Tag Archives: teen

Katelyn reviews Silhouette of a Sparrow by Molly Beth Griffin

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Silhouette of a Sparrow

Growing up, I could not get enough of historical fiction and books set in a time past. Any book that featured two girls falling in love was also irresistible to me. So when I heard about Silhouette of a Sparrow by Molly Beth Griffin, a young adult lesbian coming-of-age story set in the 1920s, the eager, history-loving 15-year-old in me just had to read it.

Silhouette of a Sparrow is Griffin’s first young adult novel, which might be why the narration has a more mature tone unlike many books for young adults in which authors tend to talk down to their audience or follow a more predictable pattern in fear of readers losing interest. Set in Excelsior, Minnesota, a real lakeside resort town, the novel follows 16-year-old Garnet Richardson who is feeling trapped by her life back home when she is sent off to Excelsior to stay with her father’s cousin, the uptight, snooty Mrs. Harrington and her rude, disinterested daughter, Hannah. While there, Garnet pushes the limitations set by her strict aunt, getting a job in a hat shop and befriending a free-spirited flapper named Isabella.

Although the relationship between Garnet and Isabella is at the heart of the novel, there is so much more going on; it isn’t just a love story. From the beginning, it is clear that the main character’s life is full of forced deception when her mother claims that she is sending her away so she won’t catch polio. There is a telling bit of narration at that point in the first chapter where Garnet tells the readers,

“At sixteen, I was hardly at risk for polio, but the real reasons for my going were among the many things unsaid between us…”

Between her father’s strange behavior and aloofness to her mother’s insistence on pushing lady-like behavior onto Garnet and planning her future wedding to a boy from school, it is clear that everyone in the Richardson is living by a sort of “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

One of the most intriguing elements that comes from this life draped in secrecy and unspoken rules is Garnet’s obsession with birds. They represent the freedom she longs for, and she is completely obsessed with them, constantly researching and observing them. Each chapter of the book is named after a different bird, and each bird represents a new stage of Garnet’s journey to find herself behind the wall of deception built by her family, her society, and even herself.

My favorite thing about this book is that Griffin manages to convey the stress so many teenagers feel when they realize that the lives they want for themselves do not match up with the lives their parents want for them and that they will have to find their own way. This experience is especially familiar to teenagers who experience same sex attraction. It is stressful and feels like the hardest thing in the world, and when you have gotten over that hump, things aren’t the same, and sometimes they’re a little bit broken, but there is a feeling of freedom and hope and the idea that in time, what is broken can be rebuilt into something better. And of course, nothing is certain, which makes it seem like anything is possible.

With all of the complicated conventions and messes of real life, Griffin manages to make the world seem a bit more poetic and beautifully synchronized for her main character. Her style has a sense of ease that makes the novel easy to get lost in without falling into the formulaic predictability of so many young adult novels. I finished the book in a two hour sitting and felt a sense of closure and satisfaction that comes with the delightful combination of an intriguing plot and solid writing.

 

Audrey reviews Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld

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It clocks in at literally just under 600 pages. It’s two books in one. It’s a heck of a new young adult experiment for Scott Westerfeld, whose previous YA series have done well. And they’ve all been very different–steampunk (Leviathan), dystopian (Uglies), and apocalyptic (Peeps), to name a few. (Also, he is married to Justine Larbalestier, which is neither here nor there, but her Magic or Madness trilogy is excellent.) “Afterworlds” is a doorstop of a book that takes on first love, the publishing world, the co-opting of cultures for the creation of art, the nature of ghosts, dreams, obligations, New York City, and a host of other things. It is, in a word rather than in a list, ambitious. And it mostly works. Which is great, because it’s a Commitment; I only picked it up because I was processing it for my library and noticed that one of the subject headings was Lesbians–Fiction.

Darcy’s barely a high school graduate, but back in the fall she gritted her teeth and committed herself to NaNoWriMo (seenanowrimo.org). She triumphed. The novel she completed is called “Afterworlds,” and not only has she sold it, she’s managed to get a two-book contract for an obscene amount of money. And she’s moved to New York to be a writer, to do the revisions of “Afterworlds,” and to come up with the elusive second novel she’s now contractually obligated to deliver.

Darcy’s protagonist is Lizzie, and no, Darcy doesn’t pick up on the Darcy-and-Lizzie thing until well after she’s completed the novel, and once it’s pointed out, it doesn’t really go anywhere; it’s just acknowledged for the Janeites. Darcy’s tale and Lizzie’s tale (that is, Darcy’s novel) are told in alternating chapters, so quite seriously, this is two full books. There’s the story of a young girl moving to New York City to test out the possibilities of what might be a charmed life, and the story of a young girl dealing with the challenges of her own new life in the aftermath of a horrible tragedy.

One of the great things about Darcy is that she has a little sister who’s smart and plucky. Another great thing about Darcy is that she’s clueless and doesn’t know it. She’s from a Hindu family, but has written a book about a white girl who survives a terrorist attack by slipping into the spirit world, becoming a spirit guide, and falling in love with a Hindu death god. There’s some good stuff going on in the book, but the leads are a bit vanilla. Darcy wanted her protagonist to be relatable, though, and she based the death god on a Bollywood actor she thought was hot. That’s her model for love. Until she moves to New York. Until she meets Imogen.

And then New York gives her an experience she hadn’t anticipated. Darcy and Imogen are both writers, both Word Girls who appreciate language and its nuances. Their relationship isn’t entirely transparent, though. Darcy has maybe skipped class once or twice. But Imogen has a past. Emotionally, Imogen is more complex than the people Darcy’s used to. From the beginning there’s a sense of something being off-kilter, and that sense only grows until things come to a head–I was disappointed with Westerfeld’s resolution here. There’s lots of attention given to how Darcy deals with the ending of Lizzie’s story, but that ending was fine. It’s the ending of Darcy’s story that disappoints. It feels as if Westerfeld lacked the conviction to carry through the momentum he built throughout an entire novel, because the original ending perhaps didn’t test well. Maybe it’s a meta-statement on publishing?

The genre story is riproaring and page-turning. The frame story offers a little wish-fulfillment peek into YA heaven, and a mostly lovely and restrained look at the amazingness of awakening feelings, and first love, and finally understanding what everyone else has been obsessing about for years. There’s no graphic sexual content, but lots of F-bombs, which is necessary to know if you’re a YA librarian. Nobody cares about murder (there’s some of that) or terrorism (yup), but is there sex (not described)? Bad language (all over the place)?

Where this book will find its readership is up for debate. Usually, the teenage girls (or “new adults”) to whom it seems to be marketed are lots more self-aware than Darcy. Her naivete may turn them off. Adults may find this to be wish fulfillment all around. Not only does Darcy fall into her publishing contract and a lovely apartment and her first relationship, she’s in an extremely accepting community. There’s only one uncomfortable moment, when she admits that she doesn’t want to go home and tell her parents she’s dating Imogen. Imogen has to point out that not everyone has it so easy, and “Not all of us make it, you know.” This is no one’s publishing story; maybe it’s no one’s coming-out story, either.

What’s the verdict? I loved the parts about the publishing world and the beginning (and pieces of the middle) of Lizzie’s story. But there’s a lot going on here. This wouldn’t be something to recommend to someone just looking for a good lesbian romance.

Ashley reviews Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel by Sara Farizan

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Sara Farizan’s second novel, Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel, is a genuinely sweet story of high school queerness. It can definitely be categorized as a “quick read” – but perhaps that is just because once I started reading, I never wanted to put it down.

The story revolves around Leila, an Iranian American teenager attending a small private high school in Massachusetts. Leila has been with the same group of classmates for as long as she can remember, so when a new girl named Saskia arrives with some international flair and a whole lot of personality, Leila can’t help but be attracted to her.

Leila discovered her attraction to women at summer camp, but she is definitely not ready to share this fact with anyone at home. When Saskia seems to be interested in her as more than just a friend, Leila is thrilled, but extremely nervous about what could happen if her classmates and her traditional Persian family discovered her secret. What follows is an absorbing story of Leila’s pursuit of love and acceptance, where she learns more about herself and her peers than she could have ever predicted.

I loved the plot and pacing of this book – it was accessible, quick, and much funnier than I expected it to be. Farizan also creates a fantastic cast of characters, developing the voices of various high schoolers to bring Leila’s story to life. Many of these characters are modeled on teenage archetypes – from the vampire techie who works backstage at the school play to the brilliant but hopelessly innocent faculty brat – but Farizan is skilled at manipulating their quirks in order to counter the stereotypes.

Leila (and the reader, by extension) really get to know the personalities behind the facades of those students who are on the fringes of the high school social scene. This sets up some great parallels between Leila’s hidden gayness and the other characters’ concealed true selves; Farizan’s story ultimately sends the message that we all have our secrets, that people are not always as they seem, and that sometimes you are rewarded when you decide to trust another person with your story.

In this way, Tell Me Again How A Crush Should Feel is as much about friendship as it is about crushes. In questioning what it means to truly be friends with someone, Farizan reveals how friends and allies often exist in unexpected places. One of my favorite examples is Leila’s adorable relationship with her English teacher, Ms. Taylor.

It was also really refreshing to see that Leila’s best friend is a guy. Although this was a complicated relationship at times, it was really nice to read a story that depicts a deep, sibling-like bond between a female and a male character that [spoiler alert] doesn’t end in romance. Even in the realm of queer YA novels, I’ve found that these bonds between male and female characters are sorely underrepresented.

Recently, I saw Farizan speak on the Tough Topics in YA Literature panel at the Boston Book Festival, where she explained that Leila was definitely more like she was as a teenager than the leading ladies of her debut novel, If You Could Be Mine. This became clear as I read Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel – Leila’s genuine voice and sarcastic humor read very naturally, and seem to reflect Farizan’s personality. I could not be more thankful that Farizan has decided to contribute her unique voice to young lesbian literature, and can’t wait to see what she writes next.

Danika reviews Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley

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This is a powerful book. Lies We Tell Ourselves is about Sarah, one of the first black kids to integrate into a formally all-white school in Virginia, 1959. The other main character is Linda, the daughter of a staunchly segregationist public figure. The two find themselves inexorably drawn to each other.

The premise alone was enough to make me immediately want to pick this one up: an interracial teen lesbian romance in the 1950s? That is not something I’ve read about before, and I’m glad that we’ve gotten to the point where it’s something that can be traditionally published. Immediately the book throws us into the reality of Sarah’s experience. It begins with the ten black students attempting to fight their way through a screaming mob of white protesters to enter the high school, an unending litany of racial slurs, insults, chants, and threats. Sarah attempts to keep her head up during this daily assault by white students and faculty, enduring countless humiliations while trying to get an education.

One of her tormentors is Linda, and I was unpleasantly surprised to have the narration switch to her perspective less than 100 pages into the book. Linda is an interesting character, because though she may not be immediately likeable, she does feel realistic. It’s a look into the mind of, well, a racist of the 1950s. She parrots what her father espouses, despite the fact that she fears and resents her father. And throughout the book, her views do change, but they are excruciatingly small steps in the right direction, still firmly in racist territory.

My immediate thoughts during Sarah and Linda’s growing to each other was How could Sarah like this girl?? Though Linda may not have been the one throwing rocks, she still actively participated in Sarah and other black students’ torments. While they meet in secret after being assigned to a school project together, Sarah and Linda get into passionate debates about integration and other issues around race. Sarah doesn’t bat an eyelash at Linda’s regurgitation of racist beliefs. But at the same time, I realized that it actually does make some sense. For one thing, Sarah feels completely isolated. She is the only black female senior in the school, and that means that there’s no one going through her exact situation that she can talk to. Her parents don’t seem to grasp just how bad things are at school, and her white classmates won’t even sit within two desks of her, nevermind talk to her. Having someone she can be herself with, can say exactly what’s on her mind to, would be a relief, even if that person didn’t understand. I also, of course, have to take into account that Sarah is still a teenager, falling for someone for the first time. She’s not the first person to see her love interest with rose-coloured glasses and think that she’s capable of change. Add to that the confusions of falling for a girl in 1950s America and it actually seems pretty realistic.

Linda seems like an ambiguous character by the end of the book. Are we supposed to like her? Are we supposed to sympathize with her? She makes progress, but it’s only a small bit of progress. She makes sacrifices, but are they really enough to counteract the damage she’s done? Her attitudes and actions may be understandable (given her upbringing), but that doesn’t make them excusable. As much as I cringed reading Linda’s thoughts, I do think I appreciate her inclusion in the book as a representative of the opposition of integration, and of the people on the other side of the battle for civil rights. Because Talley represents her as not a one-dimensional caricature or a monster, but a flawed person. And I think that’s important because it shows how important it is to be aware of your own position in terms of power, privilege, and oppression. It’s easy to be complacent, to go along quietly with the status quo.

I did have one major issue with the book, however. [spoilers, highlight to read] The violence against a black boy, Chuck, seems to be used just as a plot point in Sarah and Linda’s relationship. Specifically, the moment when Linda announced angrily, complete with racial slur, in front of a large group of people, that Chuck had been with a white girl–something she did spitefully just because he insulted her singing, was the moment where I couldn’t imagine how Linda could ever come back from that. I don’t believe that she was so naive that she didn’t know how a crowd of white people would react to that. In fact, it seems like that’s exactly why she said it. And to say something in anger that could get him lynched? I don’t know how Sarah could ever forgive her for that. I couldn’t, as a reader. And the fact that her corresponding action to make up for it was to write a newspaper article saying “I still don’t support integration, but maybe a crowd of white boys shouldn’t beat a black boy nearly to death just for being black? I think that’s wrong.” does not come close to making that okay. The violence done against Chuck just seemed to be a point of drama between Linda and Sarah, instead of its own horror. And especially given the ongoing legacy of this violence that we can see today, I was disappointed with how it was handled in text. There was even an undertone of “Well, he should have known better to get involved with a white girl, and it was bound to happen even if Linda didn’t say anything.” This element dropped the book from getting a five star rating to four stars for me. [end spoilers]

This was a fantastic read. It manages to tackle a lot of big issues without seeming like there were too many balls in the air, and it adds a lot of nuance to the topics presented. For instance, I appreciated Sarah’s struggle with her religious beliefs, and how her Christianity acted as both a source of strength and also a source of anxiety for her. I also thought it was interesting how though Sarah believed completely in the cause, she began to feel as if her and her black classmates were being used as pawns in this civil rights battle fought by her parents, especially in relation to Linda being a pawn of her father. Sarah and her younger sister, Ruth, also have different experiences at the school and handle it differently.

The most powerful part for me was the “Lies We Tell Ourselves” motif throughout the book. Each chapter is titled “Lie #_: ____” For example, Sarah’s first lie is “There’s no need to be afraid” and Linda’s first lie is “None of this has anything to do with me.” Generally my eyes skip right over chapter titles, but these were so interesting that I made sure to make note of them. They serve multiple purposes: Why does each girl tell themselves this, and how does it help or hurt them? How is it a lie? How does it apply to the other girl? They were also so relateable, though obviously I’ve never gone through anything comparable to Sarah’s experience. But some of them apply to being queer and coming to terms with it, and some are lies that I think all of us have told ourselves at some point, for one purpose or another. This is definitely a book that I would recommend, though it’s not an easy read. I found myself having to put down the book for a while when my stomach was in knots reading some parts. It also has racial slurs on almost every page. If you can get through that, however, I think Lies We Tell Ourselves is well worth the read, and a fantastic addition to the YA genre.

Rachel reviews Annie On My Mind by Nancy Garden

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Fans of lesbian young adult literature should really pick up Annie On My Mind, by Nancy Garden. First published in 1982, Annie was one of the first lesbian fiction novels to have a happy ending. Garden put so much care and love into her story, and it really shows.

The story is told in the voice of Liza Winthrop, a seventeen year old high school senior looking to get into MIT. At a museum in New York City, she meets Annie Kenyon, also a high school senior, who is kind and musical. The two become good friends, and together they explore their city and get to know each other well. Soon, their tender feelings turn into love, and Liza grapples with the idea of being gay. She and Annie harbor their secret romance, and when Liza is discovered by her friends and family, she must decide whether to continue her relationship with Annie.

This novel is written in a kind of dreamlike quality that makes it beautiful. The characters of Liza and Annie are wonderful with each other. They have their faults, dreams, fears and insecurities. Annie especially sees the world in an imaginative way, which shows in her talks with Liza about the future and things in the present. She and down-to-earth, level-headed Liza, balance each other out really well.

The supporting characters were great too. I especially loved Liza’s art teacher, Ms. Stevenson. She has a strong sense of justice and is not afraid to say so. The headmistress at Liza’s private school, Mrs. Poindexter, is prim and proper, while Annie’s grandmother, Nana, provides some laughs with her easy going manner. In all, each character in the book enhanced the storyline and added to the plot nicely.

Garden also sent powerful messages about homophobia, intolerance, and same-sex love. When Liza is outed, the reactions around her range from disbelief and disgust to sadness and questioning. Most infuriating was Ms. Baxter, the headmistress’s aide, who was very judgmental to Liza, Annie, and other gay characters. Anyone reading Annie can easily recognize the homophobia and hatred that homosexuals still face today. The best of all messages, though, was that same-sex love is not a bad thing. That love is love. “Don’t let ignorance win, let love”, one of the novel’s quotes, really sums up the idea of love.

On a personal note, Annie is a very special book for me. This was the first lesbian novel I ever read. Sadly, Nancy Garden passed away in June, but she left a legacy of love and acceptance. A wonderful writer and advocate for gay rights, she and Annie On My Mind will forever hold a special place in my heart.

Krait reviews Winged Things: A Lesbian YA Short Story Collection by Jennifer Diemer and Sarah Diemer

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WINGED THINGS is a bewitching collection of young adult short stories, ranging from paranormal to fantasy, all featuring a lesbian heroine. This collection is part of Project Unicorn, a fiction project that seeks to address the near nonexistence of lesbian main characters in young adult fiction by giving them their own stories.

Winged Things, as the blurb suggests, is part of an awesome project by Sarah and Jennifer Diemer to expand the cast of lesbian protagonists in YA fiction. Project Unicorn is currently on hiatus, but a current total of 51 free short stories are available online. Winged Things is the sixth in a series of e-zines collecting the stories of Project Unicorn, with two new stories not available online.

Generally speaking, I really enjoyed this collection. It’s the sort of thing I wish I’d been able to read growing up, where there are no tragic lesbians and everything ends on a hopeful note. There’s a lightness to the stories, no doubt helped by the motif of flying running through the collection. The protagonists are young girls growing and expanding into new and lovely creatures. (Or people, depending on the story).

On an individual basis, a few stories really stood out for me. (Some spoiler-y quotes to follow)

In “When We Flew,” our heroine Ola lives in a tiny village where everyone is born with wings, but they’re considered shameful appendages, fit only to be removed at 17. I was struck by some really gorgeous turns of phrase:

“And on the scheduled day of Removing, I removed myself. I flew on wings that had been destined for dust but grazed the stars instead.”

This particular quote is fairly typical of the narrative style, so if you prefer very precise, concrete prose, the writing might not be for you.

Both “Aphrodite Has A Daughter” and “Flower Constancy” are two stories that I would love to see expanded, whether just into a longer form or into a full novel. “Aphrodite” is a short retelling of the meeting of Eros and Psyche, where Eros is the jaded daughter of Aphrodite, the embodiment of “love-in-action.” I would absolutely love to see a lesbian retelling of the full story of Eros and Psyche, particularly in Diemer’s style. “Flower Constancy” is a historical that actually ends happily for two young women in England. I didn’t get a firm sense of what time period it was set in, but the descriptions of the house and the butterfly garden make me think Victorian.

Overall, I would definitely recommend Winged Things if you enjoy speculative and fantasy short stories, and it’s definitely suitable for young teens and up.

Danika reviews Being Emily by Rachel Gold

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I feel very conflicted about this book. When I first heard about it, I was really excited to read it, because it is the first young adult book with a trans girl narrator, plus the main character is a lesbian. There are very few trans lesbian books, so they also get bumped up my reading list. When I heard that the author is cis, I was a little apprehensive, which I always am when reading a book about a minority identity that the author doesn’t share. Then when I initially read it, I was disappointed. Although it was compelling, I had a lot of issues with it, particularly the vocabulary used (which may be regional, but I haven’t heard anyone ever refer to themselves as a “survivor of transsexualism”, and the word “transsexual” itself I very rarely hear), and the ample amount of space given to Emily’s girlfriend’s initial transphobic response to Emily coming out. After that, I Rachel Gold’s second novel, Just Girls, fully expecting to dislike it. Instead, I loved it. I then discovered tons of rave reviews of Being Emily from all over, including many reviews by trans women themselves, and found out that there were many trans women beta readers who worked with Rachel Gold in shaping Being Emily. As a cisgender person, I obviously make no claim to the authenticity of a depiction of the experience of being trans.

So, I feel muddled about Being Emily. (Much more so now, because I put off reviewing Being Emily due to my ambivalence about it, and then discovered that my glitchy Kobo had helpfully erased all of my extensive highlighting and notes that I took while reading it.) Although I absolutely give precedence to trans women’s reviews of this book, I’ll share my experience with it anyways, in case it’s helpful to anyone.

One of the first things that struck me about the novel was that I wasn’t sure who it was aimed at. Almost half of the book is from the perspective of Claire, Emily’s girlfriend, who at first reacts pretty badly to Emily’s coming out. We read pages of her transphobic tirades complete with religious justification and sketchy ideas of biological truths before she comes around. This may be accurate to many people’s experience, but I cringed reading it, and I can’t imagine slogging through that as someone coming to terms with their own gender identity.

It’s also quite bleak, and again, though it may be realistic for many people for their parents to react badly and for the coming out process to be negative, as a personal preference that’s not the world I want to escape to in a book. Again, this is completely personal, but I have long ago gotten tired of reading lesbian YA that is focused on how awful it is to come out. And maybe it’s unfair to bring that into reading a trans narrative, where there are so few stories at the moment, and where the reality is bleaker than the average cis lesbian experience.

Another element that I personally didn’t enjoy was Claire’s Christianity being focused on quite a bit in her sections. One detail I did enjoy was the freedom that Emily experiences in gaming/the internet, especially World of Warcraft. This is explored more in Just Girls, and I liked it even more there.

I learned from the author that Being Emily was first drafted ten years ago, which explains some of the outdated terms. I’m still not sure how to think about this one. Although I’ve lost all my notes, I remember highlighting many of Claire’s passages, being horrified at her callousness, and questioning some other lines for not seeming realistic to how I’ve heard trans people present themselves, but at the same time, I’ve read multiple trans women’s positive reviews of this title, and no negative reviews by trans people, so I have to chalk it up to my own preferences at least in part. I did absolutely love Just Girls, though, and recommend that one wholeheartedly.

Danika reviews Twixt by Sarah Diemer

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TwixtbySarahDiemer

Sarah Diemer is an author that I am pretty familiar with from her online presence, but I’ve only read one book by her, The Dark Wife. One of my favourite Booktubers, Jessie Quinn from Cup of Books, reviewed Twixt pretty positively and recommended it as an October read, so I figured it would be a good one to pick up during Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon. (Now that all the links are out of the way…)

Twixt is a sort of dystopic fantasy young adult book. It drops you immediately into this world of Sleepers and Snatchers, a walled in town where monsters swoop in and snatch people who try to leave, a place where hair is bartered like money and memories are drugs. It’s overwhelming at first, and I spent most of the novella trying to get my bearings. This is a story that I feel like is based around the world and setting. Although the characters are interesting, I didn’t feel like they were fully realized. I also appreciated a lesbian romance in this setting, but because I didn’t feel connected to the characters, I wasn’t invested in the romance, either.

Because the setting is so unique, the whole time I was reading it I thought that the ending/explanation would really determine how I felt about the novella as a whole. The explanation is satisfying in that it is fittingly odd, and does make sense for the story, but afterward I felt like some elements were unnecessary (spoiler, highlight to read: specifically the doubling of the sixers–the two-as-one thing seemed unexplained and unneeded. Also some details like the rivalry between the houses felt superfluous).

Overall, I found the story interesting and intriguing, but I wanted more from it: more development of the characters and more detail of the setting. I would have liked to see this fleshed out into a novel-length work. It feels like the bare bones of a richer, more thorough narrative. But this may just be my own experience. In addition to Jessie’s review, also check out Katie’s very positive review at the Lesbrary.

Rachel reviews Dare Truth or Promise by Paula Boock

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In this 1997 novel by Paula Boock, Dare, Truth, or Promise explores the lives of two New Zealand teenage girls, and their budding romance.

Louise “Louie” Angelo is a confident girl preparing to become a lawyer. She meets Willa, a quiet new girl at her school who wants to be a chef. From the beginning, Louie is fascinated by Willa, who is reeling from a painful breakup with a girl that almost cost her everything. The girls become good friends, and Willa finds herself falling in love again. Soon, Louie’s admiration turns to love, and the two become lovers. But when Louie’s uptight mother finds out, a rough road is in store for both Louie and Willa. They must confront old demons and their own fears of homosexuality in order to be together.

Dare, Truth, or Promise is an easy read, told from both Louie and Willa’s perspectives, and the characters are realistic. It’s interesting how the two leads, Louie and Willa, are so opposite. Louie is from a rich family, lives in a big house, and is in a practicing Catholic family. Willa, on the other hand, is living in a pub her widowed mother owns, and is an atheist. Still, the girls have an undeniable love, and really care for each other. Other characters are interesting, such as Susi, Louie’s mother, who suspects her daughter’s relationship from the beginning. Other characters include Mo, Louie’s best friend at their all-girls school, Cathy, Willa’s ex-girlfriend, and of course, Willa’s adorable dog, Judas.

The fears the girls have over their relationship is very real. Louie worries that she is a sinner, while Willa worries of having her heart broken again. For a while, things are tense as Louie and Willa try to sort their emotions out, as well as gain acceptance from their families, friends, and religious groups. There are even a couple of nail biting moments that really drew me in.

This book, which takes place in New Zealand, has a glossary of words for the grammar and slang used in the story. And though tense at times, Dare, Truth, or Promise has really funny moments, such as the dog’s antics, or the banter between Louie and her brother and sister. And the moments where Louie and Willa are together, whether watching airplanes take off, or swimming in Louie’s Jacuzzi, add to the story. They have their disagreements; neither of them is perfect. But that accurately reflects all couples, be they gay or straight.

Though it’s a relatively short novel, (170 pages), it packs a punch and is very entertaining. Dare, Truth, or Promise is an exciting addition to teen lesbian literature.

Ashley reviews The House You Pass on the Way by Jacqueline Woodson

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The House You Pass on the Way is truly the epitome of a short and sweet book. In it, Jacqueline Woodson masterfully conjures a vivid picture of life in rural South Carolina, shedding light on the complexities of growing up as a mixed-race queer girl in barely 100 pages.

Evangeline, who dubs herself Staggerlee at age nine, is a protagonist that everyone will want to root for. Growing up with a white mother and black father in a predominately black town presents a unique set of challenges for her – Staggerlee is often considered to be stuck-up by her classmates, and is ostracized due to her shyness and perceived “white” snobbery.

Staggerlee also grapples with aspects of her identity beyond her race, and feels that she cannot share these particular struggles with her family. When her first friend makes her feel more than she anticipates, Staggerlee begins to wonder if she is a lesbian. Her confusion about her sexuality is not spoken aloud, for Staggerlee believes she must wait until she is sure about herself to tell anyone her secret.

All of this changes when Staggerlee’s adopted cousin, Trout, comes to visit. Trout and Staggerlee first bond over the fact that they both changed their names (Trout’s given name is Tyler), but soon realize they have much more in common than that. (I’ll refrain from writing any spoilers, but it is not too difficult to predict what other qualities the two characters may share…).

Trout not only provides a glimpse of a more open and accepting world outside of Sweet Gum, but she saves Staggerlee from her loneliness. She is the only person Staggerlee can truly confide in, and, despite the fact that they do not always agree, Trout and Staggerlee’s friendship highlights the importance of having someone to be honest with in times of confusion.

Though Woodson’s story is categorized as Young Adult, I would say that it is geared towards even younger readers. While its length and simplistic language made it a breeze to read, The House You Pass on the Way also exemplifies Woodson’s ability to heavy subject matter. She knows how to make tough topics accessible without diluting the seriousness of the issues, and perfectly portrays the difficulty of navigating your identity as an early teenager.

While Woodson’s plot is seemingly straightforward, her depiction of Staggerlee’s search for her true self raises questions that continue long after the story ends. Woodson’s depiction of race and sexuality confront what many adolescents face, as she details the complexity of being black and white and possibly lesbian in a way that will resonate with readers of all ages.