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Yours Celestially by Al Hess

After divorce, death, and having his reformatted soul uploaded into a new body, Sasha expected resurrection to be a fresh start. His time spent in digital Limbo with the program's cheeky AI guardian angel, Metatron, was cathartic, but what good is a second life when he only sees his daughter on the weekends, he has all the same problems he had before he died, and he can't seem to shake the ache for the married life he lost? If that weren't frustrating enough, a glitch in the program has given Sasha the ability to sense Metatron even outside of Limbo. And Metatron is in love. The angel's sickly-sweet yearning for one of the souls still in Limbo has turned Sasha's stomach into caramelized lead. It's hard enough to move on without someone else's feelings making the emptiness in his own life even more acute. He didn't have playing wingman to an actual winged being on his bingo card, but he's determined to help Metatron make a move on their crush so he ca...

Paola Santiago and the River of Tears by Tehlor Kay Mejia (Paola Santiago, #1)

Space-obsessed 12-year-old Paola Santiago and her two best friends, Emma and Dante, know the rule: Stay away from the river. It's all they've heard since a schoolmate of theirs drowned a year ago. Pao is embarrassed to admit that she has been told to stay away for even longer than that, because her mother is constantly warning her about La Llorona, the wailing ghost woman who wanders the banks of the Gila at night, looking for young people to drag into its murky depths.

Hating her mother's humiliating superstitions and knowing that she and her friends would never venture into the water, Pao organizes a meet-up to test out her new telescope near the Gila, since it's the best stargazing spot. But when Emma never arrives and Pao sees a shadowy figure in the reeds, it seems like maybe her mom was right. . . .

Pao has always relied on hard science to make sense of the world, but to find her friend she will have to enter the world of her nightmares, which includes unnatural mist, mind-bending monsters, and relentless spirits controlled by a terrifying force that defies both logic and legend.

TITLE: Paola Santiago and the River of Tears
AUTHOR: Tehlor Kay Mejia
PUBLISHER: Rick Riordan Presents
YEAR: 2020
LENGTH: 368 pages
AGE: Middle Grade
GENRE: Fantasy, Horror
RECOMMENDED: N/A

Partial Queer Rep Summary: No canon queer rep.

DNF 113 pages in (31%)

I wasn't liking it much and then I got to the bit with the former classmate and I got really frustrated so I stopped. I didn't like the combination of how long it took for the main character to get what was going on, plus how little the people with actual answers were willing to tell her. I don't know whether I would have liked this as a kid or not, but it's definitely not for me now.

CW for ableist language (unchallenged), racism, kidnapping, child death (backstory).

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A young girl in a purple t-shirt is on the edge of a rocky riverbed, looking down into glowing green water, where a large green hand made of water is reaching up as if to grab her.


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