Sleep Like Death - Kalynn Bayron

Initial Draw: ☆☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆☆☆☆
Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆☆☆☆
Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Princess Eve was raised with one purpose: to destroy the Knight. Far too many generations of Queen's Bridge have been terrorized by this evil sorcerer's trickery. Eve's own unique magic - the ability to conjure weapons from nature - makes her a worthy adversary.

As she approaches her seventeenth birthday, Eve is ready to battle. But her mother, Queen Regina, has been acting bizarrely, talking to a strange mirror alone every night. Then a young man claiming to be the Knight's messenger appears and shares  a shocking truth about Eve's past. Unsure of who to trust, Eve must find the courage to do what she's always done: fight. But will it be enough to save her family and her queendom?"

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Oh my goddddddddddddddd this book was so good. I've read one other book by Kalynn Bayron, Cinderella is Dead, and I thought it was solid but dragged a bit after a while. I was curious to see if this would be similar, and while I did think there were a couple things that got repetitive, the pace was solid and there were enough big reveals and plot twists that it's easy to forgive a little repetition. I thought Eve and her mother were such badasses, and I was so curious about Eve's powers...but the real strength of this story? The secondary characters. 

Just...SO good. Nova? Nuanced, complicated, and wonderful. Claude? What do I even say about Claude? Thoughtful, strong, vulnerable. His boys? HIS BOYS. Ugh, I love them so much. Truly, they made the book what it was, and the way that Eve had to unlearn being fiercely independent and never needing help, let people in, and lean on them even though it wasn't something she was comfortable with...so emotional. So beautiful.

Plus, don't judge a book by its cover...but judge this book by its cover, baby.

Glorious. And it has bright green sprayed edges (poisoned apple, babyyyyy), artwork on the inside cover and the reverse side of the book cover. BEAUTIFUL.

At the End of the River Styx - Michelle Kulwicki

Initial Draw: ☆☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆☆
Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆
Overall: ⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Before he can be reborn, Zan has spent 499 years bound in a 500-year curse to process souls for the monstrous Ferryman - and if he fails he dies.

In Portland, Bastian is grieving. He survived a car accident that took his mother and impulse-purchased a crumbling bookstore with the life insurance money.

But in sleep, death's mark keeps dragging Bastian into Zan's office. It shouldn't be a problem to log his soul and forget he ever existed. But when Zan follows Bastian through his memories of grief and hope, Zan realizes that he is not ready for Bastian to die.

The boys borrow time hiding in the memories of the dead while the Ferryman hunts them, and Zan must decide if he's willing to give up his chance at life to save Bastian - and Bastian must decide if he's willing to keep living if it means losing Zan."

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Intriguing concept for this Owlcrate book that I will once again argue does not qualify as YA. It hooked me enough that I started it pretty quickly (I have six Owlcrate books waiting ahead of this one but let it jump the line), but sadly I don't know that it fully delivered. Last quarter of the book? Totally. Well...mostly. I found the ending emotional and kind of lovely, just a touch unsatisfying. Maybe like 4-4.5 stars. Unfortunately, that lovely and emotional last quarter of a book is preceded by the first three quarters, which draaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaag.

Like...so little happens. I genuinely don't think you get much more information or character development from the first hundred or so pages than you start out with from the first few chapters. The pace is way too slow, with lots of hints at upcoming information that, by the time they come, you're like oh ok, I kinda figured. And while I felt Bastian's grief, the two main conflicts - struggling with his relationships and the expectations of his friends/brother and his struggle with the Ferryman/Zan - were both basically repeats of the same interaction over and over with very little change or growth to the action. 

It was kind of a letdown, especially because even though it seemed impossible to tell people about being marked for death, as a reader I was like ok at some point he's going to open up to his friends and tell them about this, right? And they're all going to work together to come up with some solution, right? WRONG! He's just going to repeat the same interaction with them over and over until you get far enough into the book that he decides he's going to try to open up and rely on his friends!

Oh, no, wait, he does finally tell his brother about it...hope! A light at the banks of the river of death! But then...nothing comes of it. Soooooo what was the point of that?

Similarly, he has a handful of mostly negative interactions with Zan, and then pretty apropos of nothing it's like nah, actually, these two are in love. Truly, there was more relationship development in the last couple chapters than in the entire rest of the book combined, which is wild.

Bah, I don't know. I feel like rating this overall at three stars is a wee bit generous, especially given all my griping in this review, but with the exception of the END end, I really did find the later chapters enjoyable, so I don't want to rate it too low. I just feel like there was a lot of potential and it fell short. Could have been great, ended up being meh. The cover art and sprayed edges on the special edition version though? Beautiful. And you know...I feel like people say "don't judge a book by its cover" like something ugly on the outside might be beautiful on the inside, but really it should be used to mean the opposite - don't think something is good just because it's pretty.

Books to read when you're sick

We spent fall break in Costa Rica, and when I tell you it was amazing...y'all, it was amazing. I mean, feast your eyes.

It was very hard to narrow all my pictures down to only four, but I tried to pick a nice sample of all the incredible things we saw and did. There is balance in all things though, so as lovely as this trip was...of course the day after we got back, I got sick as fuck and missed my entire book fair. It wasn't COVID, so that's a plus, but I do have some kind of weird, never-ending stomach bug, so that's very much a negative. Whatever it is, I needed something to fill my time between naps on the couch and what better way to fill time than rewatch Ted Lasso for the millionth time and then rewatching it again read a bunch of books?

I started off ambitiously with a new non-fiction book I was really excited about, Yonder Come Day by Jasmine L. Holmes. VERY good, incredibly emotional. Then I realized I was probably too tired to hyperfixate on another non-fiction book, so I finished listening to an audiobook I'd started on my trip, Gemina, and moved on to the audiobook for the third book in this trilogy, Obsidio. 

Now, the tricky thing about audiobooks...can't listen to them while Ted Lasso plays in the background and pretending you're absorbing both. So between audiobook listens, I also read Alex, Approximately by Jenn Bennett and Foolish Hearts by Emma Mills (my love for both of these is well-documented), interspersed with chapters from The Small and the Mighty by Sharon McMahon, which is fantastic. 

And while I did manage to work a half day today, today being...about a week and a half before this post is published, I am still very much sick. I'll be off tomorrow so I can go to the doctor and hopefully figure out wtf is going on with my stomach (please, I'd really like to climb again at some point, not to mention just generally be able to eat and feel normal), and while I wait for my appointment, I'll be rereading Starry Eyes, also by Jenn Bennett, my love for this also well-documented. So hey. If you have to be sick, at least there are books. And Ted Lasso.

October's Read Harder was actually Read Easier

Look, I read a picture book for one of them, so that's not a challenge. Young Miss Holmes was quite fun, I enjoyed it. I wish it was more readily available, I would love to read more of it. Sadly, I'm not sure about spending $25-30 per book on these, so...womp womp.

Uhhhhhh two month left and only two books to go? So strange, being ahead of the curve like this. My last two challengers are to read a howdunnit or whydunnit mystery (or, in the words of the great Captain Raymond Holt, a Who Has Done This?) and to pick a challenge from any of the previous years to repeat. God, I hate that prompt so much. Lazy.

Anyway, for me Who Has Done This I'll be reading Super Puzzletastic Mysteries, which is a collection of short story mysteries and should be fun. I didn't write down which prompt I chose to repeat and picked it a while ago, so I honestly don't remember which prompt I'm repeating (sorry), but the book I'll be reading for the last challenge is Rumaysa by Radiya Hafiza. I feel like it was maybe a poetry challenge?

Well, wow...last two books and then Reading Harder is done for 2024, amazing! Let's do it!

Speed Reviews (that's a thing!)

I was ahead on blog content, and then I didn't have much reading and reviewing time, and now we're like sixteen hours out from a flight to Costa Rica, and I want to make sure there's something in the bank in case I end up getting so caught up in ziplining and white water rafting and such that I don't write anything while I'm there. So, I bring you....speed reviews. Like speed dating. But for books. Hopefully I don't accidentally speed review something I reviewed for real and don't remember.

1. Escape from Atlantis by Kate O'Hearn - Interesting. Kind of long. Thought it would be a standalone. Kind of seems like it isn't.

2. The School for Whatnots by Margaret Peterson Haddix - Weird, but in a good way. Fun twists. Quick read.

3. This is My America by Kim Johnson - So heavy, so real. Such a damning indictment of our justice system here in the US.

4. Give Me a Sign by Anna Sortino - Loved this so much, it's cute and also gets very real, and I just think it was fantastic.

5. Garden of the Cursed by Katy Rose Pool - Hooked me faster than I thought it would! Interesting world, and I really enjoyed it (although the second book in the duology has been less riveting so far, unfortunately).

6. Finding Junie Kim by Ellen Oh - God, this book got so real. I should have known because it's heavy pretty much from the jump, but it got into so many things, and I learned a lot about the Korean War. Very good, very emotional.

7. Such Charming Liars by Karen M. McManus - KAREN DOES IT AGAIN. Love it. So many twists.

8. The Eternal Ones by Namina Forna - Final book in the Gilded Ones trilogy, not as good as the first two though. Seemed like not enough content trying to be stretched for a third book - I would have taken a couple longer books and rocked a duology, I think that would have been great.

9. The Spirit Glass by Roshani Chokshi - Look, this book is an adventure story, but also such a unique take on one? Like not a lot happened, but also so much happened at the same time. And it made me cry. It's good.

Amber & Clay - Laura Amy Schlitz

Initial Draw: ☆☆☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆☆☆☆
Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆☆☆
Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Hermes here. The Greek god - 

No. Don't put down the book - 

I'm talking to you.

I bring you a story that tells

of the quick and the dead:

the tale of a girl as precious as amber,

the tale of a boy as common as clay.

Rhaskos works in the stables. Worth less than a donkey, much less than a horse. But Rhaskos is clever and talented, and beloved of his mother - who has been forced away from her son but is willing to do anything for him.

Melisto is a girl. Wealthy, privileged, intended for a stifling marriage and dangerous childbirth. But first she is to spend a season serving Artemis, goddess of the hunt, as one of her little bears - a season from which she may or may not return.

From the exquisite pen of Laura Amy Schlitz comes a masterpiece of storytelling: the tale of a boy and a girl, told not just in their voices but also in the voices of gods and mothers and the philosopher Sokrates. It brings to vivid life a world two millennia gone and wraps its readers up in an improbable, indelible friendship that crosses the boundaries of class, of gender, and even of life and death.

There they are:

the girl as electric as amber,

and the boy, indestructible as clay."

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This might be the hardest book review I've ever written, because even after I've finished the book, I just...it's hard to pin down. I don't know what to say about it. I don't know how to describe it. I guess we can start with the decision to market it as middle grade. I find that to be a curious decision, because aside from the main characters being kids at the start of the book and growing into teens, I see nothing middle grade about this. A lot of the language and content seemed pretty beyond the average middle grade reader, and even with parts of the book written in verse, it is LONG, and it's fairly dense. 

Obviously I know nothing about book marketing, but it feels to me like they went hmm this is a pretty niche book, how do we sell it? Ummmmm kids always liked those Percy Jackson books, right? This is also about Greek gods and stuff, so let's just call it middle grade and get in on the Rick Riordan crowd? That'll sell some copies. It's definitely why I bought it - I have a handful of older students who are really into mythology, and they've read everything we have in the library multiple times, so I saw this and was like oooh something new for them! Yeah...no. It's not a bad book, I actually quite enjoyed it, but I don't think any of my students would slog through it.

"Heather, you just said you quite enjoyed it, but you sure do seem to be complaining about it a lot for a book you liked!" Yeah, it just really bugs me when things get marketed for an age group that they aren't! I think this was a very unique type of storytelling and a beautiful work of historical fiction, but why not market it to adults? YA is already being targeted to adults instead of teenagers, are we going to start doing that with middle grade too? Yeesh.

Anyway, check this book out if you're a fan of ancient Greece, mythology, etc. It was an interesting read, and the further I got into it the more I liked it. If you do read it, let me know your thoughts about it being marketed as middle grade. I'm curious how other people feel about that.

Property of the Rebel Librarian - Allison Varnes

Initial Draw: ☆☆☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆☆☆☆
Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆☆☆
Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Nobody would ever call June Harper a rebel...not until her parents discover an "inappropriate" library book and take strict parenting to a whole new level. Soon everything June loves about Dogwood Middle School - the librarian, the library, an author visit - is gone.

But June can't give up on books...and she realizes she doesn't have to, when she spies a Little Free Library. That gives June an idea: What if she starts a banned-book library of her own?

When June's classmates realize she has access to contraband, they begin a risky reading movement, one that could destroy June - or gain enough power to protect the thing she cares most about: freedom!"

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Sheesh, I tell you what, if you had told me "you're going to read a middle grade book about book banning in the span of a night and then that book is going to give you horrific nightmares about people hunting and killing librarians for sport" I would never have believed you. But that's what happened with this book! My brain is wild. And so is this book. 

The premise is pretty straightforward - June's parents get wildly angry about what seems to me like a pretty mild book and kick off a bunch of nonsense which others in town easily buy into, resulting in ludicrous book bans and kids being threatened with detention or even expulsion if they're caught reading unapproved literature at school. Even some of the students buy into it, forming a dumbass Student Club for Appropriate Reading like a bunch of squares. (For real, even mormon me was not this much of a stick in the mud, and that's really saying something.)

At times, the book reads a little melodramatic, especially because Allison Varnes kind of writes around the reasons most book bans these days are happening and focuses instead on older parent objections to things like characters being disrespectful to authority figures, "potty" humor, and portrayals of magic. The most egregious example of melodrama is probably when the guy crushing on June comes at her with a whispered "you're a liar" and then proceeds to tell her that he knows she's still reading. 

The soap opera vibes from that scene aside, though, and despite my wishing that the book tackled more books being banned for racial representation than just Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry or actually touched on bans for featuring 2SLGBTQIA characters, this book was kind of a downer of a read right up until the very end (and even kind of then) because despite the melodrama, it reflects the reality of SO much of the United States right now. Hence, my nightmare. And I don't even live in an area with serious book challenge issues, the way so many people do. 

Final thoughts: This book really captured the "how on Earth did we get here?" sentiment that washes over me on the regular. It's also a good length for its target readers, and I thought the pace moved quickly enough that it will keep young readers engaged without feeling rushed. Solid book.