★★★

Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters

July 5, 2016 Leave a Comment

With all the discussion surrounding #ownvoices and representation in publishing I know some readers will be turned off this book because Ben Winters is White and judging by his Twitter feed is like all of this writer’s woke ex-boyfriends. That said, I saw Attica Locke praising this book and I thought I’d give it a try.

Spike Lee has this mockumentary C. S. A , about an alternate future where slavery never ended. Well, Underground Airlines is in that kind of world. It’s the 2010’s and there are still 4 Southern states where enslaving Black people is legal. We meet Victor, a runaway slave living in the North who has been conscripted by the US Marshall Service to locate and return runaway slaves to their owners. His latest mission takes him to Indianapolis, but he soon discovers this case isn’t all it seems.

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Me Before You by JoJo Moyes

June 26, 2016 Leave a Comment

After losing the waitress job she loves, Louisa Clark takes the unlikely job as a companion for Will Traynor. Will is a handsome former corporate tycoon playboy who is now a quadriplegic, living at home with his posh family. Louisa’s job as a companion soon becomes a mission for the impossible when she learns the true reason she was hired.

I knew nothing about this book or Jojo Moyes going in, so I got culture shock by how English this book was. Like real deal, average day-to-day English. I mean how crazy is it that you can live right around the corner from an ancient castle ? What is Tesco ? Lots of Googling ensued.

Anyway, the story follows Louisa and Will on a series of small adventures as they try to grow out of the boxes they’ve put themselves in. During the course of their outings the book did open my eyes to how our world is built with able-bodied people in mind. It’s the little things you don’t think about unless you have to; like is there grass or are the aisles big enough ?

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For The Record by Charlotte Huang

May 25, 2016 Leave a Comment

Release Date: November 10, 2015

Pages: 320 pages

Genre: Contemporary YA

Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers

Chelsea Ford gets the opportunity of her dreams, when she is asked to step in as the lead singer of the rock band Melbourne for their summer tour. While she has chemistry with the band onstage the same can’t be said for offstage. Chelsea’s struggles to be accepted by her three male band members and it doesn’t help when teen heartthrob actor, Lucas Rivers, takes a liking to Chelsea.

Teen drama ensues as the band travels from city to city. The deeper into the summer they go the less sure the band is that it will still be together by the end.

The heart of this story is in the details. I saw on Huang’s website that her husband has connections to the music industry , so she has probably seen so much of what she is writing about. Huang brings to life the landmarks and eclectic venues where the band performs.

Her female characters are allowed to have sexual agency without slut shaming. Huang swiftly subverts the asexual Asian trope by having the band’s Chinese member, Malcolm Ho, be the biggest ladies man.

Soapy, flirty and fun this story of life in the spotlight will have readers ready to rock.

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Audiobook Review: Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard

February 22, 2016 Leave a Comment

So, you know how people think most fantasy/dystopian YA is just a thinly veiled allegory for high school ? Well the Red Queen on it’s surface is pretty much that.

We’ve got Mare Barrow another brunette YA heroine who hates her hair and wishes she was more like her sister Gisa who is pretty, talented and basically put up on a pedestal.

In Mare’s world what separates the oppressed Reds from the elite Silvers. . . is their blood. The Silver’s blood silver blood gives them abilities like controlling elements, strength and mind control.

Mare soon discovers that even though she is Red, she has abilities like a Silver. A threat to the Silver way of life, The Silvers whisk her away to live among them until they can figure out what she is.

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Audiobook Review: An Ember in The Ashes by Sabaa Tahir

February 17, 2016 Leave a Comment

The popularity of this book seemed to come out of nowhere. I just remember seeing it on an endcap one day in Barnes and Nobles and the next things I knew is was blowing up.

Ember in the Ashes takes place in The Empire, a vaguely middle ages fictional land with some vaguely Arabic influences. Elias (who by the way is 20 years old….which feels oddly old for YA) is a student at Blackcliff, a ruthless academy that trains Masks, the Empire’s deadliest soldiers. Laia is a Scholar, the conquered class, who goes undercover as a slave at Blackcliff for the Resistance to help her brother.

I don’t really have much to say about this book, which is weird since the audiobook is over 15 hours long. It wasn’t bad, it just didn’t click with me. I finished this book and I wasn’t amped for the next one. Thinking about the only other YA fantasies I’ve read; Daughter of Smoke and Bone and The Young Elites, I think what this book is missing is characters with skin in the game. Elias and Laia are just kind of going with the flow all the time.

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The Cost of All Things by Maggie Lehrman

January 28, 2016 Leave a Comment

Release Date: May 12, 2015

Pages: 407

Genre: Magical Realism/ Contemporary

Publisher: Balzer + Bray (Harper Collins)

The Cost Of All Things exists in a world pretty much like our own except spells are real and can be created by women known as hekamists. When a group of high school students in Cape Code start buying spells to cope with their insecurities…it doesn’t go well. I went into this book excited because it had blurbs from so many award winning YA authors and the premise sounded so fascinating. But overall this book didn’t work for me.

The magic system never felt fully developed and it’s existence within the world didn’t feel real . One thing that bothered me is that being a hekamist is illegal, but there doesn’t seem to be any illegality with buying a spell–which feels like the opposite of what should be happen.There were also very little stakes, the book sets up the death of one character , Win, as being a main plot point but he has a POV, so it takes some of the mystery out. I think what kept me reading was that I thought there would be a twist ending but there really wasn’t.

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