"With the Fire on High" by Elizabeth Acevedo

I loved this book! If you are looking for a heart warming, inspiring book to read, please pick this one up. There are tons of contemporary YA novels that have cute romance stories. This one is definitely not your run of the mill contemporary book.

Our main character Emoni is a high school senior who is juggling being a mother, finishing school, working and figuring out her future. Emoni is also a talented cook whose creativity in the kitchen does not go unnoticed by family, friends and teachers. Her life is not easy. She's been through a lot and still has a difficult path ahead. But her enthusiasm and love do not let her falter. I also loved the characters of Malachi, Abuela and Emoni's friend Angelica. It's a perfect summer read. It made me smile and even tear up a few times. I highly recommend it. 5 out of 5 stars.

"Uglies" by Scott Westerfeld

Uglies is considered to be an older YA series. With the publication date of 2005, this was one of the first dystopian YA series. In fact, Uglies was published 8 months before Twilight, which as we now know will spark such a reading frenzy among young adults that the YA book market will completely reshape itself.

I had heard mixed opinions about the Uglies trilogy. Some claimed it was full of tropes and did not live up to expectations. Personally, I think Uglies (at least the first book) is a solid dystopian series. The premise of the book is that all humans upon reaching the age of 16 undergo an operation which makes them pretty. 12 to 16 year-olds are considered to be uglies and live in dormitories on the outskirts of town. Their lives are basically centered around anxiously awaiting the operation.

Our main character Tally will soon turn 16 and cannot wait to turn pretty. A couple of months before the eagerly anticipated date, she meets another ugly Shay who tells her that there are people in the world who do not want to turn pretty and instead live out their lives with the appearance they got from birth. Even though this sounds pretty simplistic, Westerfeld explains why and how humanity came to this point.

Overall, I gave this novel 4 out of 5 stars and will continue with the series. I liked the way the novel was structured. I also enjoyed the fact that the main character struggles with moral decisions. She is someone who I would call a gray character. Even though her intentions always remain good, she does make major mistakes and is forced to make difficult choices. I definitely recommend this novel and hope the sequels will not disappoint.

"The Love Interest" by Cale Dietrich

Love Interest came in one of my Book of the Month boxes back in 2017. It is Dietrich's debut novel. For a while, I actually was not sure if I'd read it and was seriously considering donating it to the library. However, I am glad I decided to give it a go. It was a solid 3-star read.

It is hard to pinpoint the genre exactly. It is speculative fiction set in the present-day US. There is a secret organization that raises and trains orphans to become future love interests of the famous and powerful. Basically, once a kid gets older and is deemed ready, he or she is assigned to a potentially powerful or famous person (think movie stars, athletes, scientists, etc). The idea is to do everything possible to get the celebrity to fall in love with the love interest and then spy on them. The organization thus trades in secrets and rules the world behind the scenes.

Our main protagonist Caden is a love interest, who is about to be released into the world to meet his Chosen one: Juliet is a young high school progeny who will clearly become a very talented scientist. One other thing worth mentioning is that the love interests are divided into the Nice and the Bad. So each potential target gets two love interests assigned to him or her: a Nice one and a Bad one. The love interests basically compete for the Chosen's heart, and whoever loses, dies.

Overall, I thought the premise was mildly interesting. I also liked the twist in the story. Caden is the Nice and his opposite - the Bad - is Dylan. They both begin vying for Juliet's attention (this was a great spoof on an overused YA trope), but then instead fall for each other.

I enjoyed the story for about two thirds of the book. The end in my opinion was a bit too good to be true. Everything was just too easy and unrealistic. Other than that. a great beach/vacation read. The author should definitely keep writing.

The Classics Challenge: "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens

I had been meaning to read more Dickens for a while. Prior to this, I had only read Oliver Twist and The Christmas Carol. So as part of my classics challenge for this year, I picked up Great Expectations. 

It took me a little while to get into the book. The first half of the novel was pretty slow and a lot of narrative was basically a set up for a rapidly developing chain of events in the second half. Overall, I ended up really liking this book. It had a lot of unexpected depth and examination of human motives.

Our main character Pip gets pulled from poverty into riches by a mysterious benefactor whose identity is not revealed until much later in the novel. Pip, driven by ambition and "great expectations," easily abandons the family he grew up in and throws himself into the life of wealth and leisure. He also forms some unreasonable ideas about the source of his wealth and his own future as it relates to a certain young lady whom he met when quite young in the house of a rich gentlewoman.

However, despite his seeming ungratefulness towards Joe, the blacksmith who raised him, Pip is not a bad person. The unselfish way he assists his roommate Herbert and the role he plays in Matthew Pocket's fortune definitely raise him in the eyes of the reader. Furthermore, the trials and heartbreak he goes through make him stronger and develop his character. He really is quite a likable character by the end of the novel.

I, unfortunately, cannot say the same about Estella, the young woman Pip falls madly and unhappily in love with. She behaves like a spoiled and heartless brat towards everyone including the woman to whom she owes her position in life. It was really hard for me to understand Pip's misplaced fascination with such an unlikable young lady. That's the one thing I believe Victorian novels sometimes suffer from: as long as a woman is pretty, our character will fall in love head over heels with her no matter how flawed her personality is. Overall, even though Estella's and Pip's stories ares somewhat similar, and both of them in the end realize their mistakes, Pip's character is much better fleshed out and nuanced, whereas Estella's remains just a sketch, almost a caricature.

4 out 5 stars. I will definitely read more Dickens.

"Passion on Park Avenue" by Lauren Layne

There are quite a few books reviewed on this blog which I do not remember reading at all - and I consider myself to have a pretty good memory. I am afraid Passion on Park Avenue will end up joining the ranks of my least memorable reads. I knew going in that this was a chick lit novel (based on the cover and description). However, I did not expect it to completely lack any sort of believable plot.

In the beginning of the novel we meet Naomi Powell, one of the most successful female entrepreneurs under 30. She is about to attend a funeral of her lover, who she discovered from the obituary, was married. The first question that comes to mind is why would she even go to the funeral? She only dated him for three months and she now knows he is married.... Well, she goes into the church, gets some accusing stares from the audience (the questions is why? Is the fact that she was his mistress stamped all over her face??), then decides to go for a stroll in the Central Park. Guess what happens next? Not only does she run into her late lover's wife, she also meets his other mistress and the three of them decide to become friends! If you do not think this is ridiculous enough, it gets even better from there. 

Needless to say, I felt mostly irritated while reading this book. 2 out of 5 stars.

An e-ARC was provided to me for review by NetGalley.com.

"Small Great Things" by Jodi Picoult

Small Great Things is the story of an African-American nurse named Ruth Jefferson who gets blamed for a death of an infant and gets arrested and tried for murder. The child's parents are white supremacists who had insisted that Ruth be removed from caring for their son. However, when another patient is rushed to an emergency C-section, Ruth finds herself alone with the baby boy, when he unexpectedly goes into distress.

This book is phenomenal. The characters are very well-defined, the plot is well-thought out and nuanced, and the themes are poignant and very close to my heart. I listened to this book on audio and I highly recommend the audiobook. The novel is written from three different points of view: Ruth's; Turk Bower's, the white supremacist whose son died; and Kennedy's, Ruth's public defendant. All three readers did a great job. They all sounded very authentic and truly brought the characters to life.

The thing that I appreciated the most about this book is Picoult's deep dive into the meaning of white privilege. Her assertion that ignorance (and the root here to think about is "ignore") is just another facet of privilege. People of color do not get to be ignorant about issues of race. They live it daily. This is a powerful and much needed book. I devoured it and could not get enough of it. I highly recommend it. 5 out of 5 stars.

"Underground: A Human History of the Worlds Beneath Our Feet" by Will Hunt

I began the month of May with a non-fiction read. Will Hunt is originally from Providence, RI, and his fascination with the underground began with a childhood discovery of an abandoned railroad tunnel near his parents' house. In this book, we follow him through the walks in the subway system of Manhattan, catacombs of Paris and Cappadocia, and explore mines and caves of Australia, Europe and Central America. Throughout the book, Will Hunt not only relates amazing facts about underground places, but also recounts stories about humanity's age-old fascination with caves and darkness.

Personally, my favorite parts of the book were about religious beliefs associated with caves and the underground. I loved the chapters on worshiping cave spirits in Australia and Mesoamerica. Because this book is fairly short (under 300 pages), you only get bite-size portions of information in each chapter and just a glimpse into the rich mythology and history surrounding subterranean places. I do hope this book is successful enough for him to write another one, perhaps a bit more in-depth and focused on just a couple of topics covered in this overview. Overall, a very interesting book. I gave it 4 out of 5 stars simply because it did not go into enough detail for my taste.