This group of authors has mastered writing together. Weaving together individual stories into a whole that makes sense is no easy task and yet they have done it again! It was a joy to read about a group of friends who work together to support one another while also managing to attend to their own relationships along the way.
I highly recommend this book!

(Note: Not for middle grade due to one scene that is a smidge too explicit.)

It was a good book, enjoyed this one after Blackout. Cute, wrapped up nicely and the stories all were cohesive.

I love love looooved this book! I just love an ensemble piece so much, especially one that is winter themed. Cannot recommend this enough.

This book had a really good premise, but I found myself overwhelmed by the amount of characters and keeping track of how they related to each other.

It's easy to get lost with this many moving pieces.

I was really looking forward to this book from the big name authors in the YA world. Unfortunately, it fell a little short. The characters were not like able and would have preferred not to read about Covid in a holiday themed novel. The grand gesture was not realistic for teenagers.

A decent read but did not meet my expectations.

Thank you Netgalley and HarperCollins for the arc!

This was one of my most anticipated reads of 2022! Coming from 6 of my favorite YA authors, this romance was a great holiday read. Focusing one love story, but featuring many different love stories this was a great collage of young Black love. I think that the book would have been better suited if the storylines were not so interconnected; the plot got muddled due to how many couples were involved. I was confused about names and how all of the characters were related, which took away from the super cute romances in this. I thought that each couple was super interesting and would love stand alone novels with all of them– each couple only getting one chapter was not enough!! If the book had been longer in length to allow for more development for all of the characters involved, I would have enjoyed a lot more.

Really enjoyed this love story and how the characters were linked. Definitely want to go to the aquarium in Atlanta now.

Whiteout is a multi POV book written by a team of authors about a group of Atlanta teens helping reunite a couple while falling in love themselves along the way. The story is set throughout one day during a crippling snowstorm in Atlanta. Christmas is in a few days but only one of the chapters really focuses on that so I wouldn't call this a Christmas read. One chapter had a lot of slang that I brushed over but I'm a late 30s white woman in New England - I'm not supposed to understand it lol! I appreciated the diversity this book offers with race, religion, and relationships. It was cute to see all the couples come together in each of their chapters. There is quite a few characters in the story and if you read it over a long period it can be easy to forget them by the end. Even though each character is written by a different author, the book felt very cohesive. I kept imagining this book as a cozy movie much like Let It Snow. I would recommend this for those romantics who love a happy ending without much 🔥 and anyone looking to diversify their reading. I plan to follow this up with Blackout, also written by the same authors.

Whiteout is a collection of love stories, written by an all-star team of YA authors - Dhonielle Clayton, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Angie Thomas, Ashley Woodfolk, and Nicola Yoon. Clayton first brought the group together to write Blackout, published in 2021, a collection of loosely connected stories that take place when the power goes out in New York City. Unlike their first book, which had each chapter - each story - credited to its author, Whiteout intertwines its characters and fits them under the umbrella of a primary plotline. This modified format encourages the reader to guess the lead author of each character and their subplot. There are even hints in the authors’ note.

A sweet series of teen love stories, Whiteout takes place in Atlanta during a rare snowstorm. Despite the obstacles - due to the snow and their own stubbornness - there are enough happy endings to program a week of Hallmark movies. During a release event, the authors discussed how they embraced standard romance tropes. These tropes may be overused and predictable, but rarely written with black characters. Like Blackout, Whiteout gives black teens their own joyful love stories.

The ensemble cast of characters provides diverse points-of-view. One of the main characters, Stevie, is non-binary. Two of the six love stories focus on sapphic relationships with both couples counseled by happily married gay men. Different cultural backgrounds and family structures are also represented. Sola’s family is Nigerian, Te’o is raised by his Brazilian grandmother, and Jordyn is estranged from her mother. Each family is different, but they are all from loving homes.

Readers familiar with Atlanta will enjoy the shoutouts to Lenox Mall, the Georgia Aquarium, Fox Theatre, and Mercedes-Benz Stadium, all popular landmarks and tourist sites. Atlanta residents will appreciate references to the original Snowpocolypse, and the spot-on descriptions of Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport as well as highways I-75, I-85, and I-285. Atlanta native Nic Stone knows how traffic can turn any day into a nightmare.

Whiteout is a sweet novel, and I would recommend it to any teen who enjoys love stories and any adult who counts down the days until holiday TV-movie season.

Thank you to Quill Tree Books, a division of HarperCollins Children’s Books, and NetGalley for this ARC.

It’s the Black-YA Love Actually and I am here for it! I am so glad I read this story of Black joy and love and SNOW! It was quite the ride. A bunch of short love stories of people who have loved each other for a long time but are still so young and trying to figure things out. Every story was sweet and charming. Only complaint is that some of the love stories felt a little too similar to me. An excellent holiday read!

Thanks to NetGalley for the advanced copy!

This was such a fantastic read! I loved each story and all of the characters within. I loved how the ending came together beautifully. I love a good holiday anthology, and this is probably my new favorite. The setting was perfect especially if you are stuck at home during a snowstorm. overall there is nothing that I disliked, I absolutely flew through this one in just a few hours as it was a blizzard outside.

3.5 stars.
I loved Boackout and all the authors on this line up. I thought it was kind of fun that they didn’t state who wrote what but instead left clues for the reader at the end.

I felt like some of the short stories packed a better punch than others and I had a hard time discerning who was who in the group chats at times since we did t have a lot of time which each of the stories. The central love interest Stevie/Sola was probably one of my least favorites and since they took up most of the book, that may be why my rating was lower than expected. I also felt like some sections spent too much time in flashbacks instead of the present day snow scene.

I found the “snow storm” of Atlanta to be entertaining bc I also live in the south and it is funny how everything shuts down. The Christmas and holiday cameos and focused moments were some of my favorites. This is a cutesy romance read with a lot of variety of tropes and diverse relationships with a dash of holiday vibes thrown in. Did I love it as much as Blackout? Not quite. Will I read another anthology by this group? Definitely.

LGBTQ+ rep: F/F, bisexual rep, M/M

A follow-up to BlackOut, Whiteout tells the story of twelve teens coming together to make an epic, romcom-worthy apology. The book feels like a love letter to Atlanta, to Blackness, and to teen love.

I was really excited about this one—I love these authors!—but jive with it and ended up DNFing. I've learned over the years that books with more than 2 stories/POV being told, especially when they're distinct but connected, doesn't work for my brain. I think I would've really enjoyed this one but found it feeling like work to reread past chapters and re-orient myself.

I feel strongly that if the plot structure does work for you, you should give this one a try. And I can't wait to read more from each of these authors.

Reading Between the Wines book review #97/135 for 2022:
Rating: 2 🍷 🍷
Book 🎧: Whiteout
Author: Dhonielle Clayton; Tiffany D. Jackson; Nic Stone; Angie Thomas; Ashley Woodfolk; Nicola Yoon
Genre: Romance | Teens & YA
RELEASED on November 8, 2022!!!

Sipping thoughts: I really enjoyed the prequel Blackout which involved the same characters as this book. I always say I don’t really enjoy romance books but in Blackout it was enjoyable enough. In Whiteout, it just did not do it for me. I wanted to give this book a chance because of the authors that I really like and it being an Own Voices book. I do think people will enjoy this one, but I could not keep the characters straight in my head. This could be entirely due to just having so much going on because I don’t remember having the same issue in the first one.

Cheers and thank you to @NetGalley and @HarperCollinsChildrensBooks for an advanced copy of @Whiteout.

#Whiteout #HarperCollinsChildrensBooks #NetGalley #advancedreadercopy #ARC #Kindle #Booksofinstagram #readersofinstagram #bookstagram #nicoles_bookcellar #bookworm #bookdragon #booknerd #booklover #bookstagrammer #bookaholic #bookreview #bookreviewer #IHaveNoShelfControl #ReadingBetweenTheWines #fiction #thriller #suspense #mystery #MysteryAndThrillers #GeneralFictionAdult

Last year these authors came together to bring us Blackout, a tale of black teenagers navigating NYC during a blackout, and this year they brought us Whiteout, a group of teenagers helping their friend make a grand gesture of love during a blizzard in Atlanta. In the authors’ note, they said, “When we decided to write Whiteout, we wanted to challenge ourselves to tell a love story that felt like a big, glorious puzzle, because so often the process of falling in love can feel like that: two people trying to figure out who they are, where they belong, and how they fit together.” I think they nailed it! I loved seeing all the individual stories come together, watching several relationships unfold, and figuring out how everyone was connected to each other, and it was just such a fun read. Highly recommend!

I really wanted this to be amazing. I loved Blackout and seeing the team get back together for this book was thrilling. Unlike that book, that had a wrap around story that was compelling, this one had a wrap around story that was just OK. The supporting characters all seemed a bit same-y and I just didn’t care about them. However, if they get back together and do a third book, Rainout our something like that, I am here for it.

This one was so cute and 100% percent lived up to the hype the last one. I love that we don’t know who wrote what stories and that just made it so much better. All the writing styles are unique and mold into a beautiful story taking place in a serious snow storm. Definitely a must read for the season!

I was so excited to see this incredible group of authors come together again for another amazing young adult novel, and they did not disappoint! I loved how the stories intertwined, and there were a few that I would love to know more about. I don't read YA novels often but this one is a must read!

Six powerhouse young adult authors all in one story. I was fortunate to get an e-ARC, but I’m a little behind. It was published November 8, 2022! Thank you NetGalley and Harper Collins Children's Books.

Set in Atlanta amidst the biggest snowstorm (the south is never ready for snow), one couple is going through a semi break-up. Stevie enlists the help of twelve friends to pull off the most epic apology to her girlfriend, Sola. Each storyline is written by a different author and they blend together seamlessly!

This was a fun winter read while I was actually in Atlanta for a few days!

I absolutely love all six of these authors and I loved Blackout so I had high hopes for the follow up. While I still enjoyed the story, it felt like something was missing, something that Blackout had that Whitout didn’t have, and honestly, I can’t name what it is. Either way, I did enjoy the story overall and really loved the Atlanta snowstorm setting. However, I just couldn’t find myself rooting for some of the characters. Again, I still enjoyed the story and I will definitely be recommending this to anyone who wants a classic Christmas romcom this year.