The Serpent King is a beautiful, brutally honest, sad yet hopeful, story about love, friendship and the hard realities of growing up in the Bible Belt in Southern Tennessee. It’s one of my absolute favorite reads this year. Possibly ever.

The story follows the three outcasts Dill, Lydia and Travis when they handle the hardships of their High School days. Dill’s dad was a Pastor who urged him to handle poisonous rattlesnakes to show his faith but who has been sentenced to jail after a scandal leaving Dill and his mother shunned by the people in town. Travis is a shy, lovely, but odd, boy who always has his nose in a book to shield him off from his abusive father and the hardships at home. Lydia runs a successful fashion blog and has all her focus on going away to college and rise above the narrow-minded and condemning small town.

The friendship between the three of them is so strong and beautiful. I rooted so for all of the characters. Dill who thinks he’s not worthy of Lydia and who is afraid of his past and of making the same mistakes his family has for generations. Lydia who wants so much more in life and just can’t wait to become the real her and break the chains, and of course Travis. I sure can relate to how books can help you escape reality and create a safe haven for you.

The story is told from all their POVs, which really added to the perspectives and showed how they were all stressed out and reacted in different way to the fact that life would inevitably change after graduation. For Dill, the idea of losing Lydia scares him more than anything and puts an extra stress on his already misery life:

“The worst days spent with her were better than the best days spent without her.”

I felt so much for them all, it’s been a long time since I felt so protective and invested in any characters. I read the book feverishly, both eager to know and dreading what might happen to them all in the end.

This is a book that will stay in my heart forever, it made me root for the characters and their bravery and kindness. And it broke my heart into pieces. Oh how I cried when... certain things (don’t want to spoil anything)... happened. But even though the book has a lot of hardship, struggle, unfairness and sorrow, it is full of hope and love and about daring to stay true to yourself and who you are:

“If you’re going to live, you might as well do painful, brave and beautiful things.”

Rating:
5 stars

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​Author info:
Jeff Zentner

Frankly in Love had such a great plot twist – the fake-dating trope is one of my favorites – and a new take in YA literature with a coming-of-age story of a second-generation Korean teenager in the US. But even though Frank was an adorkable male protagonist, this book didn’t deliver quite as well as I had hoped. Mostly due to the way Frank acted in some situations that made him less likable, and because of his narrowminded and racist parents.

In short, this is about Frank and how his dreams and wishes do not meet his Korean parents’ expectations. And their racism. (Sometimes it was so hard to read all the things Frank’s parents said and how they shut their daughter out for falling in love with a black man, that I wanted to toss the book into the wall.) So when Frank falls in love with white girl Brit it’s a big no no. To solve this, Frank decides not to stand up to his parents and fight for his right to love whomever he wants, but to come up with a fake-dating scheme with a Korean girl his parents would approve for him to be with.

The fake-dating scheme was really cute, but Frank’s feelings for Brit never seemed that deep and the way he treated her made me like him a lot less. In fact, the longer time I spent with Frank, the less I liked him. At first, he seemed fun and quirky, but after a while he just became a bit too much and unrelatable. I did love his friendship with Q though and the dorky way the talked and how they always supported each other, but I really feel that Q deserved more attention. This would have been a much book if he’d gotten a real backstory, instead of “the real him” being a last minute plot twist.

What I did love about this book, was to learn more about Korean culture and the complexity with family relationships and racism within minority groups, and that the author didn’t provide any easy answers to these problems. It was also great seeing through the book how Frank’s understanding of his parents, their reasons and their past, began to grow. I just wished that Frank would have behaved a little more honorable and been a more likable and relatable character.

Rating:
3 stars

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David Yoon

I struggled so much with this book and almost had to force myself through it. Honestly, this book has the most dislikable main character I ever come across, and there were so many times that I just wanted to give up and stop reading.

Mia Campbell-Richardson is the middle sister of three, where the older sister Grace is being absolutely flawless (straight As, beautiful, kind and with the perfect boyfriend) and the younger sister Audrey is a future Olympic swimming champion (and such a sweetheart). Mia, on the contrary, is wild, daring, shallow and selfish, failing at school and drinking and partying too much. She is still trying to figure out who she is and who she wants to be when her sister Grace comes home with shocking news. Hoping her sister Grace gets into trouble, it’s suddenly Mia who gets out of control.

In a way, it was very refreshing with a completely flawed main character, but the down-side was that it took me almost to the very end until I could even stand her… There were so many times I wanted to shake her and tell her to get her s**t together and stop being so selfish and reckless. I can understand why she would feel ignored or judged, but for me it was no excuse for her behavior. Especially the way she treated her friends, never caring about their feelings. It’s okay to make mistakes and stupid decisions, that’s part of growing up, but the problem in this book was that Mia didn’t seem to learn anything from her mistakes. She just blamed anyone else for them.

What I did like about this book already from the start though was the family dynamics and Mia’s sisters and parents. They were all so sweet and kind and loveable. Which made me worry that Mia would manage to destroy the family ties, especially to do something really mean and stupid that would ruin her sister’s relationship with Sam. So it was an anxious read… And sadly, I never got to like Mia, even if she got a little more tolerable towards the end. But as a main character, she was just honestly awful and made this book a completely unpleasant reading experience.

Rating:
2 stars

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Lisa Williamson

This second book in the To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before series was yet again an adorable, sweet and quirky feel-good YA romance, but it wasn’t as great as the first book. Mostly because I felt so confused about my own reaction to it. I both liked the story twists and opposed them, I both loved Lara Jean and thought she was annoying, and I both hated the love triangle and loved the guy causing it… 

In this installment, Lara Jean and Peter Kavinsky are now a real couple, so everything should be just peachy, right? Well, it’s not. Lara Jean is more confused than ever and when another boy from her past returns to her life, Lara Jean’s feelings for him return too.

I really appreciated that this book wasn’t as fluffy and lighthearted as the first one but rather more realistic and showing what happily ever after really means… I liked that it focused on heartbreak and incompatible relationships. But nevertheless, my main problem was Peter and his and Lara Jean’s relationship, as well as the introduction of a new love triangle.

I was very uncomfortable with many of Peter’s choices, reactions and priorities. For a big part of the story, I just didn’t like him as a person anymore and his and Lara Jean’s relationship didn’t sit very well with me. But that said, I did not wish for a love triangle drama. Really. I thought we were past that after the one in the first book. The conflict between Lara Jean and Peter was complex enough to exist without developing another potential love interest. This is also one of the reasons why this book left me so confused and not sure what I was feeling, since I was so opposed to the love triangle, but still fell so in love with John Ambrose…

Jenny Han did a great job with the ending though, so I finished the book on a positive note and I believe that a lot of my issues were resolved, or will be in the next installment.

My absolute favorite part of this book was still the Song Covey family and how it’s at the core of the story. Lara Jean’s dad is one of my favorite bookish dads ever, and Kitty was still feisty, hilarious and adorable.

So, I struggled a bit with this sequel, but all in all, it was an enjoyable, sweet and emotional read. I do however feel that I need to take a break before continuing with the last part of this series.

Rating:
3.5 stars rounding up to 4

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​Author info:
Jenny Han

Odd One Out is a unique take on the triangle trope, with the important message that it is okay to question your sexual identity and the label you have given yourself to try and find ways to feel comfortable with yourself, your feelings and your values. It is a story that is so real, awkward, funny and as messy as teenage life is when you’re questioning yourself and your sexuality.

The book follows the three teenagers Courtney, Jupiter and Rae, and is divided into three sections, one for each different character. Courtney is a straight black boy in love with his best friend, even though he knows she will never feel the same way because she’s a lesbian. Rae is a biracial Irish/Korean new girl at school, a people-please and apparently, not as straight as she thought. Jupiter is a biracial black girl who has two dads and a proud lesbian, as well as Courtney’s best friend and completely obliviate to his feelings.
 
I don’t think I’ve ever read anything similar, with these three blocks instead of alternating POVs, but I liked it. Especially Courtney’s parts, he was definitely my favorite character and voice in the book, I really got him. More than I did the girls. I think that having two questioning queer people in one book might have been a bit too much, in the end it all got a little too messy.

Reading this book was such a rollercoaster of rooting for the characters one second, then really disagreeing with their choices the next. But I feel like that was kind of the point and that the messiness was what made this book so unique and made it feel real. Life is messy and as a teenager you should be allowed to be messy and make bad decisions in order to figure out who you are and where and how you fit into the world. I really appreciated the talk about labels that Nic Stone added to the story in the end. It’s an important discussion to have and to realise that labels can change and it can be scary to change them and question who you are.

My main problem (and the reason why I only rated this book 3 stars) wasn’t that the characters were questioning their sexuality and changing labels, it was how the changes were portraited. I did not appreciate the way that Jupiter discovered that she was bisexual, it all left a stale after-taste, almost as if she was “fixed” by having sex with a boy. I also did not appreciate the way she herself pretty much disregarded bisexuality as a genuine label. Questioning your sexuality is normal and there is nothing wrong with changing your label, but it has to be good representation and not the opposite.
​
But, even though I didn’t agree with many of the choices made by the characters, and have some objections to the representation, I still feel that this is an important book that shows how complicated it is to navigate personhood, to question your sexuality while falling in love, to be biracial and to deal with homophobia, to grieve a family member and deal with past traumas. There were certain things about the plot that I found completely unbelievable and really distracted me from the story, but I still really enjoyed the relationships and the complexities between Coop and Jupiter and Rae, and how this book can help initiate important discussions.

Rating:
3 stars

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Author info:
Nic Stone