-
ing in the freedpeoples’ colony of Roanoke Island.
Squire. By Nadia Shammas and Sara Alfageeh. Art by Sara
Alfageeh. 2022. HarperCollins/Quill Tree. Gr. 8–11.
Aiza knows knighthood is her only path to full citizen-
ship in Bayt-Sajji, so she conceals her heritage and enlists
in the army. Expressively illustrated, this graphic novel
puts forth an adventurous alternative history of the Middle
East and North Africa.
Voyage of the Sparrowhawk. By Natasha Farrant. 2021.
Norton/Young Readers. Gr. 4–7.
After WWI, orphans Lotti and Ben risk their lives, taking a
not-exactly-seaworthy narrowboat across the English Chan-
nel to France in search of lost relatives. The aftereffects of war
are subtly threaded through this classic adventure story.
www.booklistonline.com
Booklist Reader Books for Youth
The Essentials
Medieval Times
by Julia Smith
Ready your flagons and dragons, your steeds
and noble deeds because we’ve got a plethora
of medieval tales for middle-grade readers
coming at you—perhaps displayed on a round
table? Just a thought.
The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge. By M. T.
Anderson and Eugene Yelchin. Illus. by Eugene Yelchin.
2018. Candlewick. Gr. 5–8.
Elfin historian Brangwain Spurge embarks on a diplo-
matic mission to the neighboring goblin kingdom in this
biting and hilarious adventure that slyly tackles ingrained
prejudices, particularly through its medieval-style illus-
trations.
The Beatryce Prophecy. By Kate DiCamillo. Illus. by
Sophie Blackall. 2021. Candlewick. Gr. 3–6.
When Father Edik discovers a girl with no
memory in a goat enclosure, he becomes
convinced that her coming—and great
destiny—has been foretold in his mon-
astery’s prophetic texts.
The Book of Boy. By Catherine
Gilbert Murdock. 2018.
Greenwillow. Gr. 5–8.
This marvelously rich story, set in
medieval Europe, follows Boy (an
orphan who can communicate with
animals) and Secondus’ quest to find
seven relics. Woodblock-style design ele-
ments and the pilgrim’s-journey trope set just
the right tone.
Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval
Village. By Laura Amy Schlitz. Illus. by Robert Byrd.
2007. Candlewick. Gr. 5–8.
Schlitz’s Newbery winner creates a portrait of medieval
life through a series of interconnected monologues and
dialogues that feature young
people living in and around an
English manor in 1255.
Healer and Witch. By Nancy
Werlin. 2022. Candlewick.
Gr. 5–8.
Fifteen-year-old Sylvie has just come into her powers,
but when she tries using them, things go horribly awry. To
set things right, Sylvie leaves her medieval French village
to find a teacher who can help her control her newfound
abilities.
Igraine the Brave. By Cornelia Funke. Illus. by the
author. Tr. by Anthea Bell. 2007. Scholastic/Chicken
House. Gr. 3–5.
Twelve-year-old Igraine plans to become a knight, and
her family, refreshingly, takes her ambitions seriously.
She gets the chance to prove her mettle when
her family’s castle is besieged by treacherous
opponents.
The Inquisitor’s Tale; or, The Three
Magical Children and Their Holy
Dog. By Adam Gidwitz. Illus. by
Hatem Aly. 2016. Dutton. Gr. 5–8.
In this history- and legend-laced epic,
relayed in the style of The Canterbury
Tales, travelers gathered at an inn share
what they know of three gifted children and
a holy greyhound, who are on the run from the
King of France. Illuminated and illuminating.
Knights vs. Dinosaurs. By Matt Phelan. Illus. by the
author. 2018. Greenwillow. Gr. 3–6.
Gender stereotypes and egos are challenged in this ab-
surdly fun, illustrated novel that—thanks to a mischievous
Merlin—pits King Arthur’s knights against an assortment
of dinosaurs.
Art from Knights vs. Dinosaurs, The
Beatryce Prophecy, and The Book of Boy.
Booklist Reader Adult Books
Navigating Newbery
Adding Context
with Read-alongs
by Books for Youth Editors
Historical fiction accounts for a healthy number
of Newbery Medal–winning titles, but over
time books in this genre can show their age with
outdated information, limited points of view,
and sometimes old-fashioned attitudes. Despite
that, thanks to a combination of the cachet of
the Newbery seal, the cultural memory shared by
adults recommending books to children, and the
inherent craft and appeal of the storytelling, these
titles continue to have staying power.
Advances in technology have made it easier
than ever for contemporary authors to access
reams of research about eras and locations
to enrich and enliven stories about the past,
and shifts in critical approaches to history
have brought to light long-buried perspectives
on important world events. Pairing these
perennially popular Newbery winners with
more recent titles exploring similar eras or
themes can help put that information and those
attitudes in powerful context and expand our
understanding of a book’s historical moment.
Island of the Blue Dolphins, by Scott O’Dell
1961 Winner
Taking its inspiration from a miraculous true story,
O’Dell’s first novel for children features Karana, a Ni-
coleño Native Californian who survived for 18 years alone
on remote San Nicolas Island when her people were relo-
cated by missionaries. In measured but moving verse that
has made it a favorite in classrooms, O’Dell recounts the
lengths Karana took to survive. At the time of the novel’s
publication, publishers questioned if an adventure story
24 Booklist Reader | February 2023
Art from The Many Reflections
of Miss Jane Deming.
helmed by a girl could succeed; today’s readers are more
concerned with who has the right and ability to authenti-
cally tell a real person’s story.
Read-alongs
Dreaming in Indian: Contemporary Native American
Voices. Ed. by Lisa Charleyboy and Mary Beth
Leatherdale. 2014. Annick. Gr. 9–12.
An introduction by Lois Lowry to the fiftieth-anniversary
edition of Island of the Blue Dolphins mentions that, while
many people consider “Karana,” the name O’Dell gave to
his heroine, to be the Nicoleño woman’s name, her actual
name was unknown, as she had no recognizable language
left when she was found. This collection gives narrative
control to young contemporary Native creators. In 43
pieces, their voices and lived experiences are brought to the
fore through art, prose, poetry, song, and memoir.
Where the World Ends. By Geraldine McCaughrean.
2019. Flatiron. Gr. 6–8.
For educators in search of another book that investigates
the work of survival and the strength of the spirit, Mc-
Caughrean’s Printz Honor book is a piece of stunningly
researched historical fiction with a deep emotional core.
In 1727, a group of men and boys is stranded on a remote
archipelago off the coast of Scotland during a fowling ex-
pedition. As they stare down the coming winter and their
own fears, McCaughrean plumbs the deepest depths of the
human soul.
Number the Stars, by Lois Lowry
1990 Winner
Lowry’s spare, tense novel follows Danish Annemarie,
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whose family helps their Jewish friends flee to Sweden to
escape Nazi persecution. Centering Annemarie and her
growing realization of the Nazi threat helps tell a story
about the Holocaust while only hinting at the grim re-
alities facing the Jewish community in Europe, as well
as highlighting the bravery of those who helped their
neighbors.
Read-alongs
Catherine’s War. By Julia Billet. Art by Claire Fauvel. Tr.
by Ivanka Hahnenberger. 2020. Harper. Gr. 4–7.
This graphic adaptation of a novel follows a Jewish girl
forced into hiding in France, where she must change her
name and abandon her cultural traditions to avoid cap-
ture. Readers of Lowry’s novel don’t know what happened
to Annemarie’s friend while she was a refugee in Sweden,
but Billet’s story offers the valuable perspective of someone
who is, for all intents and purposes, rescued—but still lives
in danger.
When the World Was Ours. By Liz Kessler. May 2021.
Aladdin. Gr. 6–8.
Kessler’s novel traces the story of Leo, Elsa, and Max,
three friends in Vienna whose lives spiral apart from one
another as Hitler’s forces take over. Leo and Elsa, both
Jewish, have different but similarly harrowing firsthand
experiences of the era’s atrocities, while Max—the son of a
high-ranking Nazi official—becomes pulled into the Hitler
youth. The interweaving narratives of the children bring
much-needed complexity and nuance to this evergreen
topic for historical fiction.
Sarah, Plain and Tall,
by Patricia MacLachlan
1986 Winner
This quiet novelette takes readers to a Midwestern farm in
the late nineteenth century, where Anna and her younger
brother await the arrival of their widower father’s mail-
order bride. Sarah comes to them from coastal Maine,
bringing with her the possibility of renewed family—if she
decides to stay, that is. With simple, effective prose and a
tight focus, MacLachlan explores the tension between the
grief of loss and hope for change.
Read-alongs
Prairie Lotus. By Linda Sue Park. 2020. Clarion. Gr. 5–7.
Slightly more advanced readers interested in the time
period and setting of Sarah, Plain and Tall will find an en-
tirely new perspective here, as Hanna, a half-Chinese girl
born in California, and her white father move to the 1880s
Dakota Territory. Park masterfully conjures the resource-
ful and industrious spirit of America’s westward expansion
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without ignoring the ugly veneer of racism that pushed
Native Americans off their land and overlooked the contri-
butions of Asian immigrants in the “settling” of the West.
The Many Reflections of Miss Jane Deming. By
J. Anderson Coats. 2017. Atheneum. Gr. 4–6.
After her father’s death in the Civil War, 11-year-old Jane
is left with her stepmother and little stepbrother. After
they make a difficult cross-country journey—part of a plan
to take postwar widows and orphans to the “unspoiled and
majestic” Washington Territory—she hopes to find friends
and an education, but Seattle brings them a new life with
unexpected challenges and many rewards. Jane’s story
echoes many aspects of MacLachlan’s Medal winner and
showcases an exceptionally researched and realized time
period.
The Witch of Blackbird Pond,
by Elizabeth George Speare
1959 Winner
Speare’s novel of witchcraft in Puritan New England fol-
lows 16-year-old Kit Taylor as she settles into life with her
aunt’s pious family and befriends an old Quaker widow
who is rumored to be a witch. Kit defies many social ex-
pectations held for young women at the time; this, when
paired with fear among townsfolk over an illness sweep-
ing their settlement, results in Kit becoming a fresh target
for those who see the devil in anyone who dares to be
different.
Read-alongs
The Loud Silence of Francine Green. By Karen
Cushman. 2006. Clarion. Gr. 6–9.
The same fear that drove the witch hunts of Salem is evi-
dent in the McCarthy-era crusades against communism.
Cushman probes the latter in her historical novel, set in
1949 Los Angeles. Eighth-grader Francie, who feels muz-
zled at home and in her strict Catholic school, grapples
with questions about patriotism, activism, and freedom af-
ter her friend falls under suspicion of being a communist.
Wicked Girls: A Novel of the Salem Witch Trials. By
Stephanie Hemphill. 2010. HarperCollins/Balzer+Bray.
Gr. 7–12.
The “afflicted” girls of Salem, whose accusations of witch-
craft led to the hangings of 19 townspeople in 1692, find
voice in this novel in verse, which compellingly examines
the various motivations behind their false claims—chief
among them, the restrictions placed on women’s agency
within Puritan society. The girls’ ages range from 8 to 18,
giving this novel a place in both middle- and high-school
collections.
February 2023 | Booklist Reader 25
Booklist Reader Books for Youth

Featured Review Boys like us always know one another about a thousand
years before anyone else knows us, don’t we?”
Anna-Marie Nick, concerned about Daisy’s involvement with Tom
as well as her hiding of her true self, decides to help
McLemore’s Self- Gatsby win her affection, since they were previously ro-
mantically entangled, but it is in the pairing of Gatsby
Made Boys: A Great and Nick that this absolutely shines. Their camaraderie
carries the story effortlessly, and their perspectives on
Gatsby Remix the world perfectly contrast one another: Gatsby is a
hopeless romantic who sees the beauty in what could
by Alaina Leary be, while Nick is a realist who prefers to figure out the
McLemore’s triumphant retelling is for anyone math behind everything. As Gatsby envelops Nick in his
diverse, heavily LGBTQ+ community, Nick learns the
who read The Great Gatsby and thought, this
safe ways that people in 1920s New York have found to
book needs to be much gayer. be their truest selves. In one of the book’s most affecting
moments, they bond at a gay bar filled with celebrating
When Nicolás Caraveo, a 17-year-old Mexican American queer and trans people. Their slow-burn partners-in-
trans man, arrives in Long Island’s West Egg, he’s eager to crime-to-lovers romance is tender and unflinchingly
start his new job as a quantitative analyst and find a way honest, depicting two self-made boys who have had to
to pay back his parents in Wisconsin for their easy ac- discover and create the people they want to become.
ceptance of his gender. His older cousin Daisy has other This retelling, while examining class divides and capital-
plans, though, and Nick fits neatly into her scheme. She ism, deftly explores racial divides of the roaring twenties,
has remade herself into Daisy Fay, lightening her hair and both through Nick’s frustration with how white men
skin to escape the racism of the wealthy society she means treat him and through Daisy’s attempts to pass as white.
to join. She’s hoping to secure an engagement from Tom Nick’s and Daisy’s feelings about their Mexican American
Buchanan, with whom she stays in East Egg, where every- identities are at the crux of the tension, and their relation-
one of old money resides. And Nick soon finds that Daisy ship suffers from her distancing herself from their family.
hasn’t told anyone that they’re cousins; instead, as proof of McLemore goes deeper still, exploring the layers that make
her fabricated background, she’s cast Nick and his family up Daisy, a socialite who wants more than just to marry
as her family’s maids. and dress in elegant gowns and jewels. She cares deeply
Following a path familiar to fans of Fitzgerald’s original, for her family and knows the sacrifices she must make in
Nick is folded into the glitzy world of the Long Island order to give them the life they deserve. Her emotional
upper crust. He meets the infamous Jay Gatsby, his new- arc is given just as much weight as Nick’s, and her turn-
money next-door neighbor who throws garish parties, but ing point, when she enters her debutante ball on the arm
there’s more to Gatsby of her truest love, Jordan Baker, is resonant and beautiful.
than his wealth. Nick McLemore’s writing balances accurately portraying the op-
notices that a variety pression and racism of the time with celebrating what it
of people are welcome means to be Mexican American and giving their characters
in Gatsby’s mansion, agency and joy.
including people of col- Just as the title says, Self-Made Boys is about a communi-
or—and not just as the ty of people who are designers of their own lives, working
staff. When Nick and within the constraints of their time period and still finding
Gatsby have their first ways to honor their truest selves. Nick’s journey to seeing
time alone, they share a that he deserves to be accepted is splendid and well-earned.
moment of recognition, Daisy is the complicated, layered character readers deserve,
and Nick realizes that who frustratingly makes awful choices for the right rea-
Gatsby is also trans. sons, in the name of coming to terms with her own Latina
Their exchange under- and lesbian identities. In this satisfying, emotional journey
scores the novel’s theme that celebrates love, family, friendship, identity, and forg-
of seeing and being ing one’s own path, McLemore captures the spirit of the
seen: “I think we just original while adding nuance and depth, setting a new bar
recognize each other. for what a great retelling can be.
26 Booklist Reader | February 2023 www.booklistonline.com
Booklist Reader Books for Youth
Top 10
Romance Fiction
for Youth
Love stories for every taste, from salty to sweet,
can be found in this list of standouts.
And They Lived . . .. By Steven Salvatore. 2022.
Bloomsbury. Gr. 9–12.
Chase is elated to be admitted to an animation seminar,
especially when he meets gorgeous Jack, who inspires his
short film about a prince and a knight falling in love.
The Days of Bluegrass Love. By Edward van de Vendel.
Tr. by Emma Rault. 2022. Levine Querido. Gr. 9–12.
Dutch teen Tycho meets Norwegian Oliver at the U.S.
camp where they work. When they’re expelled, in part for
their burgeoning relationship, they leave together for Nor-
way in this superbly written novel.
The Heartbreak Bakery. By A. R. Capetta. 2021.
Candlewick. Gr. 9–12.
Chaos ensues when agender Syd accidentally bakes up
a batch of heartbreak-infused
brownies. With the help of
cute Harley, Syd discovers the
nuances of love while baking
deliciously emotional treats.
Art from Melt with You.
I Kissed Shara Wheeler. By Casey McQuiston. 2022. St.
Martin’s/Wednesday. Gr. 9–12.
Shara disappears after kissing Chloe, and now Chloe be-
grudgingly teams up with two others Shara kissed—Shara’s
boyfriend, Smith; her neighbor, Rory—to learn more
about their seemingly perfect classmate.
It All Comes Back to You. By Farah Naz Rishi. 2021.
HarperCollins/Quill Tree. Gr. 9–12.
Kiran’s convinced her sister, Amira’s, fiancé is up to no
good—could it be because he’s the brother of her terrible
ex, Deen? High-stakes scheming and wedding planning
combine in this enticing story.
Kiss and Tell. By Adib Khorram. 2022. Dial. Gr. 10–12.
Boy-band member Hunter is one of the most famous gay
teens in pop culture, but he longs for queer friends. A new
romance with Iranian American Kaivan is a thrill, but will
a public scandal jeopardize their relationship?
Melt with You. By Jennifer Dugan. 2022. Putnam.
Gr. 9–12.
Fallon’s determined to limit contact with ex–best friend
(and maybe more) Chloe, but that plan wilts when they’re
stuck together in an ice cream truck on a road trip. Will
the journey bring them together or force them apart?
Nothing Burns as Bright as You. By Ashley Woodfolk.
2022. HarperCollins/Versify. Gr. 9–12.
This blistering novel in verse follows two 16-year-old
girls, both Black and queer, as they share a final, com-
bustible day together following two-and-a-half years of
friendship that bled into a passionate, undefinable ro-
mance.
She Gets the Girl. By Rachael Lippincott and Alyson
Derrick. 2022. Simon & Schuster. Gr. 9–12.
It’s hate at first sight when Alex and Molly
meet, but they have mutually beneficial
goals, so a reluctant partnership is born.
Uproarious dialogue and dynamic characters
make this queer slow-burn romance a
true delight.
Together We Burn. By Isabel Ibañez.
2022. St. Martin’s/Wednesday.
Gr. 8–12.
Eighteen-year-old flamenco dancer Zare-
la must rescue her family’s dragon-fighting
arena, but she needs the help of brooding
Arturo, who despises her family. Spinning
with magic, fantasy, and—of course—
romantic sparks.
February 2023 | Booklist Reader 27
Booklist Reader Books for Youth
A Conversation
Telling the Right
Story with Dahlia
Adler
by Maggie Reagan
For Dahlia Adler, community matters. An author
of young-adult fiction—including, most recently,
sapphic romance Home Field Advantage—she’s
also the editor of several YA anthologies that re-
envision familiar stories and themes for a wider
audience (At Midnight: 15 Beloved Fairy Tales
Reimagined, 2022). And she’s the founder of
the LGBTQ Reads blog, a beautifully organized
(by age level, genre, and identity rep) database
of LGBTQ children’s and young adult books.
Recently, we caught up with Adler to discuss
the changing landscape of LGBTQ YA romance,
especially for readers interested in sapphic
romances—and to get a look at some of her
personal book recommendations.
Reagan: LGBTQ+ books for teen readers are growing in
number, especially in the romance arena, but for a long
time the access point, especially in mainstream fiction, has
been romances between two white cisgender boys. I’d love
your initial thoughts on why certain kinds of love stories—
like those featuring women who love women—might be
more taboo, or more invisible.
Adler: There’s at least the perception of what the audi-
ence is for sapphic love stories—that nobody’s interested
in reading them unless they themselves are sapphic read-
ers. And I think that perception is not the same for m/m
romance, where the assumption is boys want to read about
boys but girls will also read about boys.
Now that publishing is finally taking chances on sapphic
28 Booklist Reader | February 2023
romances, I think it’s impossible to ignore that the reader-
ship is greater than it was expected to be by a lot, which
means either there are a lot more sapphic readers than
publishing had any idea existed, or maybe, just maybe,
sapphic love stories are more universal than publishing
had realized they were to begin with. There is some sort
of internalized misogyny and externalized misogyny in
every industry, and publishing is not an exception. So the
assumption that people did not want to read about girls
in love because it involved not reading about boys is hope-
fully dissipating to some extent.
Reagan: When you’re writing for readers who still have
fewer stories available to them, what kind of responsibility
do you feel toward your readers?
Adler: It’s so complicated. My first sapphic romance was
published in 2015 and it felt like you had to have inar-
guably perfect representation. Your characters had to be
beyond reproach and they couldn’t have flaws. And that
was a really tough thing, starting out when there were so
few. Now that there are so many more, I feel like you can
write messier characters. You’re still going to find people
who don’t love them, but they don’t have to read your
work, and it doesn’t mean that they’re then not going to
get sapphic YA at all, because now there are more than
three people who get to write it.
When you’re among the first, when you’re among the
few, it feels like you should be writing the most flawless
characters and flawless examples of representation that you
www.booklistonline.com
can. I stop short of calling that our responsibility to the
reader because it’s ignoring those readers who need to see
messy. And so I think our duty to the reader is to ensure
that there are all different kinds of representation out there
that show a wealth of queer experiences.
Reagan: Cool for the Summer is one of my favorite books,
largely because it feels like Larissa is discovering her identi-
ty in such a true way. It doesn’t feel like she’s being made to
pick a side, which is something that can happen a lot with
bisexual characters. Even in LGBTQ+ spaces, identities like
bisexuality or asexuality can be sidelined or misunderstood.
As someone writing in these spaces, how do you stay mind-
ful of those marginalizations?
Adler: I try to stay honest about what it’s like. There will
be people who hate it anyway and you have to accept that.
But I do like to stay away from the things that feed into
the really strong stereotypes and perceptions.
Now I’m quoting Cool for the Summer, but there’s a line
in it about how it’s important to tell the right story. And
that means sometimes the story that you were trying to
tell goes off the path that you had planned, but it’s going
onto the right path. So I think you have to tell the story
that you feel is the right story in the way you’re confident
in telling it, in a way that you feel is going to resonate with
readers. And you try to keep out all the noise that tells you
you’re wrong. It requires having a lot of faith in yourself,
and that’s a really hard thing to do as an author. You just
really hope that it resonates and feel really lucky when you
hear that it does.
Reagan: You’re the founder of the LGBTQ Reads blog; it
seems like fostering community and boosting voices is a big
part of what you do. Can you tell us more?
Adler: It’s wonderful that traditional publishing is seeing
an expansion and valuing of queer lit, but indie authors
have been holding it down for years. So what’s nice about
LGBTQ Reads is that featuring traditionally published
books helps build the platform, and then self-published
authors and small presses get to use that platform.
The reason I thought LGBTQ Reads as a project span-
ning all the categories would work is that so many people
had no queer lit growing up, and it seemed a place where
people were particularly willing to read cross-category,
even if it was not necessarily their category of interest.
Now there’s so much that nobody has to do that, but
we’re talking 2016 when it started, and it was incredibly
different at the time. I have watched it grow by leaps and
bounds, which is amazing.
LGBTQ Reads is a place where traditionally published
and self-published and small press and all kinds of all
different genders and orientations come together, and it
www.booklistonline.com
feels really special to be in
Maggie Hall
the middle of that, and by
running it, I can observe
trends in real-time, observe
the growth in real-time,
learn about new things
as they happen. This is so
cheesy, but the very special
connection of somebody di-
rectly asking you for a book
they could barely imagine
existed and being like,
“Here’s five. Go forth and
enjoy,” feels amazing. So it’s a very, very labor-intensive
project that I work on almost literally every day of my
life, but it’s incredibly rewarding, and it’s really great
to see it used as a resource, to see it on library pages or
school pages as a resource.
Reagan:What’s something that you’d like to see more of in
YA romance in general?
Adler: Trans-femme representation. Give me more trans
girls in love. Give me more trans girls of color. Give me
more everyone of color, that’s clear. But we have seen
fantastic growth in transmasculine representation and in
nonbinary representation. We could still use more work
everywhere, but just comparatively, trans-femme repre-
sentation is really, really slow-growing, and that’s tough.
That’s my very obvious number one in everything. That
and more disability rep, for sure. There’s a lot of really solid
mental-health rep in queer YA, but physical disability rep
is definitely still behind.
What am I really interested in seeing more of? We’re
doing really well on the romance front. I would love to
see more epic fantasy with queer male main characters—
there’s not as much of that as I think people think there is,
and it’s something that I’m asked to recommend a decent
amount. Because gay YA dominated for so long, people
still kind of assume there’s so much of it in every genre
and sub-genre, and there actually is not. There’s not a ton
of sci-fi for anything, because that’s become the ugly step-
child of YA somehow. Could also use more gay vampires,
I think.
Reagan: Why aren’t they all? Vampires are really coming
back.
Adler: I’m really happy to see it because they’re coming
back in a really fun way, and they’re all marginalized, and
even if you don’t care about diversity in literature, that just
makes for more interesting stories. It means you’re not go-
ing to see the same story that you’ve already seen. It’s such
a value.
February 2023 | Booklist Reader 29
Booklist Reader Books for Youth
Author Recommends
Dahlia Adler Wants
You to Read
by Dahlia Adler
For our romance issue, we asked Dahlia to
recommend some of the recent and upcoming
YA roms and rom-coms she’s most excited
about—read on to see what’s been at the top of
her list.
Fifteen Hundred Miles from the Sun, by Jonny Garza Villa,
is one of my absolute favorite gay YA romances, and one
of the only YAs I’ve read, period, that has a couple grap-
pling with being long distance. There’s so much courage
and honesty on the page alongside these characters you
can’t help but love, and a story about a couple who meets
online is just so relevant to now.
A. R. Capetta’s so talented in so many different genres,
and I love the way The Heartbreak Bakery sprinkles con-
temporary romance with magic. It’s about an agender
baker accidentally wreaking havoc on the town by baking
emotions into brownies while also navigating feelings for
a transmasc bike messenger. It’s sweet, warm, and totally
delicious, which is the best you can ask for in a book about
baking!
K. Ancrum writes such beautiful found family in YA,
and she does it for the second time in The Weight of the
Stars, an incredibly lovely and soft slow-burn of a romance
between two girls, one of whom is raising her brother and
the other of whom has lost her mom to a space mission
from which she can never return. As they bond over the
stars, they fall in love, triggering a collective swoon that
can be felt all through the universe.
Beating Heart Baby, by Lio Min, is one of those debuts
that feels so special, you just know you’re going to follow
the author everywhere. It just nails the magic of finding
your people, both online and in person, and of bond-
Art from Love & Other Natural Disasters.
30 Booklist Reader | February 2023
ing over shared passions, as well as what it means to trust
someone and to have that trust broken. Alice Oseman fans
in particular should find a great new love here.
One of the best things about the evolution of queer teen
romance in the past few years is that the growth of repre-
sentation has allowed for much messier stories, like Love
and Other Natural Disasters by Misa Sugiura. Rarely do
we get to enjoy main characters who are so romantic and
flighty and fun, and Nozomi is just such rom-com chaos
incarnate in the best way.
College is one of my absolute favorite settings for
romance, and I loved seeing it play such a huge role in Ste-
ven Salvatore’s And They Lived . . . , which stars an openly
queer aspiring animator finally escaping his toxic home life
falling for a closeted poet who’s still clinging to his. It just
beautifully balances dream and reality in so many different
ways.
It’s the best feeling when you read a book that becomes
an instant favorite, and that was exactly my experience
with How to Excavate a Heart, by Jake Maia Arlow. It’s
so funny and nerdy and romantic, which are three of my
favorite things, and as soon as I was done, I just wanted
to shove it in the hands of every YA romance fan on the
planet.
Always the Almost, by Edward Underhill, doesn’t release
until Valentine’s Day 2023, but it’s absolutely worth
keeping on your radar to count down the days. I was so
absorbed by trans pianist Miles, his post-breakup issues,
his new love, and his group of friends that I couldn’t pick
up another YA for days afterward, which is about as high
a compliment as I can give when it comes to keeping me
absorbed in a world!
Dahlia Adler Recommends
Always the Almost. By Edward Underhill. 2023.
St. Martin’s/Wednesday. Gr. 9–12.
And They Lived . . .. By Steven Salvatore. 2022.
Bloomsbury. Gr. 9–12.
Beating Heart Baby. By Lio Min. 2022. Flatiron.
Gr. 9–12.
Fifteen Hundred Miles from the Sun. By Jonny Garza
Villa. 2021. Amazon/Skyscape. Gr. 9–12.
The Heartbreak Bakery. By A. R. Capetta. 2021.
Candlewick. Gr. 9–12.
How to Excavate a Heart. By Jake Maia Arlow. 2022.
HarperTeen. Gr. 9–12.
Love & Other Natural Disasters. By Misa Sugiura. 2021.
Harper. Gr. 9–12.
The Weight of the Stars. By K. Ancrum. 2019.
Macmillan/Imprint. Gr. 9–12.
www.booklistonline.com
Booklist Reader Books for Youth
Trend Alert
Love & Sports
by Ronny Khuri
Two genres, both alike in dignity. Both physical.
Mental. Sweat-inducing and suspenseful. Both
hot with competition, communication, and
catharsis. Sports and romance have a lot in
common, so it’s no wonder that when their
wires are crossed, sparks fly.
All the Things We Never Knew. By Liara Tamani. 2020.
Greenwillow. Gr. 9–12.
Rex wants to be loved for more than just his basketball
talent. Carli wants to find some peace amid her parents’
contentious divorce. When the two Black teens meet on a
basketball court, it’s love at first sight.
The Avant-Guards, v.1. By Carly Usdin. Illus. by Noah
Hayes and Rebecca Nalty. 2019. Boom! Box. Gr. 9–12.
Transfer student Charlie keeps to herself at her new
college, but Liv will stop at nothing to recruit Charlie to
her start-up basketball team, the Avant-Guards. A light-
hearted, unabashedly queer graphic novel with a budding
f/f romance.
Check Please! #Hockey. By Ngozi Ukazu. Illus. by the
author. 2018. First Second. Gr. 9–12.
Pie-baking, pop music–loving Eric uses his vlog to adjust
to the world of collegiate hockey. As Ukazu highlights
team camaraderie and dismantles toxic masculinity, a
slow-burn, gay romance is icing on the cake. Continued in
2020’s Check Please! Sticks & Scones.
Every Reason We Shouldn’t. By Sara Fujimura. 2020. Tor
Teen. Gr. 9–12.
After giving up competitive figure skating, Olivia at-
tempts to be a normal teenager. Unfortunately, this
includes maintaining her family’s struggling ice rink, but
when Jonah Choi begins training there, it provides a wel-
come distraction.
Gimme Everything You Got. By Iva-Marie Palmer. 2020.
HarperCollins/Balzer+Bray. Gr. 9–12.
Susan tries out for the new girls’ soccer team because of
her crush on the young coach, Bobby, so she’s surprised to
discover a group of girls that she respects, a coach who wants
to do right by his team, and a sport that she may love.
Squad. By Mariah MacCarthy. 2019. Farrar. Gr. 8–11.
After being ostracized by her cheer squad, Jenna finds a
new kind of camaraderie with her brother and his friends.
As she develops feelings for trans boy James, she finds her-
self discovering—and trying out—new identities.
Throw like a Girl. By Sarah Henning. 2020. Little,
Brown/Poppy. Gr. 8–11.
After losing her softball scholarship and heading to pub-
lic school, Liv must convince her new classmates that she
can be a team player. Luckily, the school’s injured quarter-
back, Grey, needs a backup, and Liv has a good arm.
Art from All the Things
We Never Knew.
Booklist Reader Books for Youth
Reserve These Reads
Children & Teens
Get your hands on these hotly anticipated
books, all out this month.
Older
The Beauty Trials. By Dhonielle Clayton. Disney/
Hyperion. Gr. 9–12.
In this follow-up to the Belles series, ambitious Edel en-
ters a competition to find a new monarch while trying to
expose a conspiracy.
Chaos Theory. By Nic Stone. Crown. Gr. 9–12.
Brilliant Shelbi and troubled Andy both carry heavy
secrets, but their connection is undeniable in this YA ro-
mance from blockbuster author Stone.
The Headmaster’s List. By Melissa de la Cruz. Roaring
Brook. Gr. 9–12.
Best-selling de la Cruz offers a tense thriller about
high-achieving prep-school teens embroiled in a mystery
surrounding a fatal car crash.
Middle
Finally Seen. By Kelly Yang. Simon & Schuster. Gr. 4–7.
After five years apart from them, 10-year-old Lina leaves
China to join her parents and sister in America, but she
must overcome obstacles before she feels at home.
A First Time for Everything. By Dan Santat. Art by the
author. First Second. Gr. 6–8.
Best-selling illustrator and cartoonist Santat opens up
about his middle-school years—specifically, a school trip to
32 Booklist Reader | February 2023
Europe—in this graphic memoir rendered in his signature
warm, expressive artwork.
The Guardian Test (Legends of Lotus Island #1). By
Christina Soontornvat and Kevin Hong. Scholastic. Gr. 3–6.
In this magical-school series starter from multi-award-
winning Soontornvat, Plum is trying to learn how to
transform into a powerful creature like her classmates, but
nothing seems to work!
Leeva at Last. By Sara Pennypacker. Illus. by Matthew
Cordell. HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray. Gr. 3–6.
When Leeva learns that her parents have squandered
their goodwill, she sets out to correct the matter in this
absurdist middle-grade novel from beloved Pennypacker.
The Story of the Saxophone. By Lesa Cline-Ransome.
Illus. by James E. Ransome. Holiday. Gr. 2–5.
The award-winning Cline-Ransomes team up again to
tell the unusual story of the invention of the saxophone in
the nineteenth century and its circuitous path from Bel-
gium to Louisiana jazz joints.
The Windeby Puzzle. By Lois Lowry. Clarion. Gr. 5–8.
Kid-lit luminary Lowry’s latest is a stirring historical
novel set in the Iron Age in Germany, inspired by the real-
life mystery of the Windeby bog body.
Young
Evergreen. By Matthew Cordell. Illus. by the author.
Feiwel and Friends. PreS–Gr. 1.
A timid squirrel ventures into the forest on a mission to
deliver her Mama’s healing soup to Granny Oak, but other
animals ask for help.
Once upon a Book. By Grace Lin and Kate Messner.
Illus. by Grace Lin. Little, Brown. PreS–Gr. 3.
Lin’s magnificent artwork pairs with Messner’s playful
lines in this picture book about a girl who explores the
world through the pages of stories.
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