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Showing posts from July, 2023

Murder on a School Night / Kate Weston / Book Review

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Kerry and Annie have always been on the outside looking in. So when they discover that one of the popular girls is getting threatening messages on social media, they jump right in to offer their investigative services. Getting invited to one of the biggest parties of the year is an obvious perk to this new job.  What they didn’t count on was finding a body at the party. Specifically, Kerry didn’t expect to find a body while almost, kind of about to have her first kiss.  Instead of tracking down a cyberbully, these best friends are now stuck in the middle of a murder investigation. And one death isn’t enough. As the popular kids go down one by one, Annie and Kerry find their new position in the in-group particularly precarious. Is everything really as shiny as they thought from the outside?

I'm Not Here to Make Friends / Andrew Yang / Book Review

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Sabine Zhang has been watching Hotel California forever. So when she gets a chance to be on this season, she can’t say no. Hotel California isn’t like other reality shows. No melodrama. No forced friction and interpersonal conflict. It’s just a bunch of kids hanging out—Asian American and proud of it. For a girl like Sabine, one of the only Asian faces in her small Illinois town, this is a dream come true.  But this season is different. This season, the show has been picked up by a bigger network. Sabine knows she’s out of her depth right away, and every other word out of her mouth seems to be a mistake, something that the producers can use to drive the cast apart. Drive Sabine away from the rest.  What Sabine hoped would be a summer for her to connect with other Asian American kids instead becomes a chance for her to feel more self-conscious than ever. And with every misstep she makes, she starts to wonder if the mistakes aren’t just her own social awkwardness. Is there a bigger plan

Night of the Living Queers / Shelly Page & Alex Brown, Editors / Book Review

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As a blue moon rises this Halloween night, anything could happen. Anything. Ghosts and ghouls, haunted houses, evil wizards and endless transformations: thirteen tales spin twist horror tropes in new, horrific ways. Haunted house parties turn deadly. Dead things come knocking in the night. Monstrous movie-goers, intrepid podcasters, and Ouija boards gone wrong cast an unsettling glow over these diverse tales. Anything could happen in the light of this uncommon moon.  

Rana Joon and the One and Only Now / Shideh Etaat / Book Review

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"It's your ignorance that makes you an asshole." Rana is supposed to be a lot of things: the perfect daughter, an excellent student, a model child of immigrants. Rana is far from perfect. It's 1996, and she loves Tupac, smokes weed, and carries a dark secret, the kind her immigrant parents won't ever be able to get over: she likes girls.  On top of all of this, her best friend Louie--the only one who knew the truth about all of her--died in a car accident almost a year ago. Since then, Rana has been unmoored, lost in grief and unseen in a world that doesn't know the truth of her. Louie was her everything, the one who encouraged her to live in the here and now. In his honor, she wants to enter the rap battle he dreamed of competing in--but she'll have to find her voice first.  With the clock ticking, she'll have to decide whether to feature one of Louie's pieces or an original work of her own. But her family is falling apart at the seams, her grades