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The Year of Luminous Love and The Year of Chasing Dreams, by Lurlene McDaniel
Lurlene McDaniel's novels The Year of Luminous Love and The Year of Chasing Dreams boast more melodrama than a Mexican telenovela. These books have everything: natural disasters! Forbidden love! Lingering illnesses! Birth secrets! Personally, I felt like I was trapped in an interminable game of “Pin the tail on the soap opera cliché”, but...
Year One, by Nora Roberts
If you've ever thought: Man, The Stand sounds interesting, but I'm just not into Stephen King's writing, congratulations, you're in luck! Year One is The Stand, as written by Nora Roberts...
Yesterday, by C.K. Kelly Martin
C. K. Kelly Martin's novel Yesterday opens with a prologue set in a dystopian version of 2063, but after six drama-stuffed pages the action shifts to Ontario, 1985, a (possibly even weirder) world full of New Wave music, enormous shoulder pads, and MacGyver. Martin's protagonist is Freya Kallas, a 16-year-old girl whose diplomat father recently died in an explosion. When her mother moves the family back to Canada after years of living abroad, Freya assumes...
Yotsuba&! Vol. 1, by Kiyohiko Azuma
Nothing much happens in the first three volumes of Kiyohiko Azuma’s Yotsuba&!. The series features a preschool-age heroine with green hair, boundless energy, and a blissfully innocent attitude. Entire chapters are devoted to things like moving a TV, doing the laundry, or visiting a department store...
Yotsuba&!, Vol. 14, by Kiyohiko Azuma
It's been years since I read a volume of Kiyohiko Azuma's Yotsuba&!, and even longer since I've reviewed one. Part of that is due to the author's extremely intermittent publishing schedule (there was a three-year gap between his last two books), but a lot of it was because it took me a long, loooong time to adjust to the editorial changes that took place between the fifth and sixth volumes...
You Have Seven Messages, by Stewart Lewis
Stewart Lewis's YA novel You Have Seven Messages is a mash-up of mystery, romance, and coming-of-age plot elements. The end result is an ambitious—but ultimately pretty silly—teen-friendly soap opera...
Young Men in Spats, by P.G. Wodehouse
The last book I reviewed left me convinced we're all about to die, so this week I wanted something soothing—and soothing, for me, usually means P.G. Wodehouse. I picked up a copy of Young Men in Spats, a collection of Drones Club, Mulliner, and Uncle Fred short stories, and, while definitely not the author's most impressive work, it did its anxiety-reducing job...