Aven Green was born with no arms.  The 12-year-old is used to getting stares when she's in unfamiliar places, but she's lived in the same town for so long that no one at school or in her community gives her a second glance anymore.  Her classmates see her use her feet to do all kinds of ordinary tasks—eat, turn pages in her textbooks, write, even play the guitar.  No big deal.  They know she can do pretty much anything they can do, even without arms.  

When her dad announces that he's taken a new job as the manager of an amusement park in Arizona, Aven is not thrilled.  She doesn't want to move to the desert, leave her friends behind, and start over at a new school.  Doing so is just as awful as she thinks it will be.  Stagecoach Pass is a grungy, derelict old place; her family's new apartment is teensy; her classmates gape at her torso and make rude comments; and Aven's taken to hiding out in the school bathroom to avoid their stares.  Things start to improve when she meets two boys who feel just as outcast as Aven—Connor has Tourette Syndrome and Zion is overweight.  With her friends by her side, she sets out to prove anew that challenges or no, they can do anything, even solve the mystery of Stagecoach Pass's missing owners!

It may not sound like it, but Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus by Dusti Bowling is a funny, upbeat book.  Really!  Our heroine, who likes to make up fantastical stories about how she lost her arms and play practical jokes on gullible, unsuspecting folks, is downright hilarious.  Although she's well aware of the limitations imposed on her because of her disability, she's determined not to let them stand in her way.  Which isn't to say she doesn't sometimes feel humiliated and angry or engage in self-pity.  She does, but she also shows that she's just as capable, determined, and clever as anyone else.  While the novel is humorous, it also offers a poignant, intimate portrayal of what it's like for a child to be different.  The story is empathy-inducing and moving without being saccharine or preachy.  It's easy to see where the book's plot is going, but even still, the tale is fun and engaging.  For all these reasons and more, I very much enjoyed this appealing, entertaining novel.  

A note:  I listened to Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus on audio.  The book is read by Karissa Vacker, whose performance I didn't love.  She tended toward a Valley Girl/mean girl accent when voicing Aven and other young females, while employing a mopey/dopey tone for Aven's male pals.  Thus, the girls all sounded like snots while the boys just sounded dumb.  I'm an audiobook novice, so perhaps I'm way too picky about narrators, but Vacker drove me a little nuts.  I got used to her after awhile, but I came close to abandoning the audio version because her voice grated on my ears, especially at first.  Just sayin'.

(Readalikes:  Hm, I can't think of anything.  You?)

To the FTC, with love:  Another library fine find

Learning to be a proper society lady—even in the enlightened year of 1924 in the modern city of Chicago—can be downright dull, especially for someone like Piper Sail.  Her tongue refuses to be curbed, she can't sew worth beans, and the silly pranks she pulls off at school are the stuff of legend.  She may be headed to college in just a few months, but she still hasn't quite learned to control her penchant for mischief.  Piper's best friend, Lydia LeVine, is the opposite.  She's a sweet, obedient girl whose only sin is her desperate crush on her family's chauffer.  Although Piper has warned Lydia not to do more than flirt with a man so far below her station, Piper worries her pleas are falling on deaf ears.  When Lydia disappears, Piper is certain she has run off and eloped.  With each day that passes with no word from her best friend, however, she becomes more distressed.  Where is Lydia?  Her naiveté and epileptic seizures would have made her especially vulnerable to anyone's nefarious schemes.  Piper fears something terrible has happened to her friend.

Although handsome detective Mariano Cassano is on the case, he's not finding answers fast enough for Piper.  With the reluctant help of a couple friends, she launches her own investigation.  As she explores Chicago's ugly underbelly, so full of corruption and crime, she realizes for the first time just how dangerous her hometown really is.  In a gritty city run by mobsters, anything could have happened to a woman as young and innocent as Lydia.  Piper's own neck is on the line as she follows a perilous path littered with disturbing clues.  Will she find its end in time to save Lydia?  Or will she become another rich girl mysteriously disappeared from swanky, secretive Astor Street?

I love me a good historical mystery, so I was naturally drawn to The Lost Girl of Astor Street, a YA novel by Stephanie Morrill.  The colorful Jazz Age setting makes for an appealing backdrop to a compelling story.  Piper and her associates are warm, sympathetic characters who are easy to like and root for.  While I saw a lot of the plot's twists coming (unlike Piper, who's a little slow on the uptake), it offered enough surprises to keep me reading.  The tale's structure is a bit loosey-goosey with extraneous characters (Walter, for instance) and story lines that don't really go anywhere (like Piper's flirtation with Jeremiah).  Perhaps Morrill left some possibilities dangling for a potential sequel?  I'd read that!  In spite of these small irritants, I enjoyed The Lost Girl of Astor Street.  It's an engrossing, entertaining mystery that kept me reading.  

One last note:  The Lost Girl of Astor Street is published by Blink, a division of HarperCollins that specializes in clean, uplifting literature for young adults.  Although there's no graphic content in the book, it does refer to issues like prostitution, white slavery, mob violence, etc. which warrants a PG-13 rating (at least in my opinion).  Also, while my library put a "FAITH" label on the novel's spine, I wouldn't really consider it Christian fiction.  Praying and going to church is mentioned a couple of times in the story, but religion isn't really discussed.  If you're put off by the "FAITH" distinction, don't be.  There's nothing preachy here.

(Readalikes:  Reminds me a bit of These Shallow Graves by Jennifer Donnelly)

To the FTC, with love:  Another library fine find

I don't know about you, but there are a lot of books I meant to get to in 2020 but didn't.  Like a lot.  Some of them didn't happen because I lost interest, others got pushed aside for more pressing reads, and still others just didn't make the cut when my mood caused me to reach for one genre over another.  For whatever reason, there are hundreds of titles I meant to read in 2020 and didn't.  This week's Top Ten Tuesday topic is just that:  Top Ten Books I Meant to Read in 2020 But Didn't Get To.  Since I don't want to list four hundred forgotten books, I'm going to take one of the prompt's suggestions and look back at the seasonal TBR lists I created in 2020 and see how many of those books I actually read.

First, though, I want to encourage you to participate in the TTT fun by hopping over to That Artsy Reader Girl, where you can find all the info on how to join up with this diverting weekly meme.

Because I did not do a Fall list, but created two lists each for Spring and Summer, I had a total of 50 books on last year's seasonal TBR lists.  How many of them did I actually read?  Drumroll, please ... 19!  Not too shabby, really.  Let's break it down by season and see which titles I still most want to read:

TBR List, Part one—read 6/10

Books on list I still want to read most:

The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat by Edward Kelsey Moore

A Good Neighborhood by Therese Ann Fowler

TBR List, Part Two—read 3/10

Books on list I still want to read most:

All the Ways We Said Goodbye by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White

Love Lettering by Kate Clayborn

Summer: 

TBR List, Part One—read 2/10

Books on list I still want to read most:

Home Before Dark by Riley Sager

The Answer Is: Reflections on My Life by Alex Trebek

TBR List, Part Two—read 7/10

Books on list I want to read most:

All the Greys on Greene Street by Laura Tucker

Splinters of Scarlet by Emily Bain Murphy

TBR List—read 1/10

Books on list I want to read most:

The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

Death in the Family by Tessa Wegert

There you go, ten books from my 2020 seasonal TBR lists that I still want to read.  Have you read any of them?  What did you think?  Which books are you rolling over from your 2020 lists?  I'd truly love to know.  Leave me a comment on this post and I will return the favor on your blog.

Former whistleblower Nora Trier has built a successful career as a forensic accountant.  For the last 15 years, she has spent her days combing through financial records searching out fraud, but she's still surprised by her newest case.  Strike, a billion-dollar home-grown premium athletics brand, is on the verge of hosting a huge kickboxing competition with an unprecedented prize—the winner earns $20 million and the chance to be Strike's new spokesperson.  The problem?  The coveted prize money has gone missing.  Strike's owners, Gregg Abbott and his wife, famous kickboxing champion Logan Russo, have suspicions about where it might be and who might have taken it, but no one knows for sure.  With one week before it's to be awarded, the money needs to be found.  Gregg is convinced that only Nora has the expertise to find it.

Nora prides herself on her objectivity, but she has more than one secret connection to Strike.  Can she investigate the company fairly?  The further she delves into its financial transactions as well as the personal lives of its owners and employees, the more concerned she becomes.  With whispers of embezzlement, betrayal, and sabotage in the air, Nora's not sure what to believe.  All she knows is that the evidence is leading in a disturbing direction.  As she gets closer and closer to the truth, Nora's position becomes more and more dangerous.  Someone doesn't want her to find out what's really happening at Strike.  Who would do the unthinkable to keep the truth hidden?

I enjoyed the two books I've read by Mindy Mejia, so I picked up her newest assuming it would be just as enticing.  Strike Me Down definitely sucked me in and kept me reading.  I whipped through its pages because I wanted to know what was going to happen next.  The plot kept me guessing, which is something I always appreciate in mysteries/thrillers.  Unfortunately, though, I just could not stand any of the novel's main characters.  Nora and Logan are both cold, selfish women who are admirable in some ways but still almost wholly unlikable.  Gregg is greedy, unfaithful, and overly obsessed with Strike.  By the end of the novel, I found all of them so repulsive that I didn't care much what happened to any of them.  So, while Strike Me Down is an engrossing page turner that held my attention, for me it ended up being a depressing, dissatisfying read because I hated the characters so much.  Bummer.

(Readalikes:  No specific titles are coming to mind.  You?)