Kim Johnson did it again. This story packed a punch and will definitely live for quite a while in my head. In this story, Andre, a high school senior, tries to make it day to day starting with serving the punishment for a crime he did not commit to quickly including the rapid descent into Covid lockdowns during the most uncertain times while living with his grandparents but without his
mother, a nurse who lives separately to attempt to protect the family. This part evoked a lot of emotion in me as I remembered a student I taught that year who lost her father because of Covid. As the weeks progress in the narrative, Andre now has to deal with the response to the murder of George Floyd and all that came along with it. Living in the incredibly white city of Portland, Oregon, Andre makes a profound statement about the fact that his neighborhood now has more Black Lives Matter signs than Black people. That will stick with me for a while. Johnson also weaves in a fictionalized version of the tragic story behind a photograph of a Black boy hugging a police officer at a protest in 2014. Four years later the boy, also named Andre, his adoptive moms and their entire family died when one of the moms purposefully drove their van off of a cliff. Clearly, all of this feels like a lot yet Johnson manages to show how people like Andre live these things all the time, that “normal” life often feels incredibly heavy. This book holds so much taht even with all the words I have spent on this review, I feel like I cannot adequately express all my thoughts about this book.
This book is a marked departure from Invisible Son which I definitely needed. (Even though I loved that book, balance is essential.) Shenanigan Swift lives in a family that gains their names from the dictionary and whatever name they receive defines their character. Of course, this means that the entire family is mad cap and absurd in the best possible way. The narrative quickly becomes a closed circle (attempted) murder
mystery when, at the family reunion held every 10 years, someone tries to kill the family matriarch. Shenanigan, along with her sisters Phenomena and Felicity, attempts to solve the mystery, especially after the adults prove completely incompetent. Throughout this, Shenanigan also struggles with the family’s rock solid belief that the name defines the person and that you can do nothing to change that. I really enjoyed how Lincoln unspooled this throughout the narrative.
This book is not for everyone but it worked so incredibly well for me. The whole narrative, all 300+ pages of it, was a delicious series of intricately deep vocabulary and syntax. Linguistics and wordplay have long fascinated me and often infected my own vernacular, much to my sister’s chagrin when we were young. This book reads not as a straight memoir but rather a collection of reflections on linguistically related topics
organized around the birth to death cycle. I really enjoyed this and could easily see and almost feel the passion the author has for words.
It took far too long for me to finally pick up this book. Yes, that means that I loved it. I felt a little bit nervous going into this because even though Spellslinger was a massive hit for me, The Malevolent Seven fell a little bit short (but still worked.) I loved this. I cannot wait to see how de Castell will build this world and weave together the narratives. One book in and Falccio is already one of my all-time favorite characters. The narrative starts with
three former Greatcoats aka former soldiers/judges for the king, failing at a bodyguard job and heading back on the road. As the narrative continues to unfold, it looks, at first, like it’s just a series of misadventures but of course it’s not. I love those sorts of stories especially as connections are made and stakes raised. Here’s to a, hopefully, new favorite series.
When you consider DNF’ing a book a third of the way through, you probably should. I have read sequels far apart from reading the first book as I did with this one and still enjoyed the sequel. My experience with this sequel followed a similar pattern with more of the story coming back to me as I read but even with that, I struggled both to understand all the different players in the game and also to connect with any of the characters, especially
the main character, Zephyr. For someone who constantly declares her divinity, she sure messes up a lot as well as finds herself, a supposed god, quite powerless, often. I’m not sure why I purchased the sequel when I do not own the first book but, clearly, this book will not stay in my library.
Aggie and Hector return in this second installment of the Aggie Morton Series. Jocelyn does such a good job making a tween version of Agatha Christie, and her, in this world, childhood best friend, Hector Poirot. The young Aggie finds herself enmeshed in yet another murder mystery when she, Hector, and cousin Lucy stumble onto a body Christmas morning while participating in a treasure hunt for their Christmas stockings.
The actual Agatha Christie novels may not work for me (although I occasionally feel tempted to give her works another try) but these middle grade versions actually do. I think that Jocelyn does an excellent job building the mystery at an age-appropriate level leaving just enough clues for an intrepid sleuth to pick up on but not too much or too little.
If this book had not come in a book box, I likely never would have heard of it, much less read and enjoyed it. This book retells the fictionalized story of a real female Chinese pirate queen. With a setting amongst the growing interest of the West in the formerly closed off Middle Kingdom, the narrative holds all kinds of hidden connections and implications for the world which this history nerd ate up. The main character (whose
name I have unfortunately forgotten) has to navigate a life in a world antithetical to her success, clawing her way to survival for years starting as a child when pirates captured her father’s merchant ship, killed her brother, press-ganged her father, and sent her to the “flower” boats where years later she meets a successful pirate and ends up marrying him and becoming a pirate herself. The author explores this character development with nuance and care through flashback chapters since the narrative opens with a battle that results in the death of her husband. She now has to scheme and plot to hold onto her place in this world; this is where the larger political world comes into play as well. Chang-Eppig captured my attention with this nautical historical fiction spanning many years, a combination which does not usually work for me. I love finding books like this.