YA

When We Were Magic by Sarah Gailey

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Started: 1/30/21
Finished: 2/3/21

I love Sarah Gailey and everything they’ve written. This is their first YA book – it’s about friends with magic, and it starts dark. The main character is pretty insecure ways that feel real even though they’re not how any of my insecurities work. I’m not totally crazy about how the magic works. I mean, it’s not explained and I don’t think it has to be, but the friends seem to be so convinced that this one thing will work, and I don’t know why they would think that. Except it’s likely they are trying to convince themselves it’ll work. Anyway, I liked it, I enjoyed it, and a lot of things about it were really good. I’m just not sure it’s really good.

The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton

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Started: 8/28/20
Gave up: 8/30/20

It feels familiar at the beginning, and I wasn’t in the mood for another same-old story, but I’d heard good things about it and the premise is fascinating, so I kept going. Then there were hints of something really dark and awful going on that the heroine is going to find out, and okay, I’m interested, but she doesn’t follow up!  Or she’s more interested in the same-old!  Are you kidding me?  And then I found out that it’s the first in a series, so I’m not even going to find everything out by the end of the book, and you know, I’m making up my mind to quit reading as I’m typing this.

Yup, I just read a few more pages and then skimmed a few more and NOTHING IS HAPPENING.  Next!

Wilder Girls by Rory Power

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Started: 8/24/20
Finished: 8/28/20

I liked the beginning, and then I got bored, and then I got interested again, and then I was disappointed.  The book ends like it’s going to have a sequel, but I don’t think it’s planned to be a series, so it just feels unfinished.  It’s supposed to be this feminist-thriller-climate change-body horror variation of Lord of the Flies, and some of that comes through, but then it just ends.

The Female of the Species by Mindy McGinnis

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Started: 8/22/20
Finished: 8/24/20

This was a good book, YA, and a hard read.  The teenagers all feel very real, even though I was nothing like them in high school, and neither were most (if not all) if the kids I knew, but hey, times are different.  It’s emotional and disturbing, and I couldn’t put it down.

Dragon Pearl by Yoon Ha Lee

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Started: 7/5/20
Gave up: 7/5/20

13-year-old goes to space to rescue her older brother, and I am not in the mood.  The writing is good, the premise is good, but the formatting on my Kindle is atrocious (it’s a converted PDF), and the mind of this 13-year-old is not as comfortable to live in as the mind of the 12-year-old wizard was (from my last book).  I’d like to come back to this later, but I’m not going to finish it in time for Hugo voting.

Deeplight by Frances Hardinge

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Started: 6/23/20
Gave up: 6/25/20

YA, possibly Lovecraftian (at least insofar as it includes monsters in the ocean deeps), with an Artful Dodger-like main character, but it didn’t grab me.  It seems perfectly readable, and maybe I’ll go back to it, but I have a limited amount of time to read Hugo-nominated books, and I don’t want to spend time on this one.

City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

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Started: 5/6/20
Finished: 5/16/20

A young adult book probably about vampires where the protagonist is only 15….yeah, we’ll see.

Update: it was NOT about vampires (whew), but it was about a special group of people who hunt them (and other supernatural beings), only when they break the law.  I called two major plot points early on.  I was 100% right about one, inconclusive but probably wrong about the second (it’s a series – I could still turn out to be right), and a little surprised by something at the end that I think will turn out to be a misdirect.

I don’t mind guessing plot points, but I HATE when they’re SO OBVIOUS and not a single character has a clue about it.  But I will probably continue reading these.

The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater

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Started: 3/27/20
Finished: 4/1/20

The last book in the psychics/witches/preppy school boys/etc. series that I like entirely too much.  It’s about time something happened.  I mean, stuff has been happening in all of the other books to move the story forward, but this thing they’ve been working toward since the first book is FINALLY HAPPENING.

The ending is good, it’s both unexpected and expected, and I feel like it happened a little too quickly.  I’d realize I was 80% done and think there’s NO WAY it can be done in only the pages remaining.  But it was, and it was good and yay.

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black

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Started: 2/14/20
Gave up: 3/9/20

I really liked that other Holly Black trilogy, so I picked this book up from the library.  I couldn’t find time to start reading the physical copy, so I borrowed the audiobook a few days later and listened to it in the car…for as long as I could.  Teenagers and vampires and the angst that goes with a centuries-old vampire who finds something deep and unique and irresistible and different and blah blah blah about a 17-year-old girl and I cannot count the ways in which I do not care.

Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater

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Started: 2/26/20
Finished: 3/4/20

Third book in The Raven Cycle (witches, psychics, magic, prep school boys, etc.), and it’s a really good continuation of the story.  We get more forward movement, more characterization, more good storytelling, AND it has teenagers being teenager-y and grown-up and all over the place in what feels real, despite the magic.  I am waiting impatiently for the 4th book to be available from the library.

Nyxia Unleashed by Scott Reintgen

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Started: 2/18/20
Finished: 2/26/20

Second book in the Nyxia trilogy, and while I still enjoyed it, I have some major problems with the aliens.  I mean, they’re fine, but they’re written as humans on another planet – hardly any differences, barely even cultural ones.  Doesn’t feel well thought out.

The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater

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Started: 2/14/20
Finished: 2/18/20

Second book in the trilogy with psychics, witches, magic, ghosts, and prep school boys, and it started with a swerve that took me by surprise in a very good way, and I liked this book a LOT.  Also, turns out it’s not a trilogy, it’s a…tetralogy?

Nyxia by Scott Reintgen

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Started: 2/2/20
Finished: 2/7/20

I picked this one up from the library after a Tor.com post about science fiction that provides hope for humanity.  It’s the first in a trilogy, and I liked it.  I don’t know if it’s officially YA, but the focus is on a bunch of teenagers, and aside from a few kind parents and parent-figures, the adults are Evil-with-a-capital-E.  So, yeah, it’s YA.

In the Hand of the Goddess by Tamora Pierce

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Started: 1/4/20
Finished: 1/16/20

Book 2 of the Alanna books.  She’s 14-16 (at least in the first third of the book), so it’s a little easier to take, but she can do EVERYTHING and kick ass at it.  So, yay for her, but also COME ON.  Still fun, though.