A Feather so Black by Lyra Selene

 

Publication Date: March 12th, 2024

Read: February 2th - March 2nd

Rating: 3/5 stars

goodreads

Maybe this book and I just have different priorities.

A Feather So Black is the story of Fia, a changeling who was left in the human realm as a child, with no memories of her past. At first, her eerie resemblance to the princess she replaced made people fear and shun her, but over time...Well, they still actually shun her, but the high queen eventually warmed up to her.

Fia has been trained in various skills by her adoptive mother's druid advisor, and we meet her when she's trying to steal a captured faerie creature from a prince. This does not go incredibly well (which is foreshadowing for my experience with this book, I suppose) but she does end up running into ROGAN, childhood friend to lover to ESTRANGED AND ANGSTY CHILDHOOD FRIEND. They have a "let's kiss in a dark corner to throw off the people who are chasing us" moment in like, chapter 2. This, perhaps more than anything, sets the tone.

The Unmaking of June Farrow

 

Publication Date: October 17th, 2023

Read: February 8th - 9th

Rating: 3/5 stars 

goodreads synopsis

There’s so much to say about this book, but I’ve already talked about it so much that it almost feels like I’ve already written a review…even though I very much have not.

Crown of Coral and Pearl by Mara Rutherford: I love when low expectations are exceeded

Publication Date: August 7th, 2019

Read: January 14th - 15th

Rating: 3.5/5 stars

goodreads

The story of why I read this book goes all the way back to like, one or two years ago, when I was tasked with writing a bullet point description of it for a blind book display. You know, those displays bookstores and sometimes libraries do where they wrap the book in brown paper and describe it with some bullet points, and then you buy the book without knowing exactly what it is? Yeah. So! For some reason, out of every book I wrote a description for, this is one of the ones that vaguely stuck in my mind, and when I saw it available on Libby, I was like "Why not?"

Why not! I had fun with this book, even if it wasn't the best book of all time. At this point, I don't feel like I'll continue on to the sequel, but I don't regret reading this one. It was pretty fun, if also flawed.

I thought it would be fun to evaluate the accuracy of the bullet point description I wrote now that I've read the book, so here's the original description, with my commentary in green parantheses:

• First in a Series (true, but more specifically it's the first in duology)
  
• Impoverished Seaside Village (kind of true, except it's not a seaside village it's like, a floating village on top of the sea. It wasn't really clear that that was the situation until I read the book, though)
  
• Prince Choosing a Princess (yeah. Arguably "elders choosing a princess for a prince" but yeah, basically)
  
• Competition (This is probably one of my more inaccurate bullet points. The most beautiful girl in the village [as decided by the elders] is the one who gets picked. It's not exactly a competition, even though it kind of is competitive)
  
• Twins (accurate! The main character is, in fact, a twin)
  
• Switching Identities (True!)
  
• Royal Court (True! But little did I know, it's a not a regular royal court, it's a creepy spooky royal court inside a mountain with basically no windows)
  
• Political Intrigue (kind of true, but also the intrigue was one of the weaker parts of the book, so eh. An attempt was made, and my bullet point acknowledges this)
  
• Royal Brothers (there sure are two brothers who are princes and therefore royal)
  
• Perfect for Fans of Red Queen and The Selection (maybe? I have actually never read The Selection, and I didn't like Red Queen, so I was guessing here based on the fact that all three of these books involve a normal/poor girl getting sort of whisked away to a life of royalty where there's also some degree of political maneuvering going on.)

 Now that we've gone over the bullet points, I guess we should go over the actual plot. Nor and Zadie are twin sisters who live on a floating village. Everyone from their village is forbidden to set foot on land, for reasons having to do with the history/mythology of their world. They do a lot of fishing and pearl diving, but the rare pearls their region is known for are becoming less common as the oysters are over fished, plus they're not fetching as much money as they used to. The only way for someone to legally leave this village is to be chosen as the next bride of the prince of Ilara. Nor knows she won't be chosen, because only the most beautiful girl can be chosen, and she has a small scar on her face that renders her imperfect.

As everyone expects, Nor's twin sister Zadie (who is perfectly beautiful, unlike Nor) is the one chosen to be the prince's bride. But! She doesn't want to go. She's in love with a childhood friend - the same exact childhood friend their parents decided to betroth Nor to as soon as Zadie was chosen as the new princess. Desperate to avert her fate, Zadie takes drastic steps and injures herself with a dangerous jellyfish, so that she'll have scars that will disqualify her from the whole princess thing. 

Only then, it turns out that sending a less-beautiful replacement princess-to-be will be seen as an insult and could result in the whole village's fresh water supply being cut off, so it's determined that Nor will assume Zadie's identity and role as the prince's bride (with the help of a special cosmetic "stain" that hides her scar) in order to keep up appearances.

But of course, once she gets to the Ilaran capital, things aren't how she expected. Nor thought being the prince's bride would give her more freedom than she had at home in Varenia, but she's actually even more restricted in the dark, mountainous palace. Also, the previous Varenian queen is dead (or is she?), and the prince she's betrothed to is sadistic, cruel, and so obsessed with finding a cure to the curse he thinks he's under that he's willing to let children die as collateral damage. Nor begins to realize that the power structures that are in place between Ilara and Varenia only exist to allow Ilara to exploit Varenia (we love a class consciousness slay), and looks for ways to prevent the prince from exploiting Varenia even more.

The prince she's engaged to also has a hot half-Varenian younger brother who's the real love interest of this book, but I don't feel like I need to talk about him much. Not much time is spent on developing his relationship with Nor, so I was not invested in them as a couple. It came off like Nor just thought he was hot and liked him better than his brother because he wasn't a sadist who lets children die for ~science. We need more to recommend love interests besides the fact that they aren't their evil brothers!

(Also, I've forgotten both of the princes' names already. Oops...)

I really enjoyed the first half of this book, where we're exploring Nor's life in Varenia. Nor's love for and protectiveness of Zadie felt real, and so did her frustration with her mother, who has spent their lives obsessing over their beauty, all so that one of them would eventually be chosen to be the next Ilaran princess. The childhood friend character whose name I don't remember was a nice change of pace from a lot of characters in his archetype, mainly because he has feelings for Zadie instead of having a doomed crush on Nor. Also, I liked the setting of the floating ocean village. 

The castle-carved-into-a-mountain setting was cool too, but I just felt like the plot got a lot weaker once we got to Ilara. Most of the book after that point felt like it was Nor trying to figure out what to do about the evil prince and how to get in contact with her childhood friend. Just not super compelling, given the interesting set up.

Right after finishing this book, I felt like I might read the sequel, but that impulse has largely faded. I'm content to leave this book as it is, especially after looking through some of the sequel's reviews to get a sense of the vibe. The vibe is: either we're glad this was only a duology and didn't have a filler middle installment, or we think this should have been a trilogy because we didn't have enough time to develop all the ideas. Either way, it sounds like people were a bit whelmed by the sequel, and I don't have time for books I know will whelm me...except maybe Reached by Ally Condie.

Crossed by Ally Condie: Yeah, Too Many Canyons

Don't ask why this is the paperback cover and my other review was the hardback cover...I don't have answers

Publication Date:

Read: January 7th - 8th

Rating: 3/5 stars

goodreads

I think it's fascinating how all three books in this series have such similar average ratings on Goodreads. But Crossed has the lowest average, because we all agree it's the worst Matched book.

Honestly, Crossed started off surprisingly strongly. I was like, "Maybe I was wrong about this book being boring, and all about the characters wandering around a canyon?" But then we got to the canyon and started wandering around, and...well...

There are spoilers for Matched and Crossed ahead, if you're still trying to avoid spoilers for either of these books that have been out for over a decade!

What the River Knows by Isabel Ibanez

Good title, pretty cover, meh book

Expected publication date: October 31st, 2023

Read: August 18th - 24th, 2023

Rating: 3/5 stars

Did I like it? No. Did I hate it? No. Is it bad? Yes, I think so. 

This book sort of glided by with very little emotional investment from me. For the record, I was trying pretty hard to give this book a fair shake. I had just had my expectations way exceeded by The Scarlet Alchemist, a book from an author whose work I had previously disliked, so I was like hey, maybe this trend will keep up. Maybe I'll like this way more than I liked Isabel Ibanez's debut.

Everyone is wrong sometimes.

What the River Knows is the story of Inez, an Bolivian-Argentinian girl whose parents are obsessed with Egypt and spend many months out of every year in Egypt, assisting Inez’s mother’s brother on archaeological digs. Despite how much Inez begs her parents to be brought along, they have never taken her to Egypt. But then they die suddenly, and Inez decides to disguise herself as a young widow and finally go to Egypt in order to find out what really happened to her parents. Through a lot of stubbornness and arguably bad decisions, she manages to convince her uncle to let her come along on an expedition, where she uses her artistic talents to help record their findings. There’s sort of a brewing conspiracy relating to Cleopatra’s tomb, and while she’s trying to figure out what’s going on, Inez is gradually growing closer to her uncle’s Hot Young British Assistant, Whitford Hayes.

Also, this is a historical setting - specifically, we’re in the 1880s - but it’s kind of an alternate history where objects imbued with magic exist and that’s more or less normal.

Maybe it’s because I kept my expectations as neutral as possible, but I didn’t dislike this book as strongly as I disliked Woven in Moonlight when I read it. So that might be a positive. However, I think this book is pretty bad. I think it’s a type of bad that a lot of people could have a lot of fun with, and I don’t want to discount that! But overall I simply think it was bad. I was only barely invested enough to wanted to know what would happen at the end, and when I did know what happened, I was just like, "Okay."

Kerensa, what was bad about it? Well, one thing that made it bad for me, personally, was the main character, Inez. One thing that this book and Ibanez’s debut have in common is that they both have very brash, headstrong, impulsive main characters. Inez is slightly less prone to super-cringy banter than what I remember of WiM’s protagonist, but she sure does love to rush into situations by herself, with absolutely no back-up! If there’s one thing Inez is good at, it’s snap decisions and trusting the wrong people. If there’s one thing she’s bad at, it’s critical thinking. It’s hard to like a character when you feel like she’s impulsive, naïve, and just kind of stupid, without much in the way of endearing or redeeming qualities. I didn’t particularly like Inez.

As for the setting, while it felt like Ibanez had done research into the history of Egypt in the 1880s and other details of the setting, her characters ultimately did not feel grounded in that history. This is true even when she gave them backstories where they had personal emotional connections to real historical figures. The way that they talk and act, and even some of the beliefs that they espouse, just didn’t make me feel like these were characters from the 1880s. 

Obviously, there are always questions with historical fiction of how much writers should try to be “historically accurate” versus how much they should modernize, because every modern writer will modernize to some extent. Here, it just felt like the wrong balance was struck. But since I’m admittedly very nitpicky about historical fiction in general, I admit that many readers probably wouldn’t be as thrown by I was by Inez’s uncle declaring that he believes in a fair living wage (I was 2 seconds from google searching if fair living wages were a common subject of debate in the 1880s, but then I restrained myself). And to be fair, I do think that there's leeway for young adult fiction especially to use historical fiction as a way to discuss current social issues instead of perfectly replicating period ones. If that was what was being attempted here, I just found it a little distracting.

More annoying were the ways that the characters would invoke the idea of restrictive social mores, and then simply ignore them. Inez will observe that it’s improper for her to be going around un-chaperoned, but then she keeps doing it, and there are virtually no consequences, outside of other characters being kind of annoyed at her for being improper. There’s no real sense that Inez’s reputation or social standing will suffer from all the scandalous things she does, and she kind of shrugs off the possibility as if it doesn’t really matter. She spends a good chunk of the book calling Whit “Mr. Hayes,” and then decides of her own accord that they’re friends, and she gets to call him “Whit,” now. He doesn't even want her to call him Whit! 

I guess my real issue here is, don't bring up the possibility of social disgrace if it's not something you're actually interested in exploring or worrying about. This is already an alternate history, so in theory it could be a version of the 19th century where it's fine for a young woman to do all the things Inez does. If you're going to say, "Oh no, I'm unchaperoned!" then maybe that should actually feel like there are tangible consequences to it? Even if they're acknowledged as being unfair consequences? I don't know, man.

Moving on. In general, I did not love the dynamic between Inez and Whit. I was sort of interested in the beginning, and I felt like they actually had pretty good banter and an interesting dynamic. But for so much of the middle of the book, it feels like that dynamic stagnates. There’s a lot of back and forth from Inez where she’s wondering if Whit likes her, worrying about him apparently being engaged, telling the reader that they’re getting closer without showing us much, and then wondering again if he likes her. This was not enough to sustain my already very mild interest. I got to a point where I was very ready for some real progression on either the relationship or the plot, and then nothing happened on either front. For like, a good chunk of the middle of this story, it felt like nothing was happening.

The conclusion was fine. I mean, it was very silly, but not much sillier than everything that preceded it, I guess. The twist at the very end was, as previously mentioned, a little bit interesting. But I won't be reading the next book.

Ultimately, I think a lot of people will probably have fun with this. Unfortunately, I wasn't one of them. I didn't hate it, but I'm left very...whelmed. Like her bestie Rebecca Ross, I think Isabel Ibanez just isn't for me.

Mini-Review: A Bright Heart by Kate Chenli

Pretty cover!

Expected publication date: October 17th, 2023

Read: August 9th-11th, 2023

Rating: 3.5/5 stars

Synopsis

A Bright Heart exactly captures the feeling of watching a kind of cheesy Chinese drama in book form. That's honestly pretty impressive in its own right. That being said, there are some caveats that come with that. The characters are archetypes without a ton of depth, the relationship and character development that does happen is usually pretty sudden, and there's more than one instance of some clunky exposition-by-dialogue. Also the writing is sometimes very pretty, and other times a bit awkward.

But, like, if you want that C-drama experience, this will give you that. It's about a young woman who is given a second chance at her life after the prince she helped become king betrays her. The second time around, she knows who a lot more of her enemies are, and she falls for a different prince. She also gets to look cool and smart in a lot of different scenarios (she is the main character, after all) ranging from outsmarting the princes at an archery competition to showing off her intellect at the king's birthday party.

Also, there is set-up for a sequel, but I personally didn't feel like it was a big cliffhanger of an ending. I feel very content not reading the sequel, so i think this can be read as a standalone.

The Infinity Particle by Wendy Xu

 

Expected publication date: August 29th, 2023

Read: August 8th, 2023

Rating: 3/5 stars

Synopsis

The Infinity Particle is the story of a robotics engineer who falls in love with a very handsome, very humanoid robot, and then helps him escape his abusive creator. That is the story in a nutshell. There's...not a lot more to it outside of that.

This is a sweet, romantic story, but certain elements felt rushed or a little underdeveloped. The two leads, Clem and Kye, seemed to fall for each other incredibly quickly compared to the amount of time they had spent together. For the record, I did like their interactions! The way they connected based on the shared experience of having an emotionally abusive parent was nice! But I was surprised to see them declaring their love after what felt like maybe a week in story time.

I also found the ethical implications of AI to be kind of underdeveloped in this story, especially given that this book has received praise for its portrayal of said implications. There were questions about Kye's right to independence because of his burgeoning free will, but they were mostly answered in a pretty straightforward way. He's sentient like a human and he looks like a human, so he should be treated like a human and have human rights. Okay, that's fine, but what about all of the robots who aren't humanoid? Which is like...all of them except Kye? What are their moral and legal rights? What about robots who aren't fully sentient? Do they get any rights? This really isn't touched on.

As for the art, I mostly liked it. It's a pretty limited color palette, mostly pale purples and pastels. The occasional inclusion of other colors becomes more dramatic as a result, which is nice. But I do have to comment on the character designs. As you can see from the cover, Kye is a tall, pointy robot man with a long, pointy face. He has these areas below his cheekbones that are always shaded purple, which makes his cheekbones look really sharp and his face look really angular. I think the purple shading might be a robot indicator thing, and not just a simple shadow, but it looks like shadow shading, so it's really not easy for my brain to read it another way.

In contrast, Clem is short, with a rounder face and a cool, youthful bob. She's 19 in the story, but could easily be a younger teenager. The contrast between the two of them makes their romance a little weird at times. I think Kye is supposed to have a similar experience level to Clem, or even less, because he hasn't seen much of the world, but he does look like a pointy man in his 30s to me, whereas Clem very much looks like a teenager. I think a different visual indicator for Kye's robot-ness might have been better.

Overall, this is a charming story with a lot of cute robots, but not a huge amount of depth. I recommend it to graphic novel enjoyers or anyone looking for a simple, straightforward romance.

A Hundred Vicious Turns by Lee Paige O'Brien

Pretty cover!

Expected Publication Date: September 12th, 2023

Rating: 3.5/5 stars

Synopsis

My experience reading this book was a lot like trying to hold onto a handful of sand. No matter what, the sand always trickles away. In much the same way, the things this book promised never quite seemed to materialize, no matter how much I tried to hold onto them. A lot of elements in this book feel half-formed, like I can tell that in the author's head everything's there, but what's on the page just doesn't click for me. Which is a bummer, because I really wanted to like this book.

A Hundred Vicious Turns is a duology-opener as well as the story of Rat, who is gifted with a rare ability to wayfind passages that aren't supposed to (currently) exist. Prior to the beginning of the book, Rat made contact with an otherworldly being in a space between dimensions (or in a separate dimension, maybe - it doesn't matter much, I think) who wanted to spirit them away. Rat turned to classmate Harker for help, but then Rat's mother found out, things went wrong, and Harker now hates Rat, hence the synopsis talking about Rat having to face off against their rival.

That's all backstory. The book actually opens with Rat beginning to attend Bellamy Arts, a magical college with powerful wards. They are hoping that the wards will keep them safe from the otherworldly being who they think is still after them. It turns out that Harker is also going to Bellamy Arts, and has befriended two girls, Jinx and Agatha. Rat immediately decides that Harker is Up To Something and begins blowing off other friend Will (yes, poor Will) to try to figure out what Harker is up to. This involves ingratiating themself with Jinx. Jinx is also the Mysterious New Girl in a school of trust fund babies, even though she actually is just as well-connected as everyone else. (Harker is the only character who actually lacks magical familial connections).

This book starts off pretty slowly, but I was okay with that at first. We were building atmosphere, hinting at backstory, introducing characters. I'm very amenable to a slower-paced story. But then things started to feel circular and kind of boring. It seems like a lot of this book is Rat being anxious in their room, going out to meet someone (often Jinx or the rest of the group), there's a little bit of spooky other dimension stuff, the characters might discuss the thing they're trying to find, and then everyone goes back to their rooms and the cycle starts anew. There's a significant chunk of this book where it feels like the plot is just treading water.

(Also, this is a magic school story where the characters literally never go to class, which is a pet peeve of mine. If it's a school story, I want to SEE the school parts! It's not enough for them to just be on a campus.)

And again, I could have been okay with the plot taking a backseat if the writing had been beautiful or the character interactions had been standout. I don't remember there being a ton of plot in the Raven Cycle, but Maggie Stiefvater's character writing is so good that it carried even when nothing is happening. That wasn't the case here, at least not for me. All of the characters had the potential to be interesting, but it felt like we didn't spend enough time on developing any of them. Even Rat felt kind of flat after the millionth anxiety-ridden "Rat [did x} and hated themself for it" we got in the narration - not to mention the numerous times Rat starts typing out texts to people and then deletes them. I really wanted more of Agatha, or more interactions with Harker that didn't just boil down to him and Rat glaring at each other.

On a writing note, I think this book also had the somewhat rare problem of over-relying on pronouns? Since the four main characters mostly use different pronouns (except Agatha and Jinx, who are both she/her), a lot of the time the narration refrained from restating character names more often than I personally prefer. At one point, there was a half page of conversation between Rat and Harker at the end of a chapter where Rat's name is used twice and Harker is only referred to via pronouns. It may not sound like a big deal, but it did affect my comprehension, and it would easily be fixed by just using the characters' names a bit more often.

By the time I was halfway through the book, I was starting to lose steam and I began to get increasingly frustrated with the pacing. Sometimes it felt like the characters would just stand around and take forever to make a decision; other times the action and resolution of things felt weirdly fast. Someone who was still enjoying reading the latter half of the book probably wouldn't have been as bothered as I was by these things, I fully admit.

I do think this book has an interesting premise and is tackling some kind of interesting ideas. The whole premise of Rat and Harker's dynamic is that they currently "hate" each other because they used to be so close, and Rat is constantly dealing with the fact that part of them still defaults to Harker when they need someone to talk to, etc etc. There were some genuinely interesting moments between them that made me wish I liked the way their backstory had been set up more, because I was pretty meh on the execution of it all. Additionally, the dynamic of Harker not having the same connections everyone else does and having to deal with assumptions that he MUST be using people because his family isn't rich was intriguing, although there could have been more exploration of it in my opinion (Give me the full Adam from the Raven Cycle experience, c'mon!). 

Plus I like otherworldly/interdimensional stuff in general, combining it with a magic school setting seems sick, and Agatha and Jinx both seem like very interesting characters in their own right. 

While this book fell flat for me, I think there's probably an audience out there for it. I can see some people loving this book and being able to look past the flaws that prevented me, personally, from loving it. I did enjoy the concepts in this book and it was cool to read a book with a nonbinary main character and a trans love interest (even if I ultimately wished that Agatha or Harker had been the main character). 

Oh well. I hope someone likes this book. I didn't.

Sing Me to Sleep by Gabi Burton

  

Sing Me to Sleep is the story of Saoirse Sorkova, a teenage siren who lives a secret existence in the kingdom of Keirdre, which is cut off from the outside world by a magical barrier enacted by the king. Sirens are feared for their blood lust and mind control powers, and the king hates non-fae creatures in general, so Saoirse has spent the last several years pretending to be a normal fae who lacks an elemental affinity and training to one day become a soldier or enforcer (whatever pays the most). She also indulges her blood lust on the side, and for the last several months she's been working for an assassination organization called the Raze, which basically carries out the petty grudges of the nobility against each other. When she graduates her Delta training at the top of her class, she's offered a position among the fae prince's personal guard. And when she accepts, she begins to run into trouble as the royal family start to investigate the murders that she's been committing on behalf of the Raze. At the same time, she's trying to unravel the mystery of who's blackmailing her and threatening her adopted younger sister.

And there's a prince, so obviously she's going to start falling for the prince. You saw that coming, right?

The thing about this book is that it is extremely YA. That is not a value judgment on the quality of the writing. (I am saving the judgments on the quality of the writing for later in the review). It just means that this book is packed with YA tropes, and if you don't like reading very traditional, tropey YA, you probably won't like this book.

For a brief run-down of what I mean with the YA tropes:

• Saoirse has a sweet and innocent twelve-year-old sister who she would do anything to protect, even killing people for money. 
• Saoirse's adoptive parents run a mill, but the royal family prevents them from charging a reasonable price for their product, so they rely on the money that Saoirse makes from being a serial killer/assassin, even though they don't approve of her being a serial killer/assassin.
• Saoirse has secret, forbidden magic, and to make things worse, her secret, forbidden magic is because she's a secret, forbidden creature.
• And as a bonus: Before we ever meet her, Saoirse has already trained and become a super competent warrior, and she's really good with crossbows, apparently.

Are these things bad? No. They're just tropes. But for me personally, these tropes don't tend to bode well. I enjoy a lot of YA books, but the YA books I usually enjoy aren't the ones that utilize this combination of tropes, and Sing Me to Sleep wasn't an exception to this.

I had a mixed reading experience with this book. On the one hand, I was entertained enough to keep reading. On the other hand, some of my entertainment was coming from rolling my eyes at the book, not rolling my eyes...with the book. You know? We started off with tropes I don't really enjoy, and then Saoirse began making bad decisions at a truly impressive rate. I guessed one twist, but there were a few others thrown in that felt a little silly.

The very end was good. The very end intrigued me for the sequel more than anything that preceded it, to be honest.

But even with the ending being intriguing, this only nets a 3/5 with me. There was potential here, but it didn't land for me, and I think the execution being what it is always would have hindered my enjoyment.

To sum it all up, I can excuse serial killing, but I can't excuse being BAD at serial killing and getting away with it because everyone around you is even worse at investigating murders.

That's the spoiler-free review. Now it's time to get nitty-gritty and devolve into disorganized ranting.