I'd be the first to admit I judge books by their covers all the time, but sometimes the blurb is so compelling I have to try the first chapter anyway. Such was the case with Noteworthy, a book with a deceptively bland cover much like the author's previous book, Seven Ways We Lie. I mean, look at them! A+ for colour-matching but C- for covers that don't match the content:
Actually don't look at them, just open them up and start reading instead, because listen to the description of Noteworthy:
After learning that her deep voice is keeping her from being cast in plays at her exclusive performing arts school, Jordan Sun, junior, auditions for an all-male octet hoping for a chance to perform internationally.
I didn't realise I needed a book about a girl going undercover in an all-male a cappella group, but I definitely did. The blurb doesn't mention it but she auditions and spends much of the book passing as a teenage boy and (against her first inclinations) becoming friends with the other members of the group. The author describes her book as "approx. 1/3 slapstick comedy, 1/3 hideous music puns, and 1/3 explorations of toxic masculinity and performative femininity," which is fairly accurate, so if you're a fan of puns and a cappella and figuring out who you are while pretending to be someone you aren't, then give Noteworthy a try. If you want something a bit darker with a larger cast of characters, each based loosely on one of the seven sins, then try Seven Ways We Lie.
Ramona Blue is the most recent novel by Julie Murphy, whose book Dumplin' I enjoyed last year. They have similar themes of teenage girls in small towns trying to be confident in who they are while suffering from crippling doubts, but where Dumplin's self-proclaimed fat girl Willowdean deals with this by entering the local beauty pageant, Ramona Blue is aggressively happy to stay living in a trailer with her dad and supporting her pregnant sister, definitely isn't frustrated that she can't go to college, definitely isn't upset that her summer girlfriend has gone back home to her boyfriend.
In the middle of all this Ramona's childhood friend Freddie moves back into town and they start swimming at the local pool, which Ramona turns out to be rather good at, and maybe also start having feelings for each other, but that can't be right because Ramona has always known she was gay, hasn't she? And she still likes girls, so what's going on? Spoiler! it's the elusive bisexual, now captured in fiction. I was worried when I realised the direction the book was going in but it was handled really well, and is only one strand of Ramona's complex story.
If that's still too light-hearted for you then maybe you'll appreciate Tiffany D. Jackson's grim debut, Allegedly.
Inspired by a similar case in Maine five years ago, Allegedly is told from the perspective of the now sixteen-year-old girl (Mary) convicted of manslaughter of a white infant when she was only nine. Her case is famous; books have been written, a film is in the works, and at the time of her trial the public were pushing for the death penalty. Eight years later she's living in a group home while attempting to study for her SATs despite the interference of the women who run the home and the other girls living in it -- while newly pregnant. The discovery that the authorities will take away her baby when he's born prompts Mary to re-open her case, declaring she has been innocent all along. Was she? Or is she just doing whatever it takes to keep her unborn child?
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