​"But who are we without our labels? Do our labels define us, or do we give definition to our labels? I think it's the latter. I'm still learning."

​How to be Remy Cameron is the story of a teen struggling to find himself amidst the myriad labels placed on him by society - black, gay, adopted, older brother, friend. He seems confident, outgoing and self-assured but when asked to write an essay about who he is, he struggles. Thus begins a journey of self-discovery that has him learning about his past and reflecting upon his future. I enjoyed this book but I didn't love it. The beginning, where we learn about Remy, his friends and his family, took too long for me. Nothing happened - sure, we got to know Remy but it took so long that I began to wonder if this book was just going to be all about a gay guy hanging with his crew, which was going to get old fast. Then Remy gets assigned the "Essay of Doom" and bam, the book takes off. Confident, out-since-he-was-fourteen Remy doesn't know what to write and so he begins a process of self-discovery. Despite the fact that this process is a bit angsty and occasionally cliched for my tastes, it was nice that the book was finally going somewhere and exploring important topics such as identity, consent, adoption and more. I really enjoyed the relationship that Remy developed with his birth sister, heretofore unknown to him. It would have been easy to take this discovery down a saccharine path, with sappy "oh I'm so glad we found each other" scenes but Winters doesn't do that. He builds the relationship slowly and cautiously, allowing Remy and his sister to feel out who they are to one another and also allowing Remy to figure out how to fit the idea of his birth mother in to his life and identity. Similarly, Winters also gives Remy a realistic love interest, again slowly building the relationship between the two characters, with all of the awkwardness of teen romances. Finally, Remy's family is the perfect background to this process of self-discovery - a safe, supportive place to land with a cute little sister, a goofy dad and a mom with a shoulder to lean on. In the end, this book is not an action-driven novel but a character-driven one. If that's your jam, then you will love this book; Winters does a great job of developing the characters slowly and conscientiously. If you need a bit more action, then you will likely find How to be Remy Cameron too slow as the action scenes are few and far between.

Thanks to NetGalley and Duet Publishing for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

Recommended for: mature Gr 7 and up

,I was drawn to this book for a couple of reasons - first, the setting - my high school hometown, Toronto; second, I liked the idea of diving into the world of homeless teens. At first, the premise for how Harbour ends up in Toronto turned me off - what fourteen year old girl actually believes that her father would send her to camp out in a big city while he sails from Florida all the way to Toronto? As the book continues and Harbour begins to develop a relationship with a homeless teen named Lise, however, Kilbourne weaves a more and more believable explanation, slowly revealing bits and pieces of the whole story until you can see exactly how this could have come to be. This slow reveal is what really made this book for me; it kept me reading and it kept me guessing as to what the next little piece was going to be.

The look in to the lives of homeless teens is well done - revealing both the positives (the kind and caring shelter worker) and the negatives (predatory men, eating out of dumpsters, addiction, cold weather) with empathy and respect. The ending, while a little to coincidental for my taste, is not picture perfect and you are left with just enough questions to keep it from feeling like it was wrapped up with a tidy bow.
Safe Harbour is not a gritty look at the life of teens on the streets of Toronto as the flyleaf might lead you to believe; rather, it is an exploration of a young girl coming to terms with her family, friends and the harsh realities of life. Sure, the desperation of life camping out in a ravine in the middle of a big city, with no money and no lifelines underscores the story and provides the background for pivotal moments, but the true beauty of this book lies in the gradual unfolding of Harbour herself. As Harbour says at the very end of the book "I don't know everything about how I feel, or anything about how I should feel. I don't even know how I want to feel. But I know without a doubt that the ground is solid beneath my feet and it feels good."

Gr. 7 and up. Be aware of language and some content (drinking mouthwash, sexual predators - - implied). There is mention of a free downloadable teacher's guide but I was unable to find it on the Dundurn Press website (perhaps it will be available after the book is officially released Nov 2019).

I don't often read anthologies (or short stories for that matter). I prefer my books a little longer so I can really get in to the story. Right from the introduction though, Color Outside the Lines grabbed me and sucked me in - 
"When people ask me what this anthology is about, I'm often tempted to give them the complicated answer: it's about race, about being different from the person you love - how it can matter and also not matter - and it's about Chinese pirate ghosts, and black girl vigilantes, and colonial India, and a flower festival, and a garden of poisons, and so, so much else. Honestly, though? I think the answer's much simpler than that. Color Outside the Lines is a collection of stories about young, fierce, brilliantly hopeful characters of all colors." (from the introduction by Sangu Mandanna).
I mean, how can you not want to read this book after that? What I loved the most was how different all of the stories were; it would have been easy to create an anthology of YA realistic fiction from the last couple of decades but that's exactly what this book isn't and why it's so wonderful. The stories run the gamut from realistic fiction to fantasy to historical fiction and they are so well curated that the transitions never seem jarring nor are they grouped in such a way that you feel the transition from genre to genre. The book flows smoothly from story to story, author to author.
Speaking of the stories - to go through each one individually would do the book a disservice. There is something here for everyone and that is part of the beauty of the book. I didn't love each and every story but there were some that left me breathless and wanting more. Some are blatant commentary on biracial relations and relationships and some are more subtle explorations of other types of differences. Some take place in the here and now, while others take place in the past or in a different world entirely. What links them together is the humanity of the characters - their strengths, their fears, their hopes, their love - and that's what kept me reading, story after story.

Appropriate for Gr. 6 and up. Some good choices to spark classroom discussions.

Saving Everest had a lot of potential - big, meaty subject matter (suicide, depression, gay teens), romance, the weight of expectation and more. There were parts of it, especially in the first half of the book, that I really enjoyed and that felt realistic; unfortunately, the second half of the book fell apart for me.

In the first half, the unexpected attempted suicide of the super-popular high school quarterback drives the storyline, underscoring the shallowness of some relationships (the protagonist's girlfriend and teammates who mock & vilify rather than supporting him), the harshness of others (his father) and the hidden potential in still others (Beverly, the "ghost girl" who takes it upon herself to rescue him). The difficulty Everest has recovering from depression is well-written and speaks to the realities of the ups and downs of mental illness. Beverly's attempts to befriend him, while awkward and perhaps a bit unlikely, are believable in their innocence and naivete. I enjoyed many of the interactions between the characters at this point in the story and felt like they fit the genre well. I particularly enjoyed the snippets from the uncle's journal and would have loved to see those established as an anchor for the chapters and the development of the main characters and their relationships.

As the story continues, however, consistency becomes an issue. Everest's father, who has loomed large in the background as an overbearing jerk set on controlling his son's future, simply disappears. Everest haphazardly attends his senior year of high school but no one seems to care; his budding career as a musician seems explanation enough for why school is no longer necessary. We know that Beverly's relationship with her mother is generally unhealthy, but opportunities are missed to explore this in any detail. It is often difficult to remember that these are teenagers in high school as they spend very little time actually at or concerned with school, especially for kids looking to go to college.

Basically the second half of the book tries to cram a teenage romance in beside every possible high school drama imaginable, the result being that none of them are explored with any depth or detail. You've got a caricature of every type - stoner, class president, pretty, popular mean girl, bookworm, football player, closeted gay football player, musician - and every scenario - homecoming, winter formal, birthday party, drinking in the basement, coffee shop, awkward Thanksgiving and on and on. By trying to include it all, Saving Everest merely floats on the surface of what could have been some pretty important and meaningful topics. For me, Saving Everest misses the mark; the early potential to explore the stressors of high expectations, family issues and depression gave way to a poorly developed teen romance that ended with a fizzle rather than a bang.
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