The Truth According to Ember by Danica Nava

The job market is a difficult one. Just out of her accounting program and saddled with debts from paying her brother’s court fees, Ember Lee Cardinal knows she’s capable but no one is hiring her.

Until she fudges her qualifications and chooses Caucasian instead of Chicksaw when it comes to the ethnicity box.

Lo, and behold, it works and she gets her dream job. The problem will be keeping it as she wings through the rapid instructions and fights her attraction to the hot IT guy, Danuwoa Colson despite the no dating co-workers rule.

As one can imagine, the initial lie Ember sells leads to trouble and inevitably blackmail, but Nava never veers into cartoonishly evil cliches from the blackmailer or the aggravating miscommunication between Ember and Danuwoa.

Rather she uses the opportunity to explore issues regarding to classism and discrimination in the workplace. The microaggression and the larger systematic inequalities that indigenous people face today. Plus Ember’s lies don’t feel irritating in its scope because Neva is clear that the stakes and consequences are serious for Ember.

It helps that she isn’t pathological when it comes to lying. She’s rather direct by nature. Harsh even which is part of her growth in that she’s come to depend so much on herself and holding up her family, that she finds it hard to believe her little brother is trying to change his ways and that he won’t disappoint her again like their dead-beat dad did.

The love interest, Danuwoa or ‘Danny” as it’s hard for people to remember his real name, is an adorable cinnamon roll to counter Ember’s cynical hypocrisies. He is proud of his heritage yet realistic about what it takes to combat ignorant people surrounding them. Plus he’s such a good big brother to his little sister. Bonus, he’s a gentlemen in the streets and a beast in the sheets so yay.

A wonderful debut that finally brings indigenous characters to the fore in the romance section. I can’t wait for her next one.

Starring Sally J. Freedman, as Herself by Judy Blume

Since I’ve read one Judy Blume book a year, I had to do it again with this classic. I actually owned it when I was little but never read it. My mom wanted me to, and that’s exactly why I didn’t out of pure contrariness. 

Still 11 years later is better than never. 

This book is probably the most autobiographical as it features the titular Sally Freedman reckoning with the aftermath of WW2 and the death of family members she has never known. 

Sally is only 12 when this happens and her parents shield her from the horrifics of the Holocaust. All she knows is Hitler is evil because he hated Jews. 

But that doesn’t bother her much because she’s a feisty 12 year old with a big imagination. 

The story is littered with amusing side adventures of Sally being ‘discovered.” Sally, the super spy who kills Hitler and saves her back from the dead cousin, and so on. 

As usual, it is a story about growing up with the mundanities that feel like big things at the time. The mysterious secrets and fights of her parents as her dad travels back and forth from New Jersey to Miami where they’re staying for her older brother’s health. The allure of boys. Trying to fit in and be seen as grown up as the cool girls. 

It is also a time capsule to the 60s with the embargo to Cuba, the interest in go-go boots and amazing new inventions like landlines. 

So it’s a cute story but not as classic as Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret. 

The Bounty Hunter and the Tea Brewer by Faith Erin Hicks 

This is a team-up adventure I never knew I wanted. 

Iroh has settled in nicely in Ba Sing Se as the city’s best tea-house proprieter and Iroh likes the peace this new life has given him. 

Until he is hit over the head and kidnapped by June. 

She’s mum about who her client is but the time on the road allows for sharing each other’s pasts and reckoning what it means for their future. 

Hicks gets a chance to really flex her creativity with this one-shot adventure, not related to any upcoming Avatarverse property or filling in gaps to character’s histories. 

Well, we do get some backstory to June’s past and how it led to her pride in becoming a bounty hunter, beholden to no one but herself. But that choice no longer suits this peaceful world and we get some classic Iroh wisdom about the shifting path to life when it seems the world you know no longer fits you. 

Hicks also gets to dig a little into the consequences of Iroh’s time as the Dragon of the West and Iroh taking accountability to not only what he did to the citizens of Ba Sing Se but to his men when he retreated from the war. It’s not an easy answer.

I admire how Hicks puts nuance to the difficult question of whether Iroh deserves forgiveness, and if the cycle of vengeance is truly the path forward? Iroh also takes accountability for how he treated June back in the show which was played for laughs back then but has drawn some raised eyebrows today so that’s cool. 

Overall, a lovely side adventure to the universe and a welcome addition to any ATLA collection. 

Books I read

Rainbow Magic super specials #1-20 + 2 one offs by Daisy Meadows, Luv Ya Bunches quartet and Winnie Years quintet by Lauren Myracle, Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself by Judy Blume, Mandy by Julie Andrews Edwards, Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes, Girl in Fairyland quintet by Cathryn M. Valentine, How I Survived Middle School #1-12 + super special by Nancy E. Krulik, Fairy Realm #1-10 by Emily Rodda, Well That Was Awkward by Rachel Vail, Isabel and the Rogue by Liana De La Rose, Prince of Midnight and Glass by Linsey Miller, Sally’s Lament by Mari Mancusi, Odin by George O’ Connor, Saddlehill Academy quartet by Jessica Burkhart, Princess of Thieves by Mari Mancusi, Villains: Delightfully Evil by Jen Darcy, Lily’s Ghosts by Laura Ruby, Paperbacks from Hell by Grady Hendrix, Sidekicks by Jack D. Ferriola, Foodie series #1-10 by Suzanne Nelson, New Batch #3 by Coco Simon, The Earl I Ruined and The Duke I Tempted by Scarlett Peckham, Hemlock Island by Kelley Armstrong

Life with Archie: The Married Life #11-20 

Dark Phoenix Saga by Chris Claremont

Cruella De’Vil #5