The Singular Life of Aria Patel

 

Rating: 4.5 because the author, Samira Ahmed is a former English teacher and a writer who represents many of the identities that vocal Americans hate (female, person of color, daughter of immigrants). Her writing is full of radical love and culture. 

My Thoughts:

I like authors who are not afraid to be unapologetically human. If you like that too, watch the Virtual School Visit with authors Alex London and Samira Ahmed.

But back to this book. Think The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon. Take the swoony romance, science-y, nerdy girl best parts of that book. Add it to the speculative fiction meets science fiction part of If You Could See the Sun by Ann Liang, then add the physics/poetry/falling through multiverses of time/space/place and you have The Singular Life, which in and of itself is an ironic title as you will soon see. 
This is a unique book in a YA market that, at its most comforting, is predictable. Be prepared to wander and wonder. As an adult reader and a sci fi reader for most of my 50 years, I knew who wrote the poem. What I did not know was how or even if she should go back to her original life. The key was a surprise. I am going to leave it at that. 

From the Publisher:

Aria Patel likes stability, certainty, predictability. It’s why she’s so into science. It's why she dumped her boyfriend before they went to different colleges because the odds were that something would go wrong, eventually. In a life that’s already so chaotic, why obsess over complicated relationships and shadowy unknowns when the scientific method gives you direction and a straight path to avoid all the drama.  
But there’s no avoiding anything when Aria finds herself suddenly falling through parallel universes and there’s no formula that can save her. She can’t explain why she’s been waking up in a new reality almost every day, or why Rohan, and a poem from her English class, seem to be following her through every new life.
As Aria desperately attempts to find a way home, she eventually ends up stuck in a parallel world very similar to her own. She cherishes this new version of her family, and she finds herself unable to deny the yearning she has for Rohan…but it’s not her life or her Rohan. It belongs to another Aria, another girl, and unless Aria can get back home, she’ll have taken this happiness away from someone else forever. And she may never find her own. 

This whirlwind novel from New York Times bestselling author Samira Ahmed will whisk you through worlds unknown, all while putting a multiverse spin on one of BookTok’s favorite tropes: second chance romance.

Publication Information:

Author: Samira Ahmed
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (May 13, 2025)
Page length: 368 pages
Grade level: 7 and up

Anatomy: A Love Story (Anatomy Duology Book 1)

STARS: 4 this speaks to the science nerd girl in me who wanted to be a pathologist when I entered college. Historical fiction out of England, feminism, lady surgeon. . .and a romance over stolen dead bodies. . .plus the cover. So clever.

My Thoughts:

Besides the thoughts above, I am not reading white YA authors as I want to spend more time with non-white authors, however, this is a historical fiction piece about a young woman who wants to be a surgeon and lives in a society where she has to dress up in her dead brother's clothes to get bodies. She also has to sneak in side doors just to learn because unless a man escorts her, doors are closed to her. 

In addition, there is the class difference between Hazel and Jack. Who does not love a secret dalliance with a boy who is well below your social station? In the game of smash or pass, this is a hard smash. 

I am also going to add a spoiler here. She loses the boy at the end when her ex fiancee has him killed. But there is one last chance of hope, so make sure you have the second book in the duology, even if it more about her coping without Jack and trying to live out her dream.

I listened to this as an audiobook, and if you want a professional reader in your ear reading in an accent, definitely borrow the audiobook from your local library. 

From the Publisher:

Dana Schwartz’s Anatomy: A Love Story is a gothic tale full of mystery and romance.

Hazel Sinnett is a lady who wants to be a surgeon more than she wants to marry.

Jack Currer is a resurrection man who’s just trying to survive in a city where it’s too easy to die.

When the two of them have a chance encounter outside the Edinburgh Anatomist’s Society, Hazel thinks nothing of it at first. But after she gets kicked out of renowned surgeon Dr. Beecham’s lectures for being the wrong gender, she realizes that her new acquaintance might be more helpful than she first thought. Because Hazel has made a deal with Dr. Beecham: if she can pass the medical examination on her own, Beecham will allow her to continue her medical career. Without official lessons, though, Hazel will need more than just her books―she’ll need corpses to study.

Lucky that she’s made the acquaintance of someone who digs them up for a living.

But Jack has his own problems: strange men have been seen skulking around cemeteries, his friends are disappearing off the streets, and the dreaded Roman Fever, which wiped out thousands a few years ago, is back with a vengeance. Nobody important cares―until Hazel.

Now, Hazel and Jack must work together to uncover the secrets buried not just in unmarked graves, but in the very heart of Edinburgh society.

Publication Information:

Author: Dana Schwarz

Narrator: Mhairi Morrison, Tim Campbell

Publisher: McMillan Audio (January 18, 2022)

Length: 9 hours 35 minutes

 

Fire Keeper's Daughter

 

Update:

For ALA (American Library Association) Award season 2022 this book received: 

• Michael L. Printz Award Winner
• William C. Morris YA Debut Award Winner
• American Indian Youth Literature Award YA Honor Book

My Thoughts:

I have been sitting on this review for a bit because I feel as an Indigenous reader and teacher, when something comes around that is meant to teach me something, even if it a book and not a person, the respect due to this momi, this pearl of wisdom given, is to sit with it in silence and let the process of the struggle for this knowledge seep into my marrow. Finally, there is a YA semi contemporary novel that uses both radical self honesty and nerdy girl scientist skills to tell an Indigenous story and to solve a good mystery using both science and culture. 

This book is getting a lot of mainstream love, so I just want to talk about this as an Indigenous teacher who has been teaching Indigenous students for almost 30 years now. In the English classroom, we have needed this. Some of my favorite BIPOC, AAPI authors over the years did not write the kind of YA book that I could bring into my classroom. What I was left with were books about versus books by (Island of the Blue Dolphins).  Publication companies uplifting Indigenous YA authors and giving them the same kind of book press is also fairly new. One of the benefits of this pandemic is that YA publishers have been inviting a diverse group of authors to their book launch panels. This is much better than just inviting BIPOC authors, or just inviting AAPI authors so that it becomes about the color of the author and not the interplay of their books to each other.  The audience, then is more diverse. 

As far as the story, what I appreciate are those cultural elements and author decisions that feel very authentic and touch on our own native Hawaiian discussions/arguments that address what of the culture is to be shared, what is just for those inside the community and what parts are ok to publish outside of the community. There is a point where Daunis figures out something, but she also knows that it is not the kind of information that can be shared with the FBI. She also acknowledges stereotypes from the outside and speaks back to those stereotypes with radical self honesty without making this story a lecture on culture and cultural misappropriation. Perhaps this is a newer issue, but I also noticed that the FBI sent two Indigenous agents to act as undercover agents. It brought back the memories of the recent TMT protest on Mauna Kea where law enforcement made a decision to arrest Hawaiian elders so they put together all of their Hawaiian law enforcement officers. It just feels like the government putting us all in the bucket and it is the other crabs who are pulling us down so we can try and get out of this bucket. What Boulley does just with that one decision to bring in the character of "Jaime" who may be Indigenous but is neither connected to his land or his community, and therefore has no identity, is to subtly talk about the idea that belonging to a community and a culture has nothing to do with blood quantum or something on your birth certificate. It has to do with how you carry your responsibility to your land, to your elders, to those that follow you, perhaps called seven generation thinking. 

Finally, I want this book read, but I do not want to give anything away, so suffice it to say that there are disturbing parts and disturbing realizations based on certain events that are sad but not untruthful and I really appreciate the author for not glossing over or trying to soften this story to fit into a romance or feel good book. This is a story that lovingly captures the complexity of a culture in a way that only someone from inside the culture can write about, and instead of making it strictly a cultural story, can instead just weave a good story using land, people and relationships with both. 

NetGalley/Bookish and Macmillan publishing have put out very good teaching guides that can help teachers to run book clubs or have book discussions in their class. 

From the Publisher:

Eighteen-year-old Daunis Fontaine has never quite fit in, both in her hometown and on the nearby Ojibwe reservation. She dreams of a fresh start at college, but when family tragedy strikes, Daunis puts her future on hold to look after her fragile mother. The only bright spot is meeting Jamie, the charming new recruit on her brother Levi’s hockey team.

Yet even as Daunis falls for Jamie, she senses the dashing hockey star is hiding something. Everything comes to light when Daunis witnesses a shocking murder, thrusting her into an FBI investigation of a lethal new drug.

Reluctantly, Daunis agrees to go undercover, drawing on her knowledge of chemistry and Ojibwe traditional medicine to track down the source. But the search for truth is more complicated than Daunis imagined, exposing secrets and old scars. At the same time, she grows concerned with an investigation that seems more focused on punishing the offenders than protecting the victims.

Now, as the deceptions—and deaths—keep growing, Daunis must learn what it means to be a strong Anishinaabe kwe (Ojibwe woman) and how far she’ll go for her community, even if it tears apart the only world she’s ever known.

The Sun is Also a Star

Description:

Natasha: I’m a girl who believes in science and facts. Not fate. Not destiny. Or dreams that will never come true. I’m definitely not the kind of girl who meets a cute boy on a crowded New York City street and falls in love with him. Not when my family is twelve hours away from being deported to Jamaica. Falling in love with him won’t be my story.

Daniel: I’ve always been the good son, the good student, living up to my parents’ high expectations. Never the poet. Or the dreamer. But when I see her, I forget about all that. Something about Natasha makes me think that fate has something much more extraordinary in store—for both of us.

The Universe: Every moment in our lives has brought us to this single moment. A million futures lie before us. Which one will come true? 

My thoughts:

This book grabbed me from the prologue and stirred up the science nerdy girl that has been dormant in me for so long.  Yoon starts with Carl Sagan talking about making apple pie from scratch, not just with raw ingredients. No. It's Carl Sagan. He is talking about an apple pie from nothing at all. Big Bang, black holes, suns, oceans, life coming up from the muck. 

To make a thing as simple as an apple pie, you have to create the whole wide world.

That last line in the prologue is the essence of this book right there. If this were an essay, it would be the thesis. Worlds must collide. Dark matter, tides, extinction-level events. This is about two teenagers and romance and alternative worlds. It is about science and physics and the problem with immigration and race and ethnicity in America. This is about one day in New York. It is about broken dreams and loneliness. It is about time. 

And finally, as a former chemistry major who borrowed a chemistry book from my future husband and switched to English literature once we were together, this book is all about chemistry.