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Dear readers, we have some silly (Nikki) and some serious (Ashley) for you today.  We hope you enjoy the contrast, but just in case you need the abridged version, You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson is the book we needed in high school, and it just might be the book the high school student in your lives needs now.  

Sometimes we all feel the need to pretend to be someone else, or at least put on some armor.  Thinking about the masks we wear and the armor we don is at times liberating and challenging, but also vulnerable.  Rhys plays games, Ianthe is more than meets the eye, and Feyre has to fight to find herself (but really, what 19 year old doesn’t?).  What masks does Nesta wear?  What do Azriel’s shadows hide?  And WHAT is in Cassian’s box!?  If you have a theory about any of the above, or anything else related to Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses series  we want to hear it at our next Virtual Book Club on Friday, February 12 at 7:30 p.m. CST.  Sign up here to receive all the details on Friday, including to learn if Nikki does or does not finish her reread of all 3.5 books before book club.  If you’re following along on Goodreads, you’ll get an early answer, and you already know Ashley’s ready to go!  

To serious readers who aren’t amused by our love of A Court of Thorns and Roses, I’m mostly sorry about what’s about to happen and won’t be offended it you skip down to Ashley’s fantastic section.  She challenged me, and I just couldn’t back down because I was too excited.  #blameAshley [Please see Ashley’s statement below.]

I love a good underdog story, so when Leah Johnson takes a Black high school senior who’s been gut-punched by life time and time again, not unlike our darling Feyre, and suddenly she needs to win prom queen for all the right reasons, I am here for You Should See Me in a Crown.  Liz doesn’t care about being in prom court, unlike the rest of her small town, who think prom is the biggest of big deals.  Liz needs the scholarship money to attend the school she’s dreamed of, the school her mom attended, where her mom wanted her to go too, before she passed away.  The story takes us through the seven weeks of the prom season at Campbell County High during which we get to know Liz, her friends, and the others who are running for prom court.  This is a high school story, and it reads like one, big and full of feelings, but also cringe worthy in so many ways for those of us who are past those days.  It’s really not dissimilar from rereading Under the Mountain because it’s so dramatic as Liz and Feyre realize that the powers-that-be will make space for you, but you’re “going to have to demand it” and then fight for it too, with a little help from your friends, of course.  

When you’re fighting for your space, you definitely need a friend who thinks you should always wear a crown, and that’s where Britt comes in.  Johnson writes such amazing descriptions of the campaign materials for prom court and they fit the characters.  In each of Liz’s posters, Britt shows Liz wearing a crown, because she’s deserving of it from day one, just as Rhys has a crown for Feyre from the first day he has the twins dress her Under the Mountain.  Dress for the job you want… or maybe it’s visualize the win, but doubling down doesn’t hurt in this case.

Crowns always make me think of princesses, and at my age, the princesses I grew up with were Snow White, Cinderella, and Aurora.  I’m with Feyre and Liz, I’d rather be Anna, Elsa, Merida, Mulan, Moana, or any other princess who goes out and gets things done rather than waiting around to be saved (although I would not turn down mice or woodland creatures who helped clean, the princesses of my childhood do have that going for them).  Liz calls Campbell “A fairy tale for some, and a nightmare for the rest of us…  #EffYourFairyTale” which seems a lot like Feyre’s view too, especially in the House of Beasts, the first section of my personal favorite, A Court of Mist and Fury.  It’s another reminder to be conscious of the different perspectives.  Rhys thinks he’s the villain of the story, Tamlin thinks he’s the hero and Feyre is “his reward for not dying of stupidity and arrogance,” but Feyre forgot to tell Rhys “…the villain is usually the person who locks up the maiden and throws away the key…He was the one who let [her] out.”  We can debate each male’s time spent playing the villain on Friday, but they have different narratives informing and guiding them, just as we are guided by Feyre, and by Liz.  

Dear readers, here’s the thing, sometimes you read a book and you know it’s amazing, but it just didn’t hit you at the right time.  This is the way I feel about Are You There God?  It’s Me Margaret by Judy Blume.  I’m still disappointed in all the adult readers in my life for not putting that book in my hands when I was close to Margaret’s age.  Similarly, You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson got to me too late, but it’s not too late for the high school students in your life.  It seems silly for a crown to be such a big deal in this community, but the history and the continued interest of the alumni in this small town are part of the bigger problem Liz faces.  Liz is an “other” in so many ways in Campbell, and through this well-told tale, we see how she has the list of “other” boxes checked, but those around her also have a box or two checked off.  I think it is so essential for young people in the throws of high school drama to realize that everyone, and I do mean EVERYONE feels like they’re on the outside at some point, even if some people do have more obstacles put in front of them than others.  Liz gets to know people from different social groups during her time running for prom court (just as Feyre does during that multi-day, drama filled meeting at Thesan’s place), and she realizes that everyone has something that makes them feel like they’re on the outside at some point.  Does Liz have more to overcome?  Most definitely.  She’s also got a group of friends who adore her, get it on a different level, and want to help her.  Just as the Court of Dreams helps Feyre to figure out who she is now, Liz has her people to support her and help her, and they both have someone who knows they deserve to wear a crown, and that’s the dream folks, finding your people.  May you all find your people who, twenty years later will read a book because you’re excited about it, and then fan with you over it, launch a blog to put the text conversations you’re already having on the internet for more people to join in, and start a book club, on a whim, during a pandemic, and then challenge you to incorporate the similarities from that book that started it all to a very different one just because it’s entertaining to you both.  And may you buy those people a crown, or a witch hat, as they wish.  Just don’t forget to deliver it, like me.  

I hope you all have enjoyed this adventure, and I hope you read and recommend You Should See Me in a Crown to young people in your life.  I give it 3.5 stars, with a round up to 4, and I won’t likely reread it, but I’m very glad I did and I’m highly likely to recomnend it!

~Nikki

For the record, dear readers, there was no official challenge thrown at Nikki about combining You Should See Me in a Crown and the A Court of Thorns and Roses series that we have been reading for Virtual Book Club. Regardless of what was actually said in that text conversation [Nikki here: Ashley started it and I stand by that.],  Nikki’s reaction was:

 And, Nikki crushed it. I feel woefully inadequate in my ability to contextualize this book any better, so I’ll focus on what I do know. Leah Johnson is a debut author who’s here to stay. Her sophomore novel, Rise to the Sun, is slated to come out in June this year. And her website bio states she loves The Mighty Ducks – “the greatest underdog sports film of all time.” Y’all know how I feel about hockey and Canadians (Joshua Jackson is Canadian even if he plays a Minnesotan in the film). Which she wrote about for catapult online magazine, here. You Should See Me in a Crown was the inaugural Reese’s Book Club YA pick, 2021 Stonewall Honor Book, 2020 Junior Library Guild Selection among numerous other honors and accolades.

Additionally, while reading some more of her essays Johnson is HARDCORE killing me with the feels. Her essay on electricliterature.com titled “How Young Adult Literature Taught Me to Love Like a White Girl” really gets this bookish girl thinking. Nikki has admitted multiple times that she feels slighted that no one gave her Judy Blume to read as a middle schooler and maybe that’s not such a terrible thing to think about with a little introspection. Why give our (white) girls more books that just reiterate their own lived experience? Why not give them a book that helps them explore the inner lives of people who don’t look, live, or possibly love in the same way they do? It’s the same reason Nikki and I, as adults, purposefully seek out diversity in our reading life. We want to understand how people who don’t look like us experience life. I was really struck by her essay about Peter Kavinsky in All The Boys I’ve Loved Before and how he is every white boy that she has spent her adulthood getting over because white boys were the only boys she was told was worthy of chasing/giving your love to in all the young adult and romance books she read during her formative years. It got me thinking about one of the girls in the Girl Scout Troop I led years ago, one of two black girls in the troop, and how she loved Justin Beiber. This was that many years ago at the beginning of the Beiber-fever craze, and now, looking back, I wonder if she really did enjoy his music, or if perhaps she wanted to be as cool as her friends who were also experiencing the joys of being a fan-girl. Was the music and personality of Justin Beiber (another Canadian, eh) what and who she wanted to love or was it what the culture she was surrounded with told her she should want to love? Why wouldn’t the culture give her any Black young men that sang songs without explicit lyrics about “One Less Lonely Girl,” and be slated for musical collaborations with huge name artists of color, in no particular order: Ludacris, Sean Kingston, Mariah Carey, Jaden Smith, Big Sean, Nicki Minaj, Drake, and Tyga, among many others. I bet y’all already know the answer to that, and this was just ten years ago.

This. Is. Why. It. Is. Important. To. Put. Everyone’s. Story. In. Print. And in music. And on film. 

In reading these essays, I see that Johnson wrote the book that she was never given to read as a young girl. A story about a young, Mid-Western, black girl, with a sick family member (read the heartbreaking story in her Mighty Ducks essay where she talks about being fifteen-years-old and using her learner’s permit to drive her mother to the emergency room during an asthma attack and not cry, I freaking dare you) who falls in love with a joyful red-headed girl who drives a Jeep (you know that got me right in the feels, y’all), and gets the happily ever after she’s BEEN WORKING FOR. I’m going to give Johnson’s debut, You Should See Me in a Crown, a solid 4 stars, and I also won’t be re-reading it. But I most certainly will be looking for opportunities to recommend it to the people in my life, especially the young ones who need to be able to see themselves in the characters. I’ll probably read Johnson’s work in the future, and especially be on the lookout for any adult titles she might release.

~Ashley

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