Mary Murphy feels like she’s drowning. Her violent father is home from prison, and the social worker is suspicious of her new bruises. An aunt she’s never met keeps calling. And if she can’t get a good grade on her science project, she’ll fail her favorite class.
But Mary doesn’t want to be a victim anymore. She has a plan: build a real submarine, like the model she’s been making with Kip Dwyer, the secretly sweet class clown.
Gaining courage from her heroine, Joan of Arc, Mary vows to pilot a sub across the Chesapeake Bay, risking her life in a modern crusade to save herself.
Mary Underwater is an empowering tale of persistence, heroism, and hope from a luminous new voice in middle-grade fiction.
My Review
Special thanks to Dahlia Adler from LGBTQReads for inviting authors to list their debut novels in a thread on her Twitter account, which I think is how I learned about this book.
The cover and description of MARY UNDERWATER totally had me hooked. I am super interested in stories that show young women and STEM, and a girl building a submarine seemed too cool to pass up.
This book has so many things I love. I love Mary’s character. The way her timidity blossoms into confidence. The celebration of St. Joan of Arc both in her narrative and in biographical snippets between chapters. I love the relationships between Mary and her teachers, Sister Eu and Mr. Fen, and her mentor, Ford. I love the way her aunt steps into her life, building a safe relationship, and encouraging Mary, but also talking straight.
I read MARY UNDERWATER in one sitting because I couldn’t stop. Without meaning to, I pretty much one-more-chaptered myself all the way to the end and I have zero regrets about that. It’s a heartwarming, inspiring story, with a strong, positive representation of both women and faith. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that combination done so well before, and I really, truly loved it.
Profanity/Crude Language Content References to cursing.
Romance/Sexual Content Brief kissing between boy and girl.
Spiritual Content Mary attends a Catholic school and makes lots of references to the nuns praying. She also takes courage from the story of St. Joan of Arc and imagines herself being brave as she was. Mary prays the Hail Mary prayer while distressed.
Violent Content – Possible trigger warning for domestic violence Mary and her mother have bruises from her father abusing them. The abuse happens off-scene. Her father also breaks something important to Mary and attacks one of her friends. (Both these incidents happen off-scene.)
Drug Content Mary’s dad drinks a lot of alcohol.
Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support running this blog.
A few weeks ago, I got an email about an intriguing book loosely inspired by the Bible stories of Daniel and Nehemiah in a contemporary setting. I’m super fascinated by this concept, so I jumped at the chance to interview Katherine Barger to learn more. I’m sharing that Q&A here today!
First, here’s a little bit about the book, FORTUNE’S FALL.
Fortune’s Fall Katherine Barger Anaiah Press Published November 3, 2020
While her classmates prepare for elite careers across America, Nyssa Ardelone trains for her secret job as the president’s dream interpreter. But when her mentor lies to the president about the prophecy in his latest dream, Nyssa must figure out why before the lie unravels. What she learns could destroy her own future.
Fearful of a rumored rebellion, the president has launched a gas attack on Nyssa’s hometown, and her mentor lied about the dream to protect the survivors from more harm. When Nyssa learns her parents were injured in the attack, she flees with a stranger sent to steal the antidote—a stranger who claims to know her.
Together, they race to deliver the cure as well as an interpretation of another prophetic dream only Nyssa can provide. But a devastating loss dulls her caution, and she learns too late that not everyone is trustworthy. To survive the president’s deadly pursuit, Nyssa must break every rule she’s ever followed, learning along the way that faith is the only thing that can save her.
Author Q&A with Katherine Barger
Q: What led you to write a story inspired by Daniel and Nehemiah, and why did you choose a modern setting?
A: I’ve always been fascinated with the stories in the Old Testament, and when our pastor did a sermon series on Nehemiah, I went down a million Googled rabbit-holes to learn about the Babylonian exile of the Jews. When I learned that only the elite Jews were exiled to Babylon and everyone else was left behind to fend for themselves, a story began to brew. What if the Jews who were left behind not only survived, but they thrived, waiting somewhere for their ultimate return to Jerusalem?
My main character in FORTUNE’S FALL was born from that question. A character inspired by Nehemiah – an exile who led the rebuilding of Jerusalem, and Daniel – an exile and dream interpreter to the king. Fortune’s Fall is the futuristic tale of a people exiled to an unfamiliar place, the family and friends they left behind, and a girl’s determination to bring them all back together.
Now, to the question about why I put it in a modern setting. I originally had it set in a fantasy world. But something felt off about the whole thing. It just wasn’t giving me that punch in the gut I wanted. So, I thought “What if I set it in a future America?” I tried it. And it worked.
Q: What’s your favorite thing about Nyssa’s character?
A: I love that her faith journey takes time. I’m a very analytical person, and I definitely relate to her need to ask questions and consider all possible answers and outcomes before making a decision. I loved seeing her grow across the chapters into a more complete version of who she was meant to be.
Q: What do you most hope that readers take away from FORTUNE’S FALL?
A: The verse that pops up over and over throughout FORTUNE’S FALL is Hebrews 11:1. “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we don’t see.” I hope that readers see Nyssa’s journey to Fortune’s Fall as a testament to faith. It takes a strong woman to be a Christ follower, especially today. Be kind and generous. But also, be bold and follow Him in faith.
Q: Since you’ve written a story about dreams… do you remember your dreams? Are there any that stand out as odd or significant in some way?
I do remember my dreams! They’ve always been totally nuts and intense, which is why I’m so fascinated with dreaming in general. A few years ago, I started writing mine down, which coincided with the early brainstorming stages of FORTUNE’S FALL. Eventually, several of those dreams I’d written down made their way into the story.
Q: What was the hardest part of FORTUNE’S FALL to write? What made it so difficult?
A: The ending! (Smacking forehead). FORTUNE’S FALL is the first in a trilogy and I know how the trilogy ultimately ends, but knowing where to stop this book was h-a-a-a-r-d.
Q: What character or scene was the most fun to write? What made it so fun?
A: My favorite character to write was Greer. His personality is kind of a blend of a few guy friends I’ve had over the years with sarcastic senses of humor. I loved putting those pieces of them into his story and creating a character that made me laugh. My editor really helped me develop his relationship with Nyssa, and there are a few scenes between them that I love, love, love.
Q: Are there other YA books that inspired you to write? Or, what books have most inspired you as a writer?
A: I’m most inspired by Madeleine L’Engle’s YA books. I love her characters and her ability to create a setting that’s both cozy and eerie. Plus, she was so great at weaving Scripture into regular, every-day conversations without coming across as preachy.
Katherine Barger writes stories about characters of faith in a world where faith is challenged. When she’s not wrangling kids alongside her forever-forbearing husband, she’s writing, eating Mexican food, or snuggling with her family’s two rescue pets: a dog named Queen Elsa and a cat named Princess Jasmine.
Katherine loves hearing from readers! You can contact her at the links above.
Faryn Liu thought she was the Heaven Breaker, a warrior destined to wield the all-powerful spear Fenghuang, command dragons, and defeat demons. But a conniving goddess was manipulating her all along…and her beloved younger brother, Alex, has betrayed her and taken over as the Heaven Breaker instead. Alex never forgave the people who treated him and Faryn like outcasts, and now he wants to wipe out both the demons and most of humanity.
Determined to prevent a war and bring Alex back to her side, Faryn and her half-dragon friend Ren join the New Order, a group of warriors based out of Manhattan’s Chinatown. She learns that one weapon can stand against Fenghuang–the Ruyi Jingu Bang. Only problem? It belongs to an infamous trickster, the Monkey King.
Faryn sets off on a daring quest to convince the Monkey King to join forces with her, one that will take her to new places–including Diyu, otherwise known as the Underworld–where she’ll run into new dangers and more than one familiar face. Can she complete her mission and save the brother she loves, no matter the cost?
My Review
Faryn is every bit as funny and full of heart in FALLEN HERO as she was in THE DRAGON WARRIOR. I loved her relationships with the other characters, especially her relationship with Ren, which is so sweet.
I think I read this book faster than the first one, too. The quest to find the Ruyi Jingu Bang takes Faryn and her allies all over the place. Again the story leads her to lean on her connection to her family and her ancestors. I love that it celebrates the bond between generations.
I know almost nothing about Chinese mythology, so I enjoyed learning a bit and seeing the different gods and goddesses portrayed in the story. It reminded me a bit of the Percy Jackson books in that it has gods and goddesses in a contemporary world. These books might be best read by readers a little younger, but I think they’re every bit as entertaining and fun.
Content Notes
Recommended for Ages 8 to 12.
Representation Most Characters are Chinese American.
Profanity/Crude Language Content None.
Romance/Sexual Content A boy and girl hold hands for a moment.
Spiritual Content Gods and goddesses from Chinese mythology battle one another, care for Diyu (the Underworld) and rule from Heaven. Some have powerful weapons. A boy can transform into a dragon. Two children learn that their father is a Demon King in Diyu. The spirits of the dead offer aid and are more powerful than usual because of the Hungry Ghost Festival.
Violent Content Some situations of peril and battle violence (no gory details).
Drug Content None.
Note: I received a free copy of FALLEN HERO in exchange for my honest review. This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support the costs of running this blog.
Thea Hope longs to be an alchemist out of the shadow of her famous mother. The two of them are close to creating the legendary Philosopher’s Stone—whose properties include immortality and can turn any metal into gold—but just when the promise of the Stone’s riches is in their grasp, Thea’s mother destroys the Stone in a sudden fit of violent madness.
While combing through her mother’s notes, Thea learns that there’s a curse on the Stone that causes anyone who tries to make it to lose their sanity. With the threat of the French Revolution looming, Thea is sent to Oxford for her safety, to live with the father who doesn’t know she exists.
But in Oxford, there are alchemists after the Stone who don’t believe Thea’s warning about the curse—instead, they’ll stop at nothing to steal Thea’s knowledge of how to create the Stone. But Thea can only run for so long, and soon she will have to choose: create the Stone and sacrifice her sanity, or let the people she loves die.
My Review
I loved all the twisty, turning elements of this story. The quest to create the Stone. The evolving relationships, especially between Thea and her parents and Will and Valentin. I love that she faces things her mother taught her about relationships, and about men in particular and has to decide for herself if they are true. There’s a lot of exploration on trust and how much someone deserves, and some about what forgiveness looks like, and the nature of power.
Thea is a complicated character who struggles with a desire to please her mother and also resents her mother’s control over her. She desperately wants to find her own way, but also desperately wants to save her mother, too. I felt like she was so relatable in all of that, and I felt her anxiety about being on her own and her butterflies about meeting her father for the first time.
The tone in the story has an older feel to it (as in centuries, not the age of the characters), which fits the historical genre. It reads a little bit like a scientist’s journal, in that there are a lot of observations and internal thoughts and long stretches where there isn’t much dialogue.
This didn’t really bother me at all once I got into the story. By about chapter four or five, I felt pretty hooked, and even before that I was enjoying the story and really interested in what happened. But for me, my reading seemed to take off once I was a few chapters in.
Representation Major characters are white. There are some clashes of class, rich versus poor.
Profanity/Crude Language Content One curse in German.
Romance/Sexual Content Some clear attraction between a man and woman. References to others having had sex.
Spiritual Content One character is Catholic and visits a priest to confess sins. The Philosopher’s Stone gives its bearer a great amount of power, but also carries a curse that destroys the sanity of anyone who tries to make it.
Violent Content Several violent altercations with some brief graphic violence. Some reference to and events leading to torture. Multiple characters are restrained with chains once they’ve gone mad.
Drug Content Some historically appropriate social drinking.
Note: I received a free copy of A GOLDEN FURY in exchange for my honest review. This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support the costs of running this blog.
Samantha Cohoe writes historically-inspired young adult fantasy. She was raised in San Luis Obispo, California, where she enjoyed an idyllic childhood of beach trips, omnivorous reading, and writing stories brimming with adverbs. She currently lives in Denver with her family and divides her time among teaching Latin, mothering, writing, reading, and deleting adverbs. A Golden Fury is her debut novel.
One of the few good things about this year has been that I’ve ended up with a bit more time to read– and thank goodness, because this year has been an incredible one for finding new favorite books.
This month brings even more fabulous titles packed with romance, humor, explorations on social justice and racial issues, and lush fantasy landscapes. Here are a few of the titles I’m most excited about coming out October 2020.
The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass by Adan Jerreat-Poole
What you need to know: Francie Frye, a reluctant northwoods Nancy Drew tackles her third mystery and hopes to uncover the truth about her mother. Loved it!
What you need to know:Mad Max: Fury Road meets Frozen. (I’m intrigued!) A quest for her missing best friend pairs a girl with a team of unconventional allies.
What you need to know: A girl faces a terrible curse in order to save the lives of those she loves. Magic and alchemy. Sounds perfect for fans of GIVE THE DARK MY LOVE and TO BEST THE BOYS.
What you need to know: A cursed wood encroaching on a peaceful kingdom. A girl who can save it with the help of a pesky fox, a powerful bear, and the magic in her veins. Poston is on my auto-buy list, so I MUST have this one!
Available October 20, 2020
What’s on your October reading list?
Have you read any of the books on my list already? Which books are you looking forward to reading this month?
It’s hard to believe that the last (also first) time I did a post like this was the end of April. It’s been more than SIX MONTHS, y’all! They went by in a blink.
Since it’s been a bit, let’s do another check-in. Grab yourself a hot (or cold!) drink and let’s do a bit of catching up, friends.
If we were having coffee I’d tell you that we just recently started school. My oldest is doing e-learning through her high school, and so far it’s been a mixed blessing. It’s not like homeschool– her teachers are doing live classes. She thrives on individual attention and a relationship with her teachers, though, and that’s not easy to establish online (not to mention that her teachers are all juggling the extra work of in-person and online students).
She’s a really motivated student, and right now that’s sometimes translating into an intense perfectionism that makes for really long homework sessions. She’s also lonely (understandable) which means that I spend a lot of my evenings with her, just being present and available while she works on homework. I love having that one-on-one time with her which we often don’t get during the day with the littlest awake, but it makes for really long days, so by the end of the week, I’m exhausted.
My littlest will be doing some “enrichment” activities at home that we’re calling school time. She’s two, so it’s really just more for structure and fun since we aren’t doing a lot of outings right now. My mom is taking this on and it’s honestly so amazing. She’s super creative and patient, so I think (hope) this is giving her a meaningful way to engage in all of that plus teach the littlest lots of new things. I would seriously be losing my mind right now without my mom.
If we were having coffee, I would say that since my last update, my family has made hundreds more masks. Right now, we’re making them to give to my daughter’s school and other community members.
Honestly, it’s been incredible to have something we can physically do that feels useful. We can help people, even if it’s in a small way. A book reviewer I follow on Twitter recently shared that she’s a preschool teacher with few PPE supplies and worried about her safety at school. To be able to put a package together for her and send it off felt so good.
If we were having coffee, I would tell you I’m still having trouble sleeping. Between the pandemic, hurricane season, the election, and all the extra hoops to jump through for safety, sometimes I just can’t get my brain to shut off. I hate it. Not only does it mean I’m losing sleep, but then I’m snappy and irritable with my family. And then I have guilt for all the snappiness and irritability and inability to just shut off my brain and sleep.
Audiobooks seem to help. Listening to a story focuses me long enough to let my brain rest and helps me fall asleep.
Meditation also helps. I recently read a couple books about it, one that I reviewed, and another that I haven’t reviewed yet on Christian meditation. It has helped SO much to have a physical practice that calms and centers me. So that’s been good.
If we were having coffee, we’d have to talk books. I recently read WHERE DREAMS DESCEND by Janella Angeles and I’m still completely in love with it. It’s got so much to love– an incredible story world, unforgettable characters, and totally swoon-worthy romance. I also thought that FOREVERLAND by Nicole Kear was super cute. It’s about a girl who runs away because her family is splitting up, and she decides to live in the theme park where her family once took a fun family trip. I’d want to know what you’ve been reading and what’s on your list that you can’t wait to read.
If we were having coffee, you might want to know how some of the things I was planning to do in my last coffee post are going. I mentioned wanting to start up my Bookstagram account again, which I have done. I’m a bit hit-and-miss with posting still because life has been very chaotic. But I feel like it energizes me about books and my blog and reading, so I’m really excited to keep doing it.
I also mentioned wanting to do more list posts on my blog. I’ve done a few (I’ll list them at the end of the post in case you want to check them out), and have a few more in the works. I’m really excited about my debut novel lists. The MG Debut list is up, but I’m still wrestling with the YA list. I think I need to break it into two lists, and I just haven’t figured out how I want to do that. By what I’ve read vs plan to read? By genre, like Contemporary vs Fantasy? I’m not sure yet, but there are WAY TOO MANY for just one list.
I also posted a huge list of #ownvoices Asian-Inspired Fantasy, which was super fun to put together. I’ve read lots of the titles on the list, but found so many more to add to my reading list.
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If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that some of the books I’ve read this year have really challenged me. I read one that cast a bit of shade at adult reviewers, and I’m kind of embarrassed at how much it undermined my confidence.
I had a whole blogger identity crisis where I was like omg, am I a complete weirdo and need to just stop doing this and start one of those lifestyle blogs where I review books sometimes but also post about, like the kids, and do product reviews, and I don’t even know, fashion or something? Honestly, I love those blogs and follow some really incredible ones, but that is so not me. I don’t think I’m at all interesting enough to be the subject of an entire blog. Ha. But seriously, no.
For now, I’m still here doing my thing. I’m trying to be more sensitive to the others in the YA community, and to step outside my shell a bit more and post some personal stuff, which is super hard for me.
So that’s pretty much my life over coffee.
If we were having coffee, what would you say?
Tell me about you. What’s been happening that you’d want to share with me over a cup of coffee? It can be bookish or personal or just totally random. Leave me a comment and let me know how you are.
