Hooray, It’s Time for New Books!

This is a wonderful novel about a queer Palestinian American woman with blue skin. When Betty was born, her blue skin led her great-aunt Nuha to declare her special, like the color of lapis lazuli royalty. Betty is raised by several women in her family, including her larger-than-life great aunt. As an adult, Betty visits Nuha’s gravestone to tell her about the crossroads she is facing: should she stay with her family or follow the woman she loves to a foreign land? In the course of her struggle, Betty will learn all about Nuha, the hidden life and love she kept from her family, and have to decide what is the most important thing to her in her life. It’s an excellent family drama and a great piece of storytelling. (CW for violence, pregnancy trauma, war and war casualties, infidelity, body shaming, loss of a loved one, and repeated mentions of suicidal ideation and attempted suicide.)

Backlist bump: The Blue Girl by Laurie Foos

And this is another much-needed United States history book that centers Native people and their importance in U.S. history. Yale professor Blackhawk, of the Western Shoshone, explains how Native people were an integral part of many aspects of the country’s history over the last several centuries. Yet their contributions are still largely left out of the history books. There is so much information that will surprise you. This should be required reading for anyone who wants to learn — or teach — United States history.

Backlist bump: The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present by David Treuer

Okay, so this book is a lot of fun, but you really have to suspend your disbelief and just roll with it. In this bloody YA horror, America has experienced a plague called The Hollowing, which turned some people into basically zombies. They’re alive and functional like everyone else, but they can only eat human flesh. The government invented a lab-grown source of food for them, and they are allowed to live their lives, although they are monitored and must check in with their case workers. Zoey, Celeste, Valeria, and Jasmine are four teens who are Hollow girls. They’re headed to a music festival to celebrate the end of high school. They came prepared with a cooler of synth-meat, but they soon run into dangerous problems when they start being unable to control their hunger for human flesh straight off the bone. It may be part of a nefarious plot to uncover Hollow people, and if they don’t escape the festival, it’s curtains for everyone. And Zoey thought her biggest problem this trip was figuring out her crush on Celeste. This book is a bloody good time! Yes, the metaphors are heavy-handed, and there’s no way the world would welcome people who eat people back into society. But it’s a charming, silly, queer YA horror novel that will entertain. (CW for many, many things, because it’s a gory horror novel, including lots of violence and murder, loss of loved ones, gore, homophobia, substance use, suicidal ideation, and transphobia.)

Backlist bump: The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan

This week, I am just started The Unsettled by Ayana Mathis and The Road to Roswell by Connie Willis, both of which I am very excited about. I keep wanting to reread Willis’s older books, but they’re so big, and I have so many other books waiting for me! Outside of books, I am digging the new game show Split Second on the Game Show Network, and cheering on the Celtics in the first round of the playoffs. The song stuck in my head is “Loves Times Gazillion” by West Coast Exiles. And here is your weekly cat picture: Farrokh is practicing his gargoyle pose.