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Review: My Contrary Mary by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows

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My Contrary Mary by Cynthia Hand et al

My Contrary Mary (Mary #1)
Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows
HarperTeen
Published June 22, 2021

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About My Contrary Mary

Welcome to Renaissance France, a place of poison and plots, of beauties and beasts, of mice and . . . queens?⠀
⠀
Mary is the queen of Scotland and the jewel of the French court. Except when she’s a mouse. Yes, reader, Mary is an Eðian (shapeshifter) in a kingdom where Verities rule. It’s a secret that could cost her a head—or a tail.⠀
⠀
Luckily, Mary has a confidant in her betrothed, Francis. But after the king meets a suspicious end, things at the gilded court take a treacherous turn. Thrust onto the throne, Mary and Francis are forced to navigate a viper’s nest of conspiracies, traps, and treason. And if Mary’s secret is revealed, heads are bound to roll.

My Review

For a book that’s nearly 500 pages, MY CONTRARY MARY was a really quick read. The writing is really easy, and the paragraphs are pretty short, which is awesome. That made it even easier for me to get lost in the story.

This is a silly, fun reimagining of the history of Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary lives in France, where she’s waiting to marry Francis, who will one day be king of France. He loves her, but he’s uncertain whether she has feelings for him that extend beyond friendship. As Mary nears her wedding day, a new lady-in-waiting joins her: Ari, the daughter of Nostradamus, a girl who is searching for her own place in the French court.

All three of those characters have chapters from their points of view. I liked that the story rotated between the three of them. There were moments for each of them where we really needed only the perspective that character could bring.

I liked the tongue-in-cheek, break the fourth wall style the authors use to tell the story. There are lots of asides where the narrators speak directly to the reader in little jokes or funny comments. I thought that was clever, and I enjoyed it. I feel like that’s always a gamble with readers, though– some people really like it and others do not.

Conclusion

On the whole, I enjoyed this book for its silliness and the sweet romance as well as the opportunity to imagine a happily ever after for a historical figure who didn’t get one. (This isn’t a spoiler, since the authors explain this out at the beginning of the book.)

I have only read MY LADY JANE from the other series by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows, but I enjoyed that book as well. It made me want to go back and finish that series. I think the second Mary book, MY IMAGINARY MARY, comes out in August.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 12 up.

Representation
Major characters are white, either Scottish or French. Ari is in love with another girl.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Mild profanity in English. Strong profanity in French. Used pretty infrequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between boy and girl. Kissing between two girls. References to sex.

Spiritual Content
Nostradamus and Ari have visions. Ari’s are all visions of scenes from famous movies. Nostradamus has some visions of the future.

Violent Content
Situations of peril. References to torture. Brief battle scene.

Drug Content
Francis’ father gets drunk in some scenes. Mary and Francis once played a game where they took a drink every time the king said a certain word. They were pretty tipsy themselves by the end of it.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support this blog. I received a free copy of MY CONTRARY MARY in exchange for my honest review.

Review: Gone Dark by Amanda Panitch

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Gone Dark
Amanda Panitch
Margaret K. McElderry Books
Published April 12, 2022

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About Gone Dark

When seventeen-year-old Zara escaped her father’s backwoods survivalist compound five years ago, she traded crossbows and skinning hides for electricity and video games…and tried to forget the tragedy that drove her away.

Until a malware attack on the United States electrical grids cuts off the entire country’s power.

In the wake of the disaster and the chaos that ensues, Zara is forced to call upon skills she thought she’d never use again—and her best bet to survive is to go back to the home she left behind. Drawing upon a resilience she didn’t know she had, Zara leads a growing group of friends on an epic journey across a crumbling country back to her father’s compound, where their only hope for salvation lies.

But with every step she takes, Zara wonders if she truly has what it takes to face her father and the secrets of her past, or if she’d be better off hiding in the dark.

DRY meets HATCHET in this thrilling tale of survival following a teen girl who must lead her friends across country to the safety of her estranged father’s survivalist compound after a mass power failure leaves the country in chaos.

My Review

One of the fascinating things about this book is Zara’s conflicted feelings about her dad. She and her mom escaped from his compound, and there’s obviously lots of trauma back there she’s not ready to unpack at the beginning of the book. Yet when the power grids go down, she decides his property is the safest place for her and her friends. I found that idea to be kind of hard to digest sometimes.

It made sense that she had conflicted feelings– he’s still her dad, and she was a child when she lived with him, so a lot of her memories about him are a little mixed up. Maybe what was hard to digest was the idea that Zara would be safe at her dad’s. So while she’s locked in on returning to him as a goal, I felt like that was definitely not going to go the way she hoped.

I don’t want to give anything away. I guess I can say that for the most part, I was satisfied about the way things went down. Not everything went the way I expected, which was okay. But it made sense, and felt like the story resolved for the most part.

I liked Zara’s character and her relationship with Gabe and the rest of her team. I loved the way each teammate brought something different to the group, and the way they learned to depend on one another. Another thing that I liked a lot was the mix of people they met along the way. Certainly there were people for whom the catastrophe brought out the worst in them. But there were a lot of people who were trying to be good people and trying to do good things in spite of a horrific situation.

All in all, I enjoyed GONE DARK. I loved that it’s from a girl’s perspective. It reminded me a little bit of ALONE by Megan E. Freeman.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 12 up.

Representation
Zara’s best friend and her brother are Latinx. One minor character is gay.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between boy and girl. Description of a kiss between two boys.

Spiritual Content
Zara and Gabe stay on an LDS compound for a while.

Violent Content
Several scenes include brief graphic violence showing someone murdering someone else. At one point, a man drugs several others, intending to have them killed later.

Drug Content
Zara and her friends find a bottle of vodka and drink it together.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support this blog. I received a free copy of GONE DARK in exchange for my honest review.

Review: A Vow So Bold and Deadly by Brigid Kemmerer

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A Vow So Bold and Deadly (Cursebreakers #3)
Brigid Kemmerer
Bloomsbury YA
Published January 26, 2021

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About A Vow So Bold and Deadly

Face your fears, fight the battle.

Emberfall is crumbling fast, torn between those who believe Rhen is the rightful prince and those who are eager to begin a new era under Grey, the true heir. Grey has agreed to wait two months before attacking Emberfall, and in that time, Rhen has turned away from everyone—even Harper, as she desperately tries to help him find a path to peace.

Fight the battle, save the kingdom.

Meanwhile, Lia Mara struggles to rule Syhl Shallow with a gentler hand than her mother. But after enjoying decades of peace once magic was driven out of their lands, some of her subjects are angry Lia Mara has an enchanted prince and a magical scraver by her side. As Grey’s deadline draws nearer, Lia Mara questions if she can be the queen her country needs.

As the two kingdoms come closer to conflict, loyalties are tested, love is threatened, and a dangerous enemy returns, in this stunning conclusion to bestselling author Brigid Kemmerer’s Cursebreaker series.

My Review

It took me a long time to read this book. Not because of the writing or the book itself, just… it’s the end of the series. And I was pretty much Team Rhen from the beginning, so I knew this one wasn’t going to be easy, because he goes through some stuff. But I also love the other characters, especially Harper, and really wanted to see how their stories play out. Plus, if you haven’t yet heard, Kemmerer is beginning a new spin-off series this year (which has Tycho in it as a lord???) so I didn’t want to fall behind.

There’s a line in the book where Harper is thinking about Grey and Rhen’s relationship and where things went wrong between those two. She’s thinking about the mistakes they both made and whether that justifies war between them. She concludes this: “one bad choice should not undo a thousand good ones.”

If you know what’s been going on in my personal life the last few months, you probably already know that would hit me really deep. I mean, you could argue that there are some loopholes there depending on what that one bad choice is (murder maybe?). But I’d argue that the thousand choices are a good measure of the person’s true character. If one choice out of a thousand is a bad choice, probably it was a mistake, and there are probably reasons it happened. (Which is pretty much Harper’s point.)

Anyway, obviously the story resonated with me in ways outside the book. I loved the way the story explores the way mistakes impact a relationship but how hope and courage to rebuild that trust impact a relationship, too.

There are so many moments in this book that I needed to happen. Things between Rhen and Harper. Things between Lia Mara and Grey. But things for those characters individually, too. Stuff that they’ve been carrying that we’ve all known they need to face up to. There are shocking moments and moments that broke my heart, too. It’s a really fitting conclusion to this series packed with huge characters and gigantic emotions.

On the whole, I’m so glad I finally read A VOW SO BOLD AND DEADLY. I’m excited about the spinoff, FORGING SILVER INTO STARS, which comes out later this year, too. Sometimes I’m able to get Brigid Kemmerer’s books for review (probably a higher likelihood since it’s the first book in a new series??) but not always. Either way, I’m sure I’ll be reading it.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Representation
Major characters are white. Harper has Cerebral Palsy. (It’s not mentioned specifically in this book, but it is in A CURSE SO DARK AND LONELY.) Harper’s brother Jake is gay and in a relationship with a Black man. (Both minor characters.)

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between boy and girl which sometimes leads to more. Some descriptions of undressing and leading up to sex. References to sex.

Spiritual Content
A sorceress once held Rhen under a terrible curse, leaving him terrified of magic. Grey also has the ability to perform magic. Another character does as well.

Violent Content
Battle violence and situations of peril. Some graphic descriptions of violence and references to torture.

Drug Content
Characters drink alcohol.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support this blog.

Review: This May End Badly by Samantha Markum

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This May End Badly
Samantha Markum
Wednesday Books
Published April 12, 2022

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About This May End Badly

Pranking mastermind Doe and her motley band of Weston girls are determined to win the century-long war against Winfield Academy before the clock ticks down on their senior year. But when their headmistress announces that The Weston School will merge with its rival the following year, their longtime feud spirals into chaos.

To protect the school that has been her safe haven since her parents’ divorce, Doe puts together a plan to prove once and for all that Winfield boys and Weston girls just don’t mix, starting with a direct hit at Three, Winfield’s boy king and her nemesis. In a desperate move to win, Doe strikes a bargain with Three’s cousin, Wells: If he fake dates her to get under Three’s skin, she’ll help him get back his rightful family heirloom from Three.

As the pranks escalate, so do her feelings for her fake boyfriend, and Doe spins lie after lie to keep up her end of the deal. But when a teacher long suspected of inappropriate behavior messes with a younger Weston girl, Doe has to decide what’s more important: winning a rivalry, or joining forces to protect something far more critical than a prank war legacy.

THIS MAY END BADLY is a story about friendship, falling in love, and crossing pretty much every line presented to you—and how to atone when you do.

My Review

The cover copy on this book made me think of an older favorite: THE ONLY THING WORSE THAN ME IS YOU by Lily Anderson. It’s also a boarding school story with an enemies to lovers arc and loads of banter and snark. I LOVED that book when I read it, so I as soon as I read about this book, I knew I wanted to read it.

And it totally delivered on all my hopes for it. I loved Doe’s character with her single-minded passion. I loved Wells with his mysterious sorrow peeking out beneath the “I don’t care” attitude he had going on. On top of that, I loved Doe’s friends, when they pushed her, made room for her, loved her despite her misguided or hurtful actions. I loved the way they operated as a team and protected one another.

I also loved the banter! The pranks. The teasing comments. The awkward, hilarious conversations. I laughed out loud more reading this book than I have in a long time. It was exactly the story I needed this week.

If you like fake dating, boarding school stories, or prank wars and banter, this book is one you won’t want to miss.

Content Notes for This May End Badly

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Representation
Major characters are white. Doe has a diverse friend group. Her dad is bisexual. Some discussion about how single gender schools exclude trans and nonbinary students.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used infrequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between boy and girl. References to sex. In one scene, a boy and girl take their shirts off.

A teacher is rumored to be a sexual predator. The girls try to warn new students and look out for each other. One girl comes forward with details about inappropriate behavior on the teacher’s part. The scene is brief, but the girl is obviously (understandably) traumatized when she describes what happened.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
Two boys get into a fistfight.

Drug Content
Teens drink alcohol at a party and in other circumstances.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support this blog. I received a free copy of THIS MAY END BADLY in exchange for my honest review.

If We Were Having Coffee – Spring 2022 Update

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If We Were Having Coffee – Spring 2022 Update

I first saw Jamie at Perpetual Page Turner do an If We Were Having Coffee post in 2019, which is an idea she got from a life coach. Since then, I’ve been doing them periodically. Lately, it looks like I’m settling into a spring/fall routine. So, here’s my If We Were Having Coffee Spring 2022 update!

If we were having coffee…

I would tell you that I just finished reading THIS REBEL HEART by Katherine Locke. It’s fantastic and also kind of brutal– not the story itself. It’s not particularly violent or anything. Maybe emotionally raw is a better descriptor? Either way, I loved it, but I read it kind of slowly, which is unusual for me. It felt like the right pace for me to read it, though. I posed my review yesterday, so it’s up if you want to find out more.

I’m also currently listening to NONVIOLENT COMMUNICATION by Marshall B. Rosenberg, which was recommended to me by more than one friend. Right now, I’m only about 25% of the way through the book, and I feel like it’s one I’ll need to listen to more than once to really absorb the whole message. I’m really intrigued so far, and I want to give myself a trial period and see how practicing nonviolent communication effects relationships for me. I’m not sure that it’s something I’ll adopt as an overall communication strategy, but we’ll see after I’ve read the whole of the book.

If we were having coffee…

I’d want to talk about hard things. I was reading a thread on Twitter in which tons of women shared their experiences with miscarriages, and many commented on how we don’t talk about this experience enough. And that’s so true.

When I’ve talked about my own miscarriages, it seems like often people don’t know what to say, and I want to respect that, but it can be really painful because it feels like this unspoken cue to stop talking about it. It feels like they’re uncomfortable and I can fix that by stopping talking.

We’ve all been in conversations that have a weight to them that we don’t understand, where we feel like we need to say something but have zero idea what the right thing might be. I hate those, too. It can feel like waking up in a minefield and having no idea how to get to safe space again.

If we were having coffee…

If we talked about miscarriages, I’d want to tell you what it was like for me.

I was talking about my miscarriage experiences to a friend last week and this was the explanation that clicked with him. I told him it’s like being betrayed by your body in a deeply painful way. Pregnancy is this process your body is supposed to be able to do all on its own. It’s supposed to protect, nurture, and care for the budding person inside you the way you will care for and protect the baby once they’re born. And instead, it kills your baby. Without your permission or consent. You can literally do nothing to stop this thing from happening. And it’s happening inside your body, so there’s no place to retreat from it.

Also, our healthcare system? Really freaking terrible at handling miscarriages. I couldn’t get one of the medications my doctor wanted to prescribe me. Another wasn’t covered by my insurance at all. At one point I was in the ER, and let me simply say that is NOT a place anyone should experience a miscarriage. Someone in the thread I was reading used the term “undignified,” and yeah. I can honestly say that I’ve NEVER felt more like an object in a petri dish and less like a human being in my life than I did that night.

Everyone’s experience is different. I really, really wanted a baby. So, for me, the grief was very focused on the loss of that person who I was already imagining to be a part of my life and the failure of my body to protect that person.

If we were having coffee…

I’d want to tell you I’m grateful that you’re listening. Grateful that you’re here. The last few years have been really isolating for a lot of us. I’m proud of the ways we’ve found to stay connected. For me, some of this has been through online contact. I have a friend who lives far away, but checks in with me every day or so on my phone to talk about family stuff and bookish or writing stuff. She’s amazing. I’d be lost without her.

Some of it has been outdoor get-togethers, and some indoor get-togethers. I have a friend who meets me for coffee outside (and now sometimes inside!) almost every week since the early COVID days. She’s also a mom, so we talk a lot about the challenges of raising kids. We compare notes on the sometimes impossibility of remembering who you are outside of being that caretaker/chief cook/cruise director. I’d be lost without her, too. She’s awesome.

There are new friends, too. New jokes. New experiences. Lots to look forward to. I’m grateful for all those relationships and moments, too, in life and on here!

If we were having coffee, what would you want to tell me?

What’s on your mind today that you want to share with me? Have you recently read anything you love? Have you had experiences with grief that you wish other people better understood?

Thanks for catching up with me. I appreciate you. <3

Review: This Rebel Heart by Katherine Locke

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This Rebel Heart
Katherine Locke
Knopf Books for Young Readers
Published April 5, 2022

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About This Rebel Heart

A tale set amid the 1956 Hungarian revolution in post-WWII Communist Budapest.

In the middle of Budapest, there is a river. Csilla knows the river is magic. During WWII, the river kept her family safe when they needed it most–safe from the Holocaust. But that was before the Communists seized power. Before her parents were murdered by the Soviet police. Before Csilla knew things about her father’s legacy that she wishes she could forget.

Now Csilla keeps her head down, planning her escape from this country that has never loved her the way she loves it. But her carefully laid plans fall to pieces when her parents are unexpectedly, publicly exonerated. As the protests in other countries spur talk of a larger revolution in Hungary, Csilla must decide if she believes in the promise and magic of her deeply flawed country enough to risk her life to help save it, or if she should let it burn to the ground.

My Review of This Rebel Heart

The author’s note at the beginning of the book warns that Hungary’s revolution does not end in victory, so I felt like I read this entire book holding my breath, waiting for that shoe to drop. Which wasn’t a negative for me– just added a lot of intensity.

Csilla was my favorite character, but I loved the other characters, too. I loved the way that magic is woven into the story through Csilla’s relationship with the river. The way that color (or a lack of it) is used in the story, too, is really powerful and cool.

The way the story is written completely captivated me. I felt like I couldn’t stop reading, and like so many of the scenes were just aching– achingly beautiful or haunting or tragic. I feel like it struck something in me really deeply, a kind of connection with a book that I haven’t felt since reading THE BOOK THIEF years ago, where it made me want to call people and read them pages of the story.

I’m trying not to buy any new books right now because SHELF SPACE, but I really want a hard copy of this one. THIS REBEL HEART is the first book I’ve read by Katherine Locke, but obviously I need to read all their other books immediately. I absolutely loved it.

I think readers who enjoyed THE GIRL IN THE BLUE COAT by Monica Hesse or books by Ruta Sepetys would love THIS REBEL HEART.

Content Notes for This Rebel Heart

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Representation
Csilla is Jewish. Other characters are gay or bisexual.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used very infrequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Reference to a kiss between two men. Kissing between two boys. Kissing between a boy and girl. Two boys and a girl are in a romantic relationship together.

Spiritual Content
References to Jewish holidays and practices. One character is an angel of death.

Violent Content
References to genocide, some brief graphic references to death in gas chambers. References to torture and suicide. Brief description as a mob beats a young man to death. Soldiers shoot into a crowd of protestors, killing someone. Some battle violence and other situations of peril.

Drug Content
Characters drink socially at a community dance.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use, but which help support this blog. I received a free copy of THIS REBEL HEART in exchange for my honest review.