Today, YA Highway wants to know What was the best book you read in May? I checked my Kindle list and found I downloaded four ebooks in May (I’m not as prodigious a reader as some). Of the four, I read and very much enjoyed two, had to struggle through one and never finished it and barely peeked into the fourth (it was a freebie that turned out to just not be my cup of tea).
But of the two I read and enjoyed, the Latte Rebellion especially turned out to be my cup of, uh, coffee. It was such a fun book with a great multi-cultural cast. What starts as a money-making lark for the main character, Asha, turns into a full-fledged cause for mixed race kids. Her relationship with her best friend, Carey, gets dented along the way, but Asha’s character arc is believable and powerful.
Although the tone of this book is light and the opposite of angst-ridden, it covers some pretty significant topics. One of the other characters, Roger, keeps asking Asha, Why don’t you just join the Asian club? In other words, although Asha is a mix of ethnicities, Roger wants to pigeon-hole her into just one so she can be categorized. But that’s the whole point the Latte Rebellion (the movement within the book) is trying to get across. That people can’t always be easily pigeon-holed.
It occurs to me that there is another book I might just have finished at the start of May and it really deserves mention. Vodnik from my fellow Lee and Low/Tu Books author, Bryce Moore, is a YA boycentric adventure so unique I doubt you’ve read anything quite like it. Unless, of course, you’re steeped in Slovak and Roma fairy tales. It’s an exciting, page-turning read, full of the unexpected.
So there you are, my reads for May. What have you been enjoying?