Mikey has been around books for their entire life – as a graduate student, as a librarian, and now as a bookseller. They manage Avid’s Young Adult for Not-so-Young-Adults Book Club and are a firm believer that YA can be for all readers. Mikey also reads horror and other fiction and sci-fi that can be called spooky or weird and anything genre-bending. When not at Avid, Mikey is watching horror movies, playing D&D or writing.
This lyrical collection from Ohioan poet Hanif Abdurraqib sits at the intersection of grief at current events and joy at the pockets of hope in everyday life. Filtered through the lens of some bands you may love and some you may not have heard of at all, this collection deserves to be read slowly and savored. Perfect for that friend of yours that has a song for every situation.
Even though it may not be October, for some of us every day is Halloween. Set in quickly gentrifying, small-town, Proofrock, Idaho, My Heart is a Chainsaw critiques American colonialist history through the view of slasher obsessed teen, Jade. This is an absolute delight for slasher fans – try to spot all the references! – while still immensely enjoyable and readable for folks new to the genre. Soon to be a series, this will keep you guessing the whole way through.
Open the portal. Written for those of us who are a bit too chronically online: lyrically disjointed, this feels like a completely disorienting free-fall into the news cycle and cultural space of the internet. Lockwood’s writing rises to a crescendo of image, sound, and words that ultimately ends in the aftermath of grief. Moving and reflective in its fragmentary style.
The time-travel tinged WLW romance of your dreams. At times deeply hilarious and at times emotionally devastating, Casey McQuiston’s atmospheric descriptions of New York City from the train to a 24-hour pancake diner will leave you longing for a trip to New York, and for someone to share that trip with you! McQuiston’s writing feels like stepping into a dream – the New York of One Last Stop is one where the reality of apartment living is swept away in favor of a world of quirky roommates, diner jobs, drag shows, and love. With a main character named August, it feels apt to say that this romance feels like sunshine and strawberries of summer.
What happens after you achieve everything you thought you wanted? Tamsyn Muir answers that question in Harrow the Ninth, the second in the hilarious, yet harrow-ing (and very gay) Locked Tomb series. "For the Ninth!"