Amelia's Library

"Lyrebirds don't just mimic. They make their own songs too, and dance to their own beats." Peta Lyre's Rating Normal by Anna Whateley is my honest-to-god new favourite book. I feel in love with Peta and the way her brain works made so much sense to me. Novels like this one are the stories of the future, where neurotypical and straight are not the default. Peta is so much like me (and so many other readers) and by the end of the book I felt like I was her best friend. Peta Lyre's Rating Normal is about a girl with ASD, ADHD and SPD and her journey of self-acceptance and learning to stop giving so much of a crap. It includes a wholesome skiing trip and an lgbt romance that we can all get behind. This feel-good novel has such a wonderful message and I loved every page. Peta is a character that I can finally relate to and Anna Whateley portrayed neurodiversity in a positive and proud light that made autism seem so much simpler and more familiar to the reader. When I f

"And then they became near inseparable, each in the orbit of her own life, but grounded by the gravity that kept them close." Euphoria Kids by Alison Evans is one of the most intensely beautiful pieces of writing I have ever read, and there will always be a place in my heart for this story of friendship.  Euphoria Kids is a soft spoken but incandescent story of the everlasting friendship of three trans kids embarking on a journey to find the witch that cursed Babs to spend her life flickering in and out out sight.  Alison Evans clearly crafted this story with so much passion that the love put into it is tangible to the reader, and the magic between the pages holds so many lessons. Euphoria Kids sparkles with perfection and I have nothing bad to say for it.

"Mondays never fail to suck, but this one sucks harder than most." Erin Gough's 'Amelia Westlake' is the inclusive (but not ridiculously cliched and unnecessarily problematic like most LGBTQ+ novels jumping on the pride bandwagon just for the hell of it), witty and hilariously tender YA novel we have all been hoping for. I have nothing but praise for this sublimely sincere joy of a story. Amelia Westlake is an impeccably written tale of awkward outsider Will Everhart and her complete opposite; beloved school captain Harriet Price. When fate throws them together, they form an unexpected and atypical friendship that leads to rebellious shenanigans and, eventually, an intense will-they-get-together-PLEASE-JUST-GET-TOGETHER-ALREADY couple of chapters (a feature of any respectable book). This was the kind of novel that can never be read too many times, and perfectly captures the essence of private girls' schools, and, furthermore, being queer in a private

  "We don't pick and choose what to be afraid of. Our fears pick us." Sarah Epstein's Small Spaces is a beautifully written, perfectly creepy and wonderfully gripping novel that messes with your head until the very last page. The novel follows a teenage Tash Carmody who witnessed another girl, Mallory Fisher, being abducted at a carnival when they were both young children by her harrowing imaginary friend, Sparrow. Over time, Tash has come to accept that what she saw that night was a childish lie, engineered so that she would be rewarded with attention from her parents. But when Mallory and her family return to Tash's town, memories of Sparrow resurface and she starts to wonder if maybe what she saw that year was real. Sarah Epstein is a born writer and her passion for writing shines in every word. Small Spaces had me both terrified and desperate to turn the next page, and I will always remember the week I spent reading this book, immersed in the world of T

To be clear; I'm talking about the book. The movie was a grievous tragedy that broke the hearts of readers across the nation and, undoubtedly, the world. My copy of All the Bright Places is dog-eared and worn, with notes in the margins and glitter between the pages. It's been dropped in baths and squashed in schoolbags under textbooks that weigh more than any book ever should. It's been lost under beds and left in cars, but this story will always find its way back to me. When I first read All the Bright Places, I was thirteen and didn't know what it was like to be miserable, but I thought I'd seen it all and the way Theodore Finch recounted the "asleep" made me feel like I wasn't alone anymore. Violet's struggles became mine, and I felt Finch's pain with him. The words danced across the pages like nothing I'd ever read before, and I plunged myself into the reality Finch had been living. To me, that book was everything. Every time I re