Firekeeper's Daughter

3.5 stars

This book is so, so special. I blitzed through it in a matter of hours and it spoke to me on so many levels in a way only one Indigenous person can touch another. The socio-political struggles of native identity, tribal membership, cultural knowledge, and more all within your tribe and outside of it up against the many, many issues native country faces all seems like a lot because it IS a lot, but it's perfect in capturing that muchness. There is no one native issue and I think the way this book refuses to let you forget that is good, especially for readers who don't already KNOW that.

The mystery and core of the STORY really did NOT allow me to put this book down. I simply HAD to finish it before going to sleep, even if it meant reading till 3am. SO worth it. I think this book captures the cycle of feeling caught up in an overwhelming amount of responsibility and problems that feel too big to solve yourself wonderfully.

I decided not to finish it as I wasn't pulled in after 11 chapters. It's just a little too “not like other girls” for me.

For Read Harder Challenge #16: Read a book recommended by a friend with different reading tastes. (i.e., YA). Loved it.

This book is oh so good.

The author describes it as Nancy Drew-like, and I love it.

Mystery. Scandal. Crime. Romance.

And a healthy dose of learning more about indigenous people.

#MMIW

You want to read this one.
Pretty sure it's YA.
We've got: a strong female POV character, sports, drama, Ojibwe and Anishinaabe culture, science, crime, suspense, romance, and a little bit of attitude.
The characters are so believable, and the plot plays out like a non-fiction account. You are there as Daunis feels shock, love, victory, and defeat.

Caution: there are both a gunshot murder and rape in this book. Neither are described in great detail, but may be a trigger for some.

Daunis should be starting her first classes away at college, her first steps to becoming a medical doctor, her dream, but instead, she is home, after a tragedy has struck her family. As an unenrolled tribal member and the product of a teenage relationship between a wealthy rich White girl and a Native hockey star, Daunis has always had to feel her way carefully through her two families. And now a new version of a toxic drug is striking down people she has known and loved all her life, and she is asked to help with the undercover investigation.

A thriller. A story centering on Obijwe culture. The wild ebb and flow of young love. Hockey life. All somehow bound into a unique coming-of-age story.

I can't recommend this one enough.

The setting is Sautl Ste. Marie in the UP of Michigan, but more specifically it is set in Anishinaabe people. We learn a lot about the Anishinaabe outlook on the world. That is a strength of the novel. It doesn't feel like we are on the outside looking in to this culture. It feels like Daunis is bringing us into the culture, so we see it from the inside.
Daunis is biracial and her difficult family history has a significant impact on the way many people treat her. However, there are also plenty of people that accept he for who she is. So there are side characters that I love and side characters that I hated. Many of these side characters are round characters. We see different sides of them.
The mystery is solved, but I hesitate to say there is justice. When there is so much pain, it is hard for a jail sentence to ‘make it better.' There are also multiple crimes and not everyone is charged with all of the crimes that they should be. However, the tribe does their best to bring acceptance even if justice is out of reach. This lack of justice mixed with love and acceptance makes the ending powerful. It will stick with me for a while.

Great opening paragraph, but downhill from there. It just didn't add up, and kept getting less and less relatable. The protagonist/narrator (age 18 or 19) is hyperprecocious, high IQ and EQ, with a maturity and sensitivity that maybe sets a good example for teen readers (this is YA, after all) but IMO more likely flies right over their heads. The ugly twist early on—the one that sets the story in motion—is both implausible and too-convenient; and so it goes, ever more so as the body count grows. At the end, the number of conspirators is just too unbelievably high. Psychopaths are rare, fortunately for us; more than five of them, in a small community, all of them living productive lives while also cooking and distributing meth (to their community), all of them completely unfazed by more and more murders -- it just didn't work for me.

There was also an unpleasant and uninformed plot element involving “hallucinogenic” mushrooms. I almost stopped reading then, but went on in the hope that Boulley was using characters' ignorance to develop an important theme... but no, the ignorance is entirely the author's and it's the sort of thing she will one day be embarrassed about.

Decent writing, and many beautiful illustrations of Native American tradition, lore, respect, as well as challenges, bump this from 2 to 3.5 stars, almost 4, but in the end I need to round down. Boulley is clearly a compassionate soul and a great writer. Her future work will be more relatable and engaging. I look forward to it.

I really liked this! I was interested in reading it and then super excited to learn it was about an Ojibwe girl Michigan! I went to high school near a reservation and casino of Ojibwe people (Saginaw Chippewa in Isabella co.) so it was really fun to read things that were very familiar to me: the rural setting, the hockey obsession, poverty, white people being mad about casino per capita payments, and even graduating high school in 2004!

I was so excited for this book and it delivered, but could definitely have used some editing/tightening up. Excited to see what the Obama's will do for the TV adaptation. I appreciated how immersive the reading experience was, and that's credit to Boulley's world building and cultural teachings and sharing, but this book tried to do too much at once and didn't truly move until the last quarter. Daunis is such a fully realized character and there's so much of this book that I'll keep thinking about. Would recommend for upper high school - college - adult.

This book really surprised me. Partially it was because I didn???t remind
myself of the blurb before diving in, partially because it had a small focus on hockey which coincided with my re-subscription to NHL.com, partially because the plot just did not let up in terms of pace.

Our main character is a teenage girl straddling two worlds that don???t seem to want to accept her. She is sharp and vibrant in every page of the book and it felt like she was the force driving the plot along rather than the plot happening to her. She takes charge of her story as soon as events start picking up speed. One thing I didn???t love about her character is how much it is emphasised by everyone around her that she???s so good at every skill she comes across. It ended up feeling a little flat, but that???s my only drawback.

Everything else about this book was great to read. Fast plot, complicated storylines that kept me guessing, I didn???t feel like the answer to the mystery was obvious at any point. I really recommend this book to anyone interested by the blurb. It only gets better from there.

I ended up enjoying the hell out of this, despite the absolute need for willing suspension of disbelief that a government agency would recruit an 18-year-old (and teach her to make meth so she would be able to recognize the process) without a parent being informed. Honestly, I could have done without the meth storyline entirely.
What I LOVED was the interaction between community members, Auntie and the holidays and pow wows. I found learning about the culture so powerful- maybe that is why the plot with the meth seems so trivial in comparison.
Boulley's voice is incredible.
Again, just want to state for the record that I HATE that Reece Witherspoon has slapped her book club sticker on the cover. I almost didn't read it just because of that.

This felt like it needed another round of edits; there's far too much unnecessary tedium and a distinct lack of narrative thrust. The setting is the book's strongest attribute but it's hard to carry a whole story on that.

Deeply affecting and tightly plotted. I couldn't put it down.

I couldn't put this down as I was reading it–I loved Daunis as narrator and I was fully engaged with her world and ongoing investigation. It did fall apart a little bit toward the end and as I think about it I think maybe this book ultimately bit off a little more than it could chew, but it's still an amazing debut novel and I definitely look forward to seeing what Angeline Boulley writes next.

Like for example why was it a late-book reveal that Daunis has nerve damage in her shoulder? It's from her POV, why was she keeping it a secret from...herself...and then why did that reveal have very little to do with anything going forward? And I suspect the writing around the Little People was out of a respect to not wanting to write too much about Ojibwe lore but it was also kind of like..."here's hundreds of pages of mystery about meth and also there are magical creatures that are literally real and talk to you when you're high but we can't tell the FBI about it so anyway, my shoulder hurts. like I respect that maybe you don't want to write about this lore and I know some other Native American writers have gotten some backlash for putting too much sacred lore into writing but then like, IDK, maybe don't write about it at all instead of just the smallest, wildest tease of a plot element?!?! Also I'm just speculating that that might be the reasoning for it but it just seemed like...a weird level of buildup for extremely little follow through on this plot element that seemed very interesting to me!

Also hey, great to have another hockey novel for my teen hockey enthusiasts! (It's a hockey B-plot for sure but still a good amount of hockey content I think.)

Also content warning for sexual assault, drug use/overdose, murder, etc...like PG-13 but heavy for a younger teen or anyone with specific triggers.

YA mystery is one of my favorite subgenres, and I thought Boulley's debut novel hit the mark of a good thriller while also having consistent character development and a strong sense of place. You can tell that the author spent years writing and refining this story and I felt fully immersed in Daunis' world, half in and half out of Ojibwe culture. The twists and turns had me reading this book late into the night.