Jas Hammonds, winner of the 2023 Coretta Scott King John Steptoe New Talent Award for We Deserve Monuments, delivers another exceptional work of YA contemporary fiction in their scintillating sophomore title, Thirsty, about a young woman desperate to be seen and valued.
Eighteen-year-old Blake, girlfriend Ella, and friend Annetta are spending the summer pledging the Serena Society, which is, as Annetta puts it, "a club for powerful, badass women of color." Entrance seems a foregone conclusion for Ella and Annetta, whose mothers are Serena alumnae. Blake, though, isn't as sure about her own acceptance; she's the daughter of a Black pilot and a white night-shift 7-Eleven employee and the first in her family to go to college. Additionally, both Ella and Annetta grew up around women of color, an experience "different from everything [Blake has] ever known"--her white mother never even learned how to style her hair.
So, if the partying of the Serena girls is as "next level" as Blake has heard, she will work harder to impress the beautiful Serena Society president and "Big Lesbian on Campus," Roxanne Garcia. Blake knows how to be the life of the party--"Arrive looking fine as hell.... Keep up with the heaviest drinker in the room"--and hopes she'll get in by leaning into her "wild" reputation. But she gets sloppier with every party. Ella begins sending Blake home, while Ella stays and parties with Roxanne. Annetta confronts Blake about her drinking, but Ella thinks their friend is overreacting. Meanwhile, Blake--conflicted, anxious, and depressed--doesn't know what to do. So she keeps drinking.
Hammonds depicts alcoholism with spectacular accuracy, including the heady, dizzying, warm rush of the first few drinks. In the beginning, drinking gives Blake "That Feeling": "swollen lips, invincibility, sexiness, power." As she gets drunk, though, her thoughts become disjointed, the writing staccato. Intense hangxiety makes Blake's physical and emotional state spiral, even as her "end result looks like nothing but up": cocktail parties, country-club dinners, and a "fine ass girlfriend." While the conclusion feels a bit long on the romantic story and short on the recovery, Thirsty is accessible, energetic, and never over-burdened by the heft of the issues Hammonds deftly covers. Hammonds crafts with care, giving time and space to the many facets of Blake's identity while highlighting a kind of addiction story that is rarely told. Thirsty is as effervescent as it is weighty. --Siân Gaetano, children's and YA editor, Shelf Awareness
Shelf Talker: A CSK John Steptoe New Talent Award winner delivers a scintillating sophomore title about a young woman desperate to be seen and valued.