I’m still on the lookout for small press books. I grabbed these two on my last trip to the public library.

On the shelf, Whiteout looked like a small press cover to me because it it had that rebind look—a high quality rebind like you might find from Permabound. When I got the book home, I saw it wasn’t that at all. It was a large print edition from Gale/Cengage of a book originally published by Quill Tree Books.

Whiteout is a romance on overdrive with multiple couples finding their way through their relationship issues while all working to repair—under a very tight deadline—the relationship of a couple with whom they are friends. It’s probably a book solely for avid romance fans, but if the reader is a romance fan, they will love it!

The novel takes place in Atlanta as Christmas approaches. A snowstorm takes the city by surprise just as the characters spring into action to help create an epic apology and declaration of love between the two central characters, Stevie and Sola. Everyone is dealing with missed texts, missed calls, traffic jams, and unhappy parents.

The book is dedicated to Black teens and is about Black teen love. It’s written by six very successful YA authors—Dhonielle Clayton, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Angie Thomas, Ashley Woodfolk, and Nicola Yoon. What I loved about that is that the storyline worked. That is the novel wasn’t a jumble of writing styles and artificial twists where consecutive authors try to reroute the story.

My only other experience in reading a book by many authors was The Whole Family, a 19th-century project of William Dean Howells. Howells had a good idea, but the novel is a hot mess because each author tried to change the story and negate what the last one wrote. Howells and Henry James were the most famous authors of the bunch. And reading it was an interesting look into author egos. (If you’re interested, there’s a Wikipedia article about it and it is available on Project Gutenberg.) But, as a cohesive work, it was a failure. And this is what makes me appreciate the authors of Whiteout.

The second novel I picked up, One with the Waves, is a small press work. The publisher is Santa Monica Press, which I assumed was in Santa Monica, CA, but it’s in Solano Beach. It’s a coming of age story about a girl who is dealing with grief over the sudden death of her father. Ellie lives in the New York garment district, but after her dad dies, her mother sends her to California to live with her aunt and uncle, who are avid surfers. Surfing becomes integral to Ellie’s healing.

One with the Waves takes place in the 1980s and has a lot of interiority. The reader can learn a lot about surfing. I was excited about finding Santa Monica Press. However, thought they have ventured into publishing YA books, they only produce YA novels that are historical. And, of course, the 1980s are history to high school students.

Whiteout would be a good book to display or book talk before the winter holidays. One with the Waves would work before spring break.