Mo LoBeau, rising sixth grader in the tiny town of Tupelo Landing, turns detective when a local man turns up murdered. Mo and her best friend Dale figure they can locate the killer before that nosy outsider detective has time to finish his lunch at the café. After all, Mo already has experience searching for things, most particularly her “Upstream Mother” who set Mo on a raft and sent her down the river to the Colonel and Miss Lana as a baby. Mo and Dale follow clue after clue in the murder investigation, even as a hurricane barrels toward them. When Mo’s guardians disappear, she realizes she must find the killer before he adds the people she loves most to his body count.
I’ve had this book on my bookshelf for a ridiculously long time, and I’m only sorry I didn’t read it sooner. I absolutely loved it. Three Times Lucky is all the things you want in a Southern Story: interesting food, quirky characters, an adorable small town, and an unforgettable narrator. I loved the entire cast of characters. The mystery unraveled at a perfect pace. The story was equal parts humor and heart. The setting felt like a place you would recognize the minute you stepped out of your car.
This is a perfect read for middle or late elementary-aged readers. It would make a great story to read aloud or listen to on a family vacation. Definitely a must-read and one of my favorites this year.
Recommended for Ages 8 up.
Cultural Elements
Tupelo Landing, the setting of the story, is a small very Southern town peppered with quirky Southern people. The cast reminded me a little bit of the townspeople in To Kill a Mockingbird or Lucky Strikes.
Profanity/Crude Language Content
None. Mo does note that Dale swears, and comments that the way things are going, she might start anytime, but no curse words are printed in the story.
Romance/Sexual Content Mo adores Dale’s older brother Lavender and teases him about marrying her someday. He and his buddy spend some time with twin girls, but Dale and Mo seem pretty oblivious to anything that really happens between them.
Spiritual Content The local pastor agrees to hold a funeral at the church for a man even though he never attended services there. Brief references to prayer.
Mo writes letters to her Upstream Mother—the woman she believes gave birth to her and then set her on a raft and placed her in the river, where the Colonel later found her.
Violent Content When Dale’s father gets drunk, he gets violent, and hits Dale and his mother. Mo knows about it because she sees the fallout, but she doesn’t witness it happen. At one point she does witness Dale’s dad threatening to hurt him.
Mo stumbles onto a murder weapon (the victim died of blunt force trauma.) Later, as they search for a kidnapping victim, Mo and Dale discover a bloody handprint.
Drug Content
Dale’s dad gets drunk on multiple occasions. At one point Mo and Dale see him driving and worry that he may be driving drunk.
Eighteen-year-old Piper Sail’s best friend Lydia goes missing from a neighborhood street in 1924 Chicago. Piper vows to find her friend, even if she has to take up the investigation herself. As Piper begins to hunt for Lydia, she soon learns everyone in her neighborhood hides a secret, even her father and the handsome detective who’s working the case. Piper realizes finding the truth may cost her newfound love, her respect for her family, and possibly, her own life.
I loved this book! I was hooked from the first page. Immediately we meet interesting (and funny!) characters and see complex relationships. There were a few elements of the mystery that I kind of saw coming, and I worried that would make the ending too obvious. It did not. The Lost Girl of Astor Street had plenty of twists and turns to keep me guessing at the real story behind Lydia’s disappearance and the odd behavior of some of the other characters.
The plot elements tied together well enough to be believable but also not feel too convenient—which I think is a delicate balance in a mystery. Piper kept busy with a lot of sub-plots, all interesting stuff that ultimately provided other pieces in the grander puzzle of the story.
One really random thing I enjoyed a lot was all the hats. It seemed like whenever anyone went anywhere, there were great hats involved. I loved that!
I definitely recommend this book. I loved the characters, found the mystery elements well-paced, and seriously enjoyed the adventure in 1920s Chicago. This one is a must-read for mystery and historical lovers.
Recommended for Ages 14 up.
Cultural Elements
Piper learns a little bit about the Irish and Italian mafia. She dates an Italian detective, and some friends/family members disapprove of the relationship. Piper’s friend Lydia has seizures.
Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.
Romance/Sexual Content A few brief male-female kisses. Piper hears a story about a girl her age rescued from a human trafficking ring. She visits some places that prostitutes frequent as part of her search for Lydia.
Spiritual Content At one point, Piper feels discouraged, feeling like she’ll never find Lydia. She says the only thing left to do is cry out to God, if you believe He’s there.
A couple of scenes are set in a church—funeral and wedding.
Violent Content A young woman is shot. A captor interrogates a young woman, hitting her and shoving her underwater when the girl refuses to answer questions.
Drug Content
Piper’s family enjoys wine with dinner, despite Prohibition laws. (Piper herself doesn’t drink.) Piper’s brother comes home drunk and says some unkind things to her.
The BookBurners review is a little different than my usual spiel, and not only because it’s part of an Irish Banana Blog Tour. BookBurners is not actually a traditional novel. The story (well, actually, stories) was first published at Serial Box in, you guessed it, serial form. Readers have the option of subscribing to a particular series and getting the latest episodes via an app for phone and tablet or purchasing them on Amazon individually, and now as a whole season. The whole thing is almost 800 pages, so it’s pretty whoppin’.
The sixteen episodes were written by a team of authors whose names you might recognize. And rather than the longer form of a novel, these episodes read like segments of a TV show, with a team of characters who face individual challenges resolved in each section but building together to form a larger story.
Confession time: Apparently I’m a doof and didn’t read the description of the series very thoroughly before agreeing to review it. Bookburners is not young adult or new adult literature. The main character is actually in her thirties. So… um. Oops? Despite this, I really enjoyed the format and got pretty hooked on the story and its characters as well. So, let me give you a bit of background about the book and then I’ll launch into my thoughts on it…
Bookburners (Bookburners #1.1-1.16)
Max Gladstone, Margaret Dunlap, Mur Lafferty, and Brian Francis Slattery
Saga Press / Simon & Schuster
Published January 31, 2017
The critically acclaimed urban fantasy about a secret team of agents that hunts down dangerous books containing deadly magic—previously released serially online by Serial Box, now available in print for the first time!
Magic is real, and hungry. It’s trapped in ancient texts and artifacts, and only a few who discover it survive to fight back. Detective Sal Brooks is a survivor. She joins a Vatican-backed black-ops anti-magic squad—Team Three of the Societas Librorum Occultorum—and together they stand between humanity and the magical apocalypse. Some call them the Bookburners. They don’t like the label.
Supernatural meets The Da Vinci Code in a fast-paced, [fierce] character driven novel chock-full of magic, mystery, and mayhem, written collaboratively by a team of some of the best writers working in fantasy.
My Review
Though this isn’t at all my usual genre, I was totally hooked on the premise and immediately sucked into following the characters and their stories. I loved that individual episodes gave more time to explore some of characters more deeply (Grace and Asanti were my favorites) while still keeping the larger story moving forward.
One of the things that’s always tricky for me is a story that mixes faith with lore and secular ideas. So that was the biggest hurdle for me in reading this book. For the most part (see the spiritual content section for more specifics) the Catholic Church operates more like a political entity or force rather than a source of spiritual guidance and practice. This kind of storytelling can cause a lot of confusion about what practicing Catholics actually believe and value.
Apart from that, it’s a well-paced, edge-of-your-seat story. Again, not what I’d normally pick up, but I really enjoyed reading it. For the most part I found the writing to be really solid, too, not just in terms of plot and character development, but also in its use of clever and unusual descriptions that painted really vivid pictures. If you like adult supernatural thrillers, you definitely need to check this out. You can read the pilot issue for free here.
Recommended for Ages 16 up.
Cultural Elements
Asanti references her youth in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Grace is Chinese. Liam is Irish. Father Menchú is Spanish.
Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used pretty infrequently– only a few times per episode.
Romance/Sexual Content Sal engages in sex with a male friend. No descriptions of the event itself, but a few details leading up to and picking up afterward. While the two seem agreed to keep the experience “casual,” stress about the relationship and about their feelings for each other definitely affect their lives as a whole.
Spiritual Content The team technically works for the Catholic church, but there’s not a lot of overlap in spiritual content in terms of practice or prayer. Father Menchú was at one time a practicing priest and remains faithful. At one point he prays for a team member. At another point, though, he asks a being he believes to be a demon for help. (Spoiler: it goes badly.) When he reflects on this later, another team member questions his take-away from the instance. Menchú believes the lesson was that he should never have asked this demon for aid. The teammate suggests that the real lesson is that he should have made a better deal.
On the whole, I wouldn’t say the book follows any real Catholic doctrine or practice very deeply. In fact, as in the above example, a lot of the spiritual content is muddled and mixed together with the idea that demons exist bound in books and other artifacts and that they can be controlled or contained using pure silver (often but not necessarily in the form of a cross necklace) and perhaps other benevolent magic (though this is contested within the team.) The demons themselves seem to be as much monsters from another realm as anything else. There’s no explanation connecting them to any Biblical understanding of demons other than that the teams fighting them are part of the Catholic Church.
In one episode, the team visits the Oracle at Delphi for information about the future.
Violent Content Lots of battle scenes. In every episode the team faces some sort of encounter with a demonic force. Often the descriptions of battle feature gory bits and some creepy descriptions. For instance, in one episode, releasing a demon causes an apartment to become a living thing. The door breathes. The floor grows hair, skin, and even grabby fingers.
Drug Content
Sal and other team members (all over 21) drink alcohol together.
Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
About the Authors
Max Gladstone
MAX GLADSTONE has been thrown from a horse in Mongolia, drank almond milk with monks on Wudang Shan, and wrecked a bicycle in Angkor Wat. Max is also the author of the Craft Sequence of books about undead gods and skeletal law wizards—Full Fathom Five, Three Parts Dead, Two Serpents Rise, and Last First Snow. Max fools everyone by actually writing novels in the coffee shops of Davis Square in Somerville, MA. His dreams are much nicer than you’d expect. He tweets as @maxgladstone. Bookburners, which he wrote with Margaret Dunlap, Mur Lafferty, and Brian Francis Slattery, is available from Saga Press in January.
Margaret Dunlap
Before joining the Bookburners, MARGARET DUNLAP wrote for ABC Family’s cult-hit The Middleman in addition to working on SyFy’s Eureka. Most recently, she was a writer and co-executive producer of the Emmy-winning transmedia series The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, and co-created its sequel Welcome to Sanditon. Her short fiction has previously appeared in Shimmer Magazine. Margaret lives in Los Angeles where she taunts the rest of the team with local weather reports and waits for the earthquake that will finally turn Burbank into oceanfront property. She tweets as @spyscribe. Bookburners, which she wrote with Max Gladstone, Mur Lafferty, and Brian Francis Slattery, is available from Saga Press in January.
Mur Lafferty
MUR LAFFERTY is the author of The Shambling Guides series from Orbit, including the Netfix-optioned The Shambling Guide to New York City and Ghost Train to New Orleans. She has been a podcaster for over 10 years, running award-winning shows such as I Should Be Writing and novellas published via podcast. She has written for RPGs, video games, and short animation. She lives in Durham, NC where she attends Durham Bulls baseball games and regularly pets two dogs. Her family regrets her Dragon Age addiction and wishes for her to get help. She tweets as @mightymur. Bookburners, which she wrote with Max Gladstone, Margaret Dunlap, and Brian Francis Slattery, is available from Saga Press in January.
Brian Francis Slattery
BRIAN FRANCIS SLATTERY is the author of Spaceman Blues, Liberation, Lost Everything, and The Family Hightower. Lost Everything won the Philip K. Dick Award in 2012. He’s the arts and culture editor for the New Haven Independent, an editor for the New Haven Review, and a freelance editor for a few not-so-secret public policy think tanks. He also plays music constantly with a few different groups in a bunch of different genres. He has settled with his family just outside of New Haven and admits that elevation above sea level was one of the factors he took into account. For one week out of every year, he enjoys living completely without electricity. Bookburners, which he wrote with Max Gladstone, Margaret Dunlap, and Mur Lafferty, is available from Saga Press in January.
Ashton Keller has longed for this moment every day for the last four years: the day he returns home to Gilt Hollow for revenge on the boys who ruined his life. He will do whatever it takes to clear his name and prove he didn’t murder his friend Daniel. But the town doesn’t greet him with welcoming arms, and it’s certainly not going to give up its secrets easily. Harder still, being back reminds Ashton of things he’d rather forget, like his best friend Willow.
Willow spent months writing Ashton every day after his conviction, which she believed false. She stood by him, even though all she ever got in return was silence. Now that Ashton’s back, she’s determined to steer clear. But the affection that brought them together once somehow survived their time apart. With Ashton digging up the past, Willow must decide whether to stay away or risk her own life. As the sinister truth about what happened the day Daniel died begins to emerge, Willow and Ashton realize the next murder victim may be one of them.
This story is a bit darker than the Doon series tales that Lorie Langdon wrote with Carey Corp. I wasn’t sure if there would be some kind of supernatural element here in Gilt Hollow. There isn’t, but I didn’t feel like the story needed it either.
The whole perfect pure girl falls for bad boy storyline is not a new idea. I worried that the romance elements would overshadow the rest of the story, but I think there’s actually a really great balance between the plot of solving the murder and the development of the romance.
I enjoyed the antics between her and her best friend Lisa. She was another character who kept the story from getting too swoony. I wasn’t a huge fan of the way Lisa pushed Willow to wear things outside her comfort zone, especially when the goal seemed to be to impress a boy. It’s definitely something that happens, but I guess I would have had more respect for Willow if she stuck to her guts and wore what she was comfortable with rather than trying to be someone else.
The most difficult part of the story for me was the fact that both Willow and Ashton continue to date other people as the romantic tension between them heats up. Neither of them seemed to have any feelings of guilt or remorse for basically leading their dates on or using them to gather information. I feel like at least a pause for reflection or some acknowledgement that what they were doing was wrong or hurtful would have made me like them more. Ashton’s girlfriend does have a frank conversation with him about not wanting to be used, but he doesn’t come clean with her or seem to feel that bad even when he reflects on it briefly afterward.
On the whole, I enjoyed the story, especially the mystery elements. I don’t read enough stories with this blend of mystery and romance. The suspense elements were light enough that I think even younger teens could handle them. See below for content information.
Recommended for Ages 14 up.
Cultural Elements
All major characters are white.
Profanity/Crude Language Content
Two instances of mild profanity. Someone urinates on a popular boy’s football jersey. I’m disappointed in the use of profanity in the book. Blink is an imprint of Zondervan publishing books with no overt Christian message, but even so—profanity? Really? Why is this in a book by a Christian publisher?
Romance/Sexual Content Ashton and Willow get a little bit fresh with each other in comments that hint at sexual contact. They’re fairly oblique. A boy and girl kiss several times. Both Ashton and Willow date someone else as a means to gather information. They aren’t faithful and don’t really seem to have much remorse about it.
Spiritual Content Willow’s pastor makes a brief appearance and offers her some spiritual advice. It’s a small moment that doesn’t drive the story, but it felt authentic.
Violent Content A couple boys have a brief fist fight.
Drug Content
None.
Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
Cease de Menich joins the cast of a cutting-edge TV reality-drama as Jeanne d’Arc. Her acting gift isn’t just talent. It’s a kind of genetic gift passed down through her family line. But as Cease wrestles with how to remain true to her saint character in the face of overwhelming pressure to have sex with cast members as part of the show, she realizes her brother desperately wanted to tell her something before he died. As Cease searches for clues in the notes he left, she realizes that his message may be the only way she can win the contest within the TV show and finish the season with her soul intact.
I have some really mixed feelings about this story. First, I have to say that there were moments in which the writing really stood out to me as excellent. Cease had a unique voice and a really powerful way of communicating. I loved that. Sometimes, though, there would be these vague references to things that either were still a mystery or I was supposed to already know about or were maybe supposed to be clearer on their own? I don’t know. Several times I got lost trying to figure out what was going on while the story moved on and left me confused.
Another thing that was weird to me was the way that so many of the scenes felt sexualized. No mistake, there’s some sexual content in the story, and Cease thinks about sex in several scenes besides that. But those aren’t what I mean. I felt like even in scenes without any overt sexual tension or purpose, there was often at least a sensual undertone. I found it a bit odd in a story with a virgin central character.
The reality TV drama definitely hooked me as a concept, though. It reminded me of Hunger Games meets The Bachelor or something. I think it the storytelling had been smoother, I think I would have enjoyed this part more. There were times I just had a hard time following what was happening. See below for additional content information.
Recommended Age: 18+
Cultural Elements
Characters appear to be white except for Craig, one of the boys in the reality TV show with Cease, who is Hispanic.
Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used frequently. Crude speech about sex also occurs pretty regularly.
Romance/Sexual Content Cease plays a virgin in a TV show in which characters ratings seem to go sky high if they have sex with other show characters. Cease wonders if she’ll have to give up her virginity in order to stand as part of the final couple and win the series. Her attitude about this widely varies. Sometimes she seems almost eager to “become a woman” by having sex with one of the male characters. At other times she seems to resent being put in a position where she has to make this choice. Because she’s cast as Jeanne d’Arc, she feels a certain responsibility to preserve the authenticity of her character, who was martyred as a virgin. That said, she does nearly have sex with a man in his apartment, and she’s not shy about kissing the boys on the show set.
Cease struggles with the knowledge that her mother and brother had a sexual relationship. Both have died before the story begins, but she revisits that issue a couple of times, once in a brief flashback to when she discovered them together. Cease and her brother had an odd relationship, too. She often refers to him as her Romeo, and talks about how they played roles together and hated returning to reality. They also shared a bed together, much to their guardian’s dismay.
Before her brother died, some friends staged a “coming out party” for him, but then tricked him into making out with another boy on film.
Many of the scenes in the book, even some which don’t have an overt sexual context, feel sexualized. Often a conversation morphs into a brief make-out session with Cease wondering if she’s willing to have sex with the boy she’s kissing. At one point Cease’s aunt helps her bathe, and even that had a bit of a sensual vibe to it.
Spiritual Content Cease doesn’t believe in God, but she prays to the real Joan of Arc in her dark moments. When someone begins responding to her prayers via email, identifying herself as none other than the saint herself, Cease isn’t sure what to believe. She questions Joan about how she kept her faith through trials and torture. The answers seem to encourage her to have some kind of hope, though they don’t appear to alter her spiritual beliefs.
Violent Content Characters in the show battle with swords, axes, daggers and other weapons for the right to one on one scenes with the boys. Some deaths occur in the filming of the show.
Drug Content
None.
Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
A death sentence. A family torn apart. One girl’s hunt for the truth.
Seventeen-year-old Riley Beckett is no stranger to prison. Her father is a convicted serial killer on death row who has always maintained that he was falsely accused. Riley has never missed a single visit with her father. She wholeheartedly believes that he is innocent.
Then, a month before the execution date, Riley’s world is rocked when, in an attempt to help her move on, her father secretly confesses to her that he actually did carry out the murders. He takes it back almost immediately, but she cannot forget what he’s told her. Determined to uncover the truth for her own sake, she discovers something that will forever change everything she’s believed about the family she loves.
My Review
This was one of those books where every time I thought I knew what was going on, there was some new layer that turned everything upside down. I love books like that, so I definitely enjoyed that element. I loved Riley right from the beginning and especially liked Jordan and his cute little brother Matthew, too. I thought the connection between them definitely added a lot of tension. I liked that Riley made her own search for truth.
The only thing that bothered me about the story was Riley’s voice. I kept forgetting that she was supposed to be seventeen and hearing her as much younger, like fourteen or fifteen. On the whole that didn’t disrupt my ability to get caught up in the story. I liked the characters enough to overlook it.
The Row is a great book for suspense or mystery readers. It definitely had some unexpected surprises for me. If you like Jennifer Lynn Barnes series The Naturals, you definitely want to read this one.
Recommended Ages: 14 up
Cultural Elements
Riley and her parents are white. Jordan and his family are Hispanic.
Profanity/Crude Language Content
Mild profanity used infrequently.
Romance/Sexual Content A few brief kisses. Some vague discussion about a man who had an affair.
Spiritual Content None.
Violent Content Some brief descriptions of injuries to murder victims. A man attacks a woman and a boy. He breaks bones and stabs the woman in the stomach. He makes it clear that he intends to kill them both. Two men are shot.
Drug Content
Riley learns disturbing news and gets drunk. Later her mother does the same thing.
Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
