★★★

Serpent & Dove Shelby Mahurin

December 31, 2019 Leave a Comment

HarperTeen | Fantasy | Release Date: 09/03/2019

Okay, is it just me or is this one of those books in the YA book world that people either really love or really don’t like? I feel like the other books series that fall into this category are Daughter of Smoke and Bone and The Raven Cycle. I like a polarizing book so I had to check this one out.

I started this having no idea what it was about, I just knew it was a YA fantasy and was stirring up some controversy. As I was reading (listening on audio) my interested was piqued as we enter Cesarine, an opulent city forged in a land once ruled by witches—who have been ruthlessly conquered by the religious and devout Le Blanc royal family.

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Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo

December 22, 2019 Leave a Comment

9 hours 54 minutes| Fantasy YA | Henry Holt & Co| Release Date: 09/27/2016

If Six of Crows was like a Victorian heist movie then Crooked Kingdom reads like the follow-up television series. Apart from coming off as more episodic, the characters get kind of flanderized, the plot is a little bloated leaving this big finale with some hits and misses.

After narrowly escaping the ice court this band of thieves has to pull one last heist—well it’s actually a handful more cons and then a heist to set things right. Crooked Kingdom keeps its signature sardonic wit and rhythmic humor that makes the characters enduring while also taking a level in badass when necessary.

I’ve come down on being pretty “meh” on this book. I feel like the things that made Six of Crows unique weighed down this 500 plus page book, namely the flashbacks. The flashbacks in Six of Crows were a wonderful way of introducing readers to the characters by showing not telling (except for Wylan and Jesper who get their stories told in this book for some reason ? I felt like this should have been in the first book so we understood their motivations) but here it just felt like padding.

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This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

December 20, 2019 Leave a Comment

201 pages | Saga Press | Adult Science Fiction | 7/16/2019

In recent years I’ve been picking up more adult sci-fi. I’ve seen This Is How You Lose The Time War all over the bookternet. The idea of two soldiers on opposite sides of war falling in love intrigued me and when I saw this on the shelf at my library I picked it up.

I’m going to steal the character descriptions from the book jacket because it’s kind of hard for me to describe them. Our two soldiers are Red, who belongs to the Agency, a post-singularity technotopia; and Blue who belongs to Garden, a vast consciousness embedded in all organic material.

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Death by Dumpling by Vivien Chien (A Noodle Shop Mystery #1)

December 18, 2019 Leave a Comment

328 pages | St. Martin’s Press | Cozy Mystery | 3/27/2018

I really don’t know how to review a cozy mystery. I picked this book up because I was in the mood for something different and I like seeing authors of color in spaces that have been traditionally very homogeneous.

Death by Dumpling felt very much like an origin story as we are introduced to Asia Village–a quaint Asian shopping center in Ohio—and Lana Lee, our 27- year-old half-English half-Tawainese protagonist. Lana is working at her family’s restaurant in Asia Village after quitting her corporate job and when she delivers the dumpling that kills the owner of Asia Village, she reluctantly joins the case to find the true murderer.

I found Chien’s breezy first-person writing enjoyable as we met the residents of Asia Village and Detective Trudeau–who I think plays a significant role in other books. The book fell a little flat for me but I’m curious to read the next book.

I Hope You Get This Message by Farah Naz Rishi

December 6, 2019 Leave a Comment

9 hours 58 min | Sci Fi YA | Harper Teen | Release Date: 10/22/2019

I Hope You Get This Message is one of those books that asks the question ‘what would happen if everyone on Earth knew they were about to die ?’ I feel like YA does this kind of book every once and a while* but this is my first time reading this trope in YA…and it just didn’t work for me.

In this iteration of the end of the world, Earth has picked up communication from a planet called Alma. They learn from intercepted transcripts that Alma has been incubating Earth for thousands of years and is currently debating whether or not to kill all of humanity in 8 days for what they have done to Earth.

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The Monster of Elendhaven by Jennifer Giesbrecht

November 17, 2019 Leave a Comment

3 hours 53 minutes| Tor | Adult Fantasy | 9/24/2019

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