March Read Harder, or "I'm Trying My Best"

Yeah, it has been a rough start to the year. Not just with reading, like generally with life. It happens. I'm trying. Did I get back on track over spring break? Nope! I did get sick though, so that was fun. I do feel like I'm finally starting to straighten things out, though and that's not nothing. I finally finished The Crossroads, sequel to The Only Road, and it was beautiful and sad and hopeful. I also read (one of? Surprising no one, not only have I not been reading my challenge books, I haven't been keeping great notes of my plans) my choices for challenge #24, The Storyteller. It's magical realism, and it was very strange and fascinating and cool. 

So hey, four prompts complete, all told not too shabby! It could certainly be worse. I haven't requested Persepolis from the library for challenge #14 yet (frustrating, because I went to TWO libraries today and could probably have found it at one of them if I had thought about it), but I've got the audiobook for Briarheart so I've got that going for myself. And my pick for challenge #1, Read a 2025 release by a BIPOC author, has arrived. Oathbound, last book in the Legendborn series! 650 pages, whaaaaat? Who doesn't love a hefty tome like that? I'll chip away at that, though, listen to my audiobook, and next time I make a trip to the library I'll grab Persepolis. Baby steps, baby.

Each Tiny Spark - Pablo Cartaya

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

From the cover:

"Emilia Torres has a wandering mind. It's hard for her to follow along at school, and sometimes she forgets to do what her mom or abuela asks. But she remembers what matters: a time when her family was whole and home made sense. Emilia expects that her life will get back to normal when Dad returns from deployment. Instead, it unravels.

Dad shuts himself in the garage to work on an old car. Emilia peeks in on him daily, mesmerized by his welder. One day, Dad calls Emilia over. Then, he teaches her how to weld. And over time, flickers of her old dad reappear.

But as Emilia finds a way to repair the relationship with her father at home, her community ruptures, with some of her classmates - like her best friend, Gus - at the center of the conflict."

📚📚📚 

Sigh. I feel like this was much-lauded, but I found it to be very lackluster. The plot was pretty aimless, and while I thought there were nice moments, overall it didn't really go anywhere. Not to mention, the synopsis is pretty misleading. Take, for example: "Emilia peeks in on him daily, mesmerized by his welder. One day, Dad calls Emilia over. Then, he teaches her how to weld. And over time, flickers of her old dad reappear." 

Yeah, she watches her dad weld from far away through Gus's camera once and then welds with him twice, both times with disastrous conversation, and then it really doesn't come up again. This is pretty much how the whole story goes - threads picked up, immediately dropped, sometimes forgotten about, others picked back up way later. I'd say the only consistent storyline was the homework assignment from her social studies teacher, and even that I found very puzzling. Her teacher? Clearly a great one. The assignment? Made no sense to me.

Maybe I could have moved past inconsistent plot if the characters were solid, but sheesh, they were all like caricatures. Clarissa, introduced at the beginning of the book as one of Emilia's best friends, is obnoxious (but also clearly positioned as an antagonist, so that's kind of to be expected). But even Emilia, her family, and Gus are pretty stereotyped. There was no nuance or real development, and there were a lot of inconsistencies. Just...meh all around. I had high hopes, and this did not deliver. 

Monthly Mystery Read - March

It's March, and that means it's time for a new mystery read. (Pretend we aren't already a third of the way into March. Life is hard right now.) March's mystery book is another tome - Incendiary by Zoraida Cordova. 

I think this was an Owlcrate subscription book, so I had to look up the synopsis because it's been a while since I got it: 

"Renata Convida was kidnapped as a child by the King's Justice, her Moria power to steal memories exploited by the king and his guard. Renata is now one of the Whispers, rebel spies working against the Crown and helping other Moria escape the kingdom. When the commander of her unit, Dez, is taken captive, Renata is forced to return to the palace, undercover, to complete their top secret mission. But returning to the palace unlocks long suppressed memories, and as Renata becomes more embedded in royal politics, she uncovers a secret from her past that could change the fate of the kingdom and end the war that has cost her everything."

Intriguing, for sure! I'm looking forward to diving into this! 

MapMaker - Lisa Moore Ramee

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

From the cover:

"When Walt and his family relocate to Blackbird Bay, Walt thinks it's the most boring place on earth. While his twin sister, Van, likes to spend her time skateboarding, Walt prefers to hide out in his room and work on his beloved map world, Djaruba. But shortly after their arrival, Walt discovers something extraordinary: He has the ability to make maps come to life.

Suddenly his new hometown doesn't seem so boring after all. And when a magical heirloom leaves Walt, his new friend Dylan, and Van stranded in t he fantastical world that Walt created, he'll need to harness his new power to get them home.

But things are changing. People have gone missing, and it's clear that a malevolent rival to the kingdom - a fellow mapmaker - has nefarious plans for Walt. If he's not stopped soon, Djaruba could become nothing but a shadow of itself or, worse, gone forever. And if a mapmaker can destroy one world, could Earth be next?"

📚📚📚 

On the one hand, this book is shorter than many of the middle grade books I've considered adding to my library, which is refreshing - stop writing 400-500 page books for kids, y'all, tighten that shit up. On the other, I wish there had been a little more development of certain things? That's not to say the book needed to be LONGER, necessarily, but I think perhaps some of the "Blackbird Bay isn't my HOME, having a twin sister who's taller than me SUCKS, my parents don't UNDERSTAND ME" angst could have been trimmed to allow space for other things. I am assuming there will be a second book at some point, so perhaps there will be more world building in book two.

Still, it's an interesting concept for a story, and I really enjoyed the characters. Solid story for map kids everywhere.