4 stars

Such A Fun Age by Kiley Reid

March 16, 2020 Leave a Comment

9 hours 58 min. | G.P. Putnam’s Son | Adult Fiction | Release Date: 12/31/19

2020 has been kind of a meh reading year for me so I decided to switch it up with some upmarket book club-y fiction. This is one of those books where it’s better to go in with as little information as possible. Such a Fun Age starts with 25-year-old Emira, a Black girl living in Philadelphia, being racially profiled while babysitting a white child. The book then follows Emira as she tries to figure out how to become a “real adult” and her boss, Alix Chamberlain, who starts noticing Emira in a new way after the incident.

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I Wanna Be Where You Are by Kristina Forest

August 14, 2019 Leave a Comment

320 pages | Contemporary | Roaring Brook Press | Release Date: 6/4/2019

When 17-year-old Chloe Pierce gets the opportunity to audition for her dream ballet school she’ll have to break her overly cautious mother’s rules for the first time to audition. Her carefully planned day trip is quickly derailed into an unexpected weeklong road trip, when her troublemaking neighbor Eli Greene–and his dog Geezer–tag along for the ride.

I read this book while on vacation and it was the perfect YA vacation read. Forest has crafted a solid debut about discovery, friendship and confidence-building in a fun rom-com package. In our 19 to 2019 I said this looked like the kind of book teen me would have enjoyed and it totally was!

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Jack of Hearts (And Other Parts) by L.C. Rosen

July 3, 2019 Leave a Comment

337 pages | Contemporary | Little Brown | Release Date: 10/30/2018

17-year-old Jack Rothman loves sex and finds his reputation as the school slut somewhat amusing. When he uses his experience to write an advice column he’s prepared for more gossip and judgment but nothing prepares him for an anonymous stalker leaving little pink notes in his locker.

This book has a pretty high bar to clear. It has to give advice about sex and sexuality to minors in a way that is safe, inclusive and frank, explore the multiple facets of being a gay teen and build a thriller-like stalker plot. Somehow, L.C Rosen (the pen name of SFF author Lev AC Rosen) manages to do it all and more in this gem of a YA contemporary.

I’ll admit as some who is *mumbles* *mumbles* years old I was clutching my pearls at how explicit the advice column sections were, but I think it’s ridiculous to think teens aren’t talking and thinking this way. Especially gay or lesbian teens who don’t have a lot of models for love and romance for people their age. The columns go beyond just sex advice and also talk to teens who don’t feel like they want to have sex or straight boys who feel like they don’t fit into the way media portrays their desires. I will say the Jack in the advice column seems a lot more mature and worldly than the one in the story but I think it’s a conceit that makes sense for the book.

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Strange The Dreamer by Laini Taylor

April 30, 2019 Leave a Comment

18 hours 20 minutes| Fantasy | Hachette Audio | Release Date: 3/18/2017

We’ve been talking about Laini Taylor on this blog since Daughter of Smoke and Bone was featured in this Wall Street Journal article about new books reaching the Harry Potter generation. The Daughter of Smoke and Bone series blew me away and Taylor is back at it again in Strange The Dreamer.

In this book, we meet Lazlo Strange, an orphaned librarian who finds himself the center of a story beyond his wildest dreams. Taylor is one of the best storytellers in YA right now and this book reflects that. The worlds and magic systems she creates are so detailed and creative.

At over 500 pages and 18 hours on audio, there were times where you could feel the page count. In the acknowledgments, Taylor says this was originally one book that got made into two and I think with a little less backstory it probably would have worked as one book but there seems to be no room for standalones in YA

At its heart, Strange The Dreamer is as a unique and original tale of trauma and survival.

….I’m not really a fan of YA duologies. They always feel like one story that has been stretched and padded to become two books instead of a story that needed to be told with two books.

How It Happened by Michael Koryta

December 31, 2018 Leave a Comment

10 hrs. 39 min. | Hachette Audio | Release Date: 5/15/18

I love a good mystery thriller and I picked this one up because I saw Christine Lakin was the narrator. Lakin only performs the first chapter of this book and her performance of Kimmy Crepeaux, a guilt-ridden down on her luck, small town twenty-something opioid addict confessing her role in a double murder, was a stand out and chilling performance. Robert Petkoff takes the lead for the rest of the book and captures the anguish and heartbreak that follows the gruesome confession. They both commit to the distinct New England accent without overdoing it.

In most crime stories getting the confession is the end of the story, but for FBI agent Rob Barrett it’s just the beginning as he scours the small town of Port Hope, Maine to prove nothing about this crime is what it seems. Koryta makes excellent use of the setting and current events about class, false confessions, and opioid addiction to weave a mystery that forces Barrett to come to terms with what the truth really means.

I’ve never heard of Michael Koryta and based on what I’ve read online and seen in bookstores, at just 36 years old, he seems to be part of the new generation of authors behind the so-called “Dad Books” a la Dean Koontz, Lee Childs, and David Baldacci.

I also see on his website that Kroyta is an award-winning journalist, which is probably why Barrett’s journalist love interest was portrayed realistically, HOWEVER this means the book fails the Audie Cornishtest where the female journalist sleeps with a source.

Next time I need a page-turning read I know exactly where I’ll turn.

Grim Lovelies by Megan Shepherd

December 19, 2018 Leave a Comment

Release Date: 05/8/18 | Urban Fantasy | 376 Pages | HMH BFYR

The servants bound to the home of the Parisian witch Mada Vittora may appear human but are in fact beasties–animals enchanted into humans. When Mada Vittora is mysteriously murdered Anouk, her newest beastie and the other servants find themselves on a high stakes adventure across Paris to discover the truth of their origins and find a way to stay human before time runs out.

I went into this book knowing literally nothing and was completely sucked in to this unique and thrilling urban fantasy. I think magic systems are so key to how believable a story is and Shepherd builds a complex and imaginative magic system with steep consequences and rules.

This book does the thing that I really like in YA fantasy where a girl gets hero jounrey’d, discovers she has more power than she thought possible and takes a level in badassalong the way. I appreciate that Shepherd is able to write a female-centered fantasy without a lot of violence. One thing that has turned me off some YA fantasies lately is just all the sexual violence and abuse heaped on the (particularly female) characters before they can gain power. It’s one of the reasons Ember in The Ashes didn’t work for me and almost turned me off the genre.

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