This collection of microreviews is a little more eclectic than usual. But these books, which range from history to YA to literary fiction and beyond, share a common thread: the way they ask readers to see the world in new ways. These books offer fresh perspectives through reinvention and retelling, but also by simply narrating from points of view that are rarely heard or respected. This month’s books include a stunning queer retelling of the Peter Pan myth, a genre-bending memoir-cum-historical-treatise on slave revolts, a graphic novel for kids that tackles chronic illness, race, and Latinx culture, and much more. In each story, we are asked to reconsider our old ways of knowing, and make space for new narratives.
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October 2021 Reading Round Up: More Than A Mystery
Everyone love a good puzzle–but in this collection of mysterious microreviews, there’s more to the story than just a carefully woven plot. These four titles take the mystery genre and use it to explore class, gender, race, and revolution. From a man who is searching for the literal woman of his dreams to the subtle tensions between two families–one Black and one white–in apocalyptic Long Island, these stories make you reconsider what the mystery novel can do.
Continue readingSpecial Feature: A Cemetery Boys Found Poem
Healing
How long after he was gone would Yadriel be dreaming
The fullness of the family
they didn’t just take all pain
let people feel grief
it was important
to honor all those who make this community strong
“¡Mi querido!”
mourn
loss of a loved one
Why
Growth isn’t a deviation
growth is more
a sphere instead of a line
This poem was created using quotes from the book and notes from our Drizzle Summer Book Club discussion on The Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas. It was written collaboratively by Ingrid Carabulea, Rey Katz, Tracy Vasquez, Sarena Brown, and Rebecca Valley. You can find the writer bios here. To learn more about the book that inspired the poem, check out our micro review.
Special Feature: Drizzle Summer Book Club
special feature: Drizzle review summer book club micro reviews
In summer of 2021, Drizzle is launching our first ever live virtual event series! To see what’s ahead, check out these two micro reviews, written by our editors Sarena Brown and Rebecca Valley. Stay tuned for two more collaborative reviews on these titles, written by our book club participants.
Continue readingApril 2021 Reading Round-Up: Sense of Place
In our second round of micro-reviews, we are thinking about place – not just in terms of physical setting, but also the emotional and imagined places that books allow us to inhabit.
This collection includes poetry set on a rumbling train, a novella about a woman for whom time is as much as a place as the otherworldly rural setting in which she finds herself, and a mystery in which the real horror comes from inhabiting the mind of the troubled narrator. With books set from Cairo to the Oregon coast and everywhere in between, you are sure to find a book in this round-up that speaks to your desire to escape.
Continue readingMarch 2021 Reading Round-Up: All About Love
This is our first reading round-up! Hurray! And after the outpouring of support (and content!) from our community these last few months, we can’t think of a more fitting theme for our first collection of micro-reviews than LOVE.
In this month’s round-up, we’re sharing love stories — stories of queer love, brown and black love, parental love, self-love, love of home. These books teach us that love is sticky and uncertain. Sometimes, it is colored by bias and political violence. Sometimes, we don’t have the language for it. Sometimes, it is wrapped in a heavy blanket of grief. But no matter what shape love takes, the Drizzle team believes that love is valuable. Love stories are valuable. After all, as contributor Katie Centabar wrote in her review of Get a Life Chloe Brown: “In these tough times, we all need love.”
Continue readingReview: Fighting Words by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
Fighting words by kimberly brubaker bradley (Dial books 2020)
Reviewed by Megan Foster
Fighting Words is the newest middle grade novel by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, best known for her Newbery Honor-winning novel The War That Saved My Life. I’ve always attested that its sequel, The War I Finally Won, is even better, but Fighting Words is arguably her best novel by far.
Delicious Nevaeh Roberts, or Della, is all I could ever ask for in a protagonist: tough and street smart, empathetic and kind, proud of her loud mouth and lobbed curses. She’s the kind of girl who’ll draw a mustache and devil horns on a princess, then defend her bullied friend. Della and her sixteen year old sister, Suki, have had to be tough after years of living with their mother’s boyfriend, Clifton, who finally did something so bad they had to get out quick. With their mother in jail states away, the two must navigate foster care while memories of Clifton continue to haunt them both. Della continually looks to Suki as her protector, but when Suki attempts suicide, Della has a terrible, earth-shattering revelation: who’s protecting Suki?
Continue readingReview: Category Five by Ann Davila Cardinal
Category Five by Ann Dávila Cardinal (Tor Teen 2020)
Reviewed by Maayan D’Antonio
Lupe Dávila returns for another summer in Puerto Rico. But once again things are not quiet on the island. Ten months after Hurricane Maria, a category five storm, the island is still struggling to recover. On top of that there are dead people popping up on Vieques, a small island off the northeastern coast of the main island of Puerto Rico. This time Lupe’s Tío, police chief Dávila, knows better than to try and keep Lupe away from the investigation. The first murder claims three Caucasian college boys at the bioluminescent bay. The murder scene is not too far away from construction on a new resort.
Continue readingReview: Pet by Akwaeke Emezi
Pet by Akwaeke Emezi (Make Me a World 2019)
Reviewed by Robert Drinkwater
Pet by Akwaeke Emezi is set in a utopian city, Lucille, where evil people, also called “monsters” no longer exist, but have been replaced by “angels”, good people who try to establish justice and peace. Pet explores a world which may look peaceful and perfect on the outside, but is in fact full of monsters. In many ways, the book mirrors the systemic racism and issues of justice that characterize the current political situation in the United States.
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