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Review of That Way Madness Lies edited by Dahlia Adler

Posted April 10, 2021 by Kaity in Book Review, Reviews / 1 Comment

Happy Saturday and welcome to my review of That Way Madness Lies edited by Dahlia Adler! I LOVED this anthology and I’m so happy to share my review with all of you today! Read on to find my review, plus more information about the book and authors! And now without any further ado, let’s get to the review!

I received this book for free from Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Review of That Way Madness Lies edited by Dahlia AdlerThat Way Madness Lies: 15 of Shakespeare's Most Notable Works Reimagined by Dahlia Adler, Kayla Ancrum, Lily Anderson, Patrice Caldwell, Melissa Bashardoust, A.R. Capetta, Cory McCarthy, Brittany Cavallaro, Joy McCullough, Anna-Marie McLemore, Samantha Mabry, Tochi Onyebuchi, Mark Oshiro, Lindsay Smith, Kiersten White, Emily Wibberley, Austin Siegemund-Broka
Published on March 16, 2021 by Flatiron Books
Genres: Anthology, Retellings, YA, Queer
Pages: 336
Format: eARC
Source: Edelweiss
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Fifteen acclaimed YA writers put their modern spin on William Shakespeare’s celebrated classics!
West Side Story. 10 Things I Hate About You. Kiss Me, Kate. Contemporary audiences have always craved reimaginings of Shakespeare’s most beloved works. Now, some of today’s best writers for teens take on the Bard in these 15 whip-smart and original retellings!
Contributors include Dahlia Adler (reimagining The Merchant of Venice), Kayla Ancrum (The Taming of the Shrew), Lily Anderson (All’s Well That Ends Well), Patrice Caldwell (Hamlet), Melissa Bashardoust (A Winter’s Tale), Amy Rose Capetta and Cori McCarthy (Much Ado About Nothing), Brittany Cavallaro (Sonnet 147), Joy McCullough (King Lear), Anna-Marie McLemore (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), Samantha Mabry (Macbeth), Tochi Onyebuchi (Coriolanus), Mark Oshiro (Twelfth Night), Lindsay Smith (Julius Caesar), Kiersten White (Romeo and Juliet), and Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka (The Tempest).

quick thoughts

so… I read this book four months ago, and I don’t really remember much about it? I do remember that I liked the book! just not, you know, why or anything. apparently my phone deleted all my highlights, so I can’t even re-read those to get a feel for the writing. all I have are my Goodreads updates, which pretty much consist of me yelling that I love Mark Oshiro’s version of Twelfth Night. sorry!

Goodreads updates

“TWO! ACES! TWO ACES FALLING IN LOVE!!!!!!!!!
OH MY STARS I LOVE YOU MARK THIS MORE THAN MAKES UP FOR ANGER IS A GIFT!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

I really love my edit for this cover? I feel like 99% of YA covers would look better with an extra vibrance layer. BUT. I do also love the fonts and the crown and the flowers and basically everything except the (non)vibrancy, so…

9/10 stars!!!

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About A.R. Capetta

Amy Rose Capetta [all pronouns] is a bestselling and acclaimed author of YA, including Echo After Echo, The Lost Coast, The Brilliant Death series, and the Once & Future series co-authored with Cory McCarthy. AR writes about magic, science, weirdness, and the places where those things meet, and currently lives in the fantastical mountains of Vermont.

About Anna-Marie McLemore

Anna-Marie McLemore (they/them) writes magical realism and fairy tales that are as queer, Latinx, and nonbinary as they are. Their books include THE WEIGHT OF FEATHERS, a 2016 William C. Morris YA Debut Award Finalist; 2017 Stonewall Honor Book WHEN THE MOON WAS OURS, which was longlisted for the National Book Award in Young People's Literature and was the winner of the James Tiptree Jr. Award; WILD BEAUTY, a Kirkus, School Library Journal, and Booklist best book of 2017; BLANCA & ROJA, a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice; MISS METEOR (co-authored with Tehlor Kay Mejia); DARK AND DEEPEST RED, a Winter 2020 Indie Next List selection; and the forthcoming THE MIRROR SEASON.

About Austin Siegemund-Broka

Austin Siegemund-Broka cowrites YA contemporary with Emily Wibberley. A former journalist in the entertainment industry, where he covered the courts and, yes, met a couple celebrities, he graduated from Harvard in 2014 with a degree in English and a focus on Shakespeare. When he's not writing (or reading) YA, he enjoys combing every corner of contemporary music and watching Buffy with Emily.

About Brittany Cavallaro

Brittany Cavallaro is the New York Times bestselling author of the Charlotte Holmes novels, including A Study in Charlotte and, most recently, A Question of Holmes (HarperCollins/Katherine Tegen Books). With Emily Henry, she is the author of Hello Girls (HarperCollins/Katherine Tegen Books). Muse, the first novel in a historical fantasy duology, releases in February 2021. Cavallaro is also the author of the poetry collections Girl-King and Unhistorical, both from University of Akron Press. A recipient of a National Endowment in the Arts fellowship, she received her MFA in creative writing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her PhD in English literature from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Currently, she teaches creative writing at the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan.

About Cory McCarthy

CORY (previously Cori) earned degrees in poetry and screenwriting before falling in love with writing for children and young adults at Vermont College of Fine Arts. They have authored four acclaimed YA novels, with a middle grade series, young adult contemporary, and nonfiction picture book forthcoming. Cory coauthored the bestselling ONCE & FUTURE, a finalist for the New England Book Award, with their spouse Amy Rose Capetta. They live in the mountains of Vermont where they champion queer teens and raise a young maverick.

About Dahlia Adler

Dahlia Adler (she/her) is an editor of mathematics by day, a Buzzfeed blogger and LGBTQReads overlord by night, and a Young Adult and Romance author and anthologist at every spare moment in between. Her novels include the Radleigh University trilogy, Kids' Indie Next pick Cool for the Summer, and Junior Library Guild selection Home Field Advantage, and she is the editor of the anthologies His Hideous Heart, That Way Madness Lies, At Midnight, and, with Jennifer Iacopelli, Out of Our League (forthcoming from Feiwel & Friends). Dahlia lives in New York with her family and an obscene number of books, and can be found on Twitter and Instagram at @MissDahlELama.

About Emily Wibberley

Emily Wibberley grew up in Southern California, but instead of working on her nonexistent tan at the beach, she spent her time reading, making music and watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Shortly after falling for her best friend, Austin Siegemund-Broka, she attended Princeton University where she graduated Magna Cum Laude in 2014 with a degree in Psychology. She and Austin now live and write YA contemporary together.

About Joy McCullough

Joy McCullough’s debut young adult novel, Blood Water Paint, won the Washington State and Pacific Northwest book awards, as well as honors including the National Book Award longlist, finalist for the ALA Morris Award, a Publishers Weekly Flying Start and four starred reviews. Her follow-up YA, We Are the Ashes, We Are the Fire, received three starred reviews.

Her debut middle grade novel, A Field Guide to Getting Lost is a Junior Library Guild Selection, and her second middle grade, Across the Pond is an Indie Next Selection.

She is also the author of the NYT-bestselling picture book, Champ & Major: First Dogs, illustrated by Sheyda Abvabi Best.

She writes books and plays from her home in the Seattle area, where she lives with her husband and two children. She studied theater at Northwestern University, fell in love with her husband atop a Guatemalan volcano, and now spends her days with kids and dogs and books.

About Kayla Ancrum

K. Ancrum, is the author of the award winning thriller THE WICKER KING, a lesbian romance THE WEIGHT OF THE STARS and the upcoming Peter Pan thriller DARLING. K. is a Chicago native passionate about diveristy and representation in young adult fiction. She currently writes most of her work in the lush gardens of the Chicago Art Institute.

About Kiersten White

Kiersten White is the New York Times bestselling, Bram Stoker Award-winning, and critically acclaimed author of many books, including the And I Darken trilogy, the Slayer series, the Camelot Rising trilogy, and her upcoming adult debut, Hide. Her books have been published in over twenty territories, and her novel The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein is currently in development with Sony Pictures Television. Kiersten lives with her family in San Diego, where she can regularly be found pressing her hands against the glass of her back door, furtively whispering I love you to her deeply ambivalent tortoise, Kimberly.

About Lily Anderson

Lily Anderson is the author of several novels including THE ONLY THING WORSE THAN ME IS YOU, UNDEAD GIRL GANG, and SCOUT’S HONOR. A former school librarian, she is deeply devoted to Shakespeare, fairy tales, and podcasts. Somewhere in Northern California, she is expressing strong opinions on musical theater.

The Less Formal Version: I’m Lily, the curly haired gal in the pictures. I grew up in the slice of suburbs between Sacramento and San Francisco that never got it together enough to be the Bay Area. After spending my childhood searching for books about other mixed race kids who talk too fast and care too much, I decided to start writing my own.

My books are about snarky girls and emotional intelligence and—sometimes—monsters. As a woman of Afro-Puerto Rican descent, representing a diverse world isn’t a trend for me—it’s my greatest joy.

About Lindsay Smith

Lindsay Smith is the author of the YA espionage thrillers Sekret, Skandal, and Dreamstrider, all from Macmillan Children's. She lives in Washington, DC with her husband and dog, where she writes on international issues in cyber security.

About Mark Oshiro

Mark Oshiro is the author of Anger is a Gift (Tor Teen), winner of the 2019 Schneider Family Book Award and nominated for a 2019 Lammy Award (in the LGBTQ Children’s/Young Adult category) and Each of Us a Desert (Tor Teen), a YA Fantasy novel. The Insiders (Harper Collins), an MG Contemporary with magical elements, will be published in Fall 2021. When they are not writing, crying on camera about fictional characters for their online Mark Does Stuff universe, or traveling, Mark is busy trying to fulfill their lifelong goal: to pet every dog in the world.

About Melissa Bashardoust

Melissa Bashardoust (pronounced BASH-ar-doost) received her degree in English from the University of California, Berkeley, where she rediscovered her love for creative writing, children’s literature, and fairy tales and their retellings. She currently lives in Southern California with a cat named Alice and more copies of Jane Eyre than she probably needs. Melissa is the author of Girls Made of Snow and Glass and Girl, Serpent, Thorn.

About Patrice Caldwell

Patrice Caldwell is a graduate of Wellesley College and the founder of People of Color in Publishing–a grassroots organization dedicated to supporting, empowering, and uplifting racially and ethnically marginalized members of the book publishing industry. Born and raised in Texas, Patrice was a children’s book editor before becoming a literary agent.

She’s been named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30” media list, a Publishers Weekly Star Watch honoree, and featured on Bustle’s inaugural “Lit List” as one of ten women changing the book world.

Patrice’s debut novel, Where Shadows Reign—the first in a YA fantasy duology—is out September 2022 from Wednesday Books/Macmillan. She is also the editor of A Phoenix First Must Burn, 16 stories of Black Girl Magic, Resistance, and Hope (out now) and Eternally Yours, a YA Paranormal Romance anthology out in Fall 2022. Visit Patrice online at patricecaldwell.com, Twitter @whimsicallyours, and Instagram @whimsicalaquarian.

About Samantha Mabry

samantha was born four days before the death of john lennon. she grew up in dallas, playing bass guitar along to vinyl records in her bedroom after school, writing fan letters to rock stars, doodling song lyrics into notebooks, and reading big, big books.

in college at southern methodist university, she majored in english literature, minored in spanish, and studied latin and classics. after that, she went on to receive a master’s degree in english from boston college.

these days, she teaches at a community college and spends as much time as possible in the west texas desert.

A FIERCE AND SUBTLE POISON (Algonquin Young Readers, spring 2016) was her first novel. ALL THE WIND IN THE WORLD, a Western, was published in the fall of 2017 and was nominated for the National Book Award for Young Peoples' Literature. TIGERS, NOT DAUGHTERS released in the spring of 2020 and received six starred trade reviews.

About Tochi Onyebuchi

Tochi Onyebuchi is the author of Beasts Made of Night, its sequel Crown of Thunder, War Girls, and his adult fiction. debut Riot Baby, published by Tor.com in January 2020. He has graduated from Yale University, New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Columbia Law School, and L’institut d’études politiques with a Masters degree in Global Business Law.

His short fiction has appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, Omenana, Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America, and elsewhere. His non-fiction has appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Nowhere Magazine, Tor.com and the Harvard Journal of African-American Public Policy. He is the winner of the Ilube Nommo Award for Best Speculative Fiction Novel by an African and has appeared in Locus Magazine's Recommended Reading list.

Born in Massachusetts and raised in Connecticut, Tochi is a consummate New Englander, preferring the way the tree leaves turn the color of fire on I-84 to mosquitoes and being able to boil eggs on pavement. He has worked in criminal justice, the tech industry, and immigration law, and prays every day for a new album from System of a Down.

Have you read That Way Madness Lies yet? Do you love this anthology as much as I do? Let me know in the comments and have a splendiferous day!

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