Puzzleheart

Puzzleheart, Jenn Reese, 2024 middlegrade. Cute fantasy about a sentient magical house that's a sort of living escape room. Did not quite entirely land for me - this is the kind of book that starts in the real world and then magical stuff starts happening, and the tween protagonist and new friend did not really seem like the kind of people who would accept this foundational break in world-logic without significantly more metaphysical distress (is there a better term for this? maybe supernatural shock?) - and I admit to doing some skimming, but it was sweet and fun and had a solid little middlegrade moral lesson about kids not being responsible for fixing their parents. I wouldn't necessarily rec it to other adults but I would cheerfully put a copy in every elementary-school library in America.

The Girl from the Sea

The Girl from the Sea, Molly Knox Ostertag, 2021 YA graphic novel. Selkie story, not for losers. (Sorry.) Cute and sweet story about a closeted high school girl having a summer romance, coming out to her family and friends, and finding solutions other than eco-terrorism to a local ecological problem, what's not to like.