So clearly, the title of this post is a major spoiler: I’m giving all these books five stars. No surprises here, I’m just putting my cards out on the table right off the bat.
So maybe the conclusion of the reviews won’t shock you, but I still wanted to talk about these three books on my blog, because I think they deserve to be talked about. And because we all know that feeling—when you discover a book that you think is really, really awesome and you just want to tell everyone how really, really awesome it is. I would go outside and shout it from the rooftops, but that seems dangerously close to talking to humans face to face, and y’all know how I hate that.
So let’s dive into my three most recent, without a doubt five-star reads.
Undead Girl Gang by Lily Anderson
I might be most excited about this one, and was definitely most excited about it when I bought it. Funny story actually, you know how we all have these TBR piles that are stacked so high they’re pretty much constantly threatening to fall and crush us in our sleep? (There are worse ways to go, I guess???) Well, despite having plenty of books in my TBR, I saw this book on Instagram, immediately went to Barnes & Noble and bought it, and then immediately came home and read it, ignoring everything else while the other books in my TBR looked at me like, wow, okay, that seems fair.
But I was just so excited about this one. First of all, it’s called Undead Girl Gang. I mean, come on. Do you expect me not to get excited about a book called Undead Girl Gang?
And look at that cover. I mean…
Luckily, it delivers far beyond the cute as hell cover and catchy title. In this YA novel, high schooler Mila Flores, who has always felt a bit like an outcast. But it was always okay, because she always had her fellow outcast Riley, by her side. The two young women are best friends, Wiccans, and basically feel like they can take on the world together.
But then Riley dies, along with two of the most popular girls at school, June and Dayton. The police declare that the three girls all committed suicide, but Mila knows this isn’t true. She’s grieving the loss of her best—and only—friend and desperate to find out the truth when a mysterious grimoire is delivered to her and Riley’s hideout where they often practiced their craft.
Inside, she discovers a spell for bringing back the dead, but only for seven days. She performs the ritual in the hopes of reuniting with her best friend and finding out what really happened, but this would be a short book if everything went as expected. Something goes awry and she ends up resurrecting all three of the girls, who can’t remember their own deaths. Now Mila has a week to help the girls remember what happened, investigate their mysterious deaths to find out the truth once and for all, and help each of them wrap up some unfinished business and come to terms with what happened to them.
“Is it possible to be pagan agnostic? I’m open to the idea that there are more things in heaven and earth than I’ve dreamed of and all. I just don’t know if I’ll do magic now that Riley’s gone.”
I love this book for a multitude of reasons, one of the first being that Mila is one of my absolute favorite kind of characters: fierce to the point of being interpreted almost as bitchy. Y’all know I love a female character who can stand up for herself and isn’t afraid to speak her mind, no matter what people think of her for it, as well as female characters who are sarcastic and unashamed. Mila is all of this and more. She is clapping back at everyone, from popular girls who try to tease her for being fat to school counselors who seem to not take her religion seriously. She has a sharp wit and an acid tongue, and she isn’t afraid to put either one to use. It’s reached a point where she’s built up those walls almost to the point of being, on occasion, borderline unnecessarily mean, but not only is this something I identify with so much, I think it’s also something important to portray in characters. It’s important to see people who are very real and raw like this, and see that it’s okay to bite back, to be tough, and to be who you are. Mila really embodies that. I also think it’s important to show the effects that bullying and ostracizing can have on young people (or any people) and their personalities, and that is part of what has led Mila to develop this personality. In short: yeah, she’s got a bad attitude, but how do you think she developed it?
“People are assholes,” I say.
He laughs quietly. “That should be your catchphrase.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Maybe. It always seems to apply.”
It’s easy to learn to be tough when you feel like that’s your only option, and it’s really interesting to see the journey Mila takes from being tough because she has to be, to having a friend to back her up, to having that friend ripped away from her, and learning and growing along the way.
While most YA books are a journey of self-discovery of some kind, I really liked the ways that Mila grew as a person and the things she learned in this novel. While at first it seems like either an inconvenience to the MC or a simple comedic plot point that she ends up bringing back two popular girls who she was always butting heads with along with her BFF, it ends up providing more than just comic relief (though there’s plenty of that). I think seeing Mila and the way she relates to these young women and the common ground and sometimes begrudging respect they manage to scrounge up for each other along the way is actually really powerful and says a lot about women supporting other women, putting a refreshing skew on girl power. It’s really kickass to see a YA novel stepping away from the “MC is the best and all other girls totally suck/are the enemy” trope that we’ve seen so much of in the past.
I really loved the plot of Undead Girl Gang from the get-go. Right away we’ve got a teenage girl who successfully raises three of her peers from the dead, so that’s pretty captivating, but we also have a pretty complex murder mystery going on. It definitely feels like everyone is working against Mila and trying to convince her she’s crazy for questioning the conclusion that her classmates all committed suicide, so she truly has an uphill battle to fight, and she wouldn’t be able to do it without her zombie-esque (not quite zombies, they insist) companions. Plus there’s a lot of other things woven in, such as her crush on her best friend’s older brother, her feelings of disconnect from her family, and the discovery of quite a few kinds of secrets.
And of course, as I mentioned before, this book is funny. Granted it deals with some very dark subject matter, but Mila—who not only stars, but also narrates—has the perfect wry sense of observation and spot on ability to deliver scathing sarcastic remarks to balance out the darkness with incredibly relatable humor.
“The guy cutting pie with a cafeteria butter knife stops and turns his head to me. He is also wearing an enormous smile. I raised the actual dead last night, but these kids are giving me the heebie-jeebies like whoa.”
*
“I scowl at her. I don’t like the word powers. It makes me sound like I’m pretending to be a Monster High doll.”
Honestly, I don’t know why everyone at Cross Creek High doesn’t want to be friends with Mila. She’s badass and hilarious.
I also think this book takes an important step in the direction of acceptance of lots of kinds—fat acceptance, religious acceptance, and overall just being more accepting of people who are different from you. It’s an excellent read for young adults and adults alike, and I really think people of all ages could get a lot out of it. I highly recommend it, especially for fans of the spoopy-meets-girly motif (think The Merciless or Jennifer’s Body). But I also recommend it for fans of murder mysteries, kickass, bitchy-cuz-you-made-me-this-way female heroines, or anyone looking for something that’s got more meat to it than your typical girl-meets-boy and throws her life away for him plotline.
The Final Six by Alexandra Monir
The Final Six initially caught my eye because of that. cover. As a space-obsessed nerd (like much of the nation), when I saw that gorgeous galaxy facing out on the shelf as I wandered down the aisle at Barnes & Noble, I couldn’t pass it by. But it was the plot and the unbridled potential it had that drew me all the way in.
The Final Six, set in a not-unforeseeable future where Earth is quickly becoming inhabitable, focuses mainly on Naomi and Leo, two of twenty-two young adults who are drafted into International Space Training Camp. The teenagers sent to this camp will undergo grueling training and testing in order to find the six young adults who will be sent into space in order to a establish a new colony on Jupiter’s moon, Europa. While Leo and Naomi immediately hit it off, they come from two very different walks of life and very different perspectives on the mission. Leo, a championship swimmer from Italy who has lost his entire family in the increasing natural disasters overtaking the planet, sees it as an opportunity to start anew and the best option for civilization. But Naomi, an Iranian-American science prodigy who is in the rare position to have her entire family still intact, thinks there’s something the government isn’t telling them—especially since they’re mysteriously mum about a previous mission looking to colonize space failed and killed everyone on board.
The novel alternates between chapters from Leo’s POV and Naomi’s POV as they make their way through training, develop friendships, deal with being away from their families, and, eventually, delve into the mystery of the failed mission in an attempt to figure out what the space program is hiding from them and how much danger they’ll really be in if they make it to the illustrious final six.
This book had one of the more interesting plots I’ve come across recently, so that was one of the big things I liked about it. I loved this idea that we were no longer able to inhabit our own planet and we had to look outward. As a concept, this is one that I’m almost always interested in. Making it so that we as a civilization are depending on young adults to do this added an extra layer of suspense—and its own collection of complications—to the overall idea. I loved the mystery in the plot as well, and the determination Naomi has to unravel this mystery and figure out what’s really going on, not just for her own safety, but for the collective safety of the human race.
I loved the setting, as well. Yes, it’s Earth, but it’s a little bit different version of Earth than we know. The imagery of Leo swimming up to the Coliseum in Rome, which is now entirely underwater, in order to say goodbye to it was immediately so powerful and resonating, right away sucking us into just how devastating things have gotten on our own planet. Much like I talked about in my review of Ready Player One, this version of “future Earth” felt like a future Earth that was very easy to believe. This wasn’t a distant future or entirely made up planet that was difficult to envision. It was very easy to suspend disbelief and become fully immersed in the tragedy and the urgency of the situation when discussing how bad humans let our planet get, and how much they regret their mistakes.
“We learned the hard way on Earth that no amount of technology or wealth is worth polluting and destroying our planet over. We can’t afford to make the same mistake on Europa.”
These notions take this book to a place where I think it’s very accessible for most readers. Yes, it’s sci-fi, but it’s relatable sci-fi. There are no light sabers or X-wings here (not that there’s anything wrong with that); just a bunch of people who screwed up the only place we have to live and are now scrambling for a solution.
I liked seeing the friendship between Leo and Naomi, as well as the friendships between them and the other young adults vying for a spot in the top six. All of them are from different countries and different walks of life—the U.S. president’s spoiled, entitled nephew, an Olympic ice skater from Russia, and Indian pilot, just to name a few—and it’s interesting to see the way they interact with each other and learn from each other despite their vastly different life experiences. I especially liked seeing how humbling it was for Naomi to learn about the tragedies affecting the planet from people who had actually lost loved ones, and seeing the way people who have almost nothing in common can come together (or tear each other apart) when they’re all thrown into the same pressure cooker the way they are at International Space Training Camp.
And of course, while a romantic aspect is not always necessary in a YA novel, I did think the romance between Leo and Naomi was pretty cute, largely because it was built on the core foundation of their friendship and the things they learned from each other and support they gave each other.
If you like space, conspiracy theories, or dystopian novels, I would definitely recommend The Final Six. And if you’re a fan of The 100, you may like this one because it’s kind of a reverse-100. Still set in a future where once again, humankind needs to find a new place to live because were horribly irresponsible, but in this case, we are sending young adults into space rather than sending them from space to Earth. And whereas in The 100, the teens in question are the Arc’s delinquents, in this case they are the “best and the brightest” that the government was able to gather together. There’s definitely a lot of similar themes to The 100, so I think if you’re a fan of that book series or TV series, you would enjoy this one as well. I think this would also be a good choice if you’re looking to read some sci-fi, but you’re a bit intimidated by the genre, because, as I said, this one is really accessible and not too “off-the-wall”, so to speak (because it’s legitimately based in science, not just dancing through outer space being bizarre). It would be a really good starting point.
I Have Lost My Way by Gayle Forman
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m not even sure why I bought this book. I think the universe just drew me to it or something. This was not on my list of books to get. I had never heard of it before. I had never seen it on Instagram. I have never read anything else by Gayle Forman, nor seen the movie adaptation of her novel If I Stay, despite the fact that people talk about it all the time. So where did this come from?
I was just walking through Target one day, saw this on the end of a shelf, and something about it stopped me dead in my tracks. That title is so plaintive and so straightforward, I found it impossible to walk away, and before I knew it, I was carrying to the register, bringing it home, and diving right in.
I Have Lost My Way follows three main characters whose paths all intersect when they stumble into each other (sort of literally) in New York City. But what starts as a chance encounter ends up with their lives becoming inexplicably intertwined, and they each find in each other what they were searching for in themselves.
Freya is an up and coming singer who is on track to be The Next Big Thing™ when she mysteriously loses her singing voice and begins having vocal issues, putting her singing career in jeopardy after she’s sacrificed everything—family included—to get to this point. Harun is struggling with a break up with his boyfriend, the secrets he is hiding from his family, and a crazy plan to run away that he is on the verge of going through with. And Nathaniel, in a terrible place mentally and emotionally after the death of his father, has traveled to New York City with a desperate idea he thinks will solve things.
This whole book takes place over the course of one day, with flashbacks to different events in the characters’ lives, so it feels like it moves very quickly, which I absolutely love. The pacing in this book was flawless, in my opinion, because it takes place over one day and it feels like it takes place over one day, rather than some other recent books I read that took place over two or three days but dragged and felt like there was way too much going on. I also loved the fact that it was one day because it was so cool to see how one day really can change your life or one chance encounter can change the direction you’re headed in. Sometimes in our day to day life it’s easy to overlook that fact and focus more on the big things and big life events, and I love literature for the fact that it can make us slow down and look at things from a slightly different perspective.
“It sounds like a burden, to take this on, but really, it’s the opposite. To be the holder of other people’s loss is to be the keeper of their love. To share your loss with people is another way of giving your love.”
This one is also just a really sweet and emotional read. I don’t know if it just struck me at the right time, but it really hit home. It was really incredible to see these three young people who were literal complete strangers at the beginning learn how to help each other and be there for each other and become the support system that all three of them desperately needed and weren’t getting from anywhere else. I think it’s really emotionally impactful to see people who don’t really know what it’s like to be truly supported and uplifted come into contact with that for the first time, and how they can come live and really change when they have the right people backing them up. It was so beautiful to see that happen in this book, and I think that was the main thing I really enjoyed.
“You need people who will give you the food from their plate because they feel your hunger, who will refuse to let you wander off alone no matter how many times you say it’s all good, who will snap in your face and whisper so softly in your ear…come back, come back, until you do.”
The writing is simple and straightforward, not too flowery, but still very well done. Everything felt very real and relatable—these characters talked how people actually talk, they interacted how people actually interact. I love to see that and not read caricatures or things that are just really over the top. I really commend the author for writing a very human book. If you’re looking for something fast-paced and contemporary that will tug on the heart strings a little bit but ultimately leave you smiling, this is the perfect book for you!
So what about everyone else? What have been your most recent five star reads, and what did you love about them? Have you read any of the books listed here? Let me know in the comments! You know I’d love to talk. <3