One of the vendors at the Book Riot Live was the Brooklyn Library. They had librarians on had to do what librarians do best. Suggest books. They invited con goers to fill out sheets about books, genres and authors they are looking for and then they play book match. In the spirit of our Diverse Lives, Diverse Stacks Reading Challenge that I’m failing about horribly, I decided to try them out. I asked for.
YA books with diverse voices, especially POC, LGBTQ or disabled folks. I’m looking for authors like Maggie Stiefvater, genres like fantasy and Historical Fiction.
Here are the books I was matched up with.
1.Girls Mans Up by M-E Girard
All Pen wants is to be the kind of girl she’s always been. So why does everyone have a problem with it? They think the way she looks and acts means she’s trying to be a boy—that she should quit trying to be something she’s not. If she dresses like a girl, and does what her folks want, it will show respect. If she takes orders and does what her friend Colby wants, it will show her loyalty. But respect and loyalty, Pen discovers, are empty words. Old-world parents, disintegrating friendships, and strong feelings for other girls drive Pen to see the truth–that in order to be who she truly wants to be, she’ll have to man up.
2. Otherbound by Corinne Duyvis
Amara is never alone. Not when she’s protecting the cursed princess she unwillingly serves. Not when they’re fleeing across dunes and islands and seas to stay alive. Not when she’s punished, ordered around, or neglected.
She can’t be alone, because a boy from another world experiences all that alongside her, looking through her eyes.
Nolan longs for a life uninterrupted. Every time he blinks, he’s yanked from his Arizona town into Amara’s mind, a world away, which makes even simple things like hobbies and homework impossible. He’s spent years as a powerless observer of Amara’s life. Amara has no idea . . . until he learns to control her, and they communicate for the first time. Amara is terrified. Then, she’s furious.
All Amara and Nolan want is to be free of each other. But Nolan’s breakthrough has dangerous consequences. Now, they’ll have to work together to survive–and discover the truth about their connection
3. Pinned by Sharon Flake
Autumn and Adonis have nothing in common and everything in common. Autumn is outgoing and has lots of friends. Adonis is shy and not so eager to connect with people. But even with their differences, the two have one thing in common–they’re each dealing with a handicap. For Autumn, who has a learning disability, reading is a painful struggle that makes it hard to focus in class. But as her school’s most aggressive team wrestler, Autumn can take down any problem. Adonis is confined to a wheelchair. He has no legs. He can’t walk or dance. But he’s a strong reader who loves books. Even so, Adonis has a secret he knows someone like Autumn can heal.
In time, Autumn and Adonis are forced to see that our greatest weaknesses can turn into the assets that forever change us and those we love.
Told in alternating voices, Pinned explores issues of self-discovery, friendship, and what it means to be different
4. The Passion of Dolssa by Julie Berry
Dolssa is a young gentlewoman with uncanny gifts, on the run from an obsessed friar determined to burn her as a heretic for the passion she refuses to tame.
Botille is a wily and charismatic peasant, a matchmaker running a tavern with her two sisters in a tiny seaside town.
The year is 1241; the place, Provensa, what we now call Provence, France—a land still reeling from the bloody crusades waged there by the Catholic Church and its northern French armies.
When the matchmaker finds the mystic near death by a riverside, Botille takes Dolssa in and discovers the girl’s extraordinary healing power. But as the vengeful Friar Lucien hunts down his heretic, the two girls find themselves putting an entire village at the mercy of murderers.
So I am going to add these to the my to-read list and for anyone else who are looking for books to complete their own reading challenge, check them out for yourselves. Any great books you’ve read for the Diverse Stacks, Diverse Lives Challenge?
I’m a fan of both Holly Black and Cassandra Clare’s work so I was pretty stoked about their collaboration. I just wish it was better. It’s fine but not great. Someone pointed out to me that it’s a book meant for middle schoolers so I’m not the targeted audience but Rick Riordan writes for the middle schoolers and those are fantastic. Holly Black’s Spindlewick Series are also great. So I don’t think it’s the genre, I think maybe it’s the story itself. We are now in the third book and Call, Aaron and Tamara are now being honored for killing the Enemy of Death, even though they know the Enemy of Death’s soul is in Call’s body. Things get complicated when someone tries to kill Call and successfully kill a fellow student. There’s all the typical kid lit traits. The adults are clueless. True, they don’t know Call’s secret but pretty much every time they tell Call he’s going to be safe, he’s attacked. They allready have had one student and one teacher end up in cahoots with the big bad and they didn’t know it. Is it any surprise that there would be someone else also in cahoots living right under their noses? No, of course not. Typically, the kids feel they have do things on their own and typically it gets them in more trouble and typically when the real culprit is revealed the adults aren’t there so they get blamed for everything. At moments I really enjoy this book but at most times I think “is something going to happen soon?” I felt like there was a lot going on of nothing really happening until you get to the ending and then there’s yet another big cliffhanger. I will say this about this series in general, the cliffhangers have been first class. Too bad the rest of the book don’t live up to them.
It’s the universal truth that being an adult sucks. Even though today is my day off, I should be working. I have staff reviews to write, sales data to analyze and what am I doing? Flipping through 
2 Women, So Many Books 