Briar Rose

Sad and Lovely

A beautiful, poignant little story that vividly encapsulates character and setting in a few spare strokes. This is the first I've read from Fran Wilde, and I definitely liked it enough to seek out more of her books.

The Heartless City had so much promise.

After a bit of a slow start, I really loved the beginning. Then, to my complete confusion and ultimate disappointment, the story jumped ahead years, and I realized I'd been engrossed in a prologue. That prologue was the tale I most wanted to read: Virginia, smart and brave and traumatized, desperately trying to raise and keep safe a young daughter with unnatural gifts. Sadly, we jumped ahead to said daughter's teenage years instead.

I initially liked Elliot, the main male character, very much. That mostly continued throughout the story. I didn't connect so well with Iris, Virginia's gifted daughter. She was a bit... too much for me. A little too overwhelmingly beautiful and special to feel real, and her first connection with Elliot felt like insta-love. (Keep in mind that I am very picky about romantic relationships. I'm sure a lot of people would like that kind of powerful immediate connection.)

There was some gorgeous prose, swirled together with the blocks of angst and overwrought, unconvincing character interaction. The book was also set against a background of some very interesting possible conflicts (the Hydes being the most obvious example), but those aspects were mostly dropped or underused. Paired with the fact that many of the secondary characters (Virginia; Elliot's friend Cam; amazing, tough, tiny Philomena) were far more interesting overall than the leads, this felt a bit like the first draft of a really, really amazing book.

Bottom line was, The Heartless City didn't quite work for me, but there was a lot of promise hidden in its pages. I very much hope the author one day writes that truly incredible book.

Many thanks to the author for providing a free copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Far from suffering “second book syndrome,” BEASTLY BONES was, I thought, superior in nearly every way to its predecessor.

JACKABY was a fun book, but suffered a bit from lack of originality. It read like a mashup of “Sherlock” and “Doctor Who,” with just enough likable characters and original concepts to keep it afloat. BEASTLY BONES takes flight from where JACKABY left off, advancing the world-building and the characterization of existing characters, and introducing several fascinating new players and supernatural beasties.

Characters and events that seem unrelated all tie back together in the end, culminating in a suspenseful, explosive finale that I did not see coming. And have no fear–the lovable character from JACKABY who seemed to have been Put On A Bus at the end is present and accounted for here. This book takes place in his new home.

Unlike many second books of trilogies, BEASTLY BONES refuses to end on a maddening, scream-inducing cliffhanger. It ties up the storyline in a satisfying way, while also effectively setting up the villain and story of the third book.

Weird, disconnected, and hard to follow, with occasionally-pretty but mostly overwrought prose. After finishing the story, I looked up the author and found out she's rather controversial as well. I wouldn't have liked And the Burned Moths Remain either way.

I nearly wept for joy when I saw that this book was going to exist. Natasha Romanoff is one of my favorite fictional characters. Now she's going to be in a YA novel–my favorite genre?! Life couldn't get any better!

Well... It could, a bit.

Natasha's characterization is... unsteady. She flips back and forth between arctic and maternal at a dizzying pace. I think that might have been meant to convey internal conflict, but it just comes off as inconsistent, in my opinion. Her characterization, to me, is not as bad as Tony Stark's, however. In the MCU, Tony is fascinating, as much as he's a jerk: crackling with humor and impudence thinly layered over trauma and insecurity. In this book, he sounded like he was trying to be funny but didn't quite have the wit to pull it off. And the damage that's always just under the surface? Nowhere to be seen.

And as for the original characters, teenagers Ava and Alex: Tropes. Tropes everywhere. It's not all bad, and they have their moments of being likeable, but there wasn't anything really original about them, nothing I haven't seen done dozens of times. Seemingly ordinary teenagers have a super-special suppressed past that comes roaring back in hidden memories! They're drawn together and feel like soulmates even though they don't know why! INSTA-LOVE!

A character dies in the end (there are hints of this all through the book), and hir relationship to another character means that we should care about hir a lot, but I just... Didn't. I finished the book and went, "Hmm. Okay. Well, zie ain't gettin' any deader." Which tells you something about my lack of emotional connection to hir and everyone else.

Officially a DNF. Tried going back to it a number of times, but NOTHING HAPPENED. It was all ribbons and dresses and endless tedious nattering. This makes me sad, as I've loved Jessica Day George's other books.

I grew up a quiet, introverted child roaming the remote canyons of the Texas Hill Country, searching for magic. I saw myself as fundamentally wrong because I just couldn't become an extrovert, no matter how hard I tried. Nikki Loftin's WISH GIRL is the book I needed.

Peter is gentle and thoughtful, and doesn't fit in his loud family. Smart, artistic Annie has a disease that could kill her, but the treatment could leave her with permanent brain damage; she's as afraid of that as she is of dying. They find each other in a canyon whose quiet magic can turn distinctly ugly to those who don't respect it.

WISH GIRL is about life and death. It's about children and the choices they are or aren't allowed to make for themselves, and how powerless they feel (and how there are no easy answers to that, because they are still children). It's about how our society sees quiet, gentle people as broken, especially if they are boys. It's a beautiful love letter to nature and silence, and the value of closing your eyes and listening for a while.

The book itself, for all its quiet magic, doesn't shy away from hard questions and sharp edges, which gives them powerful impact when they come. Child or adult, introvert or extrovert: I think everyone should read this book.

I had the privilege of reading an ARC of this book (in exchange for an honest review), and it emerged as one of my recent favorites. It features gorgeous world-building and vivid, well-developed depiction of scenery and culture. (I'm not at all surprised to find that the author has spent considerable time in the Middle East.) The characterization is wonderful, with a truly beautiful relationship between the sisters, who remain unnamed, but whose love for each other transforms the world.

I drank in the beautiful, concise prose and the taut pacing, and after I was done reading, my mind kept going back to the underlying themes: the power of storytelling; the power of choosing to sacrifice oneself for another, out of love; the power that can be claimed by women, even in societies where they are afforded little.

I got to read an ARC, but I pre-ordered another copy anyway. I want this book to succeed, and I want more books like it. This is the re-telling of Scheherazade that I've been longing to read.

I really, really liked this book. I stayed up far too late finishing it, heart in my throat, racing toward a hoped-for happy ending that felt impossible—and while I won't spoil the way it played out, I'll just say that I wasn't at all left disappointed. Even the ending for Lore, the devastating Dark Lady at whose behest Orpheus ravaged the world, felt fitting and satisfying.

There are a lot of tropes that can and probably will be applied to this book—grumpy/sunshine, villain redemption, antagonists to lovers, et cetera—but the story is so much more than tropes. At no point was I able to confidently predict what would happen next. The dropped-into-the-action beginning left me initially a bit confused, but after about the first chapter I got my bearings and started to become fully immersed in this strange, dark, fascinating world—which leaves some unanswered questions about its history and nature lurking in the background, but not so many that I was unable to enjoy the storyline and characters.

Recommended for anyone interested in character-driven, dark-but-sweet queer love stories about making amends and finding your place in the world.

(I received a free ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.)

I really wanted to like Sleep Donation; it had a fascinating premise, and the prose was sometimes very good. Unfortunately I ended up feeling that the author was a bit too enamored of the sound of her own eloquence. Also, I would have liked an actual ending.

This is such a lovely little novella, which manages to combine a cozy atmosphere with surprisingly high stakes and tense moments of thrilling action. I love every character—including the Wagon!—and I'm looking forward to finding out where they'll go from here and how they will develop from travel companions into, hopefully, a true found family. Horace's sweet, extroverted embo personality is a joy to read, and contrasts nicely with the pricklier and/or more reserved personalities of eir companions.

The setting is also fascinating; I can't wait to learn more about the fragments and the archivists and all of the other mysteries underlying these tales, and to see more of the environments and landmarks that this world holds. Fantastic quick read for anyone looking for an easy entry point into an enthralling new universe.

(I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.)

This is a hard book to rate. Much of the prose is lovely and evocative, and early on I was very invested in Orabella's life, hoping she would find safety and happiness despite everything. That said, the middle part of the story was difficult to parse and felt incredibly repetitive. I can handle ambiguity and chaos in narration so long as enough things keep happening to hold my interest, but that wasn't really the case here.

The prose was pretty and promising enough that I will check out the author's future works, but this particular book just did not land for me.

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I really, really enjoyed this novella. Interesting characters; beautiful prose; a fluidly built world that felt real and lived-in without being over-exposited. The main character made several choices that had me going, “OH NO WHAT ARE YOU DOING,” and yet I understood and sympathized with her reasons for doing what she did—which can be a fine line to walk. There was a big twist I didn't see coming, and the ending left me longing for the next book in the series. In terms of tone, this tale never flinched away from horrors but also never felt devoid of hope, and I love stories that can find that balance.

(I received a free ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.)

I didn't know this was a novel-in-verse when I requested it from NetGalley, but it turned out to be a beautifully written surprise, a story painted in spare strokes with vivid colors, and featuring lovely polyam representation as a bonus! I read the entire thing in one sitting, desperate to know if Andres and Renee would manage to rescue their girlfriend and return to the living world. Short, but well worth reading, in my opinion.

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Merged review:

I didn't know this was a novel-in-verse when I requested it from NetGalley, but it turned out to be a beautifully written surprise, a story painted in spare strokes with vivid colors, and featuring lovely polyam representation as a bonus! I read the entire thing in one sitting, desperate to know if Andres and Renee would manage to rescue their girlfriend and return to the living world. Short, but well worth reading, in my opinion.

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I wanted to love this book. I really, really did, in part because the cover was lovely. I usually have an incredible soft spot for stories about families who protect and care for each other. The prose is very beautiful, and the Vermont landscape is lovingly described. However... there were a couple of things about this story that drove me completely crazy by the end.

1) Everything that could possibly go wrong, does. I do mean EVERYTHING. Every time the sisters take initiative and come up with an idea, it fails catastrophically within pages. To the point that I almost started to wonder if the moral of the story is “Don't ever take initiative! YOU WILL DIE!” Every idea these two little girls have just leads to more pain and struggle. It was depressing and eventually felt annoying and a bit contrived.

2) This section is spoilery: The girls' great journey, the one that causes so much pain and hardship, that ends with them badly injured and one of them almost dying? It is for NOTHING. Absolutely pointless. The journey, quest if you will, that takes up almost the entire book... It avails them nothing. At the end, they're right where they started, just injured and traumatized. There's a pretty sentiment tacked on about how "love is the greatest magic", and it's a nice thought, but for me it wasn't enough to make up for the pointlessness of most of the book.

In conclusion: The author definitely has potential, but I'd skip this one.

I liked Walk on Earth a Stranger very much, with one notable exception: the lazy, useless, no-good burden of a reverend. That trope was thin and tired seventy years ago, and I'm taking off a full star for it. I expected better from the author of the Girl of Fire and Thorns series, which explored the complexities of faith and belief in a beautiful, authentic way.

Still, there was much about Walk on Earth a Stranger to love. The main character yearned for freedom, and deeply enjoyed her taste of it while posing as a boy, but she didn't gleefully throw off all trappings of the feminine. Putting back on a skirt, she said, felt like being in her own skin again. She didn't want to abandon being a woman–she wanted freedom as a woman.

There were a wide variety of other well-developed female characters, with complex relationships and motivations. And Jefferson was wonderful.

This book reminded me, too, of why I loved the Western genre so much as a kid: the danger, maybe, the thrill and drama, but mostly the possibility. The wide-open sky. The idea that anything could be around the next bend or over the next ridge. Adding a touch of magic just makes it better.

Very little actually happens in this book, and of freaking course one of the only YA series without a love triangle now has a love triangle. I'm going to have to write my own.

Totally heartbreaking, after how much I loved the first book. I'll still finish the series just out of hope and love of the characters.

The first time I read FORTUNATELY, THE MILK, I was on a road trip with my sister's family. Her kids (9-year-old twin girls, 5-year-old boy) were antsy and bored, and begged to be read to. I had a new book on my Kindle that I thought they might enjoy, though I myself had not read it yet.

I read this book aloud to a carful of people who all ended up listening, whether they'd intended to or not. By the end, everyone was laughing–me, the kids, the kids' parents, and our cousin who had come along for the trip.

As soon as I finished the final words, the kids begged for it to be read again.

So that's how I wound up reading a book aloud, twice in a row, on a car trip, and having more fun than should probably be legal.

FORTUNATELY, THE MILK is fun, light-hearted, full of absurd British humor, and deeply sweet–all about a father's love for his children (and flair for creative storytelling). Read it. I don't care if you're grown. Read it anyway.

This is a deeply enjoyable little story: not complex, but lovely and magical. My initial impression was that it would be a dark take on a traditional fairy tale. Instead, it turned out to be sweetness hidden beneath a thin layer of darkness, which is just fine with me. The characters are compelling, though drawn with simple strokes: I especially loved the deep, quiet, fierce love between the Woodcutter and his wife of twenty years.

Is the story without flaws? Not at all. The pacing is somewhat uneven, and it sometimes felt as though the author were cramming in as many fairy tale characters and scenarios as possible. I had to roll my eyes and smile fondly at some of the fairy tale conventions that came into play (true love! at first sight! conquers all!). But for me, the likeable characters and simple, beautiful prose more than made up for the shortcomings. I am excited to see where the author will go from here.

Disappointing follow-up to MYSTIC CITY (which I liked better, well enough to read this book).

Main complaints:

The heroine carried the Idiot Ball as though it were the Olympic Torch. (Thank you, TV Tropes, for that perfect trope name.) Her dumb decisions were required to drive the plot forward, and I like plots that locomote with minimal stupidity from major characters. The dialogue overflowed with “As you know, Bob” moments where two characters discussed things both of them already knew, just to remind or inform the readers. And there was a long villainous monologue where a bad guy delayed doing The Thing That Will Give Me All The Power in order to explain his/her plan to the good guys.

Sadly–though I liked the unique setting and the cool world-building in the first book–I'm not sure I'll be picking up the finale of this trilogy, unless the reviews are convincingly positive.

Perfectly serviceable horror, I'm sure, but the ending was very much not my thing. Spoilers ahead... If you're like me and the main thing that bothers you about the horror genre is its penchant for endings that feel pointless and destroy all the main characters, with evil coming out victorious, then you might want to skip this book.

Strange, ethereal retelling of The Odyssey in a post-apocalyptic world, focusing on a teenage girl in search of her family. I can see how the choppy back-and-forth structure, lack of internal logic, and sometimes implausible characters might be bothersome, but I was able to somewhat turn my brain off and enjoy the lovely, lyrical prose. Penelope was an enjoyable narrator, especially in her fierce love for her little brother, whom she, with a big sibling's single-minded focus, considered the most beautiful and worthy person alive.

All in all, a weird but quick and enjoyable read.

I cannot believe it took me this long to finally read this book. (I feel like I'm at risk of losing my credibility as a lifelong YA fantasy fan!) But now that I have read it, I definitely understand the hype.

A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA is the coming-of-age story. It is quiet and lush and intelligent. It is full of wonder, but does not flinch from the horrible.

Gifted with incredible magic, young Ged makes a mistake–a proud, thoughtless mistake, a child's mistake–which is magnified because of his power. He spends much of the rest of the book seeking to atone, and to track down the terrible, nameless thing unleashed by his actions.

The world-building is exquisite. Ged's journey, his search for atonement always interwoven with his discovery of the shape and nature and name of things, is deeply compelling.

I will confess to some surprise at the lack of female characters–the only one I recall being positively portrayed was a fourteen-year-old who seemed to know her place, who dutifully took care of her household–but I have hope that will be remedied in later books.

If, like me, you have managed to miss this classic, I advise giving it a read as soon as possible.

I enjoyed this well enough. The world-building was pretty good; it kept me interested enough to finish, though the ending felt somewhat anti-climactic; and it was nice to have an autistic main character who felt like an actual character, though I wasn't always sure how to feel about her. (I'm not autistic, so can't speak with authority; for a GREAT review by actual autistic people, including author Corinne Duyvis, go to Disability in Kidlit here.)

On the downside, sometimes things seemed to happen just because the author decided they should, and the ending felt extremely anti-climactic.

I will probably read the next book, because the book was well-done enough to make me wonder what might happen next, and by the end, I was starting to care about Clover and her world and her friends.

Written with empathy, painstaking research, and meticulous attention to detail, this book is wrenching, horrifying, and deeply important.