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Nagata Kabi is depressed. She* goes through her self-abuse in the first few chapters, it's basically about realizing she deserves to be loved and accepted, so she embarks on a manga career and calls a lesbian escort agency as part of becoming an adult (at 28).

I think most of us can relate on some level. I'm 29, and still don't feel like an adult.

It's a bit of a sad comic (have not read the other 3 in the series), but I think it reinforces the idea that You have to love Yourself before you'll accept love from anyone else.

• I use female pronouns for Nagata Kabi though I have heard some interpretations from some lines in this book that she'd best be described as non-binary. Unfortunately I cannot find a good source so I am using She / Her until I find out otherwise.

I'm trying to figure out how to explain the premise.

The narrator is an "Artificial Friend" a robot made to accompany a child until they move out of their house.

Klara and other AFs are solar-powered, and have superstitions about the Sun being this healing force. they're also pretty anti-pollution.

The story is slow-moving, and I will tell you do NOT skim or get distracted. Kazuo Ishiguro can have some massive paragraphs, skillfully made that make your eyes glaze over if it's a bad time, but it's essential information (though not an info dump). Every time my eyes started skimming, I had to go back and reread because I missed something both subtle and vital.

they keep talking about "lifted children" in the book. It's about genetics (uh oh!). It's not clear to me whether it's like that movie Gattaca where you just make the child artificially with the best DNA possible, or if it's like, Gene Editing.

Anyway, like Gattaca, there is genetic discrimination and that's a big thing in the book.

Just in case it wasn't clear: Kazuo Ishiguro is pretty clear that this is a bad thing.

There's a lot of talk about whether or not AFs can replace humans completely.

It's a nice book, very quiet for the most part. I recommend it.

My understanding is that Neal Shusterman wanted to create a society in which something predicted to be awful (AIs gaining sentience) actually is good. So I'm pretty sure this is not a Dystopia, but I'm not sure I'd call it a Utopia either. If you are not familiar with the premise: the Cloud gains Sentience (now called "The Thunderhead") and rules the world. People are for the most part, immortal. You can age yourself back down to 21, and the Thunderhead can put you back together if you say, jump off a building for fun. People have healing nanomachines and such (they also regulate your brain if you're say, depressed). So at most you're "Dead-ish". Except for those "Gleaned" by a group called Scythes, who name themselves after esteemed figures (we're coming back to that) for population control. The premise is for the two protagonists, they meet a Scythe (Faraday) who gleans people they know, and how they respond interests Faraday in taking both of them as apprentices, (because he feels revulsion for gleaning is important) and if they fail out they can return to their normal lives. Except they can't because the scythe conclave has decided whoever wins will glean the other. Drama ensues! Basically this is a really interesting premise. Shusterman does not ignore things like mental health, (One of the protagonists, Rowan, is implied to have needed his nanomachines tweaked because he was depressed). To be clear, I do not have a problem with that! Having to answer what happened to depression is good! What I am troubled by is that The Thunderhead has "cured" deafness, and presumably erased Deaf culture. I am not deaf, but I am autistic, and I assume I don't exist in this world. I will say, yes, the person that named themselves after Ayn Rand was a shit-head. So good on Shusterman. I get the impression that if you continue the series (and I want to, I'm just busy right now) it gets more into the ethics of the Thunderhead and such. Oh yes the fatphobia. There are two fat characters, and while one points out to someone that one of the fat people clearly has this in their genes, I sort of felt like there was this undercurrent of fatness as immoral. Maybe I'm too sensitive. I dunno. To be clear, I recommend this, assuming you can deal with LOTS of death and suicide.

Whether or not you think Alex Craft deserves to die for what she has done, she HAS to for the sake of the book.

You know from the jacket copy that Alex Craft is a killer.

Specifically she horrifically murders a man because he raped and murdered her older sister, and there wasn't enough evidence to charge him even though everyone in the town knew he did it.

There are other problems. The Tweekers in the woods who roofie one of the viewpoint characters and very much intend to rape her.

The Child Molesting Uncle that people won't keep away from their family, won't publicly condemn.

It's the sins of the small town that won't condemn people. That will report to animal control a sack of puppies, but not actually report that they were dead.

Alex takes care of all of these (except the animal abusers). You could argue her only problem with the tweekers is that she didn't kill them until the end of the book and that's what undoes her.

Alex sets a man on fire, but to be clear, if you are paying any attention to the story: Alex can feel emotions. She feels TOO MUCH of them. She's loaded with empathy. Alex is both the girl who cradles baby kittens and the girl who rips a man's face apart for trying to rape her friend.

She knows she can't be normal, like everyone else.

And I think that hurts.

There's a character, Branley who gets a lot of shit for acting like a promiscuous teenage girl. But Alex realizes there's more to her than that. At one point, during Branley's breakup with her more than friend Jack, she admits she does this because she feels she has nothing more to her than her looks and she knows those will fade. She is redeemed, though you could argue it's her "fault" that Alex dies and I don't think that's fair. She's the victim of another near-assault, and the point is she is in love with a boy and doesn't know how to let him go.

I love this book and wish it got the attention it deserved.

What I really like is that this book includes a content warning list at the beginning of the book.

You have these two Bengali girls, both queer, one of whom is Muslim. They agree to fake a relationship because one wants to be Head Girl at their school, and the other wants her shitty friends to believe she's queer.

And of course they develop REAL FEELINGS OH NO.

There's a B plot about one of the girl's sister being thrown out because of her choices, and it alludes to the fact the same may happen to the girl if she comes out.

I don't think it wrapped everything up neatly, but it wrapped enough up for me to be satisfied.

I got interested in this book because it's about tarot and witchcraft, and I've very much gotten into the former for fun lately.

I want to be very clear: There is a point where the white cisgendered protagonist is blaming all intolerance on an imbalance (in like, nature). This is quickly corrected. It's clear the protagonist is incorrect.

This is a dark book with a lot of hate crimes and general intolerance.

I really like how it examines how harmful "Both Sides" -ism is.

The love interest is somewhere on the nonbinary spectrum, and that's something I rarely see. I thought this was done well.

While the plot is about magic, the story is about intolerance. I think it harmonizes perfectly.

I recommend giving it a try. While there were some loose ends, I don't think the book is in a series.

Morgan is an idealistic lesbian track star who transfers schools after her catholic school threatens to expel her. She's out and proud, and engaging in a lawsuit with said school.

Ruby is a bi/pan girl who is the daughter of an ex-pagent queen who got knocked up and her life was effectively ruined. Ruby feels she owes it to her mother to compete in these pagents, and that means she stays in the closet.

Sparks fly after a car accident between the two.

So obviously there's conflict.

And I don't want to lie to you, even if you could stand the fucked up guilt Ruby has for existing, there is physical abuse. Please be in a good place reading this book!

Don't worry, it has a Happily Ever After though.

Jennifer Dugan has great work. Verona comics is my personal favorite since I related to it so hard, but I have no complaints about this or Hot Dog Girl. As always Dugan discusses heavy topics like coming out not always being an option.