Category: Riot Grrrl!

Maeve is about to turn 18, and her greatest wish is to attend Furlympia, a furcon where she can finally fully realize her inner fursona–MauveCat, “a cozy warm pink and fuchsia striped” cat “with shining amethyst eyes,” and connect with her dozens of online furry friends IRL. There’s only one thing standing in her way: her compulsive and controlling mom. After her grandmother died of cancer, Maeve’s mom turned her grief into hoarding. And when her dad couldn’t take it anymore and her parents divorced, Maeve decided to stay with her mom to try and keep the unrelenting piles of “Stuff” at bay. But she’s slowly being smothered by her mom’s anxiety and the mounds of laundry, junk mail, shopping bags and dollar store gadgets that seem to multiply daily, no matter how many bags of trash she hauls to the curb. Now her guilty dad has offered her the ultimate graduation present: a fully paid trip to Furlympia, complete with hotel room and spending money. All she has to do is find and ride and figure out a way to convince her mom to let her go. But when her mom says no, Maeve decides to go anyway, never imagining that the fallout might be way more than either she or MauveCat are emotionally equipped to handle.

This deceptively cute looking read is actually a fascinating and informative glimpse into furries and hoarders, two diametrically opposed communities that each have their own sets of rules and norms. One is a healthy communal expression of fandom, inner peace and joy, the other a solitary disorder that causes fear and anxiety. Author Jessica Kara digs into both fearlessly, and the results are furtastic. As a veteran conference goer myself, I absolutely loved the descriptions of the furcon, and connected immediately with the gratifying feeling of being surrounded by many of my own people (in my case, librarians). Do not let this MauveCat get away, pick up a copy of Furry Faux Paw TODAY! (Posted with abject apologies for the puns and bad rhymes:)

Sometimes seventeen year old Izzy feels like her life is one big bad joke. Her power parents are too busy to spend time with her. Her older sibs treat her like an afterthought, if they notice her at all. Her boyfriend Alex pays almost too much attention to her, constantly texting and asking where she is and what she’s doing. Izzy can’t decide if his attention is flattering or claustrophobic. And she has no one to talk to about any of this since her best friend Naomi dropped her after she started dating Alex. It’s almost enough to make a girl…become a stand up comedian? Unassuming Izzy is the least likely person to step into the spotlight. But when she accidentally stumbles into a Chicago comedy club while dodging her stalker boyfriend, she discovers that all the secret thoughts she has, but never gives voice to, are actually funny when blurted into a microphone. She even picks up a new crew of older friends, who think she’s in college (and she doesn’t bother to correct them.) Suddenly Izzy has a gratifying new way to express all the emotions she’s stuffed down for so long, and it feels AMAZING! But how long can she maintain the web of lies she’s been telling to Alex, her family and new friends in order to feed her stand-up habit? It’s not long before her two worlds collide, and Izzy is forced to step out from behind her stage persona and admit the hard truth about who she really is. If you enjoyed The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel or Crashing, then you will race through Izzy’s side-splitting story faster than you could re-binge either of those shows! Hilarious and refreshingly honest, This Will Be Funny Someday is about learning how to stand up for yourself in life, love and comedy, no matter who is heckling you from the back row.

Sixteen year old Lucy Clark feels like she is always apologizing for something–for taking up space, for not being able to get over her grandmother’s death, but mostly for resenting her parents, who have created a self-help empire with no room for their own daughter. Lucy had always lived with her Nana while her parents toured to promote their business. Now that Nana has died, Lucy is forced to attend a second rate Texas boarding school, where she is tortured by mean girls until she finally pushes back–a little too hard. Before she knows it, Lucy is suspended and sent to live in New York City to live with her largely absent cousin and set up with a part-time job caring for a “mentally impaired” elderly woman. But instead of being frail and confused, Edith Fox is smart, stylish and a whiz when it comes to all things plants and gardens. She just has one problem: someone is trying to murder her and she needs Lucy to help her discover who it is. As Lucy starts to investigate, she becomes convinced that if she can get to the bottom of Edith’s wild assertions, “It would prove I wasn’t bad. I could be trusted. I could find out the truth about myself. About who I really was.” Maybe by solving Edith’s mystery, Lucy will also solve the mystery of how she has ended up so far away from the person she wants to be. This cozy, quirky puzzler of a novel, set in a soft-focus fairy tale Manhattan and full of fascinating flower lore, is the perfect summer read for anyone wondering how they fit in: with their friend group, their family or a post-pandemic world that is suddenly wide open and full of possibilities.

Sixteen-year-old Juniper Jade dreams of two things that feel like they will never happen: getting kissed by a boy and being vaccinated. While meeting floppy-haired, brown-eyed Nico at the public library takes care of the kissing part, the vaccinations are another story. Juniper’s parents believe in organic food, homeschooling and no immunizations for Juniper and her younger siblings Poppy and Sequoia. They think that childhood vaccines for diseases like measles and whooping cough cause autism in kids, and come laden with aluminum, formaldehyde and mercury poisoning. When Juniper contracts a bad case of the measles that lands her in the hospital, her parents still won’t budge, even though doctors try to explain to them that their fears are not only unfounded, but completely false. Then Juniper learns that a baby in their small southern California town has died after contracting measles. Juniper is devastated, convinced that the baby’s death is her fault. She vows that she’s going to do whatever it takes to get vaccinated, even if she has to sue her parents to do it. But that is easier said than done, and soon Juniper finds herself tangled up in a confusing legal mess. When Nico and his mom step in and offer to help, Juniper decides move forward with her plan, even though she is terrified about what it could mean for both her family and her future.

Author Marisa Reichardt’s sophomore novel couldn’t be more timely, as many people are weighing the potential consequences of getting the COVID-19 vaccine after a long, difficult year of national quarantine. Juniper’s story is nuanced, neither portraying her parents as villains nor her as a perfect hero. But while the issue may be complicated, the science is clear: vaccinations save lives, and the side effects are rarely worse than impact of NOT receiving the shot! For those who want more information after reading Juniper’s fictional story, check out these links:

https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/infant-and-toddler-health/in-depth/vaccines/art-20048334

https://www.doh.wa.gov/YouandYourFamily/Immunization/Children/ChildhoodFAQ

https://www.vaccines.gov/get-vaccinated/for_parents/five_reasons

Sydney is leaving boarding school for the summer to visit her movie star mother, Lila Shore, in San Francisco. Lila can be fun, but she can also be needy, insecure and mean. Sydney hopes this visit will be different, but already she has “a bad feeling, even before I left home. A strong one.” Her feelings are confirmed when she meets Lila’s new boyfriend, Jake. He’s domineering, aggressive and defensive, especially when Sydney starts asking about the huge framed artworks that mysteriously appear and disappear from the rented luxury beach house they’re staying in. Both Lila and Jake also make regular, uncomfortable comments about Sydney’s appearance, that she “looks a lot older” than fifteen, and that she’s acting like “Miss Sexy” in that “tight shirt.” Sydney, who “wasn’t in that part of womanhood yet where your body was something you were supposed to keep one nervous eye on all the time, like a bank balance, ” is quickly disgusted by both of them, especially after they start fighting when they think she’s gone to bed. Thank god for Nicco, the smart, artistic boy she meets at the beach. Her blossoming romance with him just might save her summer. But why is there always an unmarked black car parked across the street from the beach house? Why does Lila suddenly have all these bruises that she tries to hide with makeup? When Sydney finally learns the answers to those questions, her world shatters and nothing will ever be the same again–between her and Lila, between her and Nicco, but mostly between the woman she is now and the girl she used to be.

I couldn’t put down this riveting novel that thoroughly explodes the myths and stereotypes surrounding female sexuality and power. Sydney constantly questions how she feels about her body and her appearance, wondering if being attractive to men is a strength or a liability. “Sexy was something you wanted to be. Sexy was something you should never be.” This is a book about finding your voice, taking back your power and, to paraphrase Margaret Atwood, never letting the patriarchy grind you down. You will find yourself framing the world in a different way after reading Girl, Unframed.