Category: Brain injury/neurological disorder

The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy

By Mackenzi Lee

Sequel to The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue.

Publisher’s description:

A year after an accidentally whirlwind grand tour with her brother Monty, Felicity Montague has returned to England with two goals in mind—avoid the marriage proposal of a lovestruck suitor from Edinburgh and enroll in medical school. However, her intellect and passion will never be enough in the eyes of the administrators, who see men as the sole guardians of science.

But then a window of opportunity opens—a doctor she idolizes is marrying an old friend of hers in Germany. Felicity believes if she could meet this man he could change her future, but she has no money of her own to make the trip. Luckily, a mysterious young woman is willing to pay Felicity’s way, so long as she’s allowed to travel with Felicity disguised as her maid.

In spite of her suspicions, Felicity agrees, but once the girl’s true motives are revealed, Felicity becomes part of a perilous quest that leads them from the German countryside to the promenades of Zurich to secrets lurking beneath the Atlantic.

Representation:

Sexuality:
Asexual and aromantic: Felicity
Lesbian: Sim

Sim is Black and Muslim.

Ownvoices: Queer

Anger Is a Gift

By Mark Oshiro

Six years ago, Moss Jefferies’ father was murdered by an Oakland police officer. Along with losing a parent, the media’s vilification of his father and lack of accountability has left Moss with near crippling panic attacks.

Now, in his sophomore year of high school, Moss and his fellow classmates find themselves increasingly treated like criminals by their own school. Despite their youth, the students decide to organize and push back against the administration.

When tensions hit a fever pitch and tragedy strikes, Moss must face a difficult choice: give in to fear and hate or realize that anger can actually be a gift.

Publisher’s description:

Moss Jeffries is many things—considerate student, devoted son, loyal friend and affectionate boyfriend, enthusiastic nerd.

But sometimes Moss still wishes he could be someone else—someone without panic attacks, someone whose father was still alive, someone who hadn’t become a rallying point for a community because of one horrible night.

And most of all, he wishes he didn’t feel so stuck.

Moss can’t even escape at school—he and his friends are subject to the lack of funds and crumbling infrastructure at West Oakland High, as well as constant intimidation by the resource officer stationed in their halls. That was even before the new regulations—it seems sometimes that the students are treated more like criminals.

Something will have to change—but who will listen to a group of teens?

When tensions hit a fever pitch and tragedy strikes again, Moss must face a difficult choice: give in to fear and hate or realize that anger can actually be a gift.

Winner of the Schneider Family Book Award for Teens (2019) and Lambda Literary Award Nominee for LGBTQ Children’s/Young Adult (2019).

Ownvoices: for queer, nonbinary, and Latinx representation.

Wonderful (French)

By Carmine Sanden

Carmine is but an ordinary teenager. He doesn’t have any powers, isn’t the heir to a magical kingdom, and isn’t usually paid attention to. He’s not even at ease in his own body, and his family is far from ideal.  And yet he is going to live a great adventure.

When Carmine is unwillingly taken along into shenanigans that have been going on for a millennia, when real life and dreams mix up and when his favorite character comes to life, he will need to face frightening dangers and journey through many fantasy worlds in the depths of his imagination. To free themselves from the hold of the cruel and dangerous Jabberwocky, Carmine and Starlight Blade will fight a battle that will change their lives, and maybe meet their end…unless Kanzer, a strange persona stuck between worlds, is able to help them.

Will they save Wonderland from destruction?

Genre: Fantasy, Contemporary

Representation:
Gender:
Trans boys: Carmine
Genderqueer/Non-binary: Starlight Blade
Cis boys: Kanzer

Sexual Orientation:
Pansexual: Carmine, Starlight Blade
Asexual: Kanzer

Romantic Orientation:
Panromantic: Carmine, Starlight Blade

Race/Ethnicity:
Not explicitly addressed

Location: Europe (France), Fantasy World based on a Western country

Disability:
Carmine has depression and PTSD. He’s likely autistic (though this isn’t addressed). Starlight Blade has PTSD.

Trigger Warnings:
Transphobia: Carmine’s familial environment doesn’t recognize his gender identity. Jabberwocky misgenders him on purpose, several times throughout.  Abuse: Emotional and physical. Violence: Swordfights, abuse beatings, blood. Some exaggerated violence.

Other notes:  This book is only available in French.

Ownvoices: Transgender representation, mental illness.

Stake Sauce: The Secret Ingredient is Love, No Really

By RoAnna Sylver

Publisher’s Description:

Once a firefighter, now a mall cop, Jude is obsessed with the incident that cost him his leg and his friend, five years ago. He is convinced a terrifying vampire was involved, and that they haunt Portland’s streets. Every night he searches for proof and is about ready to give up… until he runs into one—a fuzzy, pink-haired vampire named Pixie. Cuddly, not-at-all scary, Pixie needs his help against his much deadlier kin.

Check out this book and more on our best of list for books with aromantic characters.

Genre: Fantasy

Representation:
Gender:
Trans boys: Jude
Cis boys: Jasper, Pixie
Cis girls: Eva

Sexual and Romantic Orientation:
Jude is graysexual and grayromantic.  Eva is asexual and aromantic

Race/Ethnicity:
White

Trigger Warnings: PTSD

Additional Notes:

Ownvoices: asexual, aromantic

Touching Snow

By M. Sindy Felin

Karina recently emigrated from Haiti and is struggling to adjust to the United States when her severely abusive stepfather nearly kills her sister. She develops a relationship with Rachel as she navigates family trying to protect her stepfather, school, bullying, language, and more.

Publisher’s Description:

Karina has plenty to worry about on the last day of seventh grade: finding three Ds and a C on her report card again, getting laughed at by everyone again, being sent to the principal—again. But she’s too busy dodging the fists of her stepfather and looking out for her sisters to deal with school. This is the story of a young girl coming of age amidst the violent waters that run just beneath the surface of suburbia—a story that has the courage to ask: How far will you go to protect the ones you love?

Genre: Historical Fiction (1970s)

Representation:
Gender:
Cis girls: Karina

Sexual Orientation:
Lesbian/Queer: Karina

Romantic Orientation:
Not explicitly mentioned.

Race/Ethnicity:
Haitian: Karina

Trigger Warnings:
Karina’s stepfather is very abusive.

Ownvoices: Ownvoices for Haitian rep.

Beauty of the Broken

By Tawni Waters

In this violent, painful novel, Mara begins a relationship with Xylia despite a homophobic, abusive father who has caused permanent brain damage to her brother. She is raped and accidentally accuses her best friend, who is a Native American of unspecified tribe.

Publisher’s Description

In this lyrical, heartwrenching story about a forbidden first love, a teen seeks the courage to care for another girl despite her small town’s bigotry and her father’s violent threats.

Growing up in conservative small-town New Mexico, fifteen-year-old Mara was never given the choice to be different. Her parents—an abusive, close-minded father and a detached alcoholic mother—raised Mara to be like all the other girls in Barnaby: God-fearing, churchgoing, and straight. Mara wants nothing to do with any of it. She feels most at home with her best friend and older brother, Iggy, but Iggy hasn’t been the same since their father beat him and put him in the hospital with a concussion.

As Mara’s mother feeds her denial with bourbon and Iggy struggles with his own demons, Mara finds an escape with her classmate Xylia. A San Francisco transplant, Xylia is everything Mara dreams of being: free-spirited, open, wild. The closer Mara and Xylia become, the more Mara feels for her—even though their growing relationship is very much forbidden in Barnaby. Just as Mara begins to live a life she’s only imagined, the girls’ secret is threatened with exposure and Mara’s world is thrown into chaos.

Mara knows she can’t live without Xylia, but can she live with an entire town who believes she is an abomination worse than the gravest sin?

Genre: Contemporary

Representation:
Gender:
Cis girls: Mara, Xylia

Sexual  Orientation:
Lesbian/Queer: Mara, Xylia

Romantic Orientation:
Homoromantic: Mara, Xylia

Race/Ethnicity:
White: Mara
Indigenous: Henry

Disability:
Mara’s father  has caused permanent brain damage to her brother

Trigger warnings:
Sexual assault/rape, physical assault, domestic violence, being outed involuntarily, homophobia, murder, drowning kittens

 

The Unintentional Time Traveler

By Everett Maroon

Every time Jack Bishop has a seizure, hallucinations often accompany it. When he wakes up in a past era in the body of a girl, Jacqueline, he assumes it’s a weird vision. Then it happens again. And again. And soon it’s hard to tell which life is more real, which body feels more right, and who Jack actually loves.

Publisher’s Description:

Fifteen-year-old Jack Bishop has mad skills with cars and engines, but knows he’ll never get a driver’s license because of his epilepsy. Agreeing to participate in an experimental clinical trial to find new treatments for his disease, he finds himself in a completely different body—that of a girl his age, Jacqueline, who defies the expectations of her era. Since his seizures usually give him spazzed out visions, Jack presumes this is a hallucination. Feeling fearless, he steals a horse, expecting that at any moment he’ll wake back up in the clinical trial lab. When that doesn’t happen, Jacqueline falls unexpectedly in love, even as the town in the past becomes swallowed in a fight for its survival. Jack/Jacqueline is caught between two lives and epochs, and must find a way to save everyone around him as well as himself. And all the while, he is losing time, even if he is getting out of algebra class.

Genre: Science Fiction, Historical

Representation:
Gender:
The gender and sexuality in this book are very hard to label. The closest labels that work are genderqueer/non-binary and bisexual/biromantic. 

Race/Ethnicity:
White: Jack/Jacqueline

Disability:
Jack is diagnosed with epilepsy. 

Trigger Warnings:
Medical procedures
Fire

Ownvoices: Ownvoices for trans rep and epilepsy.

Like Water

By Rebecca Podos

Vanni was planning to leave New Mexico right after graduation, but when her dad is diagnosed with Parkinson’s, she must put her plans on hold. She feels stuck and discouraged, but then she meets Leigh, who starts out as a friend but becomes something more.

Publisher’s Description: 

“A gorgeously written and deeply felt literary young adult novel of identity, millennial anxiety, and first love, from the widely acclaimed author of The Mystery of Hollow Places

In Savannah Espinoza’s small New Mexico hometown, kids either flee after graduation or they’re trapped there forever. Vanni never planned to get stuck—but that was before her father was diagnosed with Huntington’s disease, leaving her and her mother to care for him. Now, she doesn’t have much of a plan at all: living at home, working as a performing mermaid at a second-rate water park, distracting herself with one boy after another.

That changes the day she meets Leigh. Disillusioned with small-town life and looking for something greater, Leigh is not a “nice girl.” She is unlike anyone Vanni has met, and a friend when Vanni desperately needs one. Soon enough, Leigh is much more than a friend. But caring about another person stirs up the moat Vanni has carefully constructed around herself, and threatens to bring to the surface the questions she’s held under for so long.

With her signature stunning writing, Rebecca Podos, author of The Mystery of Hollow Places, has crafted a story of first love and of the complex ways in which the deepest parts of us are hidden, even from ourselves.”

Genre: Contemporary

Representation:
Gender:
Cis girls: Vanni
Genderqueer/non-binary: Leigh (side character)

Sexual Orientation:
Vanni is bisexual

Romantic Orientation:
Vanni is biromantic.

Race/Ethnicity:
Latinx: Vanni
White: Leigh

Disability:
Vanni’s dad is diagnosed with Parkinson’s

Trigger Warnings:
Substance abuse and alcoholism

The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue

By Mackenzi Lee

In this lighthearted romp, Monty is determined to make the most out of a year-long trip to Europe with his best friend, Percy. After he returns, he is expected to take over the family’s estate. However, on the trip, Monty must contend with pirates, highwaymen, and his persistent crush on Percy.

Check out this book and more on our best of list for books with Black characters

Publisher’s Description:

Henry “Monty” Montague doesn’t care that his roguish passions are far from suitable for the gentleman he was born to be. But as Monty embarks on his grand tour of Europe, his quests for pleasure and vice are in danger of coming to an end. Not only does his father expect him to take over the family’s estate upon his return, but Monty is also nursing an impossible crush on his best friend and traveling companion, Percy.

So Monty vows to make this yearlong escapade one last hedonistic hurrah and flirt with Percy from Paris to Rome. But when one of Monty’s reckless decisions turns their trip abroad into a harrowing manhunt, it calls into question everything he knows, including his relationship with the boy he adores.

Genre: Historical Fiction

Representation:
Gender:
Cis boys: Monty, Percy
Cis Girls: Felicity

Sexuality:
Bi: Monty (main character)
Queer: Percy
Asexual and aromantic: Felicity (major character) (as confirmed by author)

Race/Ethnicity:
White: Monty
Multiracial: Percy
White: Felicity

Trigger Warnings:
Alcohol/Substance abuse

Additional Notes: Felicity is a major but not main character who is asexual.  Monty, the main character, engages in sexual activities with multiple people of multiple genders.

Ownvoices: Queer