Ivy

I've read most of the UnWind books, but hadn't gotten to this collection of short stories yet. They're all good additions to the books, and give a look into some of the things that the books didn't have the time to fully explore.

I've been interested in this one for a while. It's fascinating and important, and I'm glad it's out there, but I have thoughts. It seems like many reviews are seeing this as a brush to paint all of judaism, and I rarely see reviews behaving the same way when the story is an escape from an extremist sect of Christianity.

Comfort reread, because any of these Elemental Masters books with Nan and Sarah are my favorites. They're so sweet and lovely and genuine. I want them to get to meet Maya from the Serpent's Shadow, because I think that would be a spectacular friendship/mentorship kind of situation.

Published in 2012 are you KIDDING ME?? I did not realize this was about a deadly flu when I picked it up, I expected a bomb thriller...not a medical thriller with death and quarantine and hand sanitizer. I genuinely expected to see this had been published in late 2020/early 2021. It was good, but uh, accidentally timely.

Ruta Sepetys is very quickly becoming one of the authors I will read without question simply because everything she's written has been so consistently outstanding. It's solidly within YA, our heroines are teens and the endings are generally happy, but she doesn't underestimate what the reader can handle. I fell absolutely in love with this story and I'm excited to recommend it on to other readers.

God, Daniel Handler is a menace. I swear it takes me half the book to get used to it and then takes me an hour after I finish to get used to the real world again. Not sure what you're saying, but you say it so well, keep talking.

Also I saw the big reveals coming a ways away and I don't know if I'm smart or Handler is just really good at foreshadowing.

I don't really think about Alaska much, I don't imagine most people do. Lende manages to make this area sound both beautiful and absolutely terrifying, which I'm betting is pretty accurate. At the same time, I grew up in a town that it sounds like was just a smidge smaller than Haines, and despite being worlds apart, I recognize the small town politics and nonsense and little ‘news' stories fondly.

I really wish someone had sat me down about ten years ago and explained that Stephen King has the reputation as a great author because he's a really damn good author. I won't read all of his stuff, but a lot of it is just legitimately so good, spectacularly plotted and paced and engaging and enjoyable. This was a hell of a book and I am glad I got around to reading it.

One of the better collections of “this misery we're all living through”. Probably like, 10% poetry, 75% writing, 15% photography. I'd say it should be something they make high schoolers read in ten years, but I'm betting parents will complain because the author is gay and one of the first chapters is him meeting and bringing a guy home, so it's something they need to have college kids read in ten years.

I had this when I was a wee small and Matilda was my favorite movie in the world and until yesterday I thought I'd hallucinated it because I couldn't find it, until I stumbled across it at work. Me? Crying over finding a beloved childhood book? Absolutely.

Far as I can tell, this is solidly anchored in real history. As a whole it was a good bit of historical fiction, not anything spectacular but a good read. My favorite bit, honestly, was the discovery of what happened to Evalina's daughter. We only know what's happened when she herself remembers.

Loved these books when I was younger! My mom had to order them from the UK Amazon website-looking back, I don't think I ever put two and two together and really got that it's a british series. I was young and kinda dumb, okay.
It's a fun series for tweenage and maybe early teens, and I'm enjoying the reread despite being heavily outside of the target range. Mel is impressively well written in the sense that she reads Very Much like a thirteen year old girl, and the side characters are honestly really sweet.

So that was adorable. I imagine you probably get more out of it if you're more familiar with graphic novels or D&D style Adventuring than I am, I enjoyed it but I'm not used to Big Battle Scenes visually or story wise, so it was a little overwhelming.
I am very interested in Prince Chirp who uses female pronouns? Is she genderweird, is Prince a non-gendered title in this world? I am very curious.

I'm impressed that these hold up, given that I last read them probably sixteen years ago, at least. They aren't groundbreaking or anything, but as a middle-grade series, it's pretty solid, and a sweet read. I just wish it was something you'd be able to find to actually recommend it-British book series don't make it here that often.

This was awesome! I don't think I actually got this far when I was reading these way back when and I had no idea there were ones I hadn't gotten to, I think I probably read through maybe book 7 or so, and then never looked for any more. I'd forgotten just how hopeful these books are! As an adult I'm looking through it now and just being so impressed by how loving they feel without being super preachy like most kids books that try to have this sort of concept going.

You know, I think I have to compare this series to the Maximum Ride books. They're so, so different on the surface of it, but that series tries to make Big Statements About The World too, especially in the later books. And it's really not great. I read those as a teen, in the target audience, and they seemed trite and preachy and all the messages seemed painfully out of place. They went from “ooh, evil scientists and DNA experiments!” to “YOU MUST SAVE THE WORLD!” and then whiplashed into “You must save the world specifically via ending global climate change!” with some mind control and evil robots thrown in for giggles. And these manage to evolve just beautifully from “time travel is real and we're gonna help people!” to “we're gonna help people on a bigger scale” to “oh my god what is humanity doing to the place, how can we help there?” and it's impressively not preachy! I'm delighted.

This is the most standalone of the books I've read so far in this series. Also, bless, the mortal characters in this one were great. I think this is the only one in this series that doesn't have evil humans or human-disguised Bad Guys lurking around, which was an interesting change. I'm glad we've established that our heroine still hasn't read the entire handbook-I imagine like half of these plots and sudden occurrences that pop up and startle her and the reader would be solved if she had, but in fairness, it's fully in character.

Good book and a good ending to the series. Gentle oof at an old white british lady writing a book largely centered on a Native American girl, on a reservation, and using our white teenager heroine as a mouthpiece for Native American creation gods? I feel like it was handled fairly respectfully, but I can't really say for certain because, y'know, not my culture. I don't know enough to even say whether it was handled well or not. I will say, again, this book continues the semi-aggressive “save the planet” spiel that's popped up in the last few stories, and it still doesn't feel preachy, which is just a miracle given how most authors write when they're trying to incorporate this kind of message. I'm glad I finally got to finish the series, too. I'd had no idea this book, and the last few, even existed.

I continue to appreciate finally getting to read these in order! Love having context, getting to actually see events that had only been referred to in passing. The founding of their club! I know these were at least a solid generation or so before my time, but to me, they read better than the Nancy Drew books, where our heroine is 16, has a car, and is basically a twentysomething who's been aged down to appeal to young people.

I'm enjoying reading my way through this series. This is one of the ones I'd never encountered before. It's never quite so obvious that this is an older series as when everyone in the town freaks out because the new kid wears a black leather jacket and boots. I'm pretty sure half my friends own black leather jackets.

This is a reread, I haven't got a clue why Goodreads doesn't know that! I needed a good comfort read during a bad day, and this is such a nice found-family story.

Skrypuch does a good job of covering an event and people who aren't particularly well known.

I bought this book years ago on the basis of the author-Van Eekhout also wrote Voyage of the Dogs, one of the most heartwrenching books I've ever read-and the fact that the character sounded incredibly autistic. And then I proceeded to never, ever read it, and probably passed it along. Found it in my library's ebook collection, and lo and behold, I was right! The character sounds incredibly autistic. I'm a big fan of found-family stories, even middle grade ones, so this was a fun read and very sweet.

I'll be honest-I didn't love this one the way I loved the first book or the third in the series. Not because it's not a great story, it absolutely is, but I'm just not as attached to Sun as I could be, and I barely know his teammates. I do enjoy the backstory time, and I liked getting to know team SSSN better, but I mostly read it to know what's happening.

BACKSTORY TIME!

Roman is objectively the best villain. Bad guy, sure, but a classy bad guy. And I absolutely love getting Neo's backstory, she is now my crime child, I have adopted her. The only danger in having read this as soon as it came out is, now I have to wait forever for the next one.