Romantic Parvenu

Book Review: The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henríquez

August 10, 2015

The Book of Unknown Americans is a tragedy from the mouths of immigrants. It’s a book about the American Dream and the various ways that dream can fall apart and die. At the center of the novel are two teenagers from Latin American families, but ...

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Book Review: Disgruntled by Asali Solomon

August 6, 2015

Disgruntled is a smart, fresh coming of age novel full of “the shame of being alive”—a particular embarrassment that Kenya Curtis becomes intimately acquainted with over the course of her adolescence. In this brief book, author Asali Solomon ...

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Book Review: The Jumbies by Tracey Baptiste

August 5, 2015

In this paranormal novel inspired by Caribbean folklore, author Tracey Baptiste (who is originally from Trinidad) offers young readers an alternative to European fairytales about knights and princesses and dragons. Set on an unnamed tropical ...

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Book Review: The Last Illusion by Porochista Khakpour

August 4, 2015

This is the sort of book that sounds better conceptually than it works out in execution. A slightly mythical story of a boy who spent his first ten years in a birdcage and grew up to become a man just trying to be a “normal human” sound good, ...

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Book Review: This Side of Home by Renée Watson

August 3, 2015

This book is legitimately the young adult novel I’ve been waiting for ever since I first started reading YA three years ago. This Side of Home is beautifully written and is complex in its discussion of race relations, ethnicity, and identity. ...

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Book Review: Vermilion by Molly Tanzer

July 28, 2015

So here’s the thing: Vermilion sounds excellent, but it’s even better in reality. I was completely blown away by this story, by Lou Merriwether as a protagonist, and by how author Molly Tanzer went about it. This book is a wonderfully diverse ...

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