Teen and Staff Reviews

Vicious by V.E.

The Magic Fish is a heartwarming graphic novel that showcases beautiful parallels between the fairytales Tien reads with his parents and Tien’s own story of trying to tell his family that he’s gay. There’s a lot of difficulties in communicating with parents that don’t speak English well, and wanting to them something so important as being gay. As this young boy navigates through his own struggling Vietnamese, this book shows us that happiness can be reached even through the language barrier.

Cemetery Boys is an amazing novel that follows the story of Yadriel, a Latinx, gay, and transgender teenager, as he becomes determined to prove himself as a real brujo to his traditional family. But doing so, he accidentally summons a spirit who just so happens to be the resident “bad boy” at his school and follows Yadriel around. By helping the ghost of his schoolmate, Julian, this would be the perfect opportunity for Yadriel to prove he deserves being a Brujo in his community.

Last Night at the Telegraph Club is a historical fiction novel set in San Francisco in the 1950’s, where high-schooler Lily Hu goes through her queer awakening. Lily Hu is the “model” Chinese-American daughter, who gradually comes to realize her sense of identity as she befriends her math classmate and heads off towards a lesbian bar. Caught in the overwhelming feelings of confusion and exhilaration, the threat of risking old friendships and even her father’s deportation looms over her.

Beatrice, Samantha, and Jefferson Washington are all the children of King George and their family is the current rulers of America. America was kept as a monarchy rather than turned into a democracy, and Beatrice is to be the new queen when she succeeds her father. Their stories become wrapped up when Samantha and Beatrice want the same man, Samantha’s best friend, Nina, falls in love with her twin Jefferson, and Jefferson’s ex-girlfriend, Daphne, is still obsessed with Jefferson.

In an alternate reality where the Axis powers won World War Two, current day United States has been taken over by Japanese forces and Europe by the Nazis. Ren Cabot is living in what would be California with only his father, bitter that the government killed his mother after she committed treason. The government is controlling of its people, and is only benefiting those in power, so there are many groups trying to undermine them. Mr.

Siddhartha is a philosophical book by Herman Hesse that is centered around the rise of Buddhism.  It follows Siddhartha on his search for enlightenment and the benefits of teachers.  I think that Hesse brings up important topics and there is a lot to discuss from this book. However I find Siddhartha as a character to be obnoxious, self-centered, and rude which makes it hard to enjoy a book with a main character that you don’t enjoy.

Last Night at the Telegraph Club is a story about Lily Hu in 1954 Chinatown. She’s stuck between complications with Red-Scare paranoia affecting her family, and her friend Shirley trying to set her up with Will, a boy from school that she has zero interest in. But everything gets turned upside down when Lily meets Kathleen Miller and realizes that there’s an obvious reason why she isn’t interested in Will.

Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins, the bestselling author of the Hunger Games, is a children’s fantasy story about a young boy and his baby sister who fall from their New York City home into an underworld infested by massive bats, rats, and insects, as well as humans with nearly transparent skin.

The last book of the Renegades series finishes off the trilogy with a final battle between the Renegades and the Anarchists. With Ace Anarchy captured by the Renegades and the use of Agent N to take away super powers, time is of the essence for Nova and her friends to figure out how to help her uncle before his power is taken away from him. Nova has become close friends with Ruby, Oscar, and especially Adrian but must turn against them to make her family happy.