Will I love Beautyland?

This book, about a girl who believes she's an alien, is so beautiful and moving and honest. Adina illustrates so perfectly the heartbreak of being human, of being a girl. How hard it all is and at the same time how achingly beautiful. I was totally enamored.

While this book is about a young girl who is also an alien (or believes herself to be an alien), it's really a coming-of-age story with sharp, witty, sometimes painful observations about human beings. I did a hard cry at the end of this book and it's truly one that's stayed with me.

This transportive novel combines literary writing with a bang-on sci-fi premise. There are aliens and Carl Sagan and communiques to space, and/but it's about a special girl and how we experience our humanity. In the world of this book, at the exact moment that Voyager 1 was launched into space, a baby girl named Adina — an alien from another planet — was born prematurely to a single mother in Philadelphia. Living undercover, she routinely sends messages to the aliens light years away; her communiques are silly and sweet, melancholy, wistful. She NOTICES things. Her observations are a record of… show more.