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Transitioning from life in Korea to America, a young woman struggles with change and figuring out where she fits. After her mother's decision to marry a man in Alabama, 14-year-old Chuna, who thought she was just going on another mother-daughter trip, grapples with culture shock, bullying, and integrating into a new family. Her mother is still her hero, and she recognizes the sacrifices she has made in order for them to survive. It's rough going though, especially when the rest of the Kims, her new stepfamily, are not very supportive. She can't help but compare Korea to the U.S., the lively streets of Seoul and her many friends to her isolation in 1990s Huntsville. Bullying, though for different reasons-in Korea, for coming from a single-parent home and in Alabama, for being Asian-is always prevalent in her life. (Many of the people she interacts with at school are white.) It isn't until her mother reminds her of her love of comics and drawing that Chuna, now going by Robin, begins to thrive. Employing soft and subdued coloring for the majority of the work, Ha (Cook Korean!, 2016, etc.) uses sepia tones for recollections of her family's history in Korea. This heartfelt memoir from an author who shares her honest, personal experiences excels at showing how Ha navigated Asian American identity and the bonds between mother and daughter. An insightful, moving coming-of-age tale. (glossary) (Graphic memoir. 12-adult) Copyright Kirkus 2019 Kirkus/BPI Communications

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Fairview has been haunted by the disappearance of popular girl Andie Bell and the unexpected suicide of her alleged killer, Sal Singh. Five years later, high school senior Pippa Fitz-Amobi, who has had serious doubts about the officially circulated version of the story, decides that proving Sal's innocence will be the focus of her capstone project. But with each new discovery, Pip finds herself racing toward danger in ways she could never have expected. Thankfully, she has Sal's brother, Ravi, to help her along the way, and together they just might solve a mystery nobody else was able to unravel. Debut novelist Jackson transforms what could be a routine murder mystery into a critical examination of xenophobia, unfounded bias, and the incredibly complicated motivations that drive us all to act in ways we would never believe possible. This is an engaging narrative, full of twists and turns that will both shock and delight fans of murder, mayhem, and intrigue. Grades 9-12. Copyright 2020 Booklist Reviews.

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Exploring themes of finding oneself and finding home after immigration, Elhillo's sophisticated debut, Home Is Not a Country, will entrance readers with its deft use of language and blurred divide between reality and possibility. Nearly 15, Nima can't understand what made her mother leave her beautiful homeland to raise her then-unborn child in the U.S. Photos sparkling with laughter and songs crooned in Arabic fill Nima's apartment and capture the teen's imagination as she contemplates how much happier her mother would be in another country or with a different daughter, Yasmeen. This imagined daughter of love and beauty, named for her mother's favorite flower, becomes a fixation in Nima's mind, sister and alterego perfectly bound as the person Nima should have been. These sullen musings become unexpectedly real after Nima's best and only friend, Haitham, is attacked-presumably for his race-in a parking lot and hospitalized. A fight with her mother on the way to visit him sends Nima running off, surprisingly stepping into her mother's past with Yasmeen as her guide. There, Nima observes what really drove her mother from her home, as the girl finds bittersweet answers to many of her questions and receives harsh truths from the mouth of Yasmeen. These revelations act as a much-needed awakening for Nima, who is able to make slight changes to the past that lead to a happier present, though none more than the metamorphosis she herself undergoes in this surreal crash-course in perspective, agency, and self-love. Grades 8-12. Copyright 2021 Booklist Reviews.

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Briseis has a supernatural gift. Whatever seed or plant she touches grows into full bloom, and she's immune to the various poisons plants hold. But Briseis hasn't yet mastered her skill, often leaving her and those around her in precarious situations. So when Bri's family gets a call saying that her birth mother's sister has left her a home in upstate New York, they take it as a much needed break from the stressors of city life. What at first seems like a fairytale opportunity for Briseis to make friends, find love, and reopen her birth-family's apothecary soon becomes a mindboggling quest for answers as she grapples with realizations about her lineage and gift. The lush landscapes Bayron paints remind readers of beauty found not only in large acreages of land but even in bustling cities. Beyond the physical beauty it imparts, the greenery of this novel also creates an intimate space that delicately holds the weight of the issues Briseis grapples with, such as friendship, queerness, adoption, secrecy, and gentrification. Despite Briseis' struggles, it is refreshing to see the love and support of her moms throughout the story, breaking the mold of the traditional family model. This Poison Heart masterfully weaves a unique story grounded in the depths of Greek mythology and Black girlhood, ideal for lovers of folklore or those who enjoy the thrill of a well-paced and unanticipated adventure. Grades 9-12. Copyright 2021 Booklist Reviews.

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Avery Grambs is used to maximizing her options. Her mom's dead and her dad's out of the picture, but she and her optimistic-despite-everything half sister scrape by. When Avery is summoned to the reading of Texas billionaire Tobias Hawthorne's will, she's utterly perplexed; she never even met the man. She's even more bewildered to learn that he left almost his entire estate not to his daughters or grandsons but to her, with one condition: Avery must move into Hawthorne House, a giant mansion filled with puzzles, secret passages, and Tobias' deeply irked actual family, for a year. As she delves into the mysteries of the house, Avery also becomes caught up with the four Hawthorne brothers, all raised on secrets, each with his own deeply held motivation. The seemingly indefatigable Barnes (Deadly Little Scandals, 2019) digs into the teen psyche in this well-characterized mystery that's packed to the brim with twists and tricks. Hand immediately to teen fans of Knives Out or readers who love Maureen Johnson's Truly Devious series. Grades 9-12. Copyright 2020 Booklist Reviews.

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"A patchwork story is the shame of a refugee." It's with this refrain that 12-year-old Khosrou, known as Daniel to his skeptical Oklahoman classmates, tells "a version" of his life story. In the tradition of 1,001 Nights' Scheherazade, he gathers up the loose strands of his memory, weaving short personal vignettes into the Persian histories, myths, and legends that are his ancestry. The result is a winding series of digressions that takes the reader on a journey as intimate as it is epic, knitting together a tale of Daniel's youth in Iran, the perilous flight from home with his sister and mother, and their oppressive new beginning as refugees in Oklahoma. It's a story heavy with loss (of home, of his left-behind father, of innocence), light with humor and love (for his mother, the "unstoppable force"), rich in culture and language (and, somehow, never sentimental). Walking the line between fiction and non-, this is a kind of meta-memoir, a story about the stories that define us. It's a novel, narrated conversationally-and poetically-by a boy reaching for the truth in his fading youth. Nayeri challenges outright what young readers can handle, in form and content, but who can deny him when it's his own experience on display? He demands much of readers, but in return he gives them everything. A remarkable work that raises the literary bar in children's lit. Grades 7-12. Copyright 2020 Booklist Reviews.