Today we celebrate the book birthday of This is the Year by Musa Gloria Muñoz. We sat down with Gloria to learn more about this book.

Tell us about This is the Year:
This dazzling YA cli-fi written in prose and verse will speak to any reader struggling with the state of our world and how to understand their place in it.

Seventeen-year-old self-proclaimed Goth and aspiring writer Julieta Villarreal is drowning. She’s grieving her twin sister who died in a hit-and-run, her Florida home is crumbling under the weight of climate disaster, and she isn’t sure how much longer she can stand to stay in a place that doesn’t seem to have room for her. Then, Juli is recruited by Cometa, a private space program enlisting high-aptitude New American teens for a high-stakes mission to establish humanity’s first extraterrestrial settlement.

Cometa pitches this as an opportunity for Juli to give back to her adopted country; Juli sees it as her only chance to do something big with her life. Juli begins her training, convinced Cometa is her path to freedom. But her senior year is full of surprises, including new friendships, roller skating, and first love. And through her small but poignant acts of environmentalism, Juli begins to find hope in unexpected places.

As her world collapses from the ramifications of the climate crisis, Juli must decide if she’ll carry her loss together with her community or leave it all behind. Told in gripping prose interspersed with poems from Juli’s writing journal, this genre-bending novel explores themes
of immigration, climate justice, grief, and the power of communities.

This sounds fantastic! Read more below...

Today we celebrate the book birthday of 10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT PROM, by Elle Gonzalez Rose, illustrated by Rebeca Alvarez. We sat down with Musa Elle Gonzalez Rose to learn more about the inspiration behind this book.

10 Things I Hate About Prom is a young adult rom-com that follows Ivelisse Santos, a wallflower who's senior year takes an unexpected turn when her best friend, Joaquin, enlists her help in pulling off the perfect promposal for the most popular girl at their school.

When Ivelisse begins sabotaging Joaquin's promposal attempts to save him from having his heart broken, she tells herself it's just because she doesn't want to see her best friend get hurt. But as her sabotage begins to get out of hand, she starts to realize her feelings for Joaquin might not be just platonic.​

Read more after the jump...