THE GIRLS WHO GREW BIG, Author Leila Mottley's sophomore novel...worth the wait

THE GIRLS WHO GREW BIG
LEILA MOTTLEY
Alfred A. Knopf (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

On the ALA's 2026 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence longlist.

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: From the author of Oprah's Book Club pick and New York Times bestseller Nightcrawling, here is an astonishing new novel about the joys and entanglements of a fierce group of teenage mothers in a small town on the Florida panhandle.

Adela Woods is sixteen years old and pregnant. Her parents banish her from her comfortable upbringing in Indiana to her grandmother’s home in the small town of Padua Beach, Florida. When she arrives, Adela meets Emory, who brings her newborn to high school, determined to graduate despite the odds; Simone, mother of four-year-old twins, who weighs her options when she finds herself pregnant again; and the rest of the Girls, a group of outcast young moms who raise their growing brood in the back of Simone’s red truck.

The town thinks the Girls have lost their way, but really they are finding it: looking for love, making and breaking friendships, and navigating the miracle of motherhood and the paradox of girlhood.

Full of heart and life and hope, set against the shifting sands of these friends’ secrets and betrayals, The Girls Who Grew Big confirms Leila Mottley’s promise and offers an explosive new perspective on what it means to be a young woman.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: A worthy follow-up to Mottley's debut novel...link to my 4.5* praise for it is at the top...and one that evokes a strong sense of a place both radically different (cosmetically) and exactly the same as Oakland in Nightcrawling. "No matter where you go, there you are" said Peter Weller in the cult movie with the long title I don't want to type.

Kiara's siblings in trappedness in this book are Adela, Simone, and Emory. Not one scintilla of good luck, or often enough good sense, between 'em. This is what really makes the read come alive for me. These three young women are all pregnant, one again, and teenagers. Their little Peyton-Place-y gossip factory, Padua Beach, has written them off. They gravitate together to give mutual aid and comfort, often as the only source of help for each of them. "Family" is usually best found in this story. They're there for each other because there's no one else willing to do what's needed, more than the minimum anyway.

Not one girl had an abortion; not one impregnator has done one damn helpful thing. Welcome to the world rapist Kavanaugh and christian nutball Coney Barrett were elevated far beyond their capabilities to enable.

You know you're not gettin' away from here without hearing about how stories can and should give the reader a dose of empathy expansion and exercise.

I think the most important reason to read *this* book at *this* moment is that the stories of each narrator are told from her PoV. It's all too frequent for a book on this kind of intimate scale, dealing with this intimate, very personal topic, to be narrated from the outside. Instead Author Mottley chose to tell us the stories of these young women in their own eyes, how it looks to them not someone standing aside, not involved with the necessary action of pregnancy. Of course there is a certain, if not penalty then effect on the narrative pacing. Very like pregnancy itself, the first two-thirds of the young mothers' tale is just slow, it sort of meanders and makes its way through their experiences; and then that last third is non-stop. I'm reluctant to quote lines out of their context because there are spoilers, but believe me: Author Mottley delivers on her literary promise.

If you go into the read forearmed, permaybehaps you won't experience the impatient, finger-tapping sense of "get on with it!" that marked me down as a four-star reader. The last ~125 pages will be well worth your time, I assure you.

We're sliding into some dark days. These three young women are your cicerones to a way out: They are the people we need to focus on helping. Knowing how they feel should make that easier. Anf you'll really enjoy a well-told story.

THE STORMLESS SERIES: Stormless #1 & The Fire King #2

STORMLESS (Stormless #1)
NICK STITLE
Blazecrest Publishing (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$6.99 Kindle edition,available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: The world you are about to enter is very different from the one you know.

Auris is a place of storms and chaos where seven violent Tempests rule the land, wreaking havoc across the continent. Only the Summoners, bearers of powers not unlike those of the divine Tempests themselves, have the strength to stand against the tyranny of the storms. Society depends upon the enigmatic Summoner-empowering Crystals for survival... Yet when a Summoner bearing powers that should not exist appears on Arvendon’s doorstep, the world begins spiraling into chaos.

Castien Varic, a common soldier, finds himself in the throes of a coming war. He embarks on a mission with the most legendary of Auris’s Summoners, hoping to discover the truth behind the resurfacing of the Ancient Summoner.

Faelyn Titansworn, heir to the largest of Auris’s empires and one of the most powerful Summoners in the world, finds himself lost in his father’s shadow. When a conspiracy threatens to destroy all that he knows and loves, Faelyn takes it upon himself to save not just his kingdom, but all of Auris.

Asteros Silverglade bears the powers of a god. Two years in the past, he, along with five others of his Sect, uncover the hidden secrets that the world has tried to erase. Yet they soon learn that the mysteries of the baffling event known as the Vanishing—the war that somehow caused over half of Auris’s Summoners to disappear without a trace—run far deeper than they could’ve ever imagined.

These three heroes walk the threads of fate, together weaving an epic tale of magic, war, love, and loss. Together these individuals will forever change Auris’s future. Empires will shatter, Tempests will be Unbound, but destiny will prevail as these heroes face their fated ends.

This is Stormless.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: First novels usually have issues...this one has mostly fantasy-novel ones. Male characters predominate, and they are the ones we get to know. The female characters, therefore, are there to dress the stage up for the males...sadly all too typical in most genres, especially Chosen One fantasy narratives like this. The author, as a counterweight to this, understands pacing quite well. He uses the templates of fantasy that are well known and well developed. This is not a knock, since there really is little reason to mess with a generations-old template unless you have to. Many others do not bother to do so, and they have far less command of their material than Author Stitle does.

And now a word about our author: He is all of seventeen. For someone that age to have the fluency and the grasp of the mechanics of storytelling that he does is *remarkable*. If you need a good reason to read this particular fantasy novel, there it is. Will you come away from the read enlightened and changed by the power of the storytelling? No. Will you be entertained for the trip you take with these dudebros through Auris?

Fantasy fans surely will. I came to this read expecting to be annoyed and frustrated, but willing to try because someone seventeen does not lightly just write a novel. I was ready to applaud him for doing this difficult task, but criticize his output. Here I am, not his natural reader, saying you should give this book your time.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE FIRE KING (Stormless #2)
NICK STITLE
Blazecrest Publishing (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$6.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Immediately following the shocking events of the Solstice, Castien Varic finds himself forced to leave his home city for good. With an unlikely team, Castien sets off for the city of Celes, hoping to find an explanation for Ilyana’s betrayal.

Arvendon’s crown falls to a grieving Faelyn Titansworn as the young king grapples with his father’s death. At the guidance of the treacherous Illusomancer Eithor, Faelyn travels to Cyfalion in a misguided attempt at revenge.

Finally, the Emissary shows Asteros Silverglade the secret histories of Auris, revealing that there is far more to the continent’s past than Asteros had believed.

The Fire King brings the Stormless Series to new heights, elevating the stakes and bringing Auris to life like never before. Surprising twists and riveting action sequences build toward two spectacular battles involving all of Auris’s greatest forces. The world of Stormless will evolve in unimaginable ways, forever changing the rest of the series.

This is The Fire King

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Literally picks up where the previous book leaves off. Feels more like one long book simply cut in half, in which case I say good decision! This afforded me the chance to rest between battles. This is a thing that the characters get little chance to do.

We are still within the male-dominated narrative of Western European high fantasys Chosen One plot. Betrayal, sadness, and loss are the dominant modes for most of the book. I think it bears repeating that Author Stitle is a seventeen-year-old writing sensitively and well about heavy, hard topics that many much older can do less with than he does. This is very impressive inner-directed writing, given the general trope of fantasy for tormented heroes. These men grieve realistically.

Still fully within genre conventions, though. Nothing breaks the mold...but it does not need to when it is molded so well.

A new fantasy author is born. Try him out.

HEARTSTOPPER VOL. ONE, a graphic novel YA coming-of-age coming-out story

HEARTSTOPPER vol. 1
ALICE OSEMAN
Graphix (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$9.99 on Kindle

Everyone else on the planet luuuvs these stories and, on 20 May 2022, Netflix viewers (including me, actually) are getting two more seasons with two cute-enough English boys playing the leads. Enjoy!

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: (from the author's site) Boy meets boy. Boys become friends. Boys fall in love. An LGBTQ+ graphic novel about life, love, and everything that happens in between - for fans of The Art of Being Normal, Holly Bourne and Love, Simon.

Charlie and Nick are at the same school, but they've never met ... until one day when they're made to sit together. They quickly become friends, and soon Charlie is falling hard for Nick, even though he doesn't think he has a chance.

But love works in surprising ways, and Nick is more interested in Charlie than either of them realised.

Heartstopper is about love, friendship, loyalty and mental illness. It encompasses all the small stories of Nick and Charlie's lives that together make up something larger, which speaks to all of us.

This is the first volume of Heartstopper, with more to come.

(from Goodreads) Charlie, a highly-strung, openly gay over-thinker, and Nick, a cheerful, soft-hearted rugby player, meet at a British all-boys grammar school. Friendship blooms quickly, but could there be something more...?

Charlie Spring is in Year 10 at Truham Grammar School for Boys. The past year hasn't been too great, but at least he's not being bullied anymore. Nick Nelson is in Year 11 and on the school rugby team. He's heard a little about Charlie - the kid who was outed last year and bullied for a few months - but he's never had the opportunity to talk to him.

They quickly become friends, and soon Charlie is falling hard for Nick, even though he doesn't think he has a chance. But love works in surprising ways, and sometimes good things are waiting just around the corner...

MY GOODREADS FRIEND STEVEN LOVED IT TO BITS AND IT WAS CHEAP SO WHY NOT?

My Review: The reasons why not:
1) YA...how often have I bemoaned the depressing prevalence of YA books in publishing? It seems that what ain't Fifty Shades of Ptui is Twiphlegm.
2) Coming-of-age...hated that mess in 1972, no fonder of it 49 years on.
3) Coming out...never having been convincingly *in* I'm less emotionally invested in coming *out*.
4) Graphic novel...comic books weren't part of my childhood. My sisters are more like aunts, I have no memories of them before they were teens so, to me, adults. The boys I hung around with weren't comic-booky sorts, they were playscripts and Asimov readers, Star Trek fanfic writers...not superhero-worshipping guys. They could, however, decline the nouns in Elvish from Lord of the Rings and draw maps of Mordor from memory.

So what the hell was this oh-so-precious overbred individual doing here? Making a concerted effort not to die above the neck before dying below it. Must examine and challenge those prejudices lest they clog my mental arteries too far.

It was fun, in a weird way, to make it through the story in 25 minutes, then go back and really look at the art.
They meet after a random seating assignment:

They get interested in each other:

Things move along, Nick discovering that he's got Feelings for another guy and...liking it:

...and Life goes on.

That's where I start moving with the times. I LOVE the message of this story, I think the presentation of the big sporty boy who's really just never so much as thought about boys sexually finding out that falling in love means it's with the guy wearing the body, not the body alone.

Yeah. Absolutely perfectly in tune with the way I think about the world of sex and love. So very much what I'd've given my son!

So, on balance, a yes from me with the caveat that I wouldn't read more at the regular $9.99 price because of my own tastes...and I'd say the art is, at best, serviceable. I always knew at whom I was looking, and had a vague sort of feel for where the scenes were set, but...if I was wearing socks, they wouldn't be blown off. Again, that's a personal taste matter, and the pages above should tell you what you think of the art for yourself.

Smiles, not wreaths of joy, are more than good enough in the Plague Year.

THURSDAY, 1:17 P.M. is a very satisfying summer read as well as a deep pool of subtext

THURSDAY, 1:17PM
MICHAEL LANDWEBER
Coffeetown Press
$13.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Time stopped at 1:17 p.m. on a beautiful Thursday afternoon in Washington, DC. Duck is the only person moving in a world where all other living beings have been frozen into statues in an endless diorama. Duck was already in limbo, having lost his mother to cancer and his father to mental illness. Now, faced with the unimaginable, he approaches his dilemma with the eye of an anthropologist and the heart of a teenager trying to do the right thing under the strangest of circumstances. Ultimately, he realizes that while he doesn’t understand the boundaries between friendship and love, that uncertain territory may be the key to restarting the world.

Says Landweber, “We’ve all wanted to stop time. Thursday, 1:17 p.m. started with the idea that this particular wish could turn into a curse if you weren’t able to start time up again. After the initial thrill of being the last person moving in a frozen world, how would a person deal with the loneliness? Or the temptation to do things that you would never consider doing in the fully functioning world? But what interested me most was turning that potential nightmare into a story about one person finding meaning in a world that makes no sense.”

My Review: This book was offered to me by the publicist, and after many days, I am cheerfully offering my sincere opinion of it: Good stuff!

I think what drew me to the book in the first place was the conceit of a boy living in stopped time after his mother's awful death from cancer, and his father's descent into a world of his own, one so deep that he can't reach out or be reached by anyone. Not even his son. That's isolation! Jacob, known as Duck to friends, experiences something amazing and unprecedented as he escapes home, where his mother's body is being removed: He walks into an intersection without paying attention, in front of a speeding Mercedes that's running a red light, and...nothing. No impact. It's as if time has stopped.

It has. For everyone except Duck. He's alive, he's mobile, he's a free agent in a world of statues. His adventures are just beginning. I'm sure most of us have thought what we'd do in Duck's shoes; his first response is to test the situation, determine if this is a real event by examining the world, experimenting with gravity...still works...and other forces, which don't. ELectromagnetism is halted. Anything relying on electricity like computers and human brains is offline. Water won't flow unless Duck is touching it. More parameters of the social world start to vanish from Duck the longer his situation lasts. He sleeps wherever he is whenever he's tired. It's 1:17p.m. on a lovely sunny day, unchangingly 71 degrees (Fahrenheit)...when to sleep? That's always a problem for those out of step with the rest of the world. And boy is Duck out of step! He runs around naked, playing pranks, redistributing cash from wealthy places like stores and rich mall-goers' wallets, tipping frozen people over, generally acting like a 17-year-old on a bender should. Oh yes, there's all kinds of good stuff he can eat and drink in the restaurants of frozen Washington DC, just so long as he's careful to eat already prepared food, nothing from the kitchen that hasn't been plated. Cooking has, obviously, stopped with the electricity. Natural gas, since it flows mostly like water, isn't moving either.

So here he is, in an abundant world, with easy enough access to all the necessities and luxuries; nothing, then, to do but think. Process the painful past, since he's in an eternal present. He visits his father in the loony bin, trying to make the world start again by using his father's mental disturbance as an oracle. This isn't helpful, but Duck makes the most of it by really digging into his memories of his Dad before the final psychotic break that sent Dad to the bin: Stealing a Duck, the tour bus/boat that's seen in many cities with rivers or big lakes, since he needs an ark for himself and his son to ride out the flood that's coming. Only it doesn't come. A flood of cops, yes; a flood of scared tourists as Dad drives the Duck into the reflecting pool on the Mall. Hence Duck's nickname, a brand of shame until his mother sends him to a private school. Even that wouldn't have helped had it not been for the cool cat in class, Carlos, taking a shine to Duck and enveloping him in the aura of popularity. Duck, Carlos, Mackenzie the uber-rich girl, and Grace the uber-smart and pretty darn rich girl. The Gang of Four. Duck is safe at last.

Nothing stops cancer, but his friends at least keep Duck occupied. They all care about him very much, even Grace and her surgeon parents after they delve into his Mom's condition and give Duck the same news he's already heard: No hope. Terminal. Sad for you, but we will always have a place for you in our home. And he repays them by storming out of their house, blaming them for his mother's death. (I have to think that, as parents of teenagers themselves, they get where he's coming from and hold no grudges.)

It's Grace that Duck wrongs the most, treating her with offhanded discourtesy. He stands her up for her graduation party, he blows her off socially, it's a wonder she doesn't stick a knife in his eye. Mackenzie does much the same thing to him. Carlos is above it all, his diplomat parents having instilled in him the ability to slip unscathed through muddy emotional waters filled with piranhas.

While the world is stopped, Duck looks into his friends' houses and lives: Mackenzie, well, she's not the little lady he'd hoped for; Carlos's parents are in mid-fuck, which clearly isn't something Duck would see any other time or way; Grace is nowhere to be found. Not at her summer internship. Not at home. Duck gets worried enough to check their secret stashes: Lunchboxes, vintage lunchboxes that Grace compelled Duck to buy with her. They agreed to keep their you'll-know-when-it's-time secret stuff in them. He finds Grace's suicide note. It directs him to her family's cabin seventy miles away.

Riding a stolen bike with a kid carrier attached, Duck makes it to West Virginia after riding through a thunderstorm. He takes the chance to get close to a bolt of lightning, not something you're ever likely to be able to do safely when time is unstopped, but who wouldn't want to see what lightning really looks like?

What he finds makes him into the ultimate MacGyver master. Grace has thrown herself out the window, aiming for some spiky rocks. Duck creates a soft landing place for her by stealing every mattress and sofa cushion from all the houses he can see. That way when he touches Grace's foot and she falls, she won't be hurt. And that's now of paramount importance to him because, in addition to her suicide note, Grace also left a packet of Carlos's letters to her, loving, warm letters indicating a relationship Duck knew nothing about between two of his best friends. Grace has clearly told Carlos that her real feelings are for Duck, and Carlos knows just what to do: break off their relationship and go back to being friends. Duck reads the letters and knows, the way you do, that he's in love with Grace and always was.

In the end, Duck does unfreeze the world after he has made as many things right as he can. He is now sorted out, emotionally stable in his grief, and ready to meet life on life's terms. It's a good, satisfying way to end a book. This is very much a summer page-turner with subtleties that you'll have to read for yourself. Enjoyed as a tale, it's fine; looking into the shadows cast by the rich subtexts all through the book makes the experience much richer. But either way, read it soon. It will repay you with interest.

MONGRELS: A Novel by Stephen Graham Jones...one helluva fine YA tale

MONGRELS: A Novel
STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES
William Morrow (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$13.49 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A spellbinding and darkly humorous coming-of-age story about an unusual boy, whose family lives on the fringe of society and struggles to survive in a hostile world that shuns and fears them.

He was born an outsider, like the rest of his family. Poor yet resilient, he lives in the shadows with his aunt Libby and uncle Darren, folk who stubbornly make their way in a society that does not understand or want them. They are mongrels, mixed blood, neither this nor that. The boy at the center of Mongrels must decide if he belongs on the road with his aunt and uncle, or if he fits with the people on the other side of the tracks.

For ten years, he and his family have lived a life of late-night exits and narrow escapes—always on the move across the South to stay one step ahead of the law. But the time is drawing near when Darren and Libby will finally know if their nephew is like them or not. And the close calls they've been running from for so long are catching up fast now. Everything is about to change.

A compelling and fascinating journey, Mongrels alternates between past and present to create an unforgettable portrait of a boy trying to understand his family and his place in a complex and unforgiving world. A smart and innovative story—funny, bloody, raw, and real—told in a rhythmic voice full of heart, Mongrels is a deeply moving, sometimes grisly, novel that illuminates the challenges and tender joys of a life beyond the ordinary in a bold and imaginative new way.

I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

My Review: This novel was born from a short story that Author Stephen collected in After the People Lights Have Gone Off (q.v.). It is a take on the werewolf legend that is, not to beat around the bush, completely and utterly his own and therefore exciting, involving, and deeply relatable. Like his fiction is in general.

What makes this so deeply and deliciously devourable is the way it takes us into the misery of being Othered in our modern Murruhkuh. There's the level of supernatural Otherness, of course; but as a result of this inborn, intrinsic Othering, the people who have it in them are forced to the lowest and least desirable options for survival: Migrant workers are the base of the modern food chain and are treated accordingly. That is, as the slaves they are in all but name. And, if our country doesn't pull its head out of its collective ass, things are about to get a whole lot worse for the Othered.

Different post...sorry. The blizzard coming has me edgy.

What Mongrels does that other werewolf fiction does not do is to make the quotidian decisions of life, of adolescence in particular...what it takes to have a significant other, for example:

Just when I thought I’d figured out what made a girlfriend happy, what would make one stay, I would do something wrong again and that would be that.

“Something wrong, like, I don’t know, like eating their pet goat?” Libby said, without looking over from the game show glowing all our faces light blue.

into the fictional universe's center. That will indeed make a lass's heart colder and her mouth set harder towards one, indeed...and while I'm here, let me note that Author Stephen's choice to use our PoV character without a name (or without one we know) but a shifting series of labels, eg "the reporter", makes his adolescence all the more touchingly obvious and honest. He's himself, he doesn't need a name inside his head; but he's trying on new identites, seeing which ones might fit. Yet everyone else has names, just like our own internal monologues give them. It's another technique to give the adolescent within the reader a strong and lasting handhold into the shifting (!) and unstable reality of not belonging. Of Being Other, being Othered, and knowing in your very deepest parts that you are, in fact, Other.

Not allowing others' Othering of you to take, to resist it internally, to make your Other from a label into an Identity, is one of the central struggles of adolescence. I know because I was Othered by gayness. I know because I watched my entire peer group choose up sides in the culture wars of the 1970s and 1980s, and I was never in the majority. And thus it is that, at *ahem*ty-plus years of age, that I can find myself in this story of a werewolf whose membership in even his birth community is not assured...he hasn't fully made it. He is just...hangin' there.

If blood and gore are hard-pass material for you, by no means should you try this read...or any other Stephen Graham Jones read. If you're thinking this story will scare you and keep you awake, I don't think you need to worry. The atmosphere of dread is situational. It's a spice used to make this a rare and precious dish not another Wednesday-night stew. I think the most important question to ask yourself before picking it up is, "how much longer do I want to ignore how many wonderful stories there are that I think I won't care about?" Break your cycle here. Learn about the reality of Othering and its huge personal and societal costs without being smacked around by Facts. Let the Truth work her mystical wiles on you instead.