I enjoyed this contemporary middle grade novel about a young Indian American girl who loves to draw but also feels constantly anxious to the point of throwing up and not eating breakfast consistently to avoid throwing up. She feels pressure to help her mom with her clothing story because of money pressures that she’s constantly aware of, worrying that those troubles will cause her parents to divorce. This resonated with
me because of my own generalized anxiety that manifested with similar symptoms when I returned to teaching. I cannot imagine dealing with that as a 12 year old which is why I strongly recommend this book. These voices need to be heard.
Am I just too skeptical a person? I did not feel any sort of tension or suspense throughout this purported horror novel. Granted, I believe that the author went more for psychological horror than anything graphic. Even with that, the creep factor did not really enter the story until well after the first 25%. The opening quarter sets the novel up as more of a survival story with these supposedly troubled teens sent to a
wilderness camp. These types of stories I tend not to enjoy so I had already started to pull away from the narrative which, perhaps, contributed to the minimal effect of the horror elements once introduced. I also figured out one of the twists long before any of the characters did. So … this was fine but I will not keep my copy.
I love Mbalia’s prose so I eagerly dove into his new middle grade series published under his own imprint with Disney. Jax is such a lovable, well-rounded character; it also does not hurt that Jax reminds me of one of my former students. Poor Jax gets propelled into a fantastical world of Summoners, a magic system loosely based on the Great Migration with connections to other more ancient magics although Mbalia does not flesh that
out in this first book. Jax does not stop moving from the start and neither does the reader. Even though I wish that a little more had been explained and that poor Jax had gotten a little bit of downtime, I still loved this first installment and hope that the next one comes soon!
Unfortunately, my enjoyment of this concluding installment went down a little from the first book because the narrative fixated far more on the romance than on the plot. As the audiobook progressed closer and closer to the end with blow after blow coming against opponents of the witch queen, I could not figure out how Ciccarelli could adequately wrap up this plot in a way that favored the main characters. She did
manage to do it in a way that somehow did not seem clunky or through the use of deus ex machina but that did not change my experience with the earlier portions of the book, in which I quickly grew tired of all the times Rune and Gideon found themselves together, were found out and somehow escaped the consequences. Oh well.
I really enjoyed returning to this world even though the narrative read so quickly. While the sequel lacked a little bit of the charm that the first book had in spades, I loved the main character and how she fully came into her powers and used her dyspraxia to her benefit not as something to make her less than. Even though it looks like the author does not plan to write more in the series, she left it open enough for more if she chose to. I would certainly read it if she did.
This is the first of the freshman class of Bindery published books that I have read. I hoped for better than what I ended up getting. This was not a bad book, just a rather basic one. Everything read formulaic and flat with stereotypical characters and plot events.
This graphic novel is so cute! The main character was supposed to go to a summer camp for cooking but ends up on the wrong bus and at a camp for vampires, not people who like vampires, actual vampires. The plot was so fun and enjoyable and also, at points, made fun of Twilight which I also appreciated. I would definitely recommend this book.
In this graphic novel, the cover characters work together against a rather ridiculous vice principal to create an art club at their school. I enjoyed the read but think that most of the plot followed well-trod paths of other novels. I did appreciate some of the parental representation, specifically the parents of the main character’s best friend. I would put this on my classroom library shelves.
Hopefully this book will be categorized accurately come Goodreads Choice Awards time. (Goodreads seems to struggle with that when an author writes in a genre they’re not known fore.) I did not have any expectations going into the book since it has been quite a while since I have read one of Bray’s books – A Great and Terrible Beauty back in 2010. The book had an uphill battle for me since it has multiple timelines (not my favorite) with one
set during WWII (I’ve read far too many set during that time period.) That being said, Bray did an excellent job building full characters in each of the timelines and weaving them together although I think that each of the timelines had a little bit of bloat that could be trimmed to make the book more enjoyable. I think this was a decent book but not anything close to five stars.
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