Hooray, It’s Time for New Books!

This is slice-of-life story about Joan, an Asian American doctor who thinks she has her life under control. She fulfilled her Chinese immigrant parents’ wishes and became a doctor, and she’s very successful. But when her father dies and her mother returns home, it unleashes feelings she’s been keeping inside about her family, her profession, and her place in the world. And then she must deal with the emergence of COVID-19 at the hospital. Joan is Okay is a funny, heartfelt novel about identity, work, and family. I am a big fan of Wang’s writing, it feels very personal, but also quite clinical. I mean that in a good way! It’s very sharp and precise and cold, like it cuts you and you don’t even know it until later. (CW for illness, death of a family member, sexism, and racism.)

Backlist bump: Chemistry by Weike Wang

This is the second book in the Seven Devils duology! I loved the first one. It’s about Eris, the heir to an empire, who fakes her death to escape her family’s legacy. But then she’s recruited to an organization opposed to the empire, the Novantaen Resistance. Her first assignment? Infiltrate a spaceship full of dangerous cargo and report back. But Eris is met with resistance from her own team, as well as faces danger around every corner. Can she manage to complete her mission and deliver the important information before the new heir to the empire destroys the existing one? Secret royalty + badass rebels + space = F-U-N.

Backlist bump: Seven Devils by Laura Lam and Elizabeth May

And this is the final book in Okorafor’s highly acclaimed Nsibidi Scripts YA trilogy. The first book Akata Witch introduces us to Sunny. Sunny is a 12-year-old American girl living in Nigeria. She never feels like she fits in, because she is not from Nigeria and because she has to stay out of the sun, because she has albinism. But things change when Sunny discovers she has magical powers. Suddenly, people are very interested in her. But can she help the other magical students in her area capture the magical criminal plaguing their town? This is an inventive, fun series, which continues with Akata Warrior, which I also loved. I hope to read this last one very soon!

Backlist bump: Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor

Nell Young is a cartographer (someone who makes maps) just like her father. They used to work together at a museum until they had a falling out over a map Nell discovered in her father’s office. She thought it was a rare map of great significance, her father said it was nothing. When she continued to pursue her interest in the map, they had a huge fight and she got fired. So Nell has been estranged for years from her father, who raised her after her mother died when she was a baby.

Then she gets the call that her father has died. Shocked, she visits his office and discovers he still has that map hanging around, Without her father around to stop her, Nell digs deeper into the map. What she finds changes everything she knows about her father, and herself. The map leads her to a group of cartographers from decades ago, and a dangerous villain who has been hunting down every copy of the strange map and destroying them—even if it means leaving a trail of bodies in their wake. Determined to discover the map’s origin and find out just where it leads, Nell sets out on an adventure that just might be her last!

I loved this delightful speculative mystery! I think it’s a good comp for people who love the mystery of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. The Cartographers has murder and violence, sure, but it somehow still gives off this wholesome vibe. I was left feeling that the book was really nice, and I was utterly charmed. And the reveals are so fun! (I also recommend reading The Book of M by Peng Shepherd while you wait for this one.) (CW for infidelity, violence, murder, and death of a loved one.)