Efren Divided

Written by: Ernesto Cisneros

First line: Once again, Efren Nava woke up to a chubby pajamaed foot in his face. 

Why you should read this book: Efren and his little twin siblings live a cramped but happy existence with their hard-working immigrant parents in their little apartment full of good food and good cheer, and Efren is excited for milestones like being able to walk to school by himself and help his best friend run for school president. Then, his life is turned upside down when his mother is the victim of an ICE raid and is deported to Mexico. Now Efren's father is working all the time to raise the money to bring their mother home while Efren finds himself struggling to take care of his family with the same grace and care that his mother once provided. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: It doesn't exactly have a happy ending. 

Signs of the Imminent Apocalypse and Other Stories

Written by: Heidi Bell

First line: The brightest of lights and a liquid dark presence, a smell like smoke and mussels gritty with sand, motion over water streaked with moon.

Why you should read this book: These quietly epic stories stand with one foot planted in the fairy tale realm and the other in our strange reality, joined together by darkness and magic. Some of them are more experimental, such as the eponymous story, an abecedarian of modern troubles, or "This Is Your Life," written as catalog copy for a lifestyle brand, while others lean more into the realm of magical realism, such as "Obscure Magic," in which a girl is imprisoned, Rapunzel style, on a magical estate where her mother seeks to protect her from the outside world. A powerhouse collection of humans seeking human connection with all the messiness, joy, heartbreak, and triumph that entails.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You have to blackmail people into accepting your companionship. 

Little Princes: One Man's Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal

Written by: Conor Grennan

First line: It was well after nightfall when I realized we had gone the wrong way.

Why you should read this book: In order to mitigate the "unrepentantly self-indulgent" nature of his plan to spend a year traveling the world partying and rubbing up against strange women, Conor Grennan schedules a two-month stint volunteering at an orphanage in Nepal. To his surprise, he falls in love with the orphans of Little Princes, who call him "Brother" and have mastered the art of the tackle-hug, and feels compelled to return to Nepal after his grand tour. When learns that most of the children aren't truly orphans, and some of them have vanished, he dedicates himself to recovering the lost ones and tracking down all the families who thought they were sending their kids to a better life, combatting Maoist rebels, war, poverty, bureaucracy, the cold, knee pain, inclement weather, language barriers, lack of medical care, and a diet consisting almost entirely of white rice and lentils. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: You believe empathy is a weakness. 

Nana & Kaoru volume 1

Written by: Ryuta Amazume

First line: Show me the back, too.

Why you should read this book: Kaoru is a perverted slacker who spends most of his time and money on BDSM porn and Nana is the student council top-of-the-class overachiever, the object of Kaoru's fantasy and completely out of his league. When the guidance counselor tells Nana she needs to relax on the same day that Nana finds the bondage costume Kaoru bought in her exact size, the two embark on a personal journey of growth through fetish, with loser Kaoru developing confidence as a master and Nana finding release from stress through their depraved "breathers." This is a sweet, softcore BDSM romance.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You're offended by how other people get off. 

Mr. Knocky

Written by: Jack Ziegler

First line: The three o'clock bell had just rung and I was running all over the schoolyard, yelling at the top of my lungs.

Why you should read this book: Mr. Knocky is a socially challenged old man who terrifies the local children with his weird and boring stories, which are presented without solicitation in the middle of the kids' games. One day, Mr. Knocky gets hit in the head with a snowball and ends up flat on his back in the snow. The kids are terrified, and when it turns out Mr. Knocky is OK, they are much more accepting of his presence and don't find his stories so weird and boring. 

Reverie

Written by: Ryan La Sala

First line: This is where it happened. 

Why you should read this book: I think, at its core, it's a metaphor about maladaptive daydreaming, the kind where it's so easy to escape into your dissociative fantasy world that your coping mechanism becomes more real to you than the real world, and begins to impact your real life and all your relationships, but it's also a YA queer fantasy, so the daydreams are very, very real and if the characters can't control them, it could be the end of life as we know it. Kane doesn't have any real memories of the night he supposedly crashed his car and burned down a local landmark, but, as he heals, he starts to realize that he's missing a lot of memories, mostly those pertaining to close friendships he doesn't remember having, but also that he was the leader of a group of teens with superpowers and that other worlds are creeping out of people's imaginations and taking over reality. Kane has to figure out who to trust and who to protect, and to defeat a magical drag queen who wants to use him to create another world in place of the one Kane calls home. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: It took me a while to get into it.