Started: 10/22/23
Finished: 12/15/23
YA trilogy with interesting (although often very confusing) magic, high-strung heroes, a completely insane and evil villain, and an occasionally baffling time-travel plot. I enjoyed it, but I didn’t love it.
Started: 10/30/23
Finished: 10/30/23
A strange retelling of a folktale about a kid and a castle and a talking skull. Definitely too much for Jack, but I enjoyed it.
Started: 9/29/23
Finished: 10/10/23
Pretty good story, pretty good narrator (for the audiobook, I mean), and the main character pretty much acted her age, which was a nice change. I mean, she still outsmarted lots of people and saved the day, but in a tolerable way. Magic and dangerous grimoires! And libraries!
Started: 9/15/23
Gave up: 9/16/23
I have heard so much good about this book and this series, so I started the audiobook and quit almost immediately. Main character was TOO young/immature, all of the dialogue was too misogynistic, and maybe it gets better, but I don’t want to get through this to find out. Maybe I could deal with it better if I were reading it at my own pace instead of listening. Maybe someday I’ll try again.
Started: 8/10/23
Finished: 8/28/23
I read the first one two years ago, but the second and third books weren’t out yet, so I felt I should re-read this once I got my hands on the second and third books. I really enjoyed this series, but it’s pretty brutal. The kids are dealing with constant danger, their parents are mostly pretty awful, and the magic system is pretty weird. But I love the characters, and I love the author, and I’m glad I read these.
Started: 8/25/23
Gave up: 8/27/23
I wanted to like this, but it didn’t grab me enough to push through. A teenager who never really fit in finds out she’s part (or all? I don’t remember) alien, gets picked up by hopefully the good guys (aliens), rescues some other misfits, and I assume they save the universe, but I didn’t get that far.
Started: 8/25/23
Finished: 8/25/23
I read this in one sitting, stuck on an airplane in DC waiting out weather delays and then crew change delays. It’s YA, but YA like A Wrinkle in Time, YA like Diana Wynne Jones – you know, timeless and very very good. We have semi-normal kids going through a tough time, noticing odd things around them, and then super-crazy stuff happens and they save the world, all mixed up with folklore and history and mythology.
Started: 4/12/23
Finished: 4/19/23
Weird and sad and lovely and weird. And sad. But good! But weird.
Started: 10/5/22
Gave up: 10/8/22
I read a Buzzfeed article about cozy fantasy books for the fall, and this sounded promising. Magic hidden in plain sight in Palo Alto, cute little romance. And sure, those things happen. But the characters are in high school, and I just cannot. I literally said, “Ugh, teenagers,” when I put this one down for good.
Started: 3/25/22
Finished: 3/29/22
I enjoyed this book – it’s a really cute queer YA love story about a teenager in a bakery. It’s set in Austin, and the Austin-love felt a little much in the beginning, but either it settled down or I let it go – not sure which. Anyway, I will NOT return this book to the library until I have copied out nearly every recipe. They sound really really good, and I want to try them.
Started: 10/20/21
Finished: 10/24/21
Slow start, but that’s based more on the formatting than the story/writing. It’s not .mobi, so the formatting isn’t perfect. Annoying!
SO EASY to get past the formatting after just a bit. Really good story, totally sucked me in, and I’m looking forward to the sequel.
Started: 8/19/21
Gave up: 8/21/21
I loved her Raven Cycle series, and I was totally hooked by the beginning of this one. It’s her writing – I can’t put my finger on it, but I like her writing. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get into the plot of this one. Magical realism isn’t always my thing, and this book reminded me of One Hundred Years of Solitude and all the ways I could not read it. So I gave this one up.
Started: 8/14/21
Finished: 8/18/2021
I think this is magical realism, which usually doesn’t do it for me, but it’s also mythology and it’s also a dark book about a kidnapping and it’s also a book about a teenager with problems. I’m not sure if that’s one element too many, but I really enjoyed it.
Started: 4/28/21
Finished: 5/5/21
Recommended by Sarah Gailey. There’s a cult! And a missing sister! And trauma! Good, but I was disappointed by the reveal and the end. Which were both quite abrupt.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
Started: 7/2/20
Finished: 7/5/20
Young wizard goes on an adventure! Light, quick read, good characters.