#CBR12 Book 85: "Yes No Maybe So" by Becky Albertalli and Aisha Saeed

Page count: 448 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Official book description:

YES

Jamie Goldberg is cool with volunteering for his local state senate candidate—as long as he’s behind the scenes. When it comes to speaking to strangers (or, let’s face it, speaking at all to almost anyone), Jamie’s a choke artist. There’s no way he’d ever knock on doors to ask people for their votes…until he meets Maya.

NO

Maya Rehman’s having the worst Ramadan ever. Her best friend is too busy to hang out, her summer trip is canceled, and now her parents are separating. Why her mother thinks the solution to her problems is political canvassing—with some awkward dude she hardly knows—is beyond her.

MAYBE SO

Going door to door isn’t exactly glamorous, but maybe it’s not the worst thing in the world. After all, the polls are getting closer—and so are Maya and Jamie. Mastering local activism is one thing. Navigating the cross-cultural romance of the century is another thing entirely.

Jamie is Jewish. Maya is Muslim. Their mothers used to be friends, and apparently, they were inseparable on the playground for a while when they were little. However, Jamie and Maya haven't seen each other in a very long time, and are now both in high school. Jamie has seen Maya in a couple of places and is instantly smitten, Maya is too busy being upset about her parents separating and her best friend is too busy to work and/or prepare for college to really have time for her at all. The two get thrust together to do political canvassing during an important local election in Georgia (very timely, really).

To begin with, Maya only agrees to continue with canvassing because her parents promise to get her a car after the election. Jamie's cousin is in charge of volunteering for the campaign and keeps getting crazier and crazier as the election approaches, so he couldn't really opt out, even if he wanted to. Any chance to hang out with Maya, even if it means talking to strangers about politics, is good with him. As they get to know each other better, the two teens also become a lot more involved in the politics at stake, and soon, the canvassing and trying to help the campaign becomes really important to both of them.

Yes No Maybe So is a collaborative work between the two YA authors Becky Albertalli and Aisha Saeed, who both live in Georgia. They were both gutted by the presidential election results in 2016 and wrote this book partly as a response. The authors have included local places that mean a lot to them, including restaurants and other public places, and thought it was important that both Jamie and Maya are just 17, too young to vote in the election they're canvassing for, but nevertheless working tirelessly to help make a difference. They wanted to provide a road map for other teens who might be feeling frustrated and who are wondering how they can get involved, even on a local level. 

I'm guessing Ms. Albertalli wrote all the Jamie chapters, and she mentions in interviews that parts of his personality and social anxiety mirrors her own. Ms. Saeed wrote the Aisha chapters (they alternate) wanted to really show the experience of a Pakistani American teen growing up in the USA today can look like, complete with racism, fear, bigotry, but also a sense of family and community and the joy that can be found in everyday life, and which can also offer resistance to racists and white supremacists everywhere. 

That I read this novel while romance writers, readers, and others all over the internet were working together to fund-raise as much as possible for the upcoming Georgia run-offs, an election that is way more important than the one featured in this book, just seems to be another one of those strange coincidences this year has brought. Here's hoping that Georgia remains blue in the January senate elections as well. 

Judging a book by its cover: The shades of blue that make out the majority of the background are really pleasing to me, and I love how the cover subtly reveals much of the development of the story  and Jamie and Maya's relationship without really spoiling anything. It's one of the better examples of little cartoon people on the cover of novels. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR10 Book 42: "Leah on the Offbeat" by Becky Albertalli

Page count: 368 pages
Rating: 4 stars

While this book can be read as a standalone, it is a sequel of sorts to Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda and I suspect you might get more out of it if you read that one first. The movie adaptation of said book; Love, Simon is currently in cinemas now (and it's just as delightful as the book it's based on).

Leah Burke has a big secret and she doesn't really feel comfortable telling anyone apart from her Mum, even her best friend Simon. Leah's bisexual, but doesn't really know how to tell even her openly gay BFF. Simon was involuntarily outed online for their entire high school to see, but it all ended well for him and he's been soppily happily in love with his boyfriend for most of senior year.

Leah is different from most of her friends - she lives with her single Mum and they certainly don't have the same amounts of money everyone else in her friend group has. With their high school graduation and prom coming up, Leah's previously so tight knit friend group seems to be fracturing and her home life is also changing in ways she's not sure she's ready for. Her Mum seems to be getting serious about her new boyfriend, and Leah's not really certain how she feels about that. She is pretty sure that she's in love, but she's also pretty sure the object of her affection is straight, not to mention still dating one of Leah's closest friends. Should Leah act on her crush, or stay silent?

While I didn't read this book during Pride month, it seems suitable that my review of it comes out during - considering the subject matter of this book. You don't often see confident and clearly out bisexual characters in YA fiction (or other types of genre fiction for that matter), but Leah is bi and proud and has both a female and a male love interest in this book. Her female love interest (the name of whom I don't want to disclose - because I don't want to spoil anything) is in a relationship with a boy at the start of the book and isn't entirely sure of her own sexuality to begin with - but Leah's never been in doubt about liking both genders, she just hasn't told anyone except her Mum about it.

About a month ago, I went to see Love, Simon in the cinema and Leah's character was played by the excellent Katherine Langford. The actress gets thanked in Albertalli's acknowledgements at the end, and I can see why, she seemed like a perfect choice (although the actress may be a bit too thin) and was pretty much my mental image while reading the book. When I read Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda, I pretty much loved Simon from page one. He's just so earnest and adorable. Leah is a slightly tougher nut to crack and while she lightens up on her Mum and her Mum's boyfriend eventually, I thought she was being generally bratty and unfair. Leah's Mum was great, so supportive and has clearly worked so hard to provide for her daughter - I wished Leah would show a bit more gratitude and acknowledge that her Mum deserved some happiness too.

There's a fair amount of teen drama in this book, with break-ups, conflicted feelings about the future and college choices, old friends coming to unpleasant realisations about each other, and obviously various characters crushing on each other. One of her male friends is clearly interested in her and wants to take her to prom. Leah finds his attention flattering, while also feeling guilty, since she fancies a girl more, but is unsure if said girl even vaguely returns her interest. It's a cute book, with a fun cast of diverse characters and absolutely in the vein of what Albertalli has written in the past, but it didn't give me the same happy feels as both Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda and The Upside of Unrequited. Even ranked lowest of her three books, this is still a good read with a lot of nice role models for teens and I can't wait to see what Albertalli is doing next.

Judging a book by its cover: I don't know if it's the mustardy yellow top on the cover model that clashes with the teal background, or the fact that this cover just seems a lot more haphazardly thrown together than the ones for Albertalli's previous two books, but I really don't like this much. Two thumbs way up for a plus-size model on the cover - body positivity is very important, but I wish the cover designers had given Leah's book more care and consideration.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR9 Book 44: "The Upside of Unrequited" by Becky Albertalli

Page count: 352 pages
Rating: 4.5 stars

Sixteen-year-old Molly Peskin-Suso has had a crush on twenty-six different guys (number twenty-six is Lin-Manuel Miranda, and I share your infatuation, girl!), but these crushes have never really developed into anything and she's never kissed anyone. Molly's twin sister Cassie is very encouraging and tries to get her to just "go for it", but Cassie has had flings with a number of girls, and is a lot more outgoing and confident than Molly. While they are twins, the sisters have vastly different body types. Cassie is tall and svelte and graceful, Molly is introverted, quiet and what their tactless grandmother refers to as "zaftig". Being awkward, constantly infatuated and terminally unkissed was bad enough before, now Cassie has her first proper girlfriend, whom she is absolutely gaga about, and Molly feels more alone than ever.

When gay marriage is made legal, Cassie and Molly's mothers resolve to finally get married. Molly throws herself into the wedding planning with gusto, but it doesn't exactly make her want someone of her own to love. Mina, Cassie's new girlfriend, is nothing if not supportive of Cassie's plans to get Molly a boyfriend. Mina's cute hipster friend Will seems like a very likely prospect, especially because then Molly and Cassie could double date with Mina and her bestie. Molly may have a different candidate for crush number twenty-seven. however. Reid, her lanky, fantasy-loving co-worker, makes Molly feel tongue-tied like no other. Two cute boys - will one of them finally be the one to give Molly her first kiss?

Last summer, I read Becky Albertalli's debut novel, Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda. There were so many things to like about it, but I was uncomfortable about the aspect where (SPOILER) the protagonist, Simon, is outed on social media by a classmate, and it ruined some of my happy when reading it. In this book, there wasn't anything of the sort and the teens in this book (Molly and Cassie are cousin's with Abby, one of Simon's best friends - there are tiny cameos from the first book in the latter half of this one) are just as delightful to read about as the ones in Albertalli's first book.

Lack of diversity is still a huge problem in fiction, yet a book like this should be held up as a glowing example of how easily diversity can be done, because it shouldn't have be some sort of "issue", for a huge amount of people, this is just their life and it's important that they can find this reflected in the fiction available to them. Cassie and Molly are twins born by one mother. They have a younger brother, born by their other mother (who is African American), but all share the same donor father. They are all Jewish, as is Reid, Molly's co-worker. Mina, Cassie's girlfriend, is Asian. Molly is straight, Cassie is gay. One of their mothers is bisexual. None of this massively impacts on their characters or who they are.

Molly is a hugely likable protagonist and one of my favourite things about this book is that while there are two boys as potential boyfriends for her, there is no sign of a love triangle. There are no scenes where these two boys fight for her attention. The one vague hint of one actually involves some adorable cluelessness on Molly's part, one of her newly single female friends and one of the boys (who is clearly only speaking to her friend to find out more about her, it's painfully obvious to everyone but Molly).

Being artistic as well as a talented cook/baker, Molly had so many skills that I envied her. I also wish the book had included a recipe for Molly's egg-less cookie dough, because I'm pretty sure I want to make it and eat until I'm sick. That Reid is a young man who clearly appreciates the culinary arts, as well as all things epic fantasy, endeared him greatly to me.

If you liked Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda, you are sure to like this one a lot too. I read it during a few happy hours during this Spring's 24-hour Readathon and the reason it doesn't get a full five stars is that I wanted there to be more of Molly in an actual relationship, not just building up to it. This book stands perfectly well on its own two feet, despite the connection to Albertalli's last book, but I absolutely encourage you to read both if you haven't.

Judging a book by its cover: I'm not entirely sure what I think of the cover. I like the bold colours, the bright blue, the stark black and white. I like the emoji and that they've kept the same font style as on Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda. Since the books are loosely interconnected, it's a nice touch.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR8 Book 91: "Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda" by Becky Albertalli

Page count: 336 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Simon Spier, middle child in a very close-knit family is sixteen years old and gay. Not that anyone but his pen pal Blue knows this, until class clown Martin looks over his shoulder at the library and discovers his secret. Simon suddenly finds himself blackmailed. Help Martin get a chance with his friend Abby, or Martin outs Simon to the whole school. This might also mean that Blue's identity is in some way compromised. Simon doesn't want to help Martin, but feels he doesn't have any other choice.

Simon doesn't really do drama, except in the sense of being part of the school musical. The fact that there are tensions among his life-long friends after Abby was added to the mix, and he's slowly falling more for Blue, who he's falling for, even though he doesn't know which of the boys in school it is, means Simon's life is becoming a lot more eventful and constantly pushes him out of his comfort zone. Will Simon continue to let Martin blackmail him? Will his friends Nick and Leah adjust to the fact that Nick is in love with Abby? Will Simon ever discover the true identity of Blue, and do they have a chance as a couple if he does?

Once again, I'm not the first of the Cannonballers to review this, and I'd also seen it very favourably written-up over on Forever Young Adult. I liked this book a lot, but I didn't absolutely love it, which I've seen some people out there do. The blackmail aspect really did make me uncomfortable, especially after SPOILER! Martin actually goes through with the threat of outing Simon on the high school Tumblr blog after it becomes obvious that Simon is never going to be able to make Abby really notice him (super d*ck move, Martin). I felt so awful for Simon and because I have been lucky enough to grow up cis-gendered, white and heteronormative, if severely geeky and a most definitely on the social outskirts, I never needed to worry about hiding parts of who I am/was. Simon and Blue discuss coming out at some length in their e-mails and the fact that Simon didn't get to choose when and how he told his family, friends and the rest of the world made me so upset.

When I read books like this, I hope that adolescents and teens today are aware of how incredibly lucky they are. I know that lack of representation and diversity is still a big problem in literature in general, but at least there is more of it out there than when I was a teen. There is such a vast variety of genres and so many topics being discussed, nothing like the fairly dour socially lecturing fare I grew up with, where everything written for teens seemed to be warning them off drugs, eating disorders, teenage pregnancy or HIV/AIDS. There wasn't really fantasy and sci-fi written specifically for teens. There certainly wasn't all these great books about contemporary teenagers and the issues they go through, which may seem trivial to many adults (like romance, most favoured genre of my heart, the YA category (it's NOT just one genre) is so often derised by literary snobs.

This was not one of the books in the Cannonball YA poll for the upcoming book club (because too many people had recently reviewed it, I think). It's still highly recommended to anyone who's looking for more contemporary YA to check out, where there isn't a chosen one fighting a dystopian regime or trying to single-handedly conquer a fantasy kingdom or something, but just trying to get by in their hormone-fuelled daily existence and trying to survive until adulthood. As far as I'm aware, this is Becky Albertalli's first novel, but I've already added her next book (out in April 2017) to my TBR list, because she is clearly one to watch.

Judging a book by its cover: I don't entirely know what I think about this cover. I can see why you'd want the headless body, so the reader can more easily insert their image of the character, but it also looks a bit creepy. Red is a nice, bright and noticeable background colour, though, and it would stand out if placed face forward on a shelf.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.