Weekly YA Explorations: What DO Teens Like? 😊

 Weekly YA Explorations: What DO Teens Like? 😊

Since this week didn't (as far as I could tell?) have as much of a defined theme as previous weeks, I decided to just do some poking around the YA section and note what appealed to me. 


Furia by Yamile Saied Mendez is about Camila Hassan, an Argentine teenager leading a bit of a double life: the daughter her parents expect her to be on one hand and La Furia, soccer star, on the other. This pull quote I read in a review really captured my attention

I fight for every ball, and although I don’t always win, no one can say I hold back. I leave my soul on the pitch. I relish what my body can do, appreciate its unorthodox beauty. The eyes of the crowd are on me, and I feel like a goddess.

As a former soccer player myself, I identified with this quote (though I never quite reached goddess level, myself). I like that this book seems to be steeped in a love of futbol, and it seems like it would make a fun read for an American teenage girl with a love of the beautiful game. You can learn more about Furia here. 


The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, AKA The Hunger Games #0, is interesting to me. It came out in 2020 and the original Hunger Games books are now old enough to be considered somewhat "vintage." I wonder who is reading this book: former teens who loved the original series back in the oughts? Current teens, jonesing for a throwback read? The Hunger Games is one of the few YA series I've actually read through in its entirety. I read them all when I found some copies at the hotel during a vacation to Costa Rica. To me, it's odd that she would choose to write a prequel that centers on telling the story of President Snow and his first Hunger Games. He's a very unlikable man, and normally villain redemption stories work the other way around. But, perhaps we just get to see the roots of his nefariousness? Find more about The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes here. 


A Good Girl's Guide to Murder is, honestly, one of the most appealing (to me!) books that I've looked at throughout this blogging exercise. The plot seems heavily influenced by the first season of Serial, a podcast that I listened to with rapt attention when it came out. My understanding now is that it's maybe a little problematic? But no matter, because A Good Girl's Guide to Murder is fiction! So we don't have to worry about profiting off a real life murder! When a popular girl at her school goes missing, "good girl" Pip takes on the closed case to find out if she was really murdered. Find out more about A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, by Holly Jackson, here. 


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