So many good ones are out tomorrow!! I’m sorry to be the one to tell you that from here until July there are like 5-10 new books every week you’ll want to read and I just don’t see any way around it.

If You’re Out There, by Katy Loutzenhiser 
Goodreads ¦ Amazon
Series?: No
Publisher:  Balzer + Bray
Release Date: March 5, 2019
Length: 320 pages
Source: ARC
Format: Paperback
Times Read: Once
Rating: 5/5

Mini Review: If you were a reader of my (short-lived) previous blog, I did a full review of this one that is now unfortunately lost forever. In short, I loved it. The basic premise: what would it take to make you give up on a friend that you know would only stop talking to you if they couldn’t? We’ve all had friends ghost us, but some of us have a friend that you know, you know, would never choose to cut off contact. Priya is that friend to Zan, so when Priya stops talking to her, Zan can’t accept that. Everyone else believes she’s fine, that Zan just needs to move on, but she knows, she just knows this isn’t right. When new kid Logan shows up in Spanish class, he believes her. And he’s in. He wants to help her. They have amazing and hilarious chemistry, great family relationships, and the characters at the restaurant where they both work are wonderful. One of the best parts is that this whole book is actually a thriller disguised as a contemporary.  

“‘You probably shouldn’t call children bitches.’
‘Eh,’ I wave him off. ‘Kids are just small people. They can’t all be nice.'”

“If you were wondering? All the adults around you pretending they have their shit together? They don’t.”

You Asked for Perfect, by Laura Silverman
Goodreads ¦ Amazon
Series?: No
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Release Date: March 5, 2019
Length: 288 pages
Source: ARC
Format: Paperback
Times Read: Once
Rating: 3.75/5 

Mini Review: I took some AP classes in high school, but NOT the way these kids did. I only took them in classes I really enjoyed, like English and History, and I took them mainly to pad my GPA. My school weighted our classes (in AP, an A was a 5, a B was a 4, etc.), so I used them to help with my truly terrible math grades and give me an overall GPA high enough to stay in National Honor Society. Does that sound calculating? It sort of was, but nowhere near what the kids trying to make top ten or valedictorian had to do to stay tenths of a point ahead. It’s insanity, and we do this to children. Even if the parents aren’t applying pressure, the kids do it to themselves, because all the matters is college.
There is a super cute LGBTQ romance and great Jewish rep, but I was SO STRESSED the whole time even though hi I’ve been out of high school for lots of years. I felt like I was right back there again, worrying so much about taking the SAT and if my college applications were well-rounded enough. 

“I think of all my classmates, bent over textbooks, shoulders strained under heavy backpacks, eyes hooded from lack of sleep. We’re all in it together, whether we want to be or not.”

Field Notes on Love, by Jennifer E. Smith
Goodreads ¦ Amazon
Series?: No
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Release Date: March 5, 2019
Length: 288 pages
Source: ARC
Format: Paperback
Times Read: Once
Rating: 4/5

Mini Review: No one writes almost-didn’t-meet like Jennifer E. Smith does. Mae and Hugo are brought together only when Hugo’s girlfriend breaks up with him and he needs someone else with the same name to take her place on a cross-country train trip. Mae is in need of some adventure, so she replies to his ad and bada-bing, days later they’re in love. This is a storyline that I know some people have trouble with, but I personally enjoy these sped-up trip timelines. 
Hugo being a sextuplet is a story I’ve wanted to read for so long, and I wish we had gotten to hear a little more about them. I was also really interested in hearing how his mom’s blogging affected them. I’ve long wondered what that might be like for the kids as they grow up, especially as we get to a time now where those kids are actually becoming adults. 

“‘For starters, I don’t even know what my dreams are. All I know is that I feel…restless. And I’d love to do something different, you know? Something new.’
‘Hugo?’
‘Yes?’
‘Who ever told you that doesn’t count as a dream?'”

Daisy Jones & the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Goodreads ¦ Amazon
Series?: No
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Release Date: March 5, 2019
Length: 368 pages
Source: ARC
Format: Paperback
Times Read: Once
Rating: 4.5/5

Mini Review: I am such a fan of this author and was so excited to get an ARC of her latest book! It’s told as an oral history of a fictional band’s creation and sudden split. It was a little hard to get into at first because there are so many characters and you don’t know yet how they’ll all fit together (but they will). I kept waiting for something huge to happen, some massive THING that comes in to ruin it all, but it’s just so much regular life, heightened. It’s making a band back in the 60’s & 70’s, before there was paparazzi and social media, before the internet even existed. It was a look at the inner workings of a band and how they function–the album writing, recording, music producing, and touring–for a group of people that truly loved music, not fame. You’ll forget that you’re not reading a real tell-all memoir, and you’ll flip to the back to reference the song lyrics often. And there’s a small twist at the end, one thing I hadn’t even thought to wonder about, that was just so totally brilliant. There were so many quotes I pulled from this one that spoke to my very soul that I can’t put them all here. Many of them are from Karen, a quiet little badass I didn’t know I would love so much. But here are several of them. 

“I am not a muse. I am the somebody. End of fucking story.”

“Men often think they deserve a sticker for treating women like people.”

“I always knew kids weren’t in the cards for me. I think it’s a feeling you get. I think you have it in your heart or you don’t. And you can’t put it in your heart if it’s not there. And you can’t pull it out of your heart if it is.”

“I guess I’m saying…if you redeem yourself, then believe in your own redemption.”

“Showing up on time is something she does by accident.”
(IT ME! Sorry to all the on-time people out there. If I’m on time, something definitely went wrong)