The Music of What Happens

Konigsberg, Bill. The Music of What Happens. 2019. 338p. ISBN 9781338215502. Available at FIC KON on the library shelves.

Max is your typical teen. He loves video games, plays football, enjoys cooking, and is popular at school. He's also gay and out, and it is not a problem for anyone in his life. With summer, Max needs a job and would rather not work at the bank with his mother. When he helps a woman struggling with her food truck, he jumps at the opportunity to cook in a truck.

Jordan, although also gay, is the complete opposite of Max. Gay but uncomfortable, a drama queen of the first order, and most often lost in his own wallowing misery, Jordan can't believe that he has to spend the summer running his father's old food truck with his mother instead of spending time with his girl friends looking for the perfect boy. 

Finding themselves working in the truck in hot Mesa, Arizona, Max at first can't believe that Jordan is an employee, let alone the boss. Jordan is impulsive, doesn't know how to cook, and puts his foot in his mouth more often than not. Jordan finds Max aggravating with his sunny disposition and his common sense approach. They soon realize that they need each other, however, and an attraction between the two of them develop as they spend days figuring out how to turn an old food truck into a profit-making machine. 

However, both of them harbor dangerous secrets that could upend their lives. Jordan's mother is literally falling apart, gambling away the little money they have. Max's secret is even darker, as he was raped by a college student during his first sexual encounter and remains traumatized by this experience. Will they be able to move beyond their issues to really bond with each other?

Told from the alternating perspectives of Max and Jordan, their relationship is realistically portrayed and feature intense feelings, misunderstanding, and the confusion that arise out of first love. Fans of realistic fiction and of LGBTQ+ literature will appreciate the efforts that both Jordan and Max end up investing in trying to make the food truck, and themselves, work!

Fresh Ink: An Anthology

Giles, Lamar. Fresh Ink: An Anthology. 2018. 198p. ISBN 9781524766283. Available at FIC GIL on the library shelves.

The number of books written by authors who do not hail from a White Anglo-Saxon American heritage has increased over the last twenty years, but it remains low enough that many teens of diverse backgrounds still cannot find stories that showcase people like them as other than stereotypical sidekicks. Fresh Ink stands as a concerted effort to increase the number of stories available, not only for these readers but for everyone.  Twelve stories of all types are told, with the common theme of having the main character as someone not often portrayed in young adult literature.

In Eraser Tattoo, Shay and Dante have loved each other since they were five and in the same class together. Shay is now moving away from Brooklyn to North Carolina, and Dante's world is collapsing. In Meet Cute, Two girls meet at the Denver Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention. Nic is cosplaying a gender-flipped Sulu from Star Trek, while Tamia is dressed as an African-American version of Agent Scully. Both are attracted to each other, but neither wants to volunteer that they are queer. Don't Pass Me By features a Native-American boy who attends school off the reservation, and has trouble recognizing himself in the White culture that surrounds him. In Be Cool for Once, the main character is Muslim, and she confesses her love to a boy at a concert.

Tags is a one-act play that discuss how four boys died. In Why I Learned to Cook, a Persian-American girl is wondering about how to introduce her girlfriend to her grandmother. A Stranger at the Bochinche tells a science fiction story about a stolen book and the people who want to retrieve it. A young artist in A Boy's Duty has left the farm life and hopes to join the Navy and fight Nazis, and finds refuge in a big city cafe. Racial slurs undermine the college experience of an Asian-American girl in One Voice. Paladin/Samurai is an illustrated short story about boys involved in a roleplaying game and the girl next door. Tommy just came out as a boy to his swim team, and find himself in the boy's locker room for the first time in Catch, Pull, Drive. Finally, in Super Human, X, a superhero, has decided to destroy the world unless someone can talk him out of it.

Each of these stories feature a message that is most often well executed about race and belonging. Fans of paths less traveled will appreciate the range of emotions and stories featured and will connect all of them to the humanity that we all share.

Release

Ness, Patrick. Release. 2017. 277p. ISBN 9780062403193. Available as an eBook from Overdrive.

With his senior year starting soon, Adam Thorn is looking forward to finally leaving his small Washington State town and finding other people like him. Coming from a deeply religious family, Adam has known most of his life that he was gay. His father, a local preacher, does not want to hear of this and studiously ignores his son's many hints. Unlike his older brother who is the family's golden boy, Adam is charismatic but filled with anxiety and worries about the past, the present, and the future.

Today is not going to be a normal day. There is a party in the evening celebrating Enzo's departure. Enzo, Adam's first boyfriend, has been a large part of his life and Adam's first love and first sexual encounter. But their relationship fizzled, and Enzo dumped Adam. Adam hasn't quite gotten over this rejection, but good things came out of it because he met Linus, and the two of them are now in love. Adam's best friend in the whole world, Angela, is also leaving soon, going aboard for a year to study.

In one day, Adam gets sexually harassed at work by his boss and is fired for not accepting his boss's proposition. His brother got an African-American girl pregnant. His father studiously ignores the fact that Adam is gay. With his life falling apart, Adam doesn't know where to turn or what the best choices are for his life.

At the same time, the spirit of a girl who was killed by her friend who was high on drugs has been accidentally captured by the queen of the world beyond, and now she is driven to explore her death and discover what truly happened to her. Like Adam, she is bound to this world, and like him she needs to be freed from what is holding her back. As the two stories merge, can they both be released from their pain and misery?

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda

Albertalli, Becky. Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda. 2015. 303p. ISBN 978-0-06-234867-8. Available at FIC ALB on the library shelves.

Simon is gay. When he was younger he thought it might just be a phase, but now he knows for sure. What he doesn’t know is how to come out and break it to his family and friends. It’s not that he’s afraid of what they will think, or of what the rest of the school will think, per se, but rather that it’s just going to be awkward. And possibly dramatic. And it could change everything. His solace, and the only person he has shared this information with, is a teenager he has only meet online, named Blue. Like Simon, Blue is also gay and dealing with how to announce it to his family. Both of them go to the same high school, but because they don’t share names of friends and other revealing details they are able to remain anonymous. They share messages about their lives and the struggles they encounter.

Simon couldn’t wait to check his emails, however, so he used the school library’s computer, and forgot to log out. Martin, the juniors’ class clown, begins to blackmail Simon into getting a date with Addy, one of his best friends. Simon doesn’t want to do it, but he doesn’t want to be outed out by Martin, and, more importantly, doesn’t want people looking for Blue, so he goes along with it.

Unfortunately, Martin reveals Simon’s sexual orientation to the whole school after Simon is unable to secure a date for him, and bullying starts in earnest. Even the theatre, Simon’s refuge, offers no relief. His communications with Blue are the only things he looks forward to, but even these are getting strained. And his group of friends is breaking apart before his very eyes. For someone who doesn’t like to be in the limelight, Simon must now step on life’s stage and become its star in his own performance, before he wrecks everything with his friends and misses a chance at love with Blue.