Deep into the summer, we here at WWAC are combatting high temperatures by balancing our reading between romances, teens pushing boundaries, and thoughtful nonfiction. Any book can be a beach read if you bring it to the beach!
Alenka: I’ve had Gorgeous Gruesome Faces by Linda Cheng on my to-read list since before it was officially released and finally picked it up to pull myself out of a reading slump. (Hello, overworked youth librarians who are also experiencing slumps! We will survive summer, I promise.) This occult horror novel follows Sunny, a former teen idol, who was once part of a mega popular girl group called Sweet Cadence. Sunny is lost and directionless after her high school graduation, but dives back into the K-pop world to chase down her former co-star Candie and discover the truth behind the death of their former co-performer and best friend Mina.
Cheng’s writing is very tight, and the suspense begins to build right from the opening scene. Flashbacks to the girls’ career are woven throughout the story, juxtaposing 18 year-old Sunny, who is traumatized but still strong and determined, to her 15 and 16 year-old ingénue self. The bulk of the book takes place at an isolated training camp for prospective idols which provides a perfectly eerie setting. Ultimately, the world Sunny is navigating feels very insular, but the ending leaves an enticing opening for a sequel that could dive into much more expansive lore and wilder experiences. It looks like that sequel is confirmed and coming out in 2025, titled Beautiful Brutal Bodies! I cannot wait.
Emily: If you like teen romantic comedy, Payal Mehta’s Romance Revenge Plot by Preeti Chhibber is one to preorder now! That’s not even usually my preferred genre, but I stayed up all night to read the entire thing in one go, and I regret nothing. It comes out September 24 from Penguin Random House.
Payal is a smart and funny high school student with good friends and a good relationship with her parents. She’s had a crush on Jon, a cute, friendly white boy for years — only for him to say something thoughtlessly racist. Payal’s course is clear: she makes a deal with her academic rival, Philip Kim, so he’ll help her catch the white guy and teach Jon about racism in the process. I mean, what else could she possibly do?
While the overall romance plot goes how it needs to go and there is an HOA for our beloved heroine, I was pleasantly surprised by a lot in this book. Many romances fail to show their heroines being good friends as well as having supportive friends, so I was glad to see Payal supporting her friends, who had their own lives, and to see that those friends had some relationship issues of their own. They weren’t just foils for Payal’s drama. Also, in terms of the romance, there was a fakeout that successfully faked me out! Nice job, Chhibber. I’ve already recommended Payal Mehta’s Romance Revenge Plot to a number of friends and plan to continue doing so.
Kathryn: I recently discovered The Nation of Plants, a short book from 2019 by the Italian plant neurobiologist Stefano Mancuso. While firmly rooted [Emily: I see what you did there.] in science, this is a work of political philosophy written from the imagined perspective of a representative of the “nation of plants” addressing an assembly of humans. In each of the eight chapters, Mancuso presents advice from the plant world on how acting as responsible stewards of the environment can help us protect human rights, especially as the effects of climate change progress. Mancuso’s writing is gentle and accessible, and The Nation of Plants feels like a refreshing breeze across the landscape of contemporary political discourse. If you’re in the mood for ecological optimism, I’d also like to recommend Mancuso’s Tree Stories, a short essay collection that blends history and botany with a welcome touch of humor.
Jenna: I finished reading True West: Myth and Mending on the Far Side of America by Betsy Gaines Quammen in August. I first learned of this non-fiction book from Anne Helen Petersen’s Substack Culture Study. Quammen, a historian from Montana, explores the myths and narratives that characterize perceptions of the American West, but she doesn’t do this for the distant past, instead she looks at how these myths inform contemporary events and ideologies such as the current American Far Right. The foundations of Quammen’s approach are relationships and in-person dialogue as she seeks to understand people’s beliefs through this lens of the American West. As a native Texan who recently moved to Colorado, the American West is a part of my own identity, and I found this book informative, insightful, and yes, even hopeful.
Masha: I just read Come and Get It by Kiley Reid about an RA at the University of Arkansas and the professor and students on her hall she gets entangled with, and I really enjoyed it. The characters and their world all felt so real, it was like I was back in undergrad in the South. Reid has an incredible ear for naturalistic dialogue. It sounds almost like she was transcribing conversations straight from real life. The ending was a little disappointing in that I realized I liked these characters and was somehow expecting them to do better, even though I really had no reason for that. I found myself thinking about this book for a few days after I finished it, going over everyone’s bad decisions in my head even while reading completely unrelated books.
Emily: The Maid and the Crocodile by Jordan Ifueko came out on August 13th, and I absolutely loved it! Ifueko is excellent at balancing really terrible things happening in the world with characters who can both do good and have fun. This is fantasy escapism for thoughtful progressives.
The Maid and the Crocodile takes place in the same world as Ifueko’s bestselling Raybearer Duology, but with a new protagonist: Small Sade, a young woman trying to make her way in the world with a lot stacked against her. Sade is an orphan with vitiligo, a childhood foot injury that requires her to use a cane, and no money. Others see her as potentially cursed with unluckiness, and thus she is uniquely suited for a job as a curse eater. She can see and manipulate spirit silt around her as she sings and cleans the houses of the wealthy, eradicating both literal dirt and bad vibes. She’s looking for a job as a maid when she gets sucked into the world of a mysterious (and handsome) man who is possibly becoming a Crocodile God and possibly becoming a monster. The story that ensues is a romance steeped in magic, friendships, and politics.
The Maid and the Crocodile is marketed as a book for people who love both Howl’s Moving Castle and Beauty and the Beast, and I can certainly see the influences of both on Sade’s engrossing story. Readers who loved Raybearer and Redemptor will be satisfied by this return to the rich and expansive world of those books with some appearances by characters we already knew, but this book will also serve as a lovely introduction to the world.
Jenna: I recently started reading romance writer Emily Henry. Henry is a bestseller, and I avoided her for a while as I tend to read queer and less mainstream romance writers. I would see the book covers for Henry and think: nah, probably too hetero. But, I was wrong (I mean she does write heterosexual romances, but not that kind). I got two free copies of her books in July, Book Lovers and People We Meet on Vacation, and devoured them both. Her heroines are complicated which creates emotional resonance and ultimately complicates the romance tropes that Henry deftly subverts. I preferred Book Lovers to People We Meet on Vacation, but I already bought Beach Read to finish before the summer is up!
