Category Archives: By Age Range

A Thousand Nights by E K Johnston

Book Review and Content, Clean Fiction, Fantasy, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , ,

A Thousand Nights by E K JohnstonA Thousand Nights
E K Johnston
Disney Hyperion

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

When Lo-Melkhiin comes to her village looking for his next wife, she knows he will choose her beautiful sister. She knows, too, that her sister would then be next in the long line of girls who meet death soon after becoming his bride. She vows to take her sister’s place.

In the palace, Lo-Melkhiin comes to her every night. She spins stories for him, grand tales about her home. Each morning she wakes. Each night he comes again. Strange things begin to happen. Power flows through her hands at weaving. Rumors surface of the good, kind man Lo-Melkhiin once was. She vows to weave power strong enough to free him from whatever curse has made him cruel. But she must do it before he destroys the kingdom and her.

Because the story is told through a lilting first-person narrative, I was so captured by the tale I didn’t realize the main character isn’t named. Normally that would really bother me, but as I said, I was sucked right into the plight of this brave girl who expected every night to be murdered by her husband.

As the story went on, I had more of a love-hate experience regarding her relationship with Lo-Melkhiin. I wanted there to be flashes of his former self behind his eyes or something, and it really wasn’t that kind of story. She believes wholly on faith that a good man exists, imprisoned inside him. I think that worked, I just had to adjust my expectations a bit.

I also kept having to resist the urge to compare this story to a recent favorite, Book of a Thousand Days. The narrative flow is a little similar, in that it has this poetic feel. It’s not really the same, and I think the two can’t really be compared. Book of a Thousand Days felt denser (in a good way) to me. This story felt simpler, not necessarily in a bad way.

That said, I’m generally a huge fan of fairytale retellings, and this, based on the stories of Scheherazade, did not leave me feeling disappointed.

The one note I’ll add about content is that I grew up in a church which condemned watching or playing Pokemon because it bore too close a parallel to trying to control spiritual creatures (too much like demons), and from that perspective, I’m not sure I would have been allowed to read this book as a younger teen. Certainly my parents and spiritual leaders would have been concerned with the demon-possession aspect and with her own power coming from worship and prayer given to her by the people.

At this point for me personally, it’s not always easy to decide where to draw the line on spiritual matters emerging in books, movies, and video games. My daughter’s father and I don’t always share the same values on these issues. In fact, we don’t always even land on the same (conservative vs liberal) side of the scale depending on the issue. So co-parenting across those lines can also be challenging. Because it is important to both of us to foster respect for our decisions in our daughter, I think we tend to try to err on choosing the more conservative side of the spectrum. It’s often about waiting rather than forbidding. At ten, the answer is no, but at fourteen, it might be yes. I suspect this book might fall into that category in my own judgment.

Language Content
None.

Sexual Content
She understands that she’ll be expected to have sex with her husband, and worries about it. No details given.

Spiritual Content
The people pray to smallgods. Each family has a shrine set up, often to a family member who who has died. Everyone prays to the person and leaves relics and offerings at the shrine. These give the smallgods power. When she leaves her family to become Lo-Melkhiin’s wife, her family sets up a shrine to her and her sister prays and keeps it. Over time, others pray to her as well, and her power grows.

Lo-Melkhiin returned from a hunting trip possessed by a demon. It controls him, keeps him caged within a small part of his brain. It also uses his power as king to control the people. It kills his wives to strengthen itself. It’s a pretty dark concept.

The demon’s power is pitted against her growing power as a smallgod. Each tries to destroy the other: she wants to free Lo-Melkhiin. He wants to kill her and take her power for his own.

Some spiritual power and authority also goes to the Skeptics, learned men who study the universe and its often unanswerable questions.

Violence
References to wives being murdered. He sort of draws out their life force and leaves them withered and dead husks. It’s briefly described.

Drug Content
None.

Stunning Teen Sci-Fi Novel: Inherit the Stars by Tessa Elwood

Blogger's Favorites, Book Review and Content, Sci-Fi, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , ,

Inherit the Stars
Tessa Elwood
Perseus Book Group/Running Press Kids

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

When an explosion during a riot leaves Asa’s sister in a coma, she vows to do what she must to bring her back. As the youngest daughter in a royal house on the brink of collapse, her choices are desperate. She impersonates her sister in a marriage alliance to the heir to another ruling family, a boy with tragic secrets of his own.

Every time Asa thinks she has made things better, she’s met with the bitter realization that she’s in fact only made her sister’s and her family’s situation more dire. War could come at any moment. War which will destroy them all. Asa scrabbles to right each new domino that falls, hoping against hope that she can get ahead of the catastrophe enough to spare those she loves most: her sister, her family, her kingdom, and unexpectedly, her new husband.

This book is one of those fantastic ones that left me amazed at the way the plot twisted in on itself. Every time I thought I knew what was going to happen, it was like the author flipped my whole perception upside down or revealed a secret that completely changed the game. The rabbit hole of political intrigue went deeper and deeper until I didn’t think there was any way there could be light at the end of that tunnel.

I loved the characters. I felt like each of them could have walked off the page. I liked the relationship and conflict between Asa and her father and Asa and her sister Emmie best. Super complex relationships, really getting into that tug-of-war between love and hate. I loved the way her relationship with Eagle unfolded, too. I am least crazy about his name, but absolutely adored him other than that.

Another thing that I’m a total sucker for is a really dense artistic narrative style. In a response to a question I asked her via Goodreads, author Tessa Elwood talks about being inspired by Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi in her development of the raw emotional style in Inherit the Stars. She did an amazing job. There were passages I read multiple times just because I liked them too much to read them only once before moving on. An example, you ask? Here’s one of my favorites:

“He steps with me. Hands catching my cheeks, closing in until the room disappears and I taste him. Wide lips and lost places. Tangled forests of pine nuts and rivers and the way the air sings before the sun rises. His fingers chase dawn into my hair.”

Love it. Love this book. Cannot wait for the next one, which it sounds like will be out around this time next year.

Language Content
Mild profanity used moderately.

Sexual Content
Brief kissing.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violence
Brief battle violence, references to explosions. Asa’s sister is injured in a riot and remains in a coma. Asa has to cut into her husband’s shoulder, he then has to cut into hers. He tells her how he earned his scars and of a fellow soldier’s injuries. Some of that is a bit wince-worthy more in word choice than length of the description.

Drug Content
None.

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Review: Forever For a Year by B T Gottfred

Book Review and Content, Contemporary, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , ,

Forever For a Year
B. T. Gottfred
Henry Holt and Company

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Carolina and Trevor begin their freshman year at a new high school. Carolina is determined to make the right friends and impress her bestie’s older, more sophisticated sister. Trevor, new in town and resentful of the issues causing his family to relocate, has no expectation to enjoy his new school. Then he meets Carolina. The two fall head over heels and soar into the glory of first love.

As their feelings deepen, they spend more and more time alone, and kissing leads to touching leads to more. But their professed love and belief that they are each other’s soul mates may not be enough to bind the two together when Trevor keeps a secret and Carolina makes a mistake.

Gottfred captures the roller coaster ride of hormones and emotions. Carolina and Trevor’s relationship has its own gravity which pulls even their personalities into orbit around it. Though Carolina was almost obnoxiously perky at times, Trevor’s brooding temper and deep family issues kept the story from becoming trite. He experienced many of the story’s powerful moments, from the lesson on falling in love vs. being in love to the realization that long term relationships create their own baggage and become difficult. We watch the two believe wholeheartedly in the infallibility of their love and the power of being soul mates to cement their relationship for all time. And then life happens. Lies. Mistakes. Suddenly love isn’t so easy or so permanent. Gottfred really captured those moments and ideas well.

What fell flat for me was the ending. There’s this moment where I felt like the thread unraveled. I agreed with the plot of the ending. It needed to be that way. But after this long, powerful buildup, there was this moment where I felt like the characters kind of just dropped all the emotion and said, “The End,” and that was it. I also struggled with the story when the parents were being unfaithful. I felt like that revelation didn’t carry enough gravity and enough emotional fallout. I felt like it should have affected Carolina and Trevor more individually and as a couple.

Language Content
Extreme profanity used with moderate frequency.

Sexual Content
Explicit sexual content. The language used to describe the encounters is mild as opposed to erotic language, but the experiences are described in detail. Carolina and Trevor have little experience with the opposite sex when they begin dating. They spend a LOT of time behind a locked basement door exploring each other’s bodies and developing a sexual relationship. It’s steamy stuff, but it’s also fraught with the kind of awkwardness that one expects from inexperienced lovers.

Reading the book, I felt like it may be that the author wrote it with this level of specificity as a way to encourage teens who were active or experimenting with sex that many of the uncertainties and insecurities are common. I’m not a fan of explicit sex in teen fiction. I want to say a lot more about my thoughts on this as an approach to teen fiction, but I really think I need to save it for another post.

Trevor and Carolina also deal with feelings about their parents being unfaithful spouses.

I liked that Gottfred showed a spectrum of response to teen relationships. While Carolina and Trevor are pretty serious and heavy with each other, one of Carolina’s friends doesn’t date at all because her parents have set rules against it. One of Carolina’s other friends seems to be hooking up with random boys at parties. There are boys like Trevor, who wants to treat Carolina well in terms of not pressuring her and trying to reciprocate pleasure to her. Another boy pressures Carolina and really only cares about receiving satisfaction himself. Despite the explicitness, I did respect that this wasn’t a tale that painted everyone as getting into everyone else’s pants.

What was really weird, too, was that reading the explicit parts, I actually felt a bit like a creeper. Carolina and Trevor are so young, and they SOUND SO YOUNG. Eep. It was like walking in on a younger sibling and feeling like okay, now I need to forget I ever saw that! I don’t know if it’s because I’m not in the target age range or too old to read this stuff or what. I normally don’t weird myself out reading romantic YA, but this really felt weird to me.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violence
Trevor and another boy get into a fist fight.

Drug Content
Several scenes show teens drinking alcohol.

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Review: Not if I See You First by Eric Lindstrom

Book Review and Content, Contemporary, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , ,

Not If I See You First
Eric Lindstrom
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers/Poppy

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

Parker lives by a specific set of rules. She expects to be treated like everyone else. Judgment comes swiftly for anyone who takes advantage of the fact that she’s blind. One betrayal, and you’re cut from her life. Scott, the boy who was once her best friend and became her boyfriend learns this lesson the hard way.

Only now he’s back, transferred to her school, and Parker has no choice but to make the best of it. She prides herself on the ability to know the people around them, to read them even if she can’t see them. But as she grapples with unresolved feelings about Scott in the wake of her father’s death, she learns she may not see others as clearly as she thinks. In fact she may be dead wrong about the most important people in her life.

One of the random but very cool things to me about this book is that I constantly kept forgetting that the author is a man. Parker is so believably female and complex that I honestly checked several times because I thought maybe I’d misread the author’s name. (Not that I think men can’t write believable women or vice versa, but it’s always awesome when you find someone who does a spectacular job of it.)

As far as the story, I loved the unpredictable elements. I was surprised by the revelation about facts surrounding Parker’s dad’s death. I thought even the way their relationship worked seemed very real and definitely fit in with the larger story about how Parker doesn’t always peg people close to her as accurately as she would wish to believe.

I felt like there was a good balance between attention given to her blindness without the details about her daily life overtaking the story. I didn’t feel a lack of setting details despite the fact that they were not given through visual cues.

I loved the romance and the quick, witty dialogue. Great lines like that in conversation always make me want to be a better writer myself and feel a lot of admiration for the author who created them.

Other than the use of profanity (there was quite a bit), the story is pretty clean. I enjoyed reading it.

Language Content
Extreme profanity used with moderate frequency. Also some crude language.

Sexual Content
Kissing. At one point Parker reflects on feeling starved for physical contact with people and how that makes her want to go further with a boy than she would normally feel comfortable.

Spiritual Content
Parker spends time thinking in long monologues to her dad after his death. She says she doesn’t believe he’s watching over her or seeing everything going on in her life. The conversations are her way of staying close to him.

Violence
Parker hears a scuffle when a boy tackles two other boys who have been picking on her.

Drug Content
None.

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Review: Magic to Memphis by Julie Starr

Book Review and Content, Contemporary, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , ,

Magic to Memphis
Julie Starr

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

A box filled with postcards and mementos that once belonged to her father send seventeen year-old Jessie on a quest to Memphis to find the man who disappeared into his own dreams of musical stardom. Her faithful dog Bear protects her, and a quirky traveler named Finch talks to Jessie about the magic of making things happen. When Jessie begins to embrace this everyday magic, miraculous things begin to happen. But not everyone wishes Jessie well. A sinister man with dark power seeks artifacts in Jessie’s possession, and he’ll stop at nothing to get them back.

I’m not a dog person (go ahead and hate me) but I loved Bear, Jessie’s dog. I liked the way the author used the dog to build relationships between characters. I liked watching Jessie grow as a character. After her cold behavior causes a rift in her band, she learns to swallow her pride and admit she’s wrong sometimes. The music contest was awesome. I loved how that turned out (but I won’t spoil it.)

While I loved the added tension that the crazed killer brought to the story, I felt like he didn’t tie in with the rest of the story as well. He had some inexplicable powers that I kept waiting to be explained or to matter to the story somehow, and that never really panned out. The story isn’t really about him, though, so while it left me scratching my head a couple of times, overall, I enjoyed the tale and the way the author used a box of mementos, the music contest, and the dog to bring a community of people together.

Language Content
Strong profanity used moderately.

Sexual Content
None.

Spiritual Content
References to “magic.” It feels more like a mystic sort of “power of positive energy” type of doctrine. At one point, Finch tells Jessie to imagine her dog well in order for him to recover. She visualizes the dog healed, and soon he is. The sinister guy pursuing Jessie is basically able to control others around him and make them forget things or do things for him, like give him their possessions.

Violence
Bad guy roughs some people up. The carnage left behind is briefly described.

Drug Content
Jessie works at a bar on Beale Street. The band celebrates a victory by drinking beer. (Jessie, at least, is underage.)

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Review: Li Jun and the Iron Road by Anne Tait

Book Review and Content, Historical, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , ,

Li Jun and the Iron Road
Anne Tait
Dundurn

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

Working as a servant to help her family becomes unbearable when Li Jun’s lecherous master makes it clear he plans to take advantage of her. As a Chinese woman in the 1880s, Li Jun has few other options. She makes a daring escape by disguising herself as a boy and living as a street urchin. When she hears of an opportunity to travel to British Columbia to work on the railroad, she realizes this could be the chance she has longed for: to follow in her father’s footsteps and discover what has kept him from returning home.

As Little Tiger, Li Jun befriends James, the son of a railway tycoon, and promises to help him secure enough workers for the job. She proves to be an invaluable team member and a good friend to James, but the draw between them extends beyond the boundaries of work and friendship. Still, Li Jun can’t allow anything to prevent her from finding out where her father is, and what has happened to him, even if she has to confront his killer to do so.

Last fall my husband and I took a trip to Vancouver and Alaska for the first time. I’ve since fallen in love with the history of the area—places and people I had never known about before. Though this is a work of fiction, I enjoyed being able to glimpse the landscape of the 1880s and in particular, the development of the railroad in Canada. Li Jun is clever and brave, an easy heroine to admire, and the mystery of what has happened to her father pulls the story forward through the historical setting and kept me guessing all the way to the end.

At a little over two hundred pages, this novel was a quick read. I think I read it in one evening.

Language Content
Brief strong profanity.

Sexual Content
Li Jun’s master gropes her in a dark garden. It’s clear he means to do more, and she’s afraid. Li Jun and James share a moment together in his room. She removes her top, and they fall into his bed, but she stops him from removing her pants.

Spiritual Content
Some references to Chinese culture and beliefs concerning the souls of family members who’ve died. The bones or ashes of the dead must be returned home to China or else the person’s soul will wander forever.

Violence
Dangerous men try to hurt James and Li Jun. Short description of mining accidents. There’s not a lot of gore or graphic explanation.

Drug Content
None.

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.