Charlamagne (Black Privilege), cohost of the Breakfast Club radio show, opines on mental health, social media, and the power of comedy in these punchy if occasionally clichéd essays. The most successful selections showcase Charlamagne’s comic chops and idiosyncratic thinking, as when he argues that delivering big ideas in a humorous way can encourage people to engage in difficult debates with “the same level of focus you acquire with post-nut clarity” (the alleged lucidity of mind that follows an orgasm). Serving up frank personal reflection, Charlamagne discusses straining to keep his ego in check as his career took off in the mid-2010s and recounts how writing a book about his mental health struggles led his father to open up for the first time about living with depression. Other essays offer tired takes on how social media is allegedly ruining society. For example, he contends that unrealistic lifestyle standards set by influencers have created a generation of entitled brats who lack the hustle that he displayed during his rise to fame (“Kids today really believe that they should receive the fruits of one’s labor without having to do one’s labor”). The author’s charisma and candor buoy the selections, even as they’re sometimes dragged down by finger-wagging platitudes. Still, Charlamagne’s listeners will find much to enjoy. Agent: Jane Dupree, Dupree Miller & Assoc. (May)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this poignant debut, filmmaker Baum tracks 80 years of U.S. government subsidized housing policy and draws on memories of her own childhood, when her family benefited from a government-built affordable home. In 1967, Baum’s parents purchased an apartment in a limited-equity, racially integrated, cooperative building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. They joined a diverse community of owners that together managed the building, where everyday experiences were defined by a sense of “collective action,” and where daily existence was characterized by diverse friendships, political talk, and spontaneous encounters. After Baum moved away from the city in the late 1970s, New Yorkers’ relationship to housing began to shift. As restrictions on the resale of coop apartments expired, many cooperatives allowed their buildings to become privately owned; meanwhile public housing for the poor was starved of funds and open-market rents soared. The result, according to Baum, was that regular people no longer were custodians of their own housing, and the ultra-rich took over the city, replacing local color and collective decision-making with “chain stores and banks.” Baum excels at capturing the allure of interdependent, close-knit communities, and affectingly joins her lament over their decline in New York City with her grief over the deaths of her parents. Informative and nostalgic, this makes for a bittersweet look at a time when America’s cities were affordable. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this high-spirited account, historian Ankeny (The Girl and the Bombardier) profiles Hazel Ying Lee, the first Chinese American woman to fly for the U.S. military. Born in 1912 Portland, Ore., young Hazel was athletic, adventuresome, eager to break down social barriers for Asian American women, and restless in the menial jobs open to her. Shortly after falling in love with flying during a 1932 plane ride, she learned of a local flight school that was training Chinese Americans for China’s war effort against Japan. To raise money to attend (as the only woman trainee), Hazel finessed herself a job as an elevator operator at a department store where Asian workers had not previously been allowed in customer-facing roles. Once in China, due to her gender Hazel was relegated to desk work in Guangzhou. During Japan’s 1938 invasion of that city, friends credited her preternatural calm for saving their lives by facilitating their escape. Back in America, she became one of the first women pilots to fly combat aircraft domestically. Her service, which featured many risky missions, was cut short in 1944, when safety missteps by others led to Hazel’s death in a midair collision. Arkeny’s cinematic storytelling is buoyed by her zestful portrait of Hazel, who comes across as remarkably unfazed by her era’s rampant discrimination. It’s a compulsively readable tale of odds-defying derring-do. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

Journalist Heglar’s spirited debut novel layers a story of climate change activism in 2014 Mississippi with a parallel narrative of the 1950s civil rights movement. Corrine, a 20-year-old Oberlin undergrad from historic Port Gibson, Miss., is unnerved by scientists’ predictions of global catastrophe due to climate change. After Corrine’s older brother, Cameron, dies in an accident aboard an oil tanker on the Mississippi River, she grows disenchanted with campus climate demonstrations and wishes she could do something meaningful to honor his memory. A direct action would risk upsetting her grandmother, Cora, who’s not only grieving her grandson’s death but also nursing wounds from her girlhood, when she was at the center of protests over the integration of the Nashville Public School System. When Cora learns Corrine is plotting to trespass on a bridge and mount a protest banner, memories of death threats, school bombings, and hostile classmates come flooding back. Though the characters are underdeveloped, Heglar writes intriguingly of the long trail of injustice faced by subsequent generations of Americans. Readers of message-driven fiction will appreciate this. (May)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

In Ward’s engrossing latest (after The Lifeguards), three American sisters confront their family’s complicated dynamics on the eve of the youngest’s second wedding. Miami school librarian Sylvie Peacock has been on her own since her husband died 10 years earlier, but when she meets wealthy Englishman Simon Rampling on an app for book lovers, she’s charmed by his kindness and passion for bird photography, and swept off her feet by stories of his family castle in northern England. Though part of her feels like she’s betraying her late husband, she accepts his marriage proposal after a mere three months of dating. Her glamorous oldest sister, Cleo, learns shortly before traveling to England for the wedding that Simon derived his wealth from a divorce, and itches to tell Sylvie the truth. Another narrative thread involves middle sister Emma, who’s risked her own family’s well-being by sinking their savings into a pyramid scheme. Much drama ensues at Simon’s castle when the sisters converge along with their narcissistic mother, Donna. Ward’s character work is top-notch, conveying Cleo’s savior complex and Donna’s negative impact on her children. This is a cut above the standard for women’s fiction. Agent: Michelle Tessler, Tessler Literary. (May)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

Mount Shasta, Calif., high school senior Izumi Tanaka is a normal 18-year-old American girl: she enjoys baking, watching Real Housewives, and dressing like “Lululemon’s sloppy sister.” But Japanese American Izzy, conceived during a one-night stand in her mother Hanako’s final year at Harvard, has never known the identity of her father. So when she and her best friend find a letter in Hanako’s bedroom, the duo jump at the chance to ferret out Izzy’s dad’s true identity—only to find out he’s the Crown Prince of Japan. Desperate to know her father, Izzy agrees to spend the summer in his home country. But press surveillance, pressure to quickly learn the language and etiquette, and an unexpected romance make her time in Tokyo more fraught than she imagined. Add in a medley of cousins and an upcoming wedding, and Izzy is in for an unforgettable summer. Abrupt switches from Izzy’s perspective to lyrical descriptions of Japan may disrupt readers’ enjoyment, but a snarky voice plus interspersed text conversations and tabloid coverage keep the pages turning in Jean’s (Empress of All Seasons) fun, frothy, and often heartfelt duology starter. Ages 12–up. Agent: Erin Harris, Folio Literary Management. (May)

Reviewed on 05/07/2021 | Details & Permalink

Kelkar’s (Bindu’s Bindis) novel features Oceanview Academy middle schooler Sonali, whose stoicism contrasts with her love of Bollywood movies’ melodrama. Stuck in a Los Angeles home with constantly arguing parents and her sensitive nine-year-old brother Ronak, Gujarati American Sonali, 11, tries to make sense of her world through the Hindi movies she’s seen all her life. Ever since an earnest public attempt five years ago to stop her parents’ fighting led to widespread embarrassment in front of family, Sonali has resolved to hide her emotions and do her best to ignore her parents’ arguments. But her efforts prove futile when her parents decide to try the “nesting” method of separation, where they take turns living in the house with Sonali and Ronak. The contemporary narrative takes an entertaining fabulist turn as Sonali’s life begins to transform into a Bollywood movie, with everything she feels and thinks made apparent through her “Bollywooditis.” Sonali’s first-person perspective is sympathetic as she navigates friendship and family drama, and Kelkar successfully infuses a resonant narrative with “filmi magic,” offering a tale with universal appeal through an engaging cultural lens. Ages 8–12. Agent: Kathleen Rushall, Andrea Brown Literary. (May)

Reviewed on 05/07/2021 | Details & Permalink

When she was six, Justice Kasric watched her blue-eyed merchant father play chess with the Faerie King. Now 15, Justice believes the event was merely a dream. She spends her days yearning for adventure, watching from the sidelines while her 16-year-old sister Faith, as slender and golden-haired as Justice but not as curious, becomes the toast of Victorian London society. One night, however, their father shatters their comfortable lifestyles when he forces the family—Justice, Faith, their younger brother Henry, and their constantly medicated, distant mother—into a locked carriage that takes them to a shadowy mansion. Justice’s discovery that the Faerie have invaded the human world and are targeting her family gains further urgency when she learns that her parents are on opposite sides of the conflict. Together, the Kasric siblings—including older brothers Benedict and Joshua—must find a way to save their family. While characters lack depth at times, and insufficient historical details don’t fully evoke the Victorian setting, Klaver’s (the Supernatural Case Files of Sherlock Holmes series) rich, lyrical descriptions augment the fantastical source material in this engaging series starter. Ages 13–up. Agent: Lucienne Diver, the Knight Agency. (May)

Reviewed on 05/07/2021 | Details & Permalink

Nine years before this novel begins, eight-year-old best friends Esme Randal and Kayla Price snuck out of their cabin at Camp Pine Lake in Texas. They swore never to discuss the terrible events that followed, but when the girls, now 17, return to the camp as counselors-in-training from their hometown of Lewisburg, Pa., that proves easier said than done. Someone begins sabotaging camp activities, and ominous—and increasingly public—threats appear, referencing that fateful summer. The only other person who knows Esme and Kayla’s secret is a local girl named Lillian Campbell, whom they left to fend for herself that night in the woods. They’re loath to voice their suspicions of revenge lest they get in trouble or look bad in front of hunky fellow counselors Jake and Olly, but as events escalate, they realize they may not have a choice. Narrating from Esme’s increasingly apprehensive first-person perspective, Preston (The Twin) pays homage to classic summer camp slasher films. The underdeveloped, predominantly white cast relies heavily on stereotype, and the clichéd tormenter’s motive feels unearned, but horror fans will likely appreciate this paranoia-fueled tale’s gruesome, shocking close. Ages 12–up. Agent: Jon Elek, United Agents. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 05/07/2021 | Details & Permalink

Inspired by her own family’s refugee journey from Vietnam to Hong Kong, Văn’s (If You Were Night) spare picture book, powerful in its deliberate simplicity, follows a black-haired, pale-skinned child as they, their guardian, and two younger siblings join other asylum seekers for a perilous maritime voyage. In a third-person voice, Văn anthropomorphizes objects, relaying their wishes: “The dream wished it was longer,” one spread reads, as a balding, mustached guardian holds the protagonist close, and a guardian with a bun rouses the second child to dress them. “The clock wished it was slower,” the subsequent pages read, as the two children tearfully hug their mustached guardian goodbye. The narrative continues as the now family of four make their way onto the boat and beyond. A final-act switch to first-person perspective drives home the journey’s personal nature. Intricate, lissome fine-lined art by Ngai (Dazzle Ships) recalls classical Asian compositions, Japanese woodblock prints, and an evocative sensibility in a gradated, surrealistic color palette. A seamless interweaving of elegant prose and atmospheric art marks this affecting immigrant narrative. Back matter includes heartfelt author’s and illustrator’s notes. Ages 4–8. (May)

Correction: A previous version of this review misquoted the book's text.

Reviewed on 05/07/2021 | Details & Permalink