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All For One by Melissa de la Cruz
Black Girl, Call Home by Jasmine Mans
Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse
Blastaway by Melissa Landers
Can You Keep a Secret? by Sophie Kinsella
Cloaked by Alex Flinn
Death by French Roast by Alex Erickson
Delicious in Dungeon, Volume 8 by Ryoko Kui
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Float Plan by Trish Doller
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In Your Shoes by Donna Gephart
Julieta and the Diamond Enigma by Luisana Duarte Armendáriz
The Library Book by Susan Orlean
Like Home by Louisa Onomé
Lost in the Never Woods by Aiden Thomas
Lullaby For Eggs: A Poem by Betty Bridgman and Elizabeth Orton Jones
The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen
Mistletoe Murder by Leslie Meier
Moriarty the Patriot, Volume 3 by Ryōsuke Takeuchi
The Night Gardener by Jonathan Auxier
Orsinian Tales by Ursula K. Le Guin
A Pho Love Story by Loan Le
Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman by E.W. Hornung
Read or Alive by Nora Page
Rockridge by Robin Wolf and Tom Wolf
Samantha Spinner and the Super Secret Plans by Russell Ginns
Twins by Varian Johnson and Shannon Wright

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Like Home: 04/30/21

Like Home

Like Home by Louisa Onomé is a YA novel about a teenage girl trying to save her neighborhood. On the one hand it has been suffering a slow but steady death of attrition since the shooting death of a girl in an arcade. On the other hand, gentrification has come and the hold outs are being bought out.

Chinelo or Nelo to her friends has a daily routine that involves picking up her best friend Kate at her family's store. They grab a snack and then ride the bus to school. Except one morning all that changes when someone throws a brick through the window and the store is forced to close until the insurance can kick in.

The closing of the store in Ginger East brings the neighborhood to a breaking point. More families plan to move. A high school classmate and social media influencer decides to take advantage of the situation.

All of this is set in a fictional neighborhood in western Toronto and near Cooksville. While Nelo clearly loves Ginger East, it takes most of the novel to really ground her into a understandable sense of place. There would have been more of an emotional hit if Nelo's neighborhood was more of a character beyond the store and the bus stop.

Louisa Onomé's next novel is Model Minority with a release date sometime next year.

Four stars

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