Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews

All Our Hidden Gifts

By Caroline O'Donoghue.

This is an odd book.

Maeve is an Irish lass at a Catholic private school. While having to clean out The Chokey (yup, they call the closet this), she finds an odd deck of tarot cards that she has an affinity with, and starts doing readings for all the girls at school. Except there's one extra card called "The Housekeeper" in there, and she's got a knife, and the card will magically show up in the deck even if Maeve takes it out.

Maeve dumped her best friend Lily for popularity reasons, and feels guilty about it. When people harass her into giving Lily a reading, it goes terribly, and much like in Home Alone, Lily soon disappears. Did Maeve make her disappear? Or was it The Housekeeper? What the hell is going on here? Maeve appears to be a witchy sort of girl, and this seems to tie in with a former student at the school decades ago as well. She comse to the conclusion that Lily was somehow magicked away, and plans on getting her back.

In other fun news, someone else who appears to be magically gifted on the dark side and a total bigot is getting people to join his creepy group, The Children of Brighid, and they start committing hate crimes. 

Maeve also gets romantically involved with Lily's...presumably transgender/genderqueer/non-binary brother Rory, a.k.a. Roe. Their romance is very sweet and cute and fairly insta and cuddly, which I enjoyed. Though I admit I was totally confused as to how Roe appears to feel about gender (i.e. name change, women's clothing) vs. still going by male pronouns. Maeve pretty much calls him her boyfriend. I really, really expected Roe to change pronouns/officially go by something other than male and that felt HEAVILY foreshadowed, bit that never happened, which surprised me. I'm just another cisgender straight Karen so what do I know on this topic, I suppose. Others in the anything-but-straight community may have a more correct understanding/opinion on that one than me though. Maybe that's normal? 

As for the ending, I'm not sure what's going on, exactly. The main conflict gets more or less resolved, but some definitely creepy stuff is left open, possibly for a sequel? I guess we'll see?

I'm not really sure what to make of this at all. Three and a half stars, I guess. Intriguing but a bit confusing. 

 

How Not To Fall In Love

By Jacqueline Firkins.

"I'm thinking maybe you should take a break from dating for a while. At least slow down. Stop falling in love with every girl who lets you buy her an ice cream cone. Get to know someone before you name your future children."

"I don't. I didn't."

"Okay, without naming your future dogs, then."

"I like dogs. And Gimli's a good name for a pug."

Harper is the adultified child of a single mom who pretty much shepherds her mom through her mom's wedding business. Mom got knocked up as a teenager and apparently never really wanted a relationship again, and isn't the world's best at business running, so Harper seems to be involved a lot. Harper's pretty sick of bridal drama, reasonably so, though she likes her one coworker Pippa.

Harper had a wonderful summer love last year, but the dude dumped her immediately at the prospect of long distance, which kinda crushed her. Meanwhile her next door neighbor, Theo, is always constantly falling into insta-relationship with any girl he has interest in for like a minute. Theo sounds like a great, sweet, cute supergeek anyway, but he is also Dude Who Constantly Texts You Until He Scares The Girls Off. This leads Harper to the title premise: basically getting Theo to CHILL DA FUCK OUT and not dive into the deep end of the relationship pool. This pretty much does not work at all, I note, since Theo WANTS to be the guy who jumps into a relationship, darn it! But when Pippa, who's had her eye on Theo for awhile even if he's young for her, finally gets a date...could that work out, or just make things super awkward at work? 

Harper, on the other hand, finally starts dating Felix, the cute jock she's been eyeing for awhile. Felix is genuinely sweet and nice and wants commitment and love and I think he's great. BUT....

This is one of those Romantic False Lead/the whole "Edward vs. Jacob" thing where it's very obvious from the getgo that Guy A is going to win, no matter how great Guy B is. Therefore you're just killing time with Guy B while waiting around for the heroine to get her head out of her butt and go for Guy A. I'm not a fan of love triangles in general, but if one must write one, I feel that you need to establish both why Guy A is The One AND why Guy B, no matter how great he is, somehow quite isn't. Maybe he's Bill Pullman in Sleepless in Seattle and they're 'two rights make a boring," maybe he's Patrick Dempsey in "Sweet Home Alabama" where the only thing wrong with him is his mother. (That said, I vastly preferred Patrick to the husband character, who was an immature wanker and I did not root for him to win the girl. And I say that as someone who always feels neutral on Dempsey.) Like I may not agree with that last one, but at least there was a reason to not end up with that guy. 

In this book, there's nothing wrong with Felix, and that's pointed out in the book itself. He's really great. I really liked him. I rooted for him. Not that I didn't root for Theo on some level as well, but Harper was sexually attracted to him. They have a cute relationship. There's literally nothing wrong with a Felix/Harper pairing except that...he's not Theo. SIGH. I felt so bad for Felix. He deserves better. 

As for Theo, this is one of those "typical" "friendships" where oh gee, I never realized he was so darned attractive before! I somehow never realized how we snuggle together a hell of a lot more than any "platonic" relationship ever has! (AGAIN, RELATING TOO MUCH TO MY LIFE ON THAT LAST ONE.) It's pretty clear that on Theo's end, he just wants love already and he keeps throwing himself into other girls because Harper's never been openly interested. 

On the plusses of this book: the author writes great romantic heroes. They're both very sweet, nice dudes who deserve better. Harper has whopping sexual chemistry with both. And even if this isn't a book that's gonna go All The Way In Detail about teenagers making with the nookie, it's pretty emotionally hot, and I like that. I enjoyed Pippa (who thankfully isn't too fazed at how her own Romantic False Lead turn goes) as well. The final romantic resolution--at a Renaissance faire--really worked for me. 

On the minusses of the book: There's the Felix situation, as previously mentioned. Also I did kind of wonder why Harper's mystery dad and her mom's lack of interest in relationships came up periodically if the author ah, didn't really have any intention of making plot hay with it? 

And...I'm gonna go into spoiler territory, but it's a romance and frankly, y'all already know who's going to win pretty early on. Harper breaks up with Felix, wants to be with Theo, there's a bit of an incident...and then Theo bugs out of town for a month and is all "Let's just be friends" when he returns. I felt like this was Dragging Shit Out unnecessarily and I found it annoying. 

A note re: the cover: Harper appears to be a woman of color from descriptions in the book (mostly re: her hair), but the girl on the cover is a white cartoon. Marketing department might want to have thought about that one a bit? 

I'm conflicted here. Three stars overall, I guess. 

Before We Disappear

By Shaun David Hutchinson.

Jack and Wilhelm are two teenage boys living parallel lives (of sorts) in 1908-1909.

Jack was orphaned at age seven and was taken in by a magician/con artist (mostly going by "Evangeline Dubois" or "The Enchantress") as her more-or-less adopted child/assistant. She also took in an engineering genius, Lucia, a few years later. Jack is more or less pretty content working for Evangeline even though he knows she's kind of emotionally divey, but Lucia is pretty well cheesed off at not getting credit or getting the "well" treatment Jack gets by comparison. Jack's used to being a rolling stone and never gets too attached to any guys he's dating before he leaves again and hasn't thought super much about what else he might do with his life without working for Evangeline. 

Wilhelm is pretty obviously a fairy child (it's not spelled out here, but he's got magic powers and a whopping allergy to iron so you do the math) who was abducted at age four by "Theodore Barnes," a con artist/thief guy who's raised him/kept him imprisoned with iron the entire time. Teddy has been forcing Wil to rob things for him, as Teddy is hoping to become famous somehow, but so far his trait of leaving origami animals at the scene of the crime hasn't paid off for him. (This seems very Wet Bandits to me, just saying...) Teddy decides to change tactics and go from thievery to being a professional magician under the name Laszlo. 

Both magicians end up performing at the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in Seattle for several months, where their respective assistants meet and get to know each other, and Jack deduces that Wilhelm has magical powers and that's the only way he could pull off what he does. Upon finding out what's going on with Wilhelm being imprisoned and threatened, Jack vows that he's going to take "Laszlo" down. 

The guys both make some great friends along the way. Jack befriends Ruth, an African-American performer who's looking to become a doctor someday. She's hard and tough and determined and awesome. Wilhelm befriends Jessamy, the other assistant "Laszlo" hires for his show, who's a lovely girl and a future detective/reporter. Of course she and Ruth fall for each other. (I do note that Ruth is getting sexually harassed by George, a guy who keeps hanging around and Not Taking No For An Answer, grrr. ) And Lucia is tough and stubborn but awesome. I really enjoyed seeing this bunch team up as a gang to help Wilhelm. It's a great crowd.

This is a pretty short summary for a pretty long book (nearly 500 pages), as the author takes his time with people hanging out and getting to know each other. Really, the only critique I have of this book is that it probably could have picked up the pace a bit and been a bit more urgent, though I certainly enjoyed it and kept on reading anyway. I really liked all the teenage characters and how smart and kind and loving they were (though clearly they're in a bit nicer of an environment as gay kids than they would have been in real 1909, sigh). The parallels between Evangeline and Teddy are pretty clear, with Evangeline being not-the-greatest-person and pretty self-centered/rude-ish to her "kids," but she still seems to kind of care about them on some level, at least. Teddy, well, wants Wilhelm's love and ALSO for Wilhelm to fear him, which he unfortunately isn't able to comprehend that aren't two great tastes that go together.  Jack sums them up well: "Laszlo's like a monster who remembers what it was like to be a man and has fooled himself into believing he still is one. Evangeline flirts with being a monster but hasn't got the heart to really commit." 

I have a comment on Evangeline and Teddy, but it's going to go below the spoiler cut.

Anyway, I enjoyed this very much and recommend it and give it about 4.5 stars. I'm not sure if this is the sort of book that would warrant a sequel or not--it both wraps up well as is but has potential for more--but either way, I'd be good. I like these people and would be happy to see them all again. 

Aurora's End

By Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff.

Previous book here.

I haven't been quite as in love with this trilogy as I was with Illuminae, but this book is the best of the trilogy. It somehow levels up to me in a way the other two books did not. Review below the spoiler cut, but five stars. 

Only You in Everything

By Jennifer Ann Shore.

Cameron and twins Will and Bellamy Moreno, the boys next door, have always been very close. Though Cameron and Will got into a bike accident years ago that messed Cameron up some and messed Will up conspicuously (like, giant facial scar/leg issues). It's ah, entirely possible that Will has a complex about that. All three of them go to/work at a summer camp every year, and this is the last year before they go off to colleges. Last year Cameron tried to tell Will she's been in love with him forever and he shut it down and said he just wanted to be friends.

(Yup, that crap situation is why I bought the book. Relate too much.) 

Anyway, it's a pleasant read without that much plot?  There's a nice kid Cameron befriends. She's trying to figure out what art to make to win an internship or scholarship, something like that I can't exactly recall. Bellamy publicly changed genders awhile back and gets a girlfriend (Cameron's roommate, and isn't that cute). Cameron's sister and her shitty boyfriend show up on visiting day and the boyfriend acts like an asshole regarding Bellamy, and Cameron kicks him out and that's the end of that, pretty much. So, simple-ish and I felt like it could have used more oomph/plot/drama.

As for Will and Cameron: what did make me feel something in this book was Cameron and her feelings about Will. She's oddly fixated on his scar enough that it's kind of a motif in her art (that sounds creepy but I wasn't bothered), and she watches him and notices how he's feeling and doing, and I related to that. She does actually try to move on from him with another dude briefly. However, the resolution to this is pretty simple: Will admits he likes her, and there they go. Easy peasy. 

This isn't bad, but it doesn't have enough emotional oomph/plot to be memorable for me. Cameron's feelings for Will is what sold me on this, but otherwise I felt like it needed more? So, three stars. 

The Last Graduate

By Naomi Novik.

Previous book here.

It's senior year in the Scholomance, and how do I sum this up? Well, I'm going to go a bit beyond my usual "I try not to spoil beyond the first half of the book," but for reasons, because I have to discuss the themes of this. What happens is that El makes friends, and makes plans to get out for graduation, and then comes to the quite reasonable conclusion to her that she can get everyone out if they all band together. At first "everyone" is just her friends, then the senior class, and then literally the entire population of the school. And she figures out that the Scholomance itself hates that it's been doing such a poor job of protecting the students that it's supposed to be protecting, even the building itself wants to help.

HOW COOL IS THAT OF A PREMISE, EH? I love it so. It makes me want to post heart emojis. 

I continue to enjoy El's friends, and how they deal with her without being fazed by her natural cranky. I enjoy how El is shocked when she sees someone save someone else, or when she gets the idea to put together a group healing and people do it, and how when she's weirdly stuck in a room with freshmen for a semester, she basically adopts them against her own will. I enjoy that she gets an adorable smart mouse familiar that ends up being dubbed "Precious" even though El hates that sort of thing. It's all very sweet. As for Orion and the sorta-budding relationship between him and El, it does eventually, ah pick up more in an adorable way. I love the descriptions of their making out, I must say. I also like how El starts thinking of ideas as to what to do once she's out of the Scholomance, assuming she survives it and all. I won't get into that too much since clearly that'll be book three (if you look up the title of book 3, that's what she's going for), but that sounds really cool. 

If there's anything I sorta don't like, it's that the overall book execution can be hard for me to follow. Like there's constant spontaneous mal eruptions or whatever in between scheming and academics and it all feels a bit run-on and hard for me to follow at times. It's exhausting--but then again, so is El's life.

The book ends on a sudden event/cliffhanger, which I'll discuss below the spoiler cut. I will say that I have faith on this, though. Four stars. 

Quote Corner (all quotes El unless spelled out otherwise).

• "If you're wondering which of those two options I picked, then you must not know me, as pain and dismay were obviously my destination. I didn't even need to think about it."
• "It was one thing for the school to be out to get me, which I think all of us secretly feel is the case from the moment we arrive, and another for the school to be out to get only me, to the exclusion of literally everyone else....
• Aadhya to El: "I think that's like the third time you've asked to be ditched. You're like one of those puffer fish, the second anyone touches you a little wrong you go all bwoomp." I'm not gonna quote it all, but she also has a great rant about how Orion can't see or figure out people that aren't El and El thinks everyone should save total strangers, so they're perfect for one another.
• "They want someone who's going to cast death spells on their enemies. And if I gave them that, I wouldn't be me any more, so I might as well not go live in a bag of dicks."
• "Ah, the advantages of being a monstrous dark sorceress in embryonic form." 
• "Artifice is fundamentally about giving the universe a long and complicated story complete with attractive props in order to coax it to accommodate your wishes. I'm really more about shouting the universe into compliance with mine."
• "But I'd been overwhelmed by an instant eclat of idyllic vision: the two of us wandering the world together, welcomed everywhere by everyone, him cleaning out infestations and then watching my back while I put up Golden Stone enclaves with the power from the mals he took out." 
• "If you haven't eaten anything but tasteless slop in years and suddenly someone offers you a slice of chocolate cake, so what if you don't especially like chocolate cake, if you were interested in food at all, you'd at least think it over before you said no thanks." 
• "Mum always told me that you couldn't know what people would do in a crisis, but I'd thought she just meant you should forgive people for behaving like weasels under bad circumstances, not that a stale biscuit like Khamis might suddenly come over all heroic in a tight corner."
• Liesel: "It is not a complex problem to appear nice to people! You identify the most popular targets in each of your classes, learn what they value about themselves, and give them a minimum of three relevant compliments each week. So long as they think you are agreeable, others will follow their lead."

The Love Curse of Melody McIntyre

By Robin Talley.

The Beaconville High School theater department is convinced that their theater is cursed. The original theater burned down, there was a bad production of MacBeth when the new one opened, and now there's a history and a thorough Google Doc of all the injuries/superstitions, what have you, that the cast and crew have dreamed up over the years to try to thwart the curse. You may be sensibly thinking, "theaters do tend to have people randomly get injured and costumes and props go awry and shit/entropy/chaos happens," and you'd be right, but would kinda also have to agree that well, after your theater's been on fire, people might be concerned.

Anyway: everyone thinks the theater is cursed, and the cast and/or crew develop new superstitions to thwart the curse, and that's A Thing here. (The running gag of all these documents cracks me up.) 

Melody McIntyre LOVES being a stage manager. While I admire stage managers, I admit I am kind of baffled as to how they enjoy being that level of stressed out all the time. Melody, however, makes it clear that she loves being the one in charge, fixing all the problems, enough that she wants it to be her lifelong career. But after her most recent girlfriend Rachel takes it upon herself to dump Melody IN THE MIDDLE OF A SHOW, THE FUCK, the rest of the crew politely asks that she...not...fall in love with anyone during the next show, for curse purposes. Melody doesn't exactly feel like she can argue the point.

I'm going to do a bit of a rant here: Rachel is such a jerk! I'm still not sure why she was soooooooooo pissed at Melody enough that she thought that the only way Melody would notice a breakup was to do it IN MID-SHOW, but that is so utterly unprofessional even for high school that I wanted to smack her. Like if I were an adult I would have FIRED HER ASS. I don't care if Melody slept with your sister and kicked your dog, YOU DON'T DUMP THE STAGE MANAGER IN MID-SHOW. WHEN SHE IS SUPPOSED TO BE PAYING ATTENTION TO THINGS. And yet, not that much happens to Rachel over this and Melody doesn't even seem that upset about it? Like it's cool and fine to work together? Anyway, that was such egregious behavior I raged on Melody's behalf. 

Melody has apparently gotten around, or at least has something like six exes around the school and they don't seem to have had horrible breakups. Even she admits maybe she should take a break from dating after the Rachel debacle. However, when the school's Broadway stare, Odile Rose, decides she wants to be in Les Mis this spring, all bets are off because Odile is VERY INTERESTED in Melody. And I'll say this: these two have SUPER CHEMISTRY in like, every single conversation they have. (Take note, Hallmark, this is how it's done.) You never saw an actor so into stage managing before :P Even though Melody said she'd hold off, she just can't resist...and soon enough, secret relationship is going on. And then, of course, another disaster happens, and people start figuring out what's going on, and is it really all Melody's fault?

Overall, I loved the heck out of this. This is GREAT FUN. It's a really cool concept for a book. And as an actor (the crew in this show kind of scorn actors and seem to assume it's vice versa) who does kind of wonder why anyone would want the stressful job of stage manager--like I look at some of ours at the theater I perform at and hoooo boy do some of them seem quite stressed--this book sells you on why Melody LOVES being in charge and being the person who can solve all the problems. That's really cool. Added bonus is that I was reading the book while in tech week for a show. Odile and Melody fall fast, but it works. The curse plot is great, and there's fun side bits about how one of Melody's friends goes from tech to acting, dealing with a pouty lead actor, etc. 

I did like how Melody focuses on Odile being genuinely happy when acting, vs. when she's faking being happy. People at school assume she's a snot because she's been out of school doing Broadway or film or whatever, but she's not as into film work as you'd think, and is secretly uncomfortable about the whole thing. Melody's crush is based on seeing how delighted Odile is to perform, and that's adorable. "For a split second, I almost understood the appeal of acting." 

Really, the only thing I don't love about this is Rachel, who's really pretty inexplicably shitty and I'm not sure I ever got why (I think it's because Melody pays more attention to show running than her?), and then nothing really happens there. Rachel continues to work there, there's no issues, she and Melody more or less stay neutral, and then when Rachel suspects about Melody and Odile, you assume something awful is going to happen, but...sorta yes and sorta now? Confusing. I guess I just wanted Rachel to either get a comeuppance or apologize for her shitty timing or something. 

I note that the author said in her note at the back that she ended up writing it in an alternate universe where plays went on in 2020, which of course she had no idea about when writing the book in 2018-2019. She also gasp isn't a theater person and hasn't been in a show, but did wed an actor/singer/stage manager

But overall, four and a half stars. Really good, fun book.

Quote Corner:

From the "A Brief History of BHS Theater Superstitions--Spring Musicals Edition" document:

• Little Shop Of Horrors: "DO NOT TOUCH THE PUPPET AFTER DARK WE REALLY THINK IT MIGHT TRY TO EAT YOU THIS IS NOT A JOKE."
• Once Upon A Mattress: "All male principals must chant in unison before each rehearsal: "I recognize the textual and subtextual misogyny in this musical and I promise to always strive to do better in my life than these jackass characters."

From "The Scottish Play: What Went Wrong" document:

• "During tech, a plastic dagger that was branded as "retractable" did not, in fact, retract. Fortunately, that actor only needed a few hours at urgent care, but the actor on the other end of the dagger will probably need therapy for life."

On a related note, Odile on her career: "I got into this because I like to sing, and now all of a sudden I'm in this movie about spies murdering each other. I have to take lessons on how to use a hunting knife. They haven't finished the script yet, but I think I have to stab someone." 

From "Les Mis Crises To Date" document:

• Julio: Somehow got hit in the face without ever actually getting hit in the face."

The Hawthorne Legacy

By Jennifer Lynn Barnes.

Previous book here.  I'm going to keep the public review of this vague, and then discuss details below the spoiler cut.

I liked this book a whole lot better than the last one, because it finally Gets Down To Business and actually works on explaining--WITH REASONABLE REASONS--why Avery was tapped to inherit the Hawthorne millions despite not genetically being a Hawthorne. (Which frankly was a whole lot better than what book one posits, i.e. Avery's birthdate and the anagram of her name. Come on.) I'll get into that stuff below the spoiler cut, but it's mostly actually a reasonable reason--or is for most of the book, anyway. There was a last minute swerve I DID NOT LIKE (sigh), but the book at least tries to justify it, I suppose. But I really enjoyed the mystery they had going on and unraveling the missing person case that's the heart of this book. We find out who's secretly related to who, including how Skye's idiosyncratic (also "duh") naming schemes for her children are pretty obvious as to their paternities, hah. And there's a past dramatic event that has kicked off everything, including the puzzles to solve. I liked how that worked. 

I did enjoy how most of the characters band together to work on solving the mystery, including helping Avery when she's unable to physically go to places.  I also like how Max at one point is actually liberated from her parents on her 18th birthday and happily joins in the case. There may be some vibe between her and Xander, as he'll make her some droids. That's very sweet. 

As for the romances: Avery vacillates between Jameson and Grayson in this book. I don't really get the "relationship" with her and Grayson, which seems to have some attraction, but Grayson mostly doesn't want to act on it and says he wants to stay friends, and frankly, he doesn't spend that much time with Avery for us to get to know him or care. Meanwhile, Jameson has personality out the wazoo and likes to hang out with Avery and nickname her and puzzle solve with her, and after awhile he is All In on this, and I was all "Jameson, I am down with you, please." I did like how Max suggested that Avery figure out which guy she wanted by imagining which one would come up to her if she was on a cliff alone. At first Avery is all "Actually, I imagine myself alone," but later, well... I'm good with it, I'll say that. 

What's not great: see below spoiler cut. I'm also rather stumped as to how Avery survives a near-death experience that involves a coma, but we don't even really find out what injuries she suffered and after she comes out of the coma, she's fine? Shouldn't that have been more injurious? Did she get burned? Unable to walk? Anything? It's also kind of unclear what happened regarding the rule that Avery can't spend more than 3 nights a month away from "home." Is there a loophole for the hospital? I'm unclear, but we're told the rule wasn't violated...somehow? 

I'm going to give it four stars overall because I think it's a vast improvement and fairly well satisfying compared to the last one, even if I'm a wee bit bothered by the one swerve. Good job! Now on to the spoiler discussion!

Heiress Apparently

By Diana Ma.

18-year-old* Gemma Huang has moved to LA to become an actress, and she's just got a prime role as a gender-bending lawyer in a modern rom-com remake of "M. Butterfly." There's two directors: a jerky guy, and an amazing Chinese woman, Eilene, who Gemma is a fan of. Eilene privately tells Gemma that the two of them need to work to take over the movie together, since god knows Jake, the other director, doesn't have good ideas about the movie. Which is to say that her guy character, Song, has bad hair, baggy suits and is terrible gay stereotyping. Blech! But Gemma's in her first big role ever--how much power does she have on this?

• I note that Gemma is playing a lawyer, which makes me wonder on the age here?

Added bonus on top of that job stuff, and suddenly going long-distance with her new boyfriend who seems nice but jealous of her career, is that Gemma's always had no other family but her parents growing up. Dad's an orphan and Mom won't say anything about her past, other than forbidding Gemma to ever go to China. Naturally, this new movie she booked is filming in Beijing, so she takes the job and doesn't tell them where she's going.  Why didn't her mother want her to go there? I'm reminded of the comments about why Vorlons wore encounter suits on Babylon 5: we would be recognized by EVERYONE. Likewise, Gemma finds out that she has a twin: she's the spitting image of famous rich Chinese socialite Alyssa Chua and everyone thinks she's her. (In fact, that's how she's landed the role..) Gemma gets mobbed by fans and paparazzi, surprise, and one guy, Eric Liu, mistakes her for Alyssa and soon gets into conversation with her. Eric's family and Alyssa's have been feuding for years, and Eric's concerned that his little sister Mimi is now friends with Alyssa. Gemma ends up meeting Alyssa and it turns out they're identical cousins from twin mothers.  Gemma's mother left/was disowned from the family years ago, and obviously she'd like to find out what the heck is going on. So in between working on the movie, Gemma teams up with Eric, on the frequent trail of Alyssa and Mimi.

I really liked this book. It reminds me a wee bit of Crazy Rich Asians, but much better written and with more depth. I enjoyed the unraveling of the family mysteries, especially regarding Gemma's mom. I enjoyed Gemma getting closer to Eric--who's legitimately nice as well as rich--and eventually Alyssa. I enjoyed the discussion of cultural differences, like how Gemma can't view the Internet outside China after a week of VMP use, Alyssa's Weibo fame, who's heard exactly what about the Cultural Revolution/Tiananmen Square Massacre and what's banned online to find out there. And I really liked how homosexuality is discussed and handled here--the book makes a point that even if the government isn't gay-friendly, in real life people are much cooler about it. This comes up both in Gemma's personal life and in the movie, as Jake doesn't like it when Gemma thinks that given the plot of the movie, it should have more of a bisexual vibe. And when we finally find out why Gemma's mom split from the family, it's like OMG! (And that will be a prequel book.) There's also a super cool family secret that I loved. 

It's a really heartwarming, touching story and I really liked this one. Four stars! About the only thing I find a wee bit bothersome is that we don't really get to find out how the entire movie goes so much, as I was curious about that. 

The Other Side of Perfect

By Mariko Turk.    

Alina, our narrator, is a teenage girl who was diehardedly pursuing a professional ballet career until she shattered her leg and will never be able to do pointe like she used to again. Now she's forced to go to school full time, to cope with her little sister Josie still being able to pursue her own modern dance career, and figure out what to do with her life now. The answer is to audition for and get into the school musical, Singin' In The Rain, as "The Vamp." She can still dance enough for a musical, after all.

Alina's a very nice girl who's still deeply upset about what happened to her, and she gets triggered at times by it all. and doesn't always behave well, like fleeing events when she's upset. But making new friends and literally taking notice of her hot neighbor who's in the play--HE EVEN KNITS,, HOW ADORABLE IS THAT--certainly helps. She also has a certain sympathy with Diya, her love interest Jude's ex, who everyone hates for ditching Jude as a date for a dance to go to a singing competition she got into at the last minute. Alina definitely understands that drive, even if most people don't.

Then there's the racism issues (Alina's half-Japanese) that came up during her ballet career that at the time she tried to brush off. Specifically, her ballet teacher ALWAYS casting her as "Chinese Tea" in The Nutcracker and her best friend Colleen (African-American) as "Arabian Coffee" year after year and having some kind of legit-sounding excuse to always assign them those parts instead of oh, Giselle. This was something Alina tried to cope with at the time, but being outside of ballet now gives her a new perspective. Especially when she sees that her sister's dance school doesn't insist on doing a traditional "Chinese Tea" dance and how well that works. I did like when Alina and Colleen finally confront the teacher about her racism. Even though the teacher is just speechless and walks off, I like to think they made a point.

Alina's friendships in this are really great. She can't bear to text Colleen back about her dance career, but they establish that she still cares. Alina's new friend Margot is fun, and Alina builds a friendship with Diya even though the rest of her friend group isn't into that.

And Jude...Jude is just adorable. Love him. I do enjoy the plot setup that makes Alina and Jude have to behave in a sexy manner in a play, because they have to, because the teacher is (inappropriately!?) egging them on, because it's a play....WHY DOESN'T THIS EVER HAPPEN TO ME IN REAL LIFE, JUST SAYING?!?!* 

• she says, about to embark on play #4 with a certain someone...

When Jude is all "I'm not okay to be in a relationship with anyone" you're all "dammit!!!!"  I was kvelling and feeling same. 

Quotes on love declaration:

• "I was about to tell him I wanted to be so much more than that. That I understood he was going through stuff but I loved him anyway, and we could figure it out together,"
• "You haven't declared your undying love for him! And you haven't declared your undying love because you think he doesn't want you to. That's where you're wrong." "He said he wasn't ready for a relationship." "But did you tell him you were? Because that could change things." 
• "There's a reason I did the musical: Ethan Anderson." 
• "I don't want to be just friends with you! I want more than that, I've wanted more than that for a while, I just didn't know if--" Jude clicked off his seat belt, flew across his seat, and kissed me."

  Four stars. Highly recommended for schmoop and performing.