Review: Noteworthy by Riley Redgate

Noteworthy by Riley Redgate (eProof) - It’s the start of Jordan Sun’s junior year at the Kensington-Blaine Boarding School for the Performing Arts. Unfortunately, she’s an Alto 2, which—in the musical theatre world—is sort of like being a vulture in the wild: She has a spot in the ecosystem, but nobody’s falling over themselves to express their appreciation. So it’s no surprise when she gets shut out of the fall musical for the third year straight.

Then the school gets a mass email: A spot has opened up in the Sharpshooters, Kensington’s elite a cappella octet. Worshipped ... revered ... all male. Desperate to prove herself, Jordan auditions in her most convincing drag, and it turns out that Jordan Sun, Tenor 1, is exactly what the Sharps are looking for. From Goodreads.

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A Diversified Bookcase with Heidi Heilig and The Ship Beyond Time

A Diversified Bookcase is a feature where authors of diverse YA recommend other diverse YA novels by other authors to their characters. Today the wonderful Heidi Heilig, author of the incredible The Girl From Everywhere and the recently released sequel, The Ship Beyond Time, is stopping by to recommend books the to crew of the time-travelling ship, The Temptation.


As someone who wrote an entire series about traveling the wide world in a time-hopping pirate ship, it should come as no surprise that I adore diverse books-- especially those written by #ownvoices. After all, every seasoned traveler knows that locals make the best guides.

My own characters in The Ship Beyond Time are a diverse bunch, and with all the amazing #ownvoices books coming out this year, I have some great recommendations for those long midnight watches when the sea is quiet and the wind is calm.

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Review: Seven Ways We Lie by Riley Redgate

Seven Ways We Lie by Riley Redgate (eProof) - The juniors at Paloma High School all have their secrets, whether it's the confident young woman who's done with being slut shamed by her classmates, the closeted pansexual who only cares about his drug-dealing profits, or the neurotic genius who's planted the seed of a school scandal. But it's seemingly perfect Juniper Kipling who has the farthest to fall. After Juniper accidentally exposes her secret at a party, her fate dalls into the hands of the other six sinners, bringing them into one another's orbits. All seven are guilty of something. Together, they could save one another from their temptations - or be ruined by them. From the press release.

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Discussion: Why Hyping Books Because of Content Can Be a Good Thing

The lovely and wonderful Cait of Paper Fury started off the year with a great discussion, asking Is Book Hype Trully All That Bad? It's a really great post full of Cait's usual humour, but it also makes some really great points, especially about how everyone is different and we should read what we want, but not to necessarily ignore the hype. However, there was one point Cait made that I would like to look at in more detail. In her post, Cait makes a list of pros and cons for hyped books, and one the cons is:

"It’s NOT being hyped because it’s a “good book”…it’s being hyped because it fills a hole in the book world. I think this is monstrously unfair. And I’ve definitely seen it happen! Oh this book features a blind, asexual, ethnic protagonist? HYPE IT. IT MUST BE GOOD. Um, excuse me but: not necessarily. It bugs me when a book gets hyped because of content, not good storytelling!"
(All emphasis in the quote is Cait's, not mine.)

Now, as Cait pointed out, not all books are going to be liked by everyone. So just because a book is hyped doesn't mean you'll like it. But I do think this kind of hype is important.

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