I’ve got two great YA contemporaries to share with you today.  The first is from a new-to-me author, Rachel Lynn Solomon and the second is from one of my favorite YA contemporary authors Sandhya Menon.  I had so much fun with both of these reads and am excited to share my thoughts on them with you.

Author: Rachel Lynn Solomon

Publication Date: July 28, 2020

Publisher:  Simon Pulse

FTC Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book from Netgalley.  All opinions are my own.

Today Tonight Tomorrow by Rachel Lynn Solomon is one of the most entertaining and relatable novels set in a high school I’ve read in a long time.  It follows senior Rowan Roth on her last day of high school and beautifully captures all of the emotions running through her head as she prepares to say goodbye to her classmates and, in essence, her childhood, and as she looks ahead to her future and her desire to become an author.  Will she ever see her friends again?  Has she really accomplished everything she hoped to accomplish in high school?  Will people take her seriously when she tells them she wants to write romance novels?  All of the emotions swirling around in Rowan’s brain as she navigates that last day of school were so relatable and really made me nostalgic for my own high school days.

Today Tonight Tomorrow is also a really fun read though.  It features the most epic scavenger hunt/assassin game called HOWL where seniors are given clues that take them all around the city of Seattle, along with an armband and the name of a target, which is of course a fellow senior.  If you capture your target’s armband, he or she is eliminated.  The goal of the game is to correctly solve all of the clues, providing photo evidence for each, and eliminate as many targets as possible without being eliminated yourself.  How much fun does that sound like?  I would have loved this game when I was in high school. Heck, I’d actually play it right now!  What makes HOWL even more fun though is that Rowan inadvertently ends up paired with her arch nemesis and high school rival for valedictorian, Neil McNair (or McNightmare as Rowan prefers to call him).  What could possibly go wrong with this scenario?  Will they work together, maybe become friends or dare I say it, even more than friends?  Or will they relish the opportunity to go head-to-head one more time before they say goodbye to high school and to each other?  Oh, the possibilities!  I’m not going to say anymore so that you can find out for yourself, but I’ll just say I loved every minute of their time together that last day.  If you’re looking for a heartwarming, contemplative read with a little side of mostly good-natured, cutthroat fun, be sure to check out Today Tonight Tomorrow.   4.5 STARS

Author: Sandhya Menon

Publication Date: July 21, 2020

Publisher:  Simon Pulse

FTC Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book from Netgalley.  All opinions are my own.

My love for Sandhya Menon’s YA novels continues with her latest, 10 Things I Hate about Pinky.  Pinky Kumar is a free spirit and a social justice warrior, and when she is passionate about a cause, watch out because nothing is going to stop her from making her dream a reality.  While Pinky’s passion is an admirable quality, it does tend to rattle her conservative lawyer parents a bit, especially since they think her free spiritedness leads her to make unwise decisions at times.  Pinky’s choice of boyfriends is also a frequent topic of conversation and when it’s the first topic of conversation when they arrive at their beach house for summer vacation, Pinky decides to take action so that she doesn’t have to spend the entire summer listening to her parents.  When she hears that Samir Jha, a friend of a friend, has had his summer plans fall through at the last minute, she invites him to her beach house to pose as her fake boyfriend.  Samir wants to be a lawyer like her parents and he dreams of going to Harvard, which is Pinky’s mom’s alma mater, so he’s the perfect boy to finally impress her parents.  There’s just one problem…once they finally meet up and start hanging out, Pinky and Samir realize they can’t stand each other. Samir is so flustered and so frustrated by Pinky that he actually writes a list down of all the things he hates about her.  It’s so hilarious watching the two of them try to deal with each other all summer without blowing their cover and of course every step of the way I’m waiting for that moment when they’re sure to realize that perhaps those sparks flying between them aren’t all about hate after all.  I adored everything about this book. Both Pinky and Samir are adorable in their own way, and I also loved the shout outs to Ashish and Sweetie from Menon’s other books in this series.  I breezed through 10 Things I Hate about Pinky in a day and was sorry to say goodbye to these characters at the end.  As always though, Menon left me with warm fuzzies and a smile on my face and I really hope we’ll get even more books set in this world.   4 STARS