Received this book from Publisher's Weekly's Galley Grab.

On sale: April 27th, 2021


Description:
Teen Wolf meets Emergency Contact in this sharply observed, hilarious, and heartwarming debut young adult novel about friendship and the hairy side of chronic illness.

Priya worked hard to pursue her premed dreams at Stanford, but a diagnosis of chronic Lyme disease during her sophomore year sends her back to her loving but overbearing family in New Jersey—and leaves her wondering if she’ll ever be able to return to the way things were. Thankfully she has her online pen pal, Brigid, and the rest of the members of “oof ouch my bones,” a virtual support group that meets on Discord to crack jokes and vent about their own chronic illnesses.

When Brigid suddenly goes offline, Priya does something out of character: she steals the family car and drives to Pennsylvania to check on Brigid. Priya isn’t sure what to expect, but it isn’t the horrifying creature that's shut in the basement. With Brigid nowhere to be found, Priya begins to puzzle together an impossible but obvious truth: the creature might be a werewolf—and the werewolf might be Brigid. As Brigid's unique condition worsens, their friendship will be deepened and challenged in unexpected ways, forcing them to reckon with their own ideas of what it means to be normal.


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My Review:
Looking for a feel good book about friendship? Then this is the book for you. Well, as long as you like werewolves, too. And who doesn't?!

This book is cute and sweet. Almost, almost sickeningly sweet. Almost. Everyone is nice and adorable and kind...there are some moments, but ultimately they are all those things. Especially, Priya's appa! He's so cute and adorable! He brought happy tears to my eyes more than once!

There are some unanswered questions, but they don't matter. What matters is the story about friendship and learning to live and thrive with chronic illness.




Reserved for hyphen8’s Asian Diaspora VBB



Edit May 25th, 2021:

Well, this happened over the weekend. :/ On Goodreads, I don’t get many people liking my review. A friend or two usually and the occasional random stranger. About 0-2 likes per review. (Usually zero.) But this weekend, I had 4 likes in one day for a review of this book and an additional one the next day. I was suspicious. Because that’s the kind of person I am. And because I had a scammer comment on a review recently (whole other story) but it added to the air of suspicion.

So, I hopped on Goodreads (GR) to figure out what was going on. I know that 5 likes isn’t a big deal. But is was an anomaly and I wanted to know what was going on. Paranoia. And whoa! Was I ever met with a storm. There is a whole controversy swirling around this book. Does it deserve it? Probably. I’m not qualified to make that judgement. Anyway, here’s is what I walked into.

First, I checked the people that liked my review. There were 3 additional from earlier on when I first published the review on GR, (making a total of 8!) so I’m not going to go into them, even though 2 of them fit the same profile as the new ones. The other 5 that came in over the weekend are all brand new accounts. No profile pictures, a few classic books added, no reviews, all feminine sounding names, zero friends, and several likes of positive reviews for this book. All very suspicious. Why? I smell a conspiracy.

Then I checked out other reviews for this book. And wow! There are a lot of words like ‘appropriation’ and ‘cancel culture’ being thrown around.

Now, when reading this book, I was aware that the author is white writing about disability (the author has a disability) and writing about a POC and culture that is not her own. And I was concerned but I still read it. But I am not qualified in any way to weigh in on the conversation. I am white and have no basis of comparison for what people of Priya’s (the MC) background have experienced.

I don’t know what the likes to my review signal, if anything. But I don’t like the idea that my review might be being used in a discussion (in whatever way that might be) to sway, change, skew, etc. I don’t think GR allows you to give 0 stars or I would change it that way. [Update: Looks like they do and I made the change.] Not that I’m rating the book as bad or good based on the conversation going on. I would leave the written review as is with this edit added and zero stars. (Hope that makes sense.)

I understand and sympathize with people who are concerned with the message the cover and book are giving. From my limited perspective, I didn’t see what others where seeing, in terms of the cover, as I don’t have the background experiences. I saw it as 2 friends being goofy together. But I see what concerned and angered people now that I’ve been made aware of it.

There is more to the conversation surrounding this book, but I will leave it to those with more understanding of the situation to weigh in on.

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Sent to hyphen8 as the book chosen from the Asian Diaspora VBB!

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Thanks for sending this - and the bonus books! (Zoomable photo here.)