ARC Review: Are We All Lemmings and Snowflakes? by Holly Bourne

Welcome to Camp Reset, a summer camp with a difference. A place offering a shot at “normality” for Olive, a girl on the edge, and for the new friends she never expected to make – who each have their own reasons for being there. Luckily Olive has a plan to solve all their problems. But how do you fix the world when you can’t fix yourself?

ARC Review: Light Filters In: Poems by Caroline Kaufman

In the vein of poetry collections like Milk and Honey and Adultolescence , this compilation of short, powerful poems from teen Instagram sensation @poeticpoison perfectly captures the human experience.  

In Light Filters In, Caroline Kaufman—known as @poeticpoison—does what she does best: reflects our own experiences back at us and makes us feel less alone, one exquisite and insightful piece at a time. She writes about giving up too much of yourself to someone else, not fitting in, endlessly Googling “how to be happy,” and ultimately figuring out who you are.

This hardcover collection features completely new material plus some fan favorites from Caroline’s account. Filled with haunting, spare pieces of original art, Light Filters In will thrill existing fans and newcomers alike.

it’s okay if some things

are always out of reach.

if you could carry all the stars

in the palm of your hand,

they wouldn’t be

half as breathtaking

Book Review: Turtles All The Way Down by John Green

John Green, the #1 bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars is back, with a book hailed by the Guardian as ‘a new modern classic’.

‘It’s quite rare to find someone who sees the same world you see.’

Sixteen-year-old Aza never intended to pursue the mystery of fugitive billionaire Russell Pickett, but there’s a hundred thousand dollar reward at stake and her Best and Most Fearless Friend, Daisy, is eager to investigate. So together, they navigate the short distance and broad divides that separate them from Russell Pickett’s son, Davis.

Aza is trying. She is trying to be a good daughter, a good friend, a good student, and maybe even a good detective, while also living within the ever-tightening spiral of her own thoughts.

In his long-awaited return, John Green, the acclaimed, award-winning author of Looking for Alaska and The Fault in Our Stars, shares Aza’s story with shattering, unflinching clarity in this brilliant novel of love, resilience, and the power of lifelong friendship.

First edition includes an exclusive jacket poster featuring some of John’s most brilliant and memorable quotes.

Book Review: The Serpent King by Jeff Zentner

Dill has had to wrestle with vipers his whole life—at home, as the only son of a Pentecostal minister who urges him to handle poisonous rattlesnakes, and at school, where he faces down bullies who target him for his father’s extreme faith and very public fall from grace.

The only antidote to all this venom is his friendship with fellow outcasts Travis and Lydia. But as they are starting their senior year, Dill feels the coils of his future tightening around him. The end of high school will lead to new beginnings for Lydia, whose edgy fashion blog is her ticket out of their rural Tennessee town. And Travis is happy wherever he is thanks to his obsession with the epic book series Bloodfall and the fangirl who may be turning his harsh reality into real-life fantasy. Dill’s only escapes are his music and his secret feelings for Lydia—neither of which he is brave enough to share. Graduation feels more like an ending to Dill than a beginning. But even before then, he must cope with another ending—one that will rock his life to the core.

Debut novelist Jeff Zentner provides an unblinking and at times comic view of the hard realities of growing up in the Bible Belt, and an intimate look at the struggles to find one’s true self in the wreckage of the past.

ARC Review: If I Had to Tell It Again by Gayathri Prabhu

Sixty-six years of a lifetime gone. There would be no funeral. He had donated his body to the local medical college. It was part of his script, his fantasy about death. He would show his hospital donation certificate to anyone who came to our house. No rituals for me, he would announce. To his mind there was some justice in being cut up by medical students. He had wanted to be a doctor. There is his corpse, lying on the floor, people constantly milling around, talking about his untimely, unfortunate death, while I stare at everyone in dry-eyed annoyance. He had always been a popular man, much loved, generous to a fault to his neighbours, even if angry towards his own family. I just want him gone from the house. When the van from the morgue comes to pick him up, everyone urges us to touch his feet, to ask for his blessings. It is expected from children of dead parents. Everyone watches us. You first, an old man points to me, my father s first-born. I bend down, my fingers touch his feet. In my mind the words form, loud and distinct I forgive you.

Arc Review: Coins in The Coffee Cup by Ambriehl Khalil

Harrison Healy is a seventeen-year-old boy with a side of depression. Not a seventeen-year-old boy with depression. With his parents dead, his sister gone and a best friend who committed suicide from an overwhelming flood of sadness – he’s doing okay. Now, he’s just stuck with two people who can’t stand the sight of him and five friends who try to make his life a little better.
While stumping through his every day average-depressed-gay-kid-teen-life in his final senior year, he discovers EVAN, a bright-eyed, bright smiled senior who is trapped in the world around him.
Over the course of his final school year, Harry experiences his first love, his first kiss; he finds the stars, loses his mind, very nearly loses himself along the way. He finds out horrific news, he sees what can’t be unseen and he is faced with the challenge of trying to find a way to be okay.
Harrison deals with the loss of everyone he has loved. As he tries to get out of his head and into the real world, he attempts to participate in life instead of watching it fly by.