The characterizations were well thought out. I enjoyed the ride the author takes you on. The plot kept my attention the entire time. I would recommend this book to people who love an emotional journey that may or may not end in a powerful ending.

This was a very conflicting reading experience for me. I think the depiction of grief was really good, and as an autistic person I actually really liked the neurodivergent portrayal (I wasn’t expecting to.) The main issue I had was with Clare’s story and more specifically....the video. It was so completely messed up and soured the whole book for me. I also just personally have an issue with cis authors writing enby and gender fluid characters because so often the narratives are the same and contribute to a singular narrative of what it means to be those identities without any acknowledgement that everyone experiences these identities differently. I also think it often leads to wording that reinforces the binary and attempts to describe non-binary and genderfluid people within a binary context without any acknowledgment of how that binary is made up...and that definitely happened here. I don’t know, overall I just had a lot more issues with this than positives.

“It’s not a trend. We’ve always been here. We just finally feel safe enough to make that known.”

A book by an Albertan author set in Alberta with a gender fluid MC, a non-binary love interest, and a neurodivergent MC? YES PLEASE! I loved this book so much! 

This story follows twin sisters Clare and Audrey as they deal with growing up, growing apart, and finding themselves. Clare is trying to figure out her gender identity (she still prefers to use she/her pronouns) while also falling for a non-binary classmate. Audrey is struggling with being an outsider to her sister and others because of being neurodivergent. This book is about both sisters finding their place in the world while also figuring out just how much they need each other despite growing apart.

First of all, I just have to highlight again that this is a story set in Alberta from an Albertan author! I didn’t know this when requesting this book, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that out when reading. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything to come out of my home province before, especially a book that takes place here. I especially appreciated that this book features the 2013 flood that devastated the province, especially the Calgary area in which the book takes place. I also loved that both girls go to french bilingual schools like I did growing up here. It just felt like getting a slice of home in a book and I really adored that.

This book was a wonderful read! More YA books need to have gender fluid and non-binary rep, especially as main characters. I also appreciated how Audrey was portrayed and how her chapters didn’t have quotation marks to emphasize the fact that she’s neurodivergent. Also, reading about her discovering the joys of LARPing just made me so happy. Audrey was definitely my favourite character in this book since she just seemed so sweet and Clare honestly treated her like garbage for a chunk of the book. I empathized with Clare, but she still made me so mad sometimes with how ableist she was towards Audrey.

I had a couple little gripes with this book, like both romance side plots felt a little underdeveloped. Also, for how progressive this book was the author still used the word “bipolar” to describe the weather and that just rubbed me the wrong way. It’s 2020, we don’t need to be using mental illnesses to describe things. On top of this, I felt like this book was pretty white. I don’t remember a character of colour in the whole book, so that’s not great.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book! The diverse gender representation was on point and I appreciated having a neurodiverse MC. A couple things could have been handled better, but as a whole this was an enjoyable read. I’m excited to see what this author has in store for the future!


*Thank you to Netgalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Children’s Book Group for giving me this eARC in exchange for an honest review*

Audrey and Claire are non identical twins. Audrey is different to her neurotypical peers and is tired of being seen as such and just wants to fit in and go to the same school as her twin again. Clare is popular and seems to life under control. When their brother Adam dies in a car accident the girls lose their bond with blame and guilt and reprisals. Clare is trying to grieve and come to terms with her changing view of the own gender and starts to wear Adams clothes cuts her hair, just trying to find out who she is. Audrey blames herself for Adams death and thinks if she can just go back to Clare's school all will be well.

This is really interesting book about grief, gender, acceptance, bullying, ADHD  and autism I enjoyed the duel perspective narrative and feel the characters journeys are authentic and not tick box exercise to include diversity. They are clear and well constructed characters. This was an emotional read and did make me cry towards the end.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for my copy of this book to review

Audrey and Clare are fraternal twins. They used to be inseparable, but after a period of drifting apart, the death of their older brother that distance became a chasm.

This is a wonderful coming of age story. Each of the girls has their own struggles with identity, where they belong, and being themselves when that is different from the majority.

The author has handled a range of complex and often sensitive topics with clarity and compassion. I truly enjoyed this novel and stayed up into the night to finish it in a single session. 

I would thoroughly recommend this novel, and will be keeping an eye out for what comes next for Alexandra Latos.

I enjoyed reading this novel about two sisters who are learning to embrace who they truly are. As a teacher I appreciated Audrey's story. I know students who have felt her frustration and wanted to escape their "bubble" to interact with peers who they perceive as "normal." Her journey felt realistic and only a bit preachy.

However, If I buy a copy of this book for my classroom it is for Clare. For members of the LGBTQ+ community, the author's handling of Clare may seem pedantic as readers get to see every single moment in her quest to try to express and define her gender identity. However, this is a character that young readers facing the same dilemmas will appreciate. Will Clare be the beloved nb character that will stand the test of time? Probably not, but that doesn't mean that readers won't appreciate the same we we appreciated I am J or Luna when they first came out.

An enjoyable YA book about gender identity, grief, family and self discovery. It was for the most part a good book with interesting themes and fantastically diverse characters. 

I love dual perspective narratives as it gives more room for exploration of a plot by getting a more rounded story, and I found this was definitely the case with this novel. I also found Clare’s character particularly interesting due to her search for gender identity, as this is a vastly under explored topic within literature, so I really enjoyed this element of the novel. 

In general, the book was good, it covered interesting and diverse topics and was well written. Thank you to the author, Net Galley and the publisher for the advance copy of this book.

I really really loved this. I didn’t have very many expectations going into it, but I definitely wasn’t expecting it to be as touching as it was. 

It’s really interesting to see how each of the twins are grieving their brother’s death. They both grieve in very different, but also very similar ways. I found that really interesting. 

I’ve never read a book with a genderfluid person! I’ve read a few books with characters who have different gender orientations, but never someone who is fluid on the spectrum. I really enjoyed reading Clare’s perspective and her discovering that about herself. 

I really like Taylor! I think the way the author writes them was wonderful! I don’t think I’ve read a book with a non-binary character who we didn’t know their assigned sex at birth. I LOVED this. I think this is a beautiful way to introduce someone to the idea of a non-binary person. This is one of the reasons I think this book would be wonderful for those pre-teens who are ready to bridge the gap between middle grade contemporary to YA contemporary!


I also haven’t read a book with a character who is the specific type of neurodivergent that Audrey is. I think a lot of readers who are autistic might relate with Audrey a lot. (Though they never label Audrey’s neurodiversity as autism, she does have some of the characteristics, as well as a panic disorder and OCD qualities.) 

This was a very refreshing book with beautifully unique characters that I definitely recommend!

Neurodiverse and LGBT+ rep? Count me in.

This story is an emotive one that will leave you reaching for hot chocolate, praying that these siblings can move past their prior lives. 

Audrey and Clare are twins who recently lost their brother, there is blame between them, anger and sadness as with any close relative death. 

It’s interesting to see a portrayal that deals with this in a diverse manner; with the exploration of self and the relation between how neurotypical and neurodiverse people handle greif. 

Audrey is non neurotypical, Clare neurotypical and on the LGBT spectrum so there’s great representation and diversity in both voices in this book.

The author handles gender and sexuality exploration in a really emotive way that took me back to being a teen. Great rep with non binary and queer characters throughout. 

Honestly it’s one of my more memorable reads this year, I sped through this because it’s written beautifully and you find yourself with questions answered in every chapter.

It is a fairly emotionally heavy read, and one perhaps for a day in where you can curl up and just be lost in the world it presents. 

One thing I did mark this down for was my slight dislike of one of the love interests who -I don’t know- just felt rather unreal / lacked emotional depth.

Under Shifting Stars is about two teen twins, Clare and Audrey, dealing in different ways over the death of their older brother, Adam. The two have been falling apart and as the book tugs you through different teenage struggles, the sibling bond is explored, broken, bend and hopefully, fixed as understanding grows again.

Despite the shared central thread of losing a sibling, Clare and Audrey's storylines carry different identity challenges; as Clare explores her gender identity and befriends a non-binary classmate, Audrey fights to appear more 'normal' and escape the school trying to assist her neurodivergent self. Latos uses the split POV to create shifts in the already complicated dynamics of navigating siblinghood alongside grief and trying to find a place amongst everything else.

I liked a lot about this book, but a lot of the time I felt like I was reading Wiki pages on terms and therapy and 'how to talk to your kid about....' etc. I admit it's a hard balance, to get accurate portrayals of teenage emotions whilst making the book itself entertaining and emotional. But a lot of recent contemporary fiction/Young Adult fiction seems to feel too catered towards informing the reader about labels they likely already know.

It's not enough nowadays to write a book to your past self, or to say a general 'please love yourself!' message for the kids. Not unless it's actually going to blow the reader away too.

A lot of the dialogue (particularly between peers and the parental or therapy conversations, felt so unrealistic and stiff with terms and lacked much humanity/realism. Latos makes up for this with some amazing inner dialogue, however, which is definitely what kept this book interesting me. It's just a shame it wasn't consistently powerful enough.

I did not finish this book. It's dual perspective, and neither of the POVs grabbed me. I skim-read the first four chapters to see if that might change, but no luck. I had been interested in this book bc of the I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson comp, and you can definitely see the similarities/thread between the two, so it's entirely possible it's just not for me and someone else could really like it.

I cried and let me tell you, it was ugly lol. I enjoyed most part of the book. The beginning was pretty slow and some of the character's actions were a bit annoying but I totally understand that this is a teen book and I'm too old for some behaviours represented here.  It is a book about grief, identity, self-discovery, and finding your place in the world in the midst of it all. I can't say much about the gender-fluid rep, but it's there and I liked the way the author talked about it.

I received an advanced copy of Under Shifting Stars from NetGalley, so that I could share my review with you!

Audrey and Clare might be twins, but they share very little.  They don’t attend the same school, don’t live in the same room, and they definitely don’t understand each other.  The only thing they seem to have in common is the grief they are experiencing after their brother’s sudden death.   When he died, it severed the last ties between the twins, leaving them adrift in their own worlds.  Audrey is desperately tired of being treated differently because of her neurodiversity.  The only path she sees forward is changing who she is completely, so that she can match who the world wants her to be.  Meanwhile, Clare is struggling with their gender identity, wondering what it means that some days they wake up feeling more like a boy than a girl.  When searching online, they find the term, “gender-fluid,” which makes more sense than anything else so far.  Clare and Audrey both feel alone and misunderstood, but maybe their friendship will save them both.

You can get your copy of Under Shifting Stars on September 29th from HMH Books for Young Readers!

What I enjoyed most about this book was its writing style.  I found the story to be incredibly readable, and quite compelling.  I often struggle with dual-voice stories, as I usually become lost trying to tell the characters apart, but Alexandra Latos absolutely nailed it with Under Shifting Stars!  The characters felt well-thought-out and distinctive in their personalities and voices.  It was an especially refreshing read due to the fact that I felt equally engaged by both of the main characters.  

My Recommendation-
If you enjoy stories with unique dual-perspective voices, you should read Under Shifting Stars!  This book would be a good fit for readers searching for a fictional story dealing with gender fluidity, the difference between sexuality and gender, and the challenges and triumphs of neurodiversity.

Audrey and Clare are non identical twins whose older brother recently died. Audrey goes to a SEN school, and Clare to a mainstream school. Clare is figuring out her identity, and pulling away from her sister, whilst Audrey feels left behind, and is desperate to prove that she can return to Clare's school. 

The book is told through both Audrey and Clare's perspectives, with alternating chapters. I liked Audrey immediately. I'm always happy to see a neurodivergent main character, and I thought Audrey was well written and relateable. Her voice sounds a little less mature than Clare's, but it's still clear that she's a teenager, with teenage feelings and desires. Her chapters have no speechmarks, which threw me a little at first, but once I got used to it, it just added to her voice. It took me longer to warm to Clare. I think this was because she is quite hurtful towards Audrey near the beginning of the book. However, after a few chapters I really came to like and understand her. 

Under Shifting Stars tackles big topics in an engaging and understandable way. The story is about grief, growing up, sex, gender, school, teenage relationships and learning who you are. Audrey and Clare process their grief in two different ways, and I thought that both were explored well. Clare deals with homophobia, transphobia and losing friends, and Audrey deals with ableist bullying and feeling like she doesn't fit in at her school. I also thought the portrayal of gender identity discovery was very authentic and well written. The twin connection, and growing apart as you grow up reminded me a little of Double Act by Jacqueline Wilson, which I read as a child, although the two stories are otherwise very different.

This book is really sad. It started sad, and, because it was dealing with grief, there was a lot of sadness all of the way through. But it was also a really lovely, moving story. I really cared about all of the characters, and I was rooting for them in their journeys. Both Audrey and Clare get to discover themselves and learn and grow. I highly recommend this book for older teens, and also adults.

A huge thanks to Netgalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Children's Book Group for an ARC of this in exchange for a review. 

Grief is something people deal with throughout their lives. The grief of losing someone never leaves, people just learn new ways to deal with it. 

This is the central idea of “Under Shifting Stars;” how people deal with grief and how it changes our lives. In this book, twins Audrey and Clare are dealing with the aftermath of their older brother, Adam’s, death. His death has caused a rift in their friendship which affects their family dynamic, and the grief of losing him has caused each sister to act and feel differently. For Audrey, it’s going to a different school and leaning heavily into art. For Clare, it’s living through her brother and discovering new things about herself she might not have otherwise known. 

“Under Shifting Stars” is unfortunately not the memorable book I was hoping it would be. At first, the book makes out Audrey to be this helpless teenager who is bullied constantly for going to a “freak” school, but by ¼ of the way in, I wanted to only focus on her for the rest of the book. Clare starts out interesting but once she started to take on the identity of her older brother Adam, it wandered into very odd and invasive territory. 

At the beginning of the book, Clare gets into her brother’s phone and watches the sex videos he and his girlfriend Dahlia had made, which was simply uncomfortable to read and/or imagine. Going further than that, Clare takes her brother’s clothes and even uses his ID to sneak into a bar which is just odd. She does a complete 180 in terms of character and it was not a great reading experience. On top of this, the characters are 15! They’re in 9th grade. It just felt wrong on multiple levels. 

On a positive note, this book had a fairly nice message about family, self-discovery, and learning to heal from a traumatic event(s). It’s clear in the book that Audrey and Clare deal with miscommunication which gets resolved later in the book, which calls for a happy ending, though I wish the circumstances as to how they resolve their feelings was a little more natural. I believe that the ending could have also been drawn out more and could have had a deeper emotional impact, but I believe it was one of the better parts of the book nonetheless. 

Another great note that I touched on earlier was Audrey’s storyline. I think she has a great story of recovery, coming to terms with grief and coming to terms with yourself. She grows a tremendous amount in the book and I feel that she is the most relatable character in the book.

The Verdict

Overall, “Under Shifting Stars” is a good story about dealing with grief and recovery, but it wasn’t necessarily my favorite. I do think there is an interesting story in Audrey, but Clare’s journey through discovering she’s genderfluid didn’t really leave an impact on me other than that it was kind of uncomfortable to read about at times when you think about the logistics of it. This is a pretty decent book and a quick read though, so if you’re looking for an easier read about a serious topic, this is a good choice for you. 

My Final Rating: ⅗ Stars

Under Shifting Stars follows twins Audrey and Clare as they try to adapt to new changes in their lives, new romances all whilst grieving the loss of their older brother and a broken relationship between each other.

I really enjoyed the book, it was written really well and I thought the emotions and the conflicting feelings the main characters were feeling was portrayed really well.  Audrey is dealing with a lot of guilt and feels out of place in her new school whilst Clare is exploring gender fluidity at the start of the book and has a lot of anger at life. The book is told in alternating perspectives and I liked that there is focus on their individual lives and also their relationship as sisters and as a family dynamic who are still grieving over the loss of their older brother. The strongest part of the book was how it dealt with the character’s guilt and anger at the loss of their brother and their broken relationship which they find hard to mend.

The characters are younger than I thought they would be, they are 15 and when Clare is finding out stuff/researching about sexuality and gender fluidity it is done in a very factual way – sections from sites/quizzes which I personally thought it could have been written better but I also understand that this is how Clare discovers information I just felt like it could have been included more as a discussion than just information given. Although I liked Audrey’s story at the start it focused a lot more on other characters and less on her emotions which I wanted more off but this does happen more in the second half .  

I did think that the start of the book was very fast paced and seems to go over things quickly but the book then deals with them later on at a slower pace. I personally did not like the ending, it felt rushed and a bit too perfect/wrapped up with things happening quickly and I thought there should have been a bit more focus on the sisters relationship in the chapters leading to the ending.

3/5

This ended up being just an okay read for me but I really appreciated the themes the book covers. The author has said that she wrote this book to help teens feel comfortable with being “different” and I wholeheartedly support that purpose.

There’s neurodiverse representation and a lot of exploration into gender identity and sexuality that’s really perfect for teens similarly exploring who they are. And at the same time it covers how difficult school is for kids who don’t stick to the “status quo” while allowing the characters to find a way to express themselves and feel comfortable in who they are.

My main issue was that it felt too educational (particularly with the gender identity narrative) rather than a natural progression of someone exploring their identity. There was a lot of google searching and an overload of definitions that overpowered any description of how the character was actually thinking and feeling in this process; a lot of telling rather than showing. I understand that those definitions would be helpful to teens going through a similar process but it read almost like an educational manual.

I did like that the general format of the book with alternating 1st-person narration from the twins, though I tended to prefer Audrey’s narration as it felt much more natural. The only thing with the dual perspective is that because we’re able to know both of their thoughts, the explanatory nature of the book is overkill here.

I can’t speak to the accuracy of either the gender or neurodiversity representation but while I found Audrey more natural, she did come off very young (so much so I thought she was in elementary school when I started reading, not high school!). A Goodreads reviewer commented on the harm of this infantilization for a character with a potential mental disability (though undiagnosed) so I don’t know how neurodiverse readers would react to the character. 

It was an interesting read and while it seems from my review that grief isn’t a big part of the story, it is handled really well and is the impetus behind a lot of growth in the characters throughout the book. I also really appreciated the nuance in the gender exploration, with discussions around gender fluidity, finding labels or identifying without, LGBTQ student groups in the schools, and several characters that are already comfortable and confident in their identity. There were just some misses for me in the narrative style and some possible issues with representation.

Under Shifting Stars is the story about Clare and Audrey, fraternal twins who could not be more different.  Audrey is neurodiverse, and trying to cope with being sent to a new school.  Clare has always been the popular one, until she begins to question her sexuality and gender identity.  They are both grieving the loss of their older brother, who was killed in a car accident months ago.  Each finds someone that helps them explore who they are and who they want to become.

I enjoyed this book.  I felt the characters were well written.  The relationships they had with their friends and families felt real, and I enjoyed seeing how they developed throughout the book.

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Under Shifting Stars is the story of two twins whose relationship fell apart after their brother died. Clare is struggling with her self identity and sexuality and Audrey is tired of being considered different from her neurotypical peers. On top of that, Audrey blames herself because she thinks she was the cause of her brother's death since he was coming to pick her up from a disastrous karate lesson. 

I LOVED this book. I could relate to both characters and I enjoyed watching them grow and find their way back to each other. Even if I'm an only child, books about sisterhood always make me tear up, because I can only imagine how lovely it would be to have someone who just gets you. 

I loved how supportive Clare and Audrey's parents were, we definitely need more positive representation! 

The writing style kept me hooked and the characters were well-rounded so I would definitely recommend this to anyone who's looking for a book about sisterhood, grief and self-discovery.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read an early copy.

I couldn’t finish this book. The quality of the writing was really good but I think that this book just isn’t for me. It sounds really good and probably is great for other people! But it just wasn’t an ideal book for me and I found my self slumping massively and I just couldn’t power through with it