Carlitos lives with his mother and his abuela in a town across the harbor from Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. His cozy, happy, and comfortable life is colored by the lack of a father. His family looks different than those he sees around him. This lack has him crossing the bay to look for his father in Old San Juan – by himself.

The story leads Carlitos to interact with many interesting people in many interesting and beautiful places throughout the city. Carlitos spirits eventually plummets when he loses his only picture of his father. With the help of a park ranger, he realizes sad things are like dark clouds and that the sun always returns. With a lighter heart, he returns home.

Across the Bay is a sweet story with lovely illustrations. While I enjoyed the story and appreciate the portrayal of Puerto Rico, I found the fact that a young child leaves home to explore a large city alone rather disconcerting.

Aaron and Tillie stand on the George Washington Bridge expecting to end their lives.  Aaron and Tillie don’t know each other but they’ve come to the same conclusion that suicide is the only viable option for each.  What happens in Aaron jumps and Tillie doesn’t.  Or vice versa?  Or if they both jump?  Or if neither do? Bill Konigsberg’s genius is in his character development, and the story-telling technique of four possible plotlines allows for finite details of Aaron and Tillie’s personalities to emerge. They are genuine, they are real, they have issues, they have choices. Readers are led to consider how “life” is impacted by the choices we make. Bill Konigsberg develops an authentic description of what depression might feel like and he doesn’t glamourize suicide. It is questionable whether or not readers will find the fourth story to be repetitive but overall this unique take on a serious topic will keep readers intrigued.

Many in the United States take the right to vote for granted. The struggle for equality in voting rights, however, has been a struggle for all the many year of our nation’s history. Equality’s Call is a wonderful introduction the story of voting rights in America.

The book begins with the establishment of our system of government and the inclusion of consent and representation in our foundational national documents. But this same inclusion excluded most of the new nation’s population due to gender, race, or wealth. The story steps through history, explaining some of the milestones in expanding voting rights.

The refrain, equality’s call is repeated with each milestone, “A right isn’t a right / Till it’s granted to all.” The book closes with a reminder that the journey isn’t over and voter suppression is another form of disenfranchisement. Each vote we make is possible because of the struggles of others in the past and it is our responsibility to ensure the right to vote to all.

In this dystopian novel, teenaged Natalina “Nat” Peña lives in a future San Francisco, where she works as a hotel maid, practices martial arts, and cares for her eleven-year-old brother, Calvino. “Cal” should be starting to ‘wane’, where kids in their teens begin to lose their ability to feel emotions. Nat has already waned. Their mother is dead, having died from taking bad “emotion” drugs while trying to regain her own lost emotions. And their dad is estranged and missing. When a corporation kidnaps Cal to do medical research on him to determine why he isn’t waning, Nat feels a series of emotions and this shocks her. Why is she feeling? An interesting premise for a dystopian novel.

What she does next takes up the bulk of the book. And this is where the premise failed for me. There was too much violence, too many unexplained secret weapons, too many unrealistic situations. I just could not buy it. Some die-hard fans of dystopia who are looking for a new book may enjoy it, but The Waning Age is not for me.

Today, she hates him.

It is the end of high school for Rowan, she has spent 4 years hating, and competing to be the best, against Neil. It all started with an essay contest that he won freshman year, and she hasn’t forgotten that loss. They have been rivals this whole time, forcing each other to do and be better for their entire high school career. Their rivalry has often forced them to work together, which both act like they hate every minute of. And now, it all comes down to who is named valedictorian.

After the valedictorian is named and before graduation day, the senior class has one last exciting thing to look forward to. HOWL, a city wide scavenger hunt in downtown Seattle organized by the Junior Class Officers, with a big cash prize to the winner. Rowan realizes this cash prize could help with college next year and it could be the one last thing to beat Neil at.

The Kingdom of Back is a historical retelling of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s real-life older sister, Nannerl Mozart, with heavy threads of fantasy. The story follows the young lives of the siblings growing up in a family whose future depends on the recognition of their family talent by the nobility.

Nannerl is at first the gem of the musical Mozart family until the genius other brother seeps out to steal the focus. It seems her talent cannot compete with his innate gift. As she feels more diminished, she turns to the fantasy world they had created. The prince of the Kingdom of Back becomes her focus as she drifts between the realness of the two worlds trying to find her place.

The story unveils itself easily as it follows Nannerl through to adulthood. The symbols and analogies presented in the Kingdom of Back creatively convey the emotion and thought processes of a young adult girl trying to find her way in a world with a domineering father and a child prodigy younger brother. A shift from her adventure-focused fantasy writing, Lu presents the story of a person coming to grips with her future by finding a way to deal with it.

This is an immigration story, a family drama, an LGBTQ romance, with a sci-fi plot, all in one YA novel. Marisol, the teenaged protagonist, flees El Salvador after her brother is killed and her sister is threatened. While escaping to the US fulfills a longtime dream of hers, the trade she has to make, taking on the grief and trauma of another girl, is the where the sci-fi plot comes in.

This is an intriguing, sad yet bitter sweet story.

A fantasy set in Greco-Roman times is told from five distinctive points of view from the five primary characters: A prince exiled from his kingdom, a ruthless killer known as the Pale Hand, a once-faithful leader torn between his duty and his heart, a reckless gambler with the power to find anything or anyone, and a dying girl on the verge of giving up. These characters are living in the chaos of the Age of Darkness that falls upon them after the Seven Prophets, who have guided humanity for generations, have disappeared.

Some readers may struggle with the multiple points of view and the parallel plots.

There Will Come a Darkness is the first book in the Age of Darkness series, followed by As the Shadow Rises, and concluding with Into the Dying Light. This series may appeal to fans of Throne of Glass, Children of Blood and Bone, and similar epic fantasies.

Goldstone, author of Unpunished Murder: Massacre at Colfax and the Quest for Justice, sets tells the history of African American voting, beginning with the Constitutional Convention and continuing through two Constitutional Amendments, two Reconstruction Acts, two Civil Rights Acts, three Enforcement Acts, and continues into the second decade of the 21st century with voter suppression efforts in several southern states. Written for a younger audience, with short chapters and an approachable narrative, make this an accessible book for school aged readers, as well as adults.

The book contains a detailed table of contents, primary source documents and photographs, a glossary, bibliography, extensive source notes, and an index. I recommend this book for middle and high school libraries.

Curse of the Divine in the final book in duology Ink in the Blood. The reader returns to the world of inklings, tattoo magic, and the evil deities Celia and Anya faced earlier. Now guilt ridden and saddened to live without Anya, Celia’s quest is to stop Diavala once and for all. When Celia learns that Diavala is now threatening Griffin, the plague doctor, pledges not to lose another person she loves to the evil deity.

The fantasy world Kim Smejkal created in The Ink in the Blood is explored with more depth in Curse of the Divine. This macabre YA fantasy may appeal to fans of The Young Elites series by Marie Lu.