If you love a good friends to enemies to lovers trope, this is a fantastic book to try.  While I myself am not generally a huge fan of romance novels, I really enjoyed this funny, sweet, and thoughtful romp from Talia Hibbert.  The sense of history between the two main characters feels believable and the evolution of their connection feels wholly earned.  With excellent character development, clever banter, and real world aspirations and obstacles playing just as important a role as the sweet blossoming romance, this one hits the mark.

Once a dancer with dreams of Julliard, Moth's life is forever changed when a car crash takes away her family and leaves her the only survivor.  Now living with an aunt who won't even look at her and trying to make it through each day until graduation, she meets Sani, a boy whose inner pain mirrors her own.  After a violent incident in Sani's home sends him running, he and Moth drive through the country, reconnecting with their respective Navajo and Hoodoo roots and falling for each other until the bittersweet end. 

Olga was always the perfect one - good grades, followed the rules, never disappointed her strict Mexican parents.  But when Olga is killed in a tragic traffic accident, younger sister Julia begins to find clues that Olga may have had some secrets.  In order to process the loss of her sister and work through her own grief (as well as the grief of her family), Julia starts to hunt down the truth about her sister. But how do you come to terms with the truth when no one else wants to hear it? 

Cindy loves shoes - she designs them - it’s her form of creative self-expression. She’s also hoping, having just graduated with a fancy degree in design - that it will be her career. But while she awaits her dream job, she moves back home to live with her stepmother and stepsisters. Her stepmother is the executive producer of a hit reality tv show called “Before Midnight” and when one of the eligible ladies bows out at the last minute, her stepmother convinces Cindy to step into the role.  Cindy figures that it could at least be a way to launch her shoe line, after all, her designs will be appearing every week in prime time. Suddenly Cindy becomes the first plus-size contestant ever to appear on the show, and she becomes an overnight sensation as a body-positivity icon.  The strangest part, is that Cindy finds herself making real connections with a few of the other contestants, and quite possibly actually falling for the charming bachelor. This book was a delight to read (even for someone like me, who doesn't usually go in for "romance fiction").  The main characters are relatable, well-written, three-dimensional people, and the story was empowering, charming, and even believable.  

This profoundly beautiful and heart-rending novel in verse tells the story of 16-year-old Alicia who has been cut out of her friend group, abandoned by her best friend, and made to live on the fringes of her school's social universe.  Like the mythical Medusa, society has cast her as the villain rather than acknowledge the victimization she suffered at the hands of a popular teacher.  Alicia's journey to reclaim her power, her voice, and her body autonomy leads her down some dark and dangerous paths, but as she begins to re-write the script and tell her own story, we witness the potential for her pain to become power.  When mysterious notes left in her locker at school begin to clue her in that she may not be the only victim of this predatory teacher, Alicia must decide whether to remain silent or take action once and for all.  An important exploration of toxic masculinity, the effects of outdated and misogynistic gender role expectations, and the immense power that comes from owning your truth and your body.  A great read-alike for Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson.

This is an incredibly thoughtful and honest examination of a lot of big things…and yet it never feels like it’s too much to handle or taking on too many “issues” at once.  The plot centers around Kermit - a 15-year old who’s just recently lost his beloved sister in a terrible car accident.  The grief over losing his sister is compounded by the fact that she was one of the few people in his life who really saw and accepted him for who he was.  Unable to talk to his evangelical Christian parents about his identity as a young gay man, knowing that the church from which his parents are deriving much of their grief support would shun him or worse if they knew about his sexual identity, Kermit is feeling very much cut adrift.  And then he receives an invitation to a secret club where a group of students who’ve all suffered losses, come together to be with other students who get it.  The group, which includes Kermit’s crush, Matt, is at first a welcome distraction, but as he and Matt grow closer, Kermit begins to realize that Matt’s happy-go-lucky facade is covering up a deep and crushing loneliness and hurt - one that has the potential to destroy the Minus-One Club and even Matt himself - unless Kermit can help himself and his friends find a path toward healing. Told in short chapters, this is a quick and moving read.

In a rural, Ojibwe community in North Dakota in 1988, a woman is attacked, raped, and almost killed.  When she returns home to her husband and 13-year-old son Joe (from whose perspective the story is told), she refuses to speak about what happened.  Thus begins a complex, heartbreaking, and powerful story of a family traumatized by violence perpetrated against one of its members, a community struggling to survive, and the complications of native jurisdiction versus treaty law.  In this beautifully written book, a mother and wife seeks to carry on, a husband and father seeks justice, and a son seeks retribution.

When Hoodie Rosen’s entire Orthodox Jewish community picks up and moves to a small town, they’re met with mostly opposition. Hoodie takes it all in stride until he meets and quickly develops a crush on the daughter of the town’s mayor who happens to be one of the loudest voices in opposition to this new community. Things go from manageably unpleasant to downright dangerous when a series of anti-Semitic acts starts to terrorize Hoodie and his community. For all of its weighty issues, the book maintains an upbeat, funny, and hopeful tone. The character of Hoodie is charming with a wry and irreverent sense of humor that keeps the reader rooting for him even through some of his more questionable choices. 

May Chen has never seemed to be able to earn her mother’s approval. Her beloved brother, Danny, on the other hand, has always been the one to make his parents proud.  But his academic and social success is hiding the depth of the depression with which he struggles, and May and her parents’ lives are torn apart when Danny dies by suicide.  In the aftermath of Danny’s death, May and her family become the targets of racist accusations that Danny’s death was caused by the pressure that her Taiwanese-American parents put on him.  While May’s father believes that the best response is to just ignore them, May decides to combat the hate by using her writing to speak her truth back to the haters.  For every action there’s a reaction and the conversation escalates with May and her friends being warned by their parents and school administrators to discontinue their writing campaign.  But what happens to our stories if we allow other people to tell them for us? 

Equal parts realistic fiction, magical fiction, and mystery, this GMBA nominee will provide you with much food for thought as you question what you believe is real and what is fantasy...what does it mean to care for someone vs. control them.  Four teenage girls are found in the woods. Each disappeared as a young child and they were all raised by a man going by the moniker of "Mother".  Through "mother's" teachings, the girls believe that they are princesses from magical lands which were under threat.  They believe they were preserved so that they could survive and one day return to unite and save their kingdoms.  When Rhi stumbles upon the girls, they believe her to be their long-awaited fifth sister, the one who signals their return to their lost kingdoms.  But a return to the world is not what any of them expect, and each of the girls as well as Rhi herself must confront what they believe about themselves and the world, in order to determine their path forward.