Welcome to Thursday Quotables! This feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines will be, and you’re invited to join in! Hosted by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies.

The one no one could quite pigeonhole (“Is she Black?” “Nah, her dad’s white.” “Yeah, but her mom’s not.”)

I thought this quote was interesting.

Saskia Brown is a biracial teen girl who recently moved with her father to Coventon due to some martial drama between her parents. Eh, it’s not so much drama as Saskia’s mother started a relationship with her 20 something year old substitute high school teacher. Apparently this made Saskia and her dad pariahs since it was “embarrassing” to the community or whatever. I don’t know.

Anyway, Saskia is biracial, and I guess when people initially see her, they aren’t sure what to make of her. I get this, because I get the same reactions but slightly different since I’m not biracial. “Are you Pohnpei? Because you are so beautiful!” “No, I’m not Pohnpei, so am I still beautiful?” LOL yeah I don’t understand those comments but whatever.

It’s like this need for people to define everything and everyone. Put them in neat little boxes in order to understand what’s happening. Even if there is no clear cut box to put someone in, people will still try to do so. It’s kind of like when people can’t accept the fact that someone is nonbinary… people will still want to figure out whether someone is male or female. Why does that matter to this stranger? Why does someone’s identity determine how a stranger would think someone, you know?

Hmm… I don’t remember where I was going with this post! Oops.

History and the speculative collide with the modern world when a group of high school girls form a secret society after discovering they can communicate with boys from the past, in this powerful look at female desire, jealousy, and the shifting lines between friendship and rivalry.

After her life is upended by divorce and a cross-country move, 16-year-old Saskia Brown feels like an outsider at her new school—not only is she a transplant, she’s biracial in a population of mostly white students. One day while visiting her only friend at her part-time library job, Saskia encounters a vial of liquid mercury, then touches an old daguerreotype—the precursor of the modern-day photograph—and makes a startling discovery. She is somehow able to visit the man in the portrait: Robert Cornelius, a brilliant young inventor from the nineteenth century. The hitch: she can see him only in her dreams.

Saskia shares her revelation with some classmates, hoping to find connection and friendship among strangers. Under her guidance, the other girls steal portraits of young men from a local college’s daguerreotype collection and try the dangerous experiment for themselves. Soon, they each form a bond with their own “Mercury Boy,” from an injured Union soldier to a charming pickpocket in New York City.

At night, the girls visit the boys in their dreams. During the day, they hold clandestine meetings of their new secret society. At first, the Mercury Boys Club is a thrilling diversion from their troubled everyday lives, but it’s not long before jealousy, violence, and secrets threaten everything the girls hold dear.

I can’t believe it’s already almost Friday! This week has already been icky and weird, but today is sunny thank goodness! Now I just want to get some reading done and finish up everything that I need to do before everything starts to go out of whack again. You know?

I also still need to work on a quite a few reviews so I’ll eventually make my way though that. How is everyone doing? I know August is already here, it’s already the 5th day of August and things are moving really quickly. I hope you are all staying healthy and peaceful.