Review: EVERY VARIABLE OF US by Charles A. Bush

 

Every Variable of Us by Charles A. Bush
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

After Philly teenager Alexis Duncan is injured in a gang shooting, her dreams of a college scholarship and pro basketball career vanish in an instant. To avoid becoming another Black teen trapped in her poverty-stricken neighborhood, she shifts her focus to the school's STEM team, a group of nerds seeking their own college scholarships. Academics have never been her thing, but Alexis is freshly motivated by Aamani Chakrabarti, the new Indian student who becomes her mentor (and crush?). Alexis begins to see herself as so much more than an athlete. But just as her future starts to reform, Alexis’s own doubts and old loyalties pull her back into harm’s way.

— 

This book and these characters are going to stay with me for a long, long time. After reading Every Variable of Us, Charles A. Bush is now an auto-buy author for me.

This story is so many things: it’s about loss and grief, it’s about abuse and survival, it’s about resilience and adapting to not-so-great circumstances. It’s about gangs and relationships. It’s about fears of what the future holds. It’s about family and the people we hold dear. And it says a lot about race too.

Lex is a seventeen-year-old Black girl who’s caught up in a drive by shooting and shot, ending her basketball career. She’s angry and desperate, and so flawed—but understandable and relatable. Her friends are mostly in the ‘gang culture’ and she thought basketball was her way out of the town. After the shooting, she feels she has nothing. Until new student Aamani introduces her to the STEM team and Lex becomes the final After Philly teenager Alexis Duncan is injured in a gang shooting, her dreams of a college scholarship and pro basketball career vanish in an instant. To avoid becoming another Black teen trapped in her poverty-stricken neighborhood, she shifts her focus to the school's STEM team, a group of nerds seeking their own college scholarships. Academics have never been her thing, but Alexis is freshly motivated by Aamani Chakrabarti, the new Indian student who becomes her mentor (and crush?). Alexis begins to see herself as so much more than an athlete. But just as her future starts to reform, Alexis’s own doubts and old loyalties pull her back into harm’s way member of the team, meaning they qualify for competitions.

The character arc for Lex is phenomenal. She goes from looking down on ‘nerds’ to wanting to study and really cares for her STEM teammates. She goes from nearly failing school to improving her GPA by two points, and she finds her own family among new friends. She struggles to navigate her new life as disabled and the effects this has on her career, future, and self-esteem. She wrestles with her sexuality, afraid of being Black and queer, but eventually choosing to embrace her feelings for Aaamani. She examines how much of her fears and beliefs about not being straight are rooted in ideology and her need to minimise the target on her.

Representation in this book is phenomenal. We’ve got Black characters, Asian characters, disabled characters, and neurodivergent characters. We examine white privilege and straight privilege, and we also look at drug addiction and poverty.

Lex’s mother is an addict and her mother’s boyfriend is abusive. Lex has been in multiple foster homes, at least one of which was also abusive. She’s beaten in this book and moves to a ‘crackhouse’ for safety—but she finds people who care for her and are in a position to look after at the end.

Because Lex undergoes such a strong character transformation, there’s very much her old life vs her new. Her former best friend Britt is deeply embedded in the old life—stealing, dealing drugs, living in an abusive foster home, trying to outwit other gangs—and we see her trying to pull Lex back into this life. These moments really are agonising to read. I was begging Lex to not go back to that, to stay with the STEM team, but of course, she didn’t. It was heartbreaking. And especially when Britt is then killed. I did not see that coming, but really I should have because it was inevitable.

And when Britt is murdered, Lex feels she has no choice but to avenge her—something that Aamani gets roped into when trying to stop her. I could not read fast enough here. So powerful and heartbreaking.

Aamani herself is also a great character. She’s Hindu and experiences racism, especially when other characters think she’s Muslim. In the story, she comes out as lesbian first to Lex and then to her parents—and her parents don’t accept it at all. We see Aamani struggling with this and the marriage her parents arrange for her, all the while trying to be Lex’s STEM tutor.

Matthew is on the STEM team and he’s Autistic. There’s an Author’s Note at the start of this book about this representation, emphasising it’s not own-voices autism rep. I loved Matthew’s character and Lex’s friendship with him, but I have seen a few autistic reviewers saying his character is a little stereotypical in places.

Lindsay is also another STEM team member, and Lex doesn’t get on with her at all at first, viewing her as a privileged white girl. Lindsay does seem cold and quite against Lex most of the time, but when we see her family it makes sense. She lives with parents who verbally (and maybe physically?) abuse each other. They have little money and live in a very dangerous neighbourhood. Lindsay is worn out and emotionally exhausted. Her collected, cold persona at school is a facade, and Lex acknowledges that she’s impressed that Lindsay has survived where she’s living.

And the love story. It’s a slow-build f/f between Lex and Aamani, and it challenges a lot of Lex’s misconceptions and her own stereotypes. Lex comes out as bisexual toward the end, as her relationship with Aamani has given her the courage to do this.

There is just so much packed into this story, and I wasn’t expecting it.

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Review: IDENTICAL by Ellen Hopkins

 

Identical by Ellen Hopkins
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Do twins begin in the womb?
Or in a better place?

Kaeleigh and Raeanne are identical down to the dimple. As daughters of a district-court judge father and a politician mother, they are an all-American family—on the surface. Behind the facade each sister has her own dark secret, and that's where their differences begin.

For Kaeleigh, she's the misplaced focus of Daddy's love, intended for a mother whose presence on the campaign trail means absence at home. All that Raeanne sees is Daddy playing a game of favorites—and she is losing. If she has to lose, she will do it on her own terms, so she chooses drugs, alcohol, and sex.

Secrets like the ones the twins are harboring are not meant to be kept—from each other or anyone else. Pretty soon it's obvious that neither sister can handle it alone, and one sister must step up to save the other, but the question is—who?

—

It’s taken me a little while to write this review, but honestly, this book was amazing. I’m a massive fan of verse novels, and Hopkins has to be one of the best verse novelists I’ve read so far. IDENTICAL is the story of Kaeleigh and Raeanne (I listened to the audiobook so I only just looked up the spelling of their names!), and they are identical twins, but Hopkins really shows how different they are.

The contrasts between them were beautifully done—and that just made the twist at the end all the more powerful. I did not see that coming, and it was expertly done!

This book covers some difficult topics: child sexual abuse at the hands of a parent, death, grief, mental illness (including disordered eating and dissociative personality disorder/multiple personality disorder—I don’t know the correct term, sorry!). But it also looks at positives too: Support of (good) family members, friendships and supportive relationship.

The writing itself is lyrical, poignant, powerful, and stunning. Listening to this was a delight—which is kind of a weird thing to say, given what this story was about. I now recommend this novel to my students as an example of verse storytelling.

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Review: THIS IS WHY WE LIE by Gabriella Lepore

 

This Is Why We Lie by Gabriella Lepore
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Everyone in Gardiners Bay has a secret.

When Jenna Dallas and Adam Cole find Colleen O'Dell's body floating off the shore of their coastal town, the community of Gardiners Bay is shaken. But even more shocking is the fact that her drowning was no accident.

Once Jenna's best friend becomes a key suspect, Jenna starts to look for answers on her own. As she uncovers scandals inside Preston Prep School leading back to Rookwood reform school, she knows she needs Adam on her side.

As a student at Rookwood, Adam is used to getting judgmental looks, but now his friends are being investigated by the police. Adam will do whatever he can to keep them safe, even if that means trusting Jenna.

As lies unravel, the truth starts to blur. Only one thing is certain: somebody must take the fall. 

—-

I listened to the audiobook for this one, and the narration and story are great. Right away, I was hooked and for about 60% I had no idea who the killer was because we kept getting hit with more developments that changed what I was thinking constantly. And then I worked it out, and it was so satisfying putting all the precise together—and before the narrator does too.

So, we have Jenna and Adam who discover Colleen’s body. She’s drowned…except this is a YA thriller so of course she didn’t drown. It was murder! Jenna lives with her aunt (her mother’s glamorous lifestyle isn’t compatible with being a parent) and her aunt is one of the cops investigating the case. Jenna’s and Adam’s best friends are both implicated for the murder, and we see each protecting them while trying to find out the truth. Adam also becomes a suspect.

We get flashback scenes that show us what Colleen was like as a person, and honestly, her characterisation is strong. Actually, every character’s characterisation is so strong. Really well done.

Jenna goes to Preston Prep school for Girls and Adam is at Rookwood, a school for troubled boys (and ones who often have criminal records). I loved this as it immediately meant all the boys had dark pasts and theoretically could definitely be capable of murder. But we also see how the girls are capable too, even though they’re not looked down on or judged by the rest of the town. We also have secret parties and meet-ups at Rookwood.

The final showdown, between Jenna and the killer was a bit of a let down for me, if I’m honest. Jenna fell for the trap, and I was screaming at her not to go there. Then she did. But then, by coincidence, Adam was at the right place at the right time. I know the book even has him acknowledge this as a coincidence, but it felt a bit too convenient for me. I was willing to overlook it though, expecting to get a couple more chapters afterward, but the next scenes were set farther ahead in time and sort of just provided a summary, looking back.

Spoiler: I loved that we have a female killer.

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Review: SUGAR by Carly Nugent

 

Sugar by Carly Nugent
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What’s yours is yours for a reason. Luck has nothing to do with it.

Some people get exactly what they deserve. And, as it turns out, I deserve to be called Persephone. No simple-to-sound-out Pride-and-Prejudice-style name like Elizabeth or Jane for me. Nope. Demi had to go Greek. Define ‘Persephone’. Bringer of destruction. That pretty much sums it up.

Persephone is angry. Angry that her life revolves around finger-prick tests, carbohydrate counts and insulin injections. Angry at Alexander Manson. Angry with her mum for lots of things, for nothing and for everything.
But most of all, she’s angry with herself. For deserving it all. Because of what she did, or didn’t do. Because one year ago she did something and her dad died.
But then Persephone finds a body on a bush path, a young woman she doesn’t know but feels a strong connection to. And as she tries to find out what happened to Sylvia, Persephone begins to understand her own place in the complex interconnectedness of the universe.

Sugar is the story of a sixteen-year-old girl trying to make sense of the life-changing events that have sent her world into a spin, her search for a reason behind it all, and ultimately her acceptance of life’s randomness.

—

I am drawn to books about angry girls. Girls who are hurting. Girls who feel like they deserve bad things. And also anything with chronic illness rep. And this is what drew me to Sugar.

Persephone (I love the name!) is angry. Her father died a year ago, and she feels partly responsible. She’s angry that her body doesn’t work—she has diabetes—and she’s angry at the people around her. Her mother is a complex character, clearly hurting, clearly grieving, and not really being there for Persephone.

And then Persephone discovers a body. It’s a woman, and she feels she knows her. Feels there’s a connection to her. She becomes obsessed with finding out who this woman is and she gains access to her Facebook account—and pretends to be her. She replies to messages as the dead woman and then gets close to the woman’s best friend, who’s also grieving, and was in love with her.

Normally, if I read about a character taking on a dead person’s identity, I wouldn’t feel sympathetic toward them. But with Persephone, you know she’s not doing it maliciously. She’s doing it to try and understand things better. She’s doing it as an outlet for her anger, as a coping mechanism. Her actions make sense.

While Persephone is struggling with identity—her own, her family’s, and that of the dead woman—we also see her struggle with diabetes. She feels she got this illness because of what she did that led to her dad’s death. She sees it as a punishment, and we see her spiral deeper and deeper, refusing to take care of herself.

Other storylines focus around bush fire in Australia that forces her and her family to temporarily leave their home, her cousin’s obsession with wanting a chronic illness of his own (likely due to the trauma he has from being abused by his step dad), Persephone’s ‘relationship’ with a boy and having sex for the first time, and her anger issues at school.

This book was emotionally heavy at times. But it is exactly the type of book I love.

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Review: BRUISED by Tanya Boteju

 

Bruised by Tanya Boteju
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

To Daya Wijesinghe, a bruise is a mixture of comfort and control. Since her parents died in an accident she survived, bruises have become a way to keep her pain on the surface of her skin so she doesn’t need to deal with the ache deep in her heart.

So when chance and circumstances bring her to a roller derby bout, Daya is hooked. Yes, the rules are confusing and the sport seems to require the kind of teamwork and human interaction Daya generally avoids. But the opportunities to bruise are countless, and Daya realizes that if she’s going to keep her emotional pain at bay, she’ll need all the opportunities she can get.

The deeper Daya immerses herself into the world of roller derby, though, the more she realizes it’s not the simple physical pain-fest she was hoping for. Her rough-and-tumble teammates and their fans push her limits in ways she never imagined, bringing  Daya to big truths about love, loss, strength, and healing.

— 

This is the first book I’ve read that acknowledges one of he ‘less common’ forms of self-harm: bruising. I’ve recently come to realise that I like YA books that are about pain and hurt and despair. And for that reason, I picked up this book as soon as I heard of it. Bonus: it’s about roller derby. I LOVE skating. Right away, I knew I’d love this book and I wasn’t wrong.

But I actually loved it even more than I expected to. We’ve got an f/f relationship (I loved Shanti as soon as I met her!) and nearly every character is queer and of colour.

Daya Wijesinghe is grieving her parents’ deaths after she was the sole survivor of a car accident. She blames herself, thinking she caused it by being ‘too soft’ (her parents were arguing about her losing a boxing match when the accident occurred). Thus we have 18 year old Daya who’s trying to prove she’s “hard” and “strong” and who despises anything she perceives as weakness. She won’t talk to her friends about her feelings, she won’t hug anyone, and she won’t connect to her uncle and aunt who she now lives with it. There is just so much anger inside Daya, and she is drawn to roller derby because it’s a contact sport where she can bruise herself more and more. She can slam into others. She can hurt and be hurt. She can feel pain.

And then there is Shanti and her sister Kat. Both are troubled girls, but they cope in different ways. Shanti is ‘soft’ and connected to her emotions. Kat is ‘hard’ and puts up walls around herself. Kat is the leader of the roller derby team that Daya auditions for, and there’s a weird attraction triangle and jealousy between the two sisters.

While nearly all the characters are queer, with the exception of the older lesbian couple (who are great!), none of them are really labelled as being LGBTQIA+. They just are.

This book is full of strong characters, and it’s a book that examines team sports, rivalry, pain, hurt, healing, self-hatred, self-harm, guilt, grief, and death. Highly recommended.

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Review: TOXIC by Natasha Devon

 

Toxic by Natasha Green
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Llewella has straight-A grades, a lead in the school play, a prefect badge, a successful blog and a comfortable life. Despite this, she feels like a brown, chubby square peg at a school full of thin, white girls. She's never had a best friend. Could the new student at sixth form - glamorous, streetwise Aretha - be the one? Llewella and Aretha get tight, quick. Before long, Llewella is following a diet Aretha has designed for her and has abandoned her own passions to dive headfirst into Aretha's world. She's determined to be the most loyal, greatest friend she can be, even when Aretha says and does things which make her feel the opposite of great. Even when the anxiety disorder she thought was cured starts to re-emerge. Isn't that how friendships work?

—

This was one of those books I just couldn’t stop reading. I devoured it in two days, even reading until 5am because I just had to finish it.

This book tells the story of Llewella and her new friend, Aretha. And right from the start, we can see that Aretha is a toxic, manipulative friend. I love stories that look at twisted relationships, and I think this is now one of my favourite books about manipulative and toxic female friendships (my other favourite is Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart).

The friendship portrayed in Toxic is so one-sided, and so many times I just wanted to scream at Llewella to get away from Aretha.

Llewella has anxiety and panic attacks. Aretha pretends she’s good with these, but she’s not. She undermines Llewella’s mental health struggles constantly, and then she herself claims to have bipolar, referring to it as a ‘real’ disorder—oh and she isn’t diagnosed and won’t see a doctor. My jaw hit the floor here. It seems Aretha uses her self-diagnosis as a way to excuse what a horrible person she’s being. She emotionally abused Llewella constantly and it’s so obvious to readers. I was screaming inside as I read this. I don’t think I’ve ever hated a character as much as I hate Aretha. she calls Llewella fat and gives her a meal plan. Llewella spirals into eating disorder territory because of this, but it’s Aretha doing her a favour, ‘improving’ her. Aretha takes over the blog that Llewella started and then makes her start a new brand with her. Llewella’s money goes into it, of course. Aretha wants Llewella to be dependent on her, but then she abandons her at several points, one time in London zone 1, despite Aretha having panic attacks. 

Aretha makes it clear she thinks mental illness is a conspiracy, that it’s something that means the person isn’t strong or resilient (she also is fatphobic and claims a character with PCOS is plus-sized because of lack of discipline and illnesses can’t cause it—Llewella tackles her on this, but of course Aretha turns it around so Llewella is wrong). She uses Llewella’s anxiety against her, so when we do get Aretha saying she thinks she is bipolar, that was immensely interesting. Because, she could have bipolar disorder. But still that doesn’t excuse her treatment of her supposed best friend. And she’s a horrible person. At the start of the book, Llewella is happy, a straight A* student, has an important part in a play, and has a blog and other friends. Not too long after she’s friends with Aretha, Llewella is unhappy, her grades are dropping, she’s got an eating disorder, her panic attacks worsen, she’s in therapy, she gives up the play (as Aretha says she’s got to prioritise), loses her other friends, and she basically loses who she is.  The mental illness rep is phenomenal. Half the time, Aretha is suddenly annoyed with Llewella for no apparent reason, making Llewella’s anxiety much worse. And it amazed me how whenever Aretha was mean to Llewella and Llewella tackled her about it, Aretha turned it round. Seconds later, Llewella was justifying Aretha’s reaction and blaming herself. Classic gaslighting. This is the kind of relationship you see in abusive romantic relationships, and those are covered in books a lot. But this is the first time I’ve seen it done in friendship. And we need this book. 

I really liked how Llewella has a supportive network of women (and her grandfather) around her. These women give her the strength to end the brand with Aretha and gain back some of her happiness. 

This book also tackles racial issues. Both Aretha and Llewella are mixed race, and one example is Aretha is annoyed that Llewella gets a TV opportunity that she doesn’t. She blames it on Llewella being lighter skinned than she is, and tells Llewella to turn the opportunity. Even though it’s what Llewella really wants, and she gets the opportunity because of the blog that she started, two years before she even met Aretha. It appeared to me that Aretha felt entitled to getting the TV role and when Llewella got it instead, she blamed it on racial prejudice. And yes, there could be those reasons in it too, but for me (though I acknowledge I am a white reader), Llewella clearly deserved it. It was her blog. She had done the work. And Aretha clearly didn’t want Llewella to succeed. So while this book does shine a light on the important issue of racial discrimination, it largely does this while also emphasising the toxic character that Aretha was.  But there are Black characters, such as Steph, who also encourage readers to think about race and privilege, and this is done in an unproblematic way—though of course Aretha hates Steph, disagreeing with everything she says, until she can then say the same things to attack Llewella. 

Huge thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC. This is highly recommending reading and I think it should actually be compulsory reading for teenagers in schools.

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