Tag Archives: missing girls

Review: The Shadow Sister by Lily Meade

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The Shadow Sister by Lily Meade cover shows a girl's face partly obscured by flowers. A butterfly sits on her left eye.

The Shadow Sister
Lily Meade
Sourcebooks Fire
Published June 27, 2023

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About The Shadow Sister

Sutton going missing is the worst thing to happen to Casey, to their family. She’s trying to help find her sister, but Casey is furious. And she can’t tell anyone about their argument before Sutton disappeared. Everyone paints a picture of Sutton’s perfection: the popular cheerleader with an entourage of friends, a doting boyfriend, and a limitless future. But Sutton manipulated everyone around her, even stole an heirloom bracelet from Casey. People don’t look for missing Black girls–or half-Black girls–without believing there is an angel to be saved.

When Sutton reappears, Casey knows she should be relieved. Except Sutton isn’t the same. She remembers nothing about while she was gone—or anything from her old life, including how she made Casey miserable. There’s something unsettling about the way she wants to spend time with Casey, the way she hums and watches her goldfish swim for hours.

What happened to Sutton? The more Casey starts uncovering her sister’s secrets, the more questions she has. Did she really know her sister? Why is no one talking about the other girls who have gone missing in their area? And what will it take to uncover the truth?

My Review

I love sister stories. I also love being part of the readership who discover a fantastic debut novel by an author who is sure to become a new favorite. It’s even better when those two things appear in the very same book.

First, let me say that the characters in this book are rich and layered. What they believe to be true isn’t always objectively true (happens to us all). I feel like writing a character who both comes across as genuine and genuinely wrong is really challenging, and Lily Meade makes it look absolutely effortless.

The rich themes of family, history, and reclaiming personal power are expertly threaded through the narrative of this book. I loved the way the characters explored family history and relationships. I also loved the elements of magical realism– again, something that I think is not easy to write in a way that feels believable and anchored in the real world. Yet it’s brilliantly done here.

I also really appreciated the author’s note and the care she takes in explaining her connection to some parts of the story. That only deepened my appreciation of the book, and I think added even more to the conversation within the text about intergenerational trauma and reclaiming power.

I’ve been super choosy about which books I’m adding to my shelves lately (my bookshelf runneth over!), but I will definitely be adding this one. I absolutely recommend this story for readers who, like me, love sister books or stories about family and the transformative power of love.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Representation
Casey and Sutton are biracial sisters. One minor character is a lesbian.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used very sparingly.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between boy and girl.

Spiritual Content
Casey and Sutton’s family attends a local church that preaches, as one of the girls puts it, a “condescending prosperity gospel”.

Violent Content
Characters discover the decaying body of a murdered girl. A person admits to murdering someone and attempts to murder someone else.

Drug Content
Police suggest a recently missing girl was using drugs, even though her tests repeatedly show no drug use. An unconscious girl may have been drugged; it’s unclear.

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 THE SHADOW SISTER in exchange for my honest review.

Review: Warrior Girl, Unearthed by Angeline Boulley

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Warrior Girl, Unearthed
Angeline Boulley
Henry Holt & Co.
Published May 2, 2023

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About Warrior Girl, Unearthed

From the New York Times bestselling author of Firekeeper’s Daughter comes a thrilling YA mystery about a Native teen who must find a way to bring an ancestor home to her tribe.

Perry Firekeeper-Birch was ready for her Summer of Slack but instead, after a fender bender that was entirely not her fault, she’s stuck working to pay back her Auntie Daunis for repairs to the Jeep.

Thankfully she has the other outcasts of the summer program, Team Misfit Toys, and even her twin sister Pauline. Together they ace obstacle courses, plan vigils for missing women in the community, and make sure summer doesn’t feel so lost after all.

But when she attends a meeting at a local university, Perry learns about the “Warrior Girl”, an ancestor whose bones and knife are stored in the museum archives, and everything changes. Perry has to return Warrior Girl to her tribe. Determined to help, she learns all she can about NAGPRA, the federal law that allows tribes to request the return of ancestral remains and sacred items. The university has been using legal loopholes to hold onto Warrior Girl and twelve other Anishinaabe ancestors’ remains, and Perry and the Misfits won’t let it go on any longer.

Using all of their skills and resources, the Misfits realize a heist is the only way to bring back the stolen artifacts and remains for good. But there is more to this repatriation than meets the eye as more women disappear and Pauline’s perfectionism takes a turn for the worse. As secrets and mysteries unfurl, Perry and the Misfits must fight to find a way to make things right – for the ancestors and for their community.

My Review

I’ll admit I didn’t really know much about this book when I asked to review it. Mostly, I knew the author’s name, because her debut, FIREKEEPER’S DAUGHTER was all anyone was talking about for a while when it came out in 2021. So I wanted to read it on the strength of that praise.

And… all I can say is that no one who was blown away by Angeline Boulley’s writing exaggerated. I mean, wow.

The story has a lot of moving parts. Perry and her sister are doing this summer internship (Perry only under duress). Girls keep going missing from their community. Perry begins learning about laws and processes governing the way that ancestral remains are identified and (ideally) returned to tribes and decides she must help return the remains of a woman knows as Warrior Girl. There’s the possibility of romance for Perry with one of the other interns.

So there’s a lot going on. The beginning builds a little bit slowly. I remember not being sure what the story was going to really be about. It took some time for me to feel like I got oriented within the story.

Once I did, though, the story took off. Roadblocks, and setbacks, and raised stakes, and twists kept coming one after another. And every single one seemed to pull the story more into focus.

All those pieces came together to show a more complete picture, and all of it illustrated a powerful theme about the value of life and the need to honor community and ancestry.

Conclusion

I loved this book. I’ve already got a copy of FIREKEEPER’S DAUGHTER, and I am really excited to read it. Some of the minor characters in this book are in FIREKEEPER’S DAUGHTER, so I’m curious what blanks reading that one will fill in. I hope there are more stories about Sugar Island and Perry’s family in the works, because I will definitely read them.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Representation
Perry and most other characters are Ojibwe citizens. Perry’s grandmother was Black.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used pretty infrequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between boy and girl. Perry wonders who her sister and her aunt are having sex with. A person Perry is close to reveals that she was raped by a man Perry knows by name.

Spiritual Content
References to Ojibwe tribal ceremonies, histories, and traditions.

Violent Content
Situations of peril. Girls in the community have been going missing. One girl’s body is found. Someone discovers a murdered man’s body. Another girl appears to have died from a fatal injury. A boy and a man both suffer head injuries. A girl describes how she was tied up and escaped.

Drug Content
Perry’s twin sister eats gummies with marijuana in them to manage her anxiety. References to adults drinking alcohol.

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 WARRIOR GIRL, UNEARTHED in exchange for my honest review.