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In her recent novel And Don’t Look Back, Rebecca Barrow has penned a psychological thriller with plot twists that parallel the intensity of a Criminal Minds drama. As the central character in this tale, Barrow creates Harlow Ford, who has spent her life on the run, moving to a new location whenever something triggers her mom’s paranoia. As a result, Harlow has had to reinvent, build, and dismantle several identities. Given this reality, the moments during which Harlow feels most at home are those moments spent with her mom in the car, “wherever they’ve been in the rearview mirror, whoever they’ve been fading away likeRead More →

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Bittersweet in the Hollow by Kate Pearsall is set in Caball Hollow in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia, where legend and lore thrive. Pearsall tells the story of the James family and the lives of its women whose legacy is superstition. A family of suspected witches, the James women use minerals and locally grown plants to create infusions, tinctures, and balms. With these homemade remedies and whispered words, they treat people’s ailments. However, this story extends beyond a family and natural remedies to become about our deepest desires, a belief in possibility, and the sacrifices we are willing to make in the name ofRead More →

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Through his novel The Broke Hearts, Matt Mendez shares a story that spans generations and blurs genres. A sequel to Barely Missing Everything, the style of this follow-up is unique in that multiple stories are being conveyed within its pages. Told from various view points and with screen play scripts, flashbacks, and Lotería cards interwoven in the prose, The Broke Hearts illustrates how the past never leaves us and how “being a warrior is about doing the hard thing every time” (4). Mendez also shares insight about having hopes and dreams but how life gets in the way with moments of heart break. JD SanchezRead More →

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Mexican-American author Pedro Martín writes a graphic memoir with his latest creation, Mexikid. Largely, it features a 1970s setting and recounts Pedro’s memories growing up. As a Mexican his name is Pedro, but as an American, he is Peter. The dual names are all part of being a Mexikid, according to Martín whose feet are planted on American soil but whose heart belongs to both sides of the border and whose head is trying to fill in the gaps in his own heritage story. A creative, barrel-shaped boy, Pedro likes comic books and collects action figures. These characteristics often make him the target of others’Read More →

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Sixth grader Frances Bishop is prone to worry. She wonders how thoughts can be compartmentalized or put into a box when “worry is like water. It leaks” (41). Furthermore, “no one chooses to worry. Worry just is” (99), and it causes Franny to get herself into a tangle. Because her mother is a former drug addict, Franny has had to be the responsible one, making worry a constant for her. As an escape, Franny has math where the problems have clear steps and a solution. Math is her happy place. Franny also has an ally in her mother’s Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous sponsor, Mimi, whoRead More →

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Anyone wishing for a Halloween thriller will likely find it in The Last Girls Standing by Jennifer Dugan. With this horror story, Dugan creates Charlene Addison Barnes, aka Cherry, and Sloan Thomas, two survivors of a mass murder at Camp Money Springs where they had taken summer jobs as camp counsellors. Able to diffuse tension with a single sentence, Cherry survives the killing spree of a “save the Earth” cult with her memory intact. However, like a rabbit in a snare, Sloan is caught in a time loop in her head. Although Sloan wants to study social work and save the world, her perfect plansRead More →

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With Phoenix Revived, Judy McCluney has written a story about the trials faced by two teens trying to make their way in the world.  Although told in a fairly straightforward, realistic fashion, McCluney does apply a richly developed allusion to the Egyptian myth of the phoenix while also setting the story in Arizona. Uprooted by her dad’s job in the Air Force, Sami has just moved from California to South Phoenix. More than anything, she wishes to fly away to a place of possibility where she hopes to work as a veterinarian. Unable to rely on her parents for monetary support to attend college, SamiRead More →

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Kin: Rooted in Hope by Carole Boston Weatherford is a powerful textual tribute to “the ancestors who carried us through” accented by scratchboard-like illustrations by Jeffery Boston Weatherford. In this verse novel, the Weatherfords conjure the voices of their ancestors and speak to them and through them with their art. Seeking answers to key questions: “At what age is hope born, when does resistance first rise up, and when do dreams wither” (22-23), the mother/son pair tells a moving story of their family tree. Their goal is to give voice to their African-American ancestors who were “marginalized, muted, or muzzled” as they tilled fields intoRead More →

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All You Have to Do by Autumn Allen invites readers to consider some important issues and to answer some key questions. Allen follows the lives of two black men: Kevin, an activist in 1968, and his nephew Gibran Wilson, a high school senior in 1995 attending Lakeside Academy in New York. Allen’s intergenerational story is about “Black people taking care of business—the business of and for Black people” (37). It shares the similarities in the fights both young men have in exercising control over their lives, politically, economically, and psychically. Through her two protagonists, Allen asks: Do we join the world with all its imperfectionsRead More →