At the Water’s Edge (Book Review)

Sara Gruen is a relatively well-known author, and her novel Water for Elephants is deservedly popular. It’s been years since I read Water for Elephants, but I remembered that I liked it, so I figured I’d like At the Water’s Edge as well.

What’s it about?

In the middle of WWII, Maddie’s wealthy and irresponsible husband Ellis drags her to the Scottish Highlands to search for the Loch Ness Monster. After Ellis and his best friend Hank were deemed unable to serve in the war, Ellis’ father cuts him off and Ellis determines that finding Nessie is the only way to prove his masculinity and get back into his father’s good graces. While Ellis and Hank search for the beast, Maddie spends her time at a small inn and gets to know the locals.

What’d I think?

I discuss several spoilers in depth in this review. I don’t hit every major twist, and I don’t talk about the absolute end, but still… be aware.

Have you ever read a book and been frustrated because, while you’re bored with the book you’re actually reading, you can sense a different story just beneath the surface? That’s how I felt reading At the Water’s Edge. It wants so badly to be a swoony Scottish love story that it bypasses some potentially more rewarding storylines to get there. I’ve seen lots of reviews on Goodreads that compare At the Water’s Edge to Outlander, and while I can’t speak to that (I haven’t read Outlander yet, but it is rapidly approaching the top of my to-read list), I can say that it misses the mark as a romance for one simple but inescapable reason:

Book Club: Dear Edward (+Mini Book Review)

One of the best things about a book club is that it forces you to read books that normally you wouldn’t touch. I was immediately turned off by the description of Ann Napolitano’s novel Dear Edward. I was actually dreading reading it, because mass casualty never makes for a fun read, and as a person who is already terrified of flying, I figured a book about a plane crash was going to increase that fear.

I mean, it did. My worst nightmare (literally; I have nightmares about this all the time) is everyone around me dying, leaving me all alone. That’s the actual plot of Dear Edward, and as a result I had a lot of nightmares while reading it. I think I had one every night while I was reading it. One of the ladies at book club felt similarly and actually put off purchasing airline tickets for herself and her family because of Dear Edward.

That said, Dear Edward is an excellent book. The writing is emotional and clear. There are tons of characters, but they are balanced so well that I didn’t notice until I was done how many there actually are. Napolitano manages to depict fully-formed characters with the barest of segments: she introduces the crash’s victims, spends a few pages with them, and somehow leaves the reader with the impression that he or she knows everyone well.

My only qualm with Dear Edward is the neat way things are tied up in the last few paragraphs. It’s overly romanticized, and feels drastically less real than the rest of the novel.

Discussion Starters!

Infinity Son (ARC Book Review)

I was lucky enough to get an advanced reader’s copy of Infinity Son by Adam Silvera through work, and I’m totally psyched about it. I love Adam Silvera. YA fantasy is my favorite genre. Me liking Adam Silvera’s YA fantasy novel was a foregone conclusion, but it’s nice to have it confirmed.

This review is spoiler-free. The back cover of my copy of the book was not. Hopefully someone edits that before the official book is released, because whoever wrote that blurb did Infinity Son dirty.

What’s it about?

Brothers Emil and Brighton live in an alternative version of New York, in which magic is real. Certain people, called celestials, naturally have superhero-like power. Others, called specters, have obtained similar powers by using blood alchemy with endangered creatures like phoenixes or hydras. Emil and Brighton used to dream of becoming celestials, but that was years ago, before an incident that drove celestials into hiding and has painted them with a wide brush as dangerous terrorists. Brighton, though, still loves magic and dreams that soon—under the fabled Crowned Dreamer constellation—he’ll acquire powers and become real hero, not just someone who documents them on social media.

What’d I think?

I’ll admit it took me a little while to get into Infinity Son. Silvera drops the reader right into the middle of things, so I had a period of flailing and floundering around before I figured out the history of this alternate world and what’s happening in the present day. There are four POV characters, which also makes it a little difficult to find your footing. However, once I got my bearing, I was all in and I loved it.

In his introduction, Silvera writes that he has long loved fantasy but never saw LGBTQ+ representation in it. He loved Harry Potter and X-Men, but never realized that fantasy heroes could be gay. Apparently, in his first drafts of Infinity Son, everyone was straight because he had no idea there was any other option. Representation is so important… and because fantasy often draws on real-life inequality for its worldbuilding, it also makes the stories better.

I can really, really see that X-Men inspired Infinity Son. There are magical parallels to social issues in our real world, most notably racism, homophobia, and profiling: mutants have to “come out” and the scenes are played with the queer-reading very obvious. Harry Potter does it, too: “mudblood” is a derogatory word that echoes the N-word. Lycanthropy is commonly considered a metaphor for AIDS. However, unlike in X-Men and Harry Potter, Infinity Son allows its characters to be members of the social groups being allegoried. Most of the main characters are queer and many of them are people of color. The themes of discrimination are played out mostly as magical issues, but after a while it gets annoying when stories that blatantly mirror experiences of queer people or people of color are given instead to straight, white protagonists; it’s nice to see a diverse cast in a story like this.

The political and media tilts are interesting, too. There’s a critical election in the background of the action, and Brighton crafts a narrative with his social media presence. These storylines are more commonly in dystopias like The Hunger Games (another fantastic book), and I love genre-blending.

If there’s a weakness in Infinity Son, it’s that the writing struggles a little in the most traditionally fantasy moments. When the magic system is explained or when foes shoot spells at each other, the book loses its stride just a little. It’s not as confident or purposeful as it is in other, smaller moments. Even though the world is really, really cool and the magic system is extremely creative and unlike anything I’ve read before—and that’s saying a lot; I read a lot of fantasy—there’s the feeling that Silvera isn’t totally comfortable writing it yet. It’s not nearly enough to put me off the book, since I loved it, but it’s there.

The Trials of Apollo #4: The Tyrant’s Tomb (Book Review)

Rick Riordan is one of my favorite authors, but I was still taken off-guard when The Tyrant’s Tomb came out a few months ago because I hadn’t known he was due for one. Often in situations like this, I’ll jump right into the new book because I’m too excited to wait, but this time I actually did the smart thing and reread the books that came before (well, The Trials of Apollo; I didn’t go all the way back to HoO or PJO), which was definitely a good thing because I let some truly massive plot developments slip my mind. Remember that major death in The Burning Maze? I didn’t. So, yeah. The reread was a good idea. I was well caught up when I finally got to read the newest book. Am I too late to post a review that anyone is going to care about? Probably. Is it good that I invested the time for that reread? Yes.

Rick Riordan’s books have really matured since The Lightning Thief. I don’t mean that they’re better now or that they were amateur then. I mean that Riordan has done a great job of allowing his characters to age, and the stories have developed with them. When we first met Percy Jackson, he was a sassy middle schooler; while his adventures are still incredibly readable and enjoyable for older readers, they were perfect for kids Percy’s age. They were fun. They were fast. They were witty. The stakes were high, but nothing was too scary or scarring. Everyone lived. No one was permanently psychologically damaged. But now, years later, Riordan’s characters have grown. His readers have stayed with him, which means that for nearly every middle schooler grabbing The Lightning Thief off the shelf for the first time, there’s a twenty-something like me still anticipating his latest books. Now the heroes are solidly in their teens, and the world has opened up more.

That shows in The Tyrant’s Tomb. It’s scarier and more perilous than what has come before, and the narrative doesn’t shy away from that. Unlike Percy or Leo or Annabeth or any of the other heroes that have come before him, Apollo is not an innocent caught up in battles he shouldn’t have to face. Despite his hilariousness and dramatics, Apollo is not what we’d call a good person. In these last few books, Riordan is allowing some of the darker elements of Greek mythology to rear their heads. And they’re ugly. While The Trials of Apollo doesn’t get into all disturbing elements like an adult book would (like, say, Madeline Miller’s Circe), it also doesn’t edit all of it out. Apollo is on a quest to regain his godliness, but over and over he, his companions, and the readers are confronted with the undeniable truth that he doesn’t deserve it. He was selfish. He was callous. He was egotistical. He murdered people. He harassed people. He wiped people out without a second thought. Yeah, he’s funny and charming. But he was a sociopath.

Pan’s Labyrinth (Book Review)

Even though I love movies, I’m not really a *movie person.* I don’t watch old classics except on occasion (and when prompted to do so) and I don’t know one director from another, even though I’ve been told that the great ones all have distinctive touches. I do have authors I love, though, so when I spotted Pan’s Labyrinth: The Labyrinth of the Faun by Guillermo del Toro and Cornelia Funke, I picked it up for Funke and not for del Toro. I knew that “Pan’s Labyrinth” is a well-known movie, but I’d never seen it and didn’t know much about it (I still don’t, actually). Honestly, I knew so little about the movie that I mixed it up with “Labyrinth,” a similarly titled but different movie that I also have not seen. Maybe I should watch more classics.

What’s it about?

Spain, 1944. A young girl who still believes in fairy tales travels with her pregnant mother to join her cruel stepfather, and upon arriving meets a mysterious faun who tells her that she is actually daughter of the moon, princess to an underground kingdom. But before she can return home, she must complete a series of tests. Meanwhile, a group of rebels hides in the woods, desperately fighting the good fight against evil in human form.

What’d I think?

The weird thing about Cornelia Funke is that she is one of my favorite writers even though I’ve really disliked some of her books. She’s extremely hit-or-miss for me. Dragon Rider? Adorable.The Inkheart trilogy? Brilliant. Some of the best fantasy ever written. Reckless? Phenomenal. Dark and fascinating in all the best ways, and best as a standalone book, because its sequels, Fearless and The Golden Yarn, are major letdowns. The latter actually soured me on Funke for nearly two full years. Igraine the Brave? Meh. At her best, Funke is fantastic.

In my opinion, sadly, she’s not fantastic here. She’s good, but I’m not going to widely recommend Pan’s Labyrinth the way I do Inkheart or Reckless. 

Pro tip: if you want to read Reckless (and you should!), it’s unfortunately now known by an alternate/inferior title, The Petrified Flesh. Don’t let that put you off!

There are two very distinct stories in Pan’s Labyrinth: Ofelia’s story and Mercedes’ story. Ofelia’s journey through the mystical world is fun. I love the fairy tales that are woven in, which makes sense as magic and fairy tales are Funke’s bread and butter. Actually, I prefer the fairy tales—which essentially serve as backstory for Ofelia’s kingdom and for the faun she serves—to anything that happens in the present-day continuity. The fantasy half of the novel is creepy and interesting, and I wanted to find out more about the underground kingdom and Ofelia’s past life. A whole book of just the fairy tales and the beautiful illustrations would be pretty awesome.

These Witches Don’t Burn (Book Review)

I feel like I’m the only YA fan who didn’t read These Witches Don’t Burn by Isabel Sterling in October this year. I like dressing up for Halloween (this year I was Klaus from The Umbrella Academy!), but that’s the extent of my spooky October activities. I did read a bunch of reviews for it, though, and since they were almost entirely positive, I figured I’d give it a shot.

What’s it about?

Hannah is an elemental witch living in Salem, Massachusetts. When she and her ex-girlfriend Veronica come across evidence of a blood ritual, Hannah becomes convinced that a Blood Witch—the most powerful and most dangerous kind of witch—has come to Salem. She knows firsthand what Blood Witches can do to someone, so, when the more senior members of her coven refuse to, she decides to investigate the  on her own, with only occasional help from Veronica.

What’d I think?

I liked These Witches Don’t Burn, but I’m surprised by the almost universal enthusiasm it has been met with. While it’s cute enough and Hannah’s best friend Gemma is a wonderful, beautiful person that I would love to have as a friend, the rest of the book is honestly pretty meh.

Hannah is an unmemorable main character, but her love interest Morgan makes her look like a sparkling personality. The mysterious villain is far from mysterious if you’re paying even the slightest bit of attention. And, most grievously in my opinion, both the A and B plots of the novel hinge on an unexplained incident that took place before the story starts but which is never adequately addressed.

The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Riddle of Ages (Mini Book Review)

The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart is one of the best books for young readers that I’ve ever read. A random bookseller recommended it to me forever ago, and I’m incredibly grateful to her because it is an absolutely delightful read. It’s full of clever puzzles, brilliant characters, silly moments, and exciting action. It’s supposedly a bestseller, but I very rarely run into other people who’ve read it, which is deeply upsetting. More people need to read this series! I had absolutely no idea that Riddle of Ages was coming out this year or even that it was coming out ever. I thought the series was done, and I was happy to be wrong.

What’s it about?

It’s been years since Reynie, Sticky, Kate, and Constance helped Mr. Benedict by going undercover at the Living Institute for the Very Enlightened. Now they’re young adults (well, not Constance, not yet) who are trying to figure out what that means. Change is awkward, and it’s especially difficult to know how to move about in a world you’ve saved on more than one occasion. But things are slightly more complicated than that, because of course they are. There are still some of Mr. Curtain’s dangerous Ten Men loose, and poor Constance is plagued by another psychic—called the Listener—whose presence in her mind forces her to be constantly on edge.

What’d I think?

I’ll admit something upfront: when I opened this book up and realized that ¾ of the Mysterious Benedict Society are now in their late teens and that there is now a fifth member of the Society, I was deeply skeptical. I love these books, and only recently reread the first one and found to my delight that it holds up especially well even though I’m older and it was published more than a decade ago. There’s always a worry with childhood favorites, because what if they’re not as great as you remember? The Mysterious Benedict Society is, and when I saw how much things had been shaken up for book four, I was afraid.

Thankfully, I didn’t need to be. It is a little jarring that Kate doesn’t always carry her bucket around and that Sticky now wants to be called “George,” but these are little changes in service to a larger theme and as a whole the feel of the book is the same. The Society is still the Society. These are the same characters as before, just a little older.

Book Club: Holes

Because of NaNoWriMo, I haven’t had time to write my usual book reviews and as a result this blog has suffered. Since my most popular posts are my book club discussion questions, I figured I would post questions I wrote a few years ago for one of my all-time favorite books: Louis Sachar’s phenomenal Holes. I’ve read Holes many times over the course of my life, and loved it every time. However, as I’ve aged and gotten better at reading, my love for Holes has expanded from thinking it’s a funny book with the best protagonist’s name ever to knowing that it is a masterful, nuanced novel full of complex issues and, yes, the best protagonist’s name ever.

If you haven’t read Holes yet, you should, no matter how old you are! It’s so, so good.

As is always the case, these prompts are full of spoilers. Read on only if you have finished Holes or don’t mind being spoiled.

Ninth House (Book Review)

Every few months, I read one of Leigh Bardugo’s books and then explode enthusiasm all over this blog. It’s been a few months since I read King of Scars, so it’s time for another one. She is one of my instant-read authors. When I heard about Ninth House, I knew I was going to read it and love it before I even read the synopsis. Then I found out that it was the choice of the book club I run for work and I got even more excited. You mean now I get to read the new book by one of my all-time favorite writers and then I get paid to discuss it for an hour? Score.

What’s it about?

Alex has always been able to see ghosts, an ability that has reduced her to a state of constant terror. When she is discovered at the site of a bloody mass murder, passed out from an OD next to the body of her friend, she is hospitalized, eliminated as a suspect, and picked up by the dean of one of Yale’s secret societies. Because of Alex’s sight, she is ideal to join the Ninth House, Lethe, which exists to keep the other houses—and, more specifically, their dangerous and bloody magical rituals—under control. Lethe seems like a lifeline, but things quickly get out of control when Alex’s mentor Darlington disappears mysteriously and a young woman’s body is found campus on a night when a ritual nearly went sideways.

What’d I think?

This book is so, so good. It absolutely lived up to my high expectations.

It has a pretty different feel from the Grishaverse, but I wouldn’t say that it’s more adult. Before reading Ninth House, I wondered what was going to be in it that would classify it as adult fantasy rather than YA like the rest of Bardugo’s books. If you’ve read Six of Crows, you know that it’s not exactly bright and cheery. Think about Kaz’s beginnings in Ketterdam. Remember the time he rips a dude’s eye out? Yeah, it goes to pretty dark places.

Ninth House actually addresses some of the same larger themes that are present in Bardugo’s earlier books. Alex turns to drugs to drown out the ghosts and Darlington takes a magical drug to be able to see them; Nina gets hooked on the jurda parem and Crooked Kingdom deals in detail with her recovery. Alex’s boyfriend Len essentially whored her out to get in with unsavory types; Inej spent years as a prostitute before Kaz rescued her. Like Alex, the crows are experienced with hunger and poverty. Both stories deal with the violent underbellies of society. The difference isn’t the content; it’s the context.

Book Club: Ninth House

Please enjoy these discussion starters for Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo. Feel free to use them in your own book clubs or to respond to them in the comments. These questions are full of spoilers, so make sure you’ve read the book before diving in!

It’s also worth mentioning that Ninth House deals with difficult subject matter and as a result these questions reference sexual assault and rape, violence towards women, abuse, drug use, and more. So… proceed with caution.

I’m also wrote a regular review for Ninth House. If you’re interested, you can read that here. 

Loki: Where Mischief Lies (Book Review)

Mackenzi Lee is one of my favorite authors. The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue is a perfect mix of silly, snarky, stirring, and sweet. I didn’t know that she’d written a new book until one day at work I rung a customer who was purchasing Loki: Where Mischief Lies. I’m not entirely convinced by the recent trend of comic book characters being adapted to novel form by the top YA writers. Why reshape well-known characters to fit a format they’re not designed for? Why take writers at the top of their game away from original fiction? It can work, but I haven’t exactly been seeking these books out. Still, I’ll read anything by a favorite author (I read Leigh Bardugo’s Wonder Woman: Warbringer as well), and matching Mackenzi Lee with Loki was clearly brilliant. If there’s any writer who could do justice to the utter queer chaos that is Loki, it’s Lee.

What’s it about?

Young Prince Loki knows he’s not his father’s favorite. His brother Thor is big, strong, blonde, and clearly destined for kingship. Loki wants his father’s approval, but how can he achieve it? All his talents are frowned upon and he is consistantly pitted against Thor in competitions catered for Thor. Loki is not a fighter, but he is clever and has powerful magic. Unfortunately, his cleverness is taken for untrustworthiness and he is forbidden from using his magic except in the tiniest doses. But there’s one person who understands Loki and believes in him. Amora is an enchantress-in-training, at least until she and Loki accidentally destroy a magical relic and she is banished to Earth. Years later, Loki too goes to Earth—ostensibly to investigate a series of murders, although everyone knows he really goes in exile—where their paths may cross again.

What’d I think?

Fair warning. This is a somewhat nitpicky review. It’s not a rant, because I liked the book a lot, but there are a lot of small things that disappointed me.

I did like Loki, but I wasn’t as blown away as I expected to be. There’s a long segment before the real action begins, where Lee introduces the major Asgardians—Loki, Odin, Thor, Amora, and Amora’s teacher Karnilla—and their relationships. It’s not bad by any means, but I had a hard time getting into it. At the beginning, Loki is an earnest young prince. He plays the occasional trick, but his magic amounts merely to a few parlor tricks and his idea of chaos is bewitching the floor to change color to clash with his father’s outfit. He doesn’t feel like Loki or like one of Lee’s usual characters. He doesn’t have the charming magnetism of Monty or Felicity or the MCU’s Loki, all of whom are fun and feisty and prone to inappropriate behavior. I wanted a fun, feisty character who is prone to inappropriate behavior, so it was disappointing to get a lovestruck goth.

Book Club: Inland (+Review)

I read Téa Obreht’s sophomore novel Inland for book club. Going in, I was tentatively optimistic. Though I’ve never read The Tiger’s Wife, Obreht’s first novel, I’ve heard good things about it and Obreht, and the synopsis of Inland intrigued me. I enjoyed parts of the novel, but others dragged and overall I’d say my reading experience was mostly neutral but overall more negative than positive. I’ve been in a reading slump, and while Inland isn’t the worst book I’ve read this month, it certainly didn’t pull me out of the slump.

What’s it about?

Inland tells two nebulously connected stories that take place in the Arizona Territory in 1893. Nora is a frontierswoman whose husband and eldest two sons are missing. Lurie is an outlaw who joined the camel corps and is traveling across the desert with supplies. The novel straddles a number of genres: it is part western, part historical fiction, part magical realism, and part mystery.

What’d I think?

I suspect that Inland is a divisive book. Much of what I disliked comes down to preference: Obreht is bold with her writing, and while I’m not a big fan of many of her choices, that doesn’t make them bad.

The narration style is interesting, to say the least. Nora’s sections, which are thankfully longer than Lurie’s, are comprised largely of flashbacks. I don’t know that I’ve ever read a novel before that is set so near the end of its story, and I’ve definitely never read one that spends so much time is such a static period. Nora is waiting. She waits for her husband Emmett to return with water. She waits for her sons, who disappeared without word or warning. She waits to discover the long-term effects of her youngest son’s brain injury. But before the novel’s beginning, she was more active. In the many flashbacks, the reader experiences the highs and the lows of Nora’s life. Everything comes to a head when Nora’s waiting comes to an end, yes, but the circular, meandering way that Obreht chose to tell Nora’s story is peculiar. I’m used to flashbacks setting up the story, and I kept expecting them to end so that the real story could begin. I was more than halfway through Inland before I realized, no, the flashbacks are the story. The flashbacks don’t end until the novel does. It takes either a very good or a very bad writer to structure a novel like this. I think that Obreht is probably the former, even though it didn’t work for me. I did find Nora’s chapters generally interesting, though, which is more than can be said for Lurie’s.

Lurie’s sections drag the novel down. I’ve read the whole darn thing and I couldn’t tell you what the point of Lurie is. He adds very, very little to the plot (the connection between the stories, at least in my opinion, is profoundly underwhelming) and is deeply uninteresting. Also, his narration is in first person and addressed directly to his camel, Burke. Lurie is weirdly obsessed with Burke, and I see no reason why his story is in first person rather than third, like Nora’s. Nora is a much more interesting character and she has a lot more going on in her head. Lurie is kind of a blank slate minus his camel obsession and supposedly ghost-inspired kleptomania.

My response to all Lurie’s chapters

The novel’s magical realism is also quite weird. Many characters profess to see ghosts, but it’s never confirmed whether the ghosts are actual paranormal apparitions or if they exist only in the minds of those seeing them. Personally, I read them more as psychosomatic manifestations of guilt and regret more than anything magical. There’s something to be said for ambiguity, but sometimes ambiguity feels like pretentiousness. Maybe I was just in a weird mood when I read Inland, but it seemed to have a self-impressed undercurrent, like every sentence was written not to tell a strong story or to create characters, but to prove Obreht’s cleverness and technical writing prowess.

What’s the verdict?

Inland is simply not my kind of book. I’ve never liked westerns or survival stories, so a western survival story was never going to be my jam. Still, I did enjoy half the story; when the novel focuses on Nora, I kept reading and wanted to know more. Any time Lurie and his camel took center stage, though, I had to fight against myself to keep from setting the book aside because no matter how much I tried, I could not care about them. It didn’t help that I found the resolution of the novel, when the two storylines finally come together, singularly disappointing. I read 367 pages expecting that, eventually, Lurie’s presence in Inland would be warranted; in my opinion, it never was, and Obreht could have saved her time and mine by scrapping his half entirely.

C/⭐⭐⭐

Discussion Starters:

Opposite of Always (Book Review) ⭐⭐⭐

When it comes to contemporary YA writers, there aren’t many better than Becky Albertalli and Angie Thomas. The fact that they both endorsed Justin A. Reynolds’ Opposite of Always was enough for me to give it a shot. Unfortunately, it doesn’t live up to those two names. Opposite of Always is cute enough, but it is nowhere in the league of Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda or The Hate U Give.

What’s it about?

While visiting a college campus towards the end of his senior year of high school, Jack meets Kate and they fall in love. Sounds good, right? Wrong. Jack and Kate only have a short time together, because Kate has a genetic disease that kills her before they can have their happily ever after. But then Jack finds himself transported back to the moment when he first met Kate. Given a miraculous second chance with Kate, Jack does everything in his power to save her life only to lose her again (and again and again), and return again (and again and again) to the stairs where they met.

What’d I think?

I’ve been somewhat uninspired by my own reviews lately, so I’m going to try out yet another format. I’m also trying to keep my reviews shorter than usual, as I’ve noticed that the long, analytical ones rarely get read. Here we go!

I liked Jack’s relationships with his best friends Franny and Jillian. They are a really cool trio, and the way that their dynamic shifts with the decisions that Jack makes is far and away the best part of Opposite of Always. The way that Jack’s friends (particularly Franny) are folded into Jack’s family is particularly sweet. Franny and Jillian are their own characters even outside their relationships to Jack, and I love that the narrative emphasizes them as much as it does. They’re never get pushed to the side, and their emotional wellbeing is treated as seriously as either Jack or Kate’s, which is awesome.

I didn’t like the central romance. With Jack, Franny, and Jillian, Reynolds proved that he can write a fun, deep, important relationship. Unfortunately, however, he didn’t put that ability to work for Jack and Kate. For the life of me, I don’t understand what Jack sees in Kate. Or What Kate sees in Jack. They’re both good characters, but together they’re all kinds of bland. No matter how many times I watched them fall in love, I never got it. Forget true love, they don’t even have basic chemistry. I just do not get them as a couple. So I certainly don’t understand why their romance warrants repeated time loops to get it right.

I liked the adults. Jack’s parents are goofy and cringy and very present in Jack’s life. They’re real people, not just cardboard cutouts who only show up to parent when the plot calls for it. Likewise, Franny’s dad is a great character. Terrible guy, great character. Franny’s relationship with his dad is one of the best emotional storylines.

And the Ocean Was Our Sky (Book Review) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I love that the title seems so poetic and deep… but it’s also literal.

Patrick Ness is one of my favorite writers. I’ve been a huge fan of his since I read A Monster Calls for a book club a few years ago. The Rest of Us Just Live Here is one of the first books I reviewed for this blog, and I was pumped to read Release and And the Ocean Was Our Sky even though they’re inspired by classic novels that are decidedly not amongst my favorites (Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, respectively). When I picked up And the Ocean Was Our Sky, I knew that my main takeaway was going to be the answer to one question: which is stronger, my love for Patrick Ness or my hate for Moby-Dick? Seriously. That book has sooo many unnecessary descriptions. The parts that are actual story are good, but that’s like 10% of the book. If you want to write a textbook about whales, just write a textbook about whales. Don’t try to pass it off as a novel.

What’s it about?

Bathsheba is the youngest apprentice to the great hunter Captain Alexandra. Their pod, like all hunter pods, has one goal: hunt and kill humans. But for Captain Alexandra—and therefore for Bathsheba—it goes deeper than that. They are destined to hunt the dangerous, mythological Toby Wick, who hunts with a single ship and has left untold hundreds of whales dead. When their pod comes across a human survivor of a wreck with Toby Wick’s calling card clutched in his hand, they know that—if destiny is real—it has come for them.

So what won? My love of Patrick Ness or my hate of Moby-Dick?

My love of Patrick Ness.

What’d I think?

I knew that And the Ocean Was Our Sky was based on Moby-Dick, but I did not know that the protagonists are to going be whales. It’s pretty cool, but it took me entirely surprised. When I first figured that out, I was hesitant. Talking-animal stories aren’t my thing. It took a little while to get oriented (the whales have boats? Their world is the inverse of the human world, not just beneath it? They actively try to kill humans and harvest the remains?), but once I did I was fully onboard. The whales aren’t exactly like humans, but the core of them is quite similar, and the novel focuses on very human issues: the nature of good and evil, self-fulfilling prophecy, the power of reputation, etc.

And the Ocean Was Our Sky defies description. Describing it makes it sound, honestly, terrible. If I’d known before starting that the book was about a murderous pod of whales intent on seeking the devil, I probably would’ve been like… pass. But in true Patrick Ness fashion, the writing is lyrical without being self-indulgent and the ideas are big enough to prompt a great discussion. I wish I still ran a book club, because this would be a very fun one to write questions for. The characters are perhaps not the most compelling in the literary world, but this is one of the rare cases where that doesn’t really matter. The main player in this book is humanity, not specific people, so it works.

I wouldn’t say that that this is the most engaging novel I’ve ever read, which is why it did get one star knocked off, but it is still very good and since it goes by so quickly (it’s only 158 pages, and some are illustrated) it doesn’t actually need to draw the reader in more than once or twice.

Lastly, it would be remiss not to mention the illustrations by Rovina Cai. They’re stunning. With a limited color palate she captures Ness’ world perfectly, and even manages to illustrate the parts that made me think, “Surely there’s no way to depict that.”

What’s the verdict?

⭐⭐⭐⭐

While And the Ocean Was Our Sky is not my favorite of Patrick Ness’ works, it is still a very beautiful book. The writing is violent but affecting—helped along by the gorgeous illustrations—and the huge themes are distilled simply but complexly (if that even makes sense) into a deceptively short page-count. Report card: A

The Cardturner (Book Review)

I love Louis Sachar. Holes is one of my all-time favorite novels, and I can remember reading the Wayside School books over and over again when I was younger; they are honestly some of the most hilarious stories I’ve ever read. The Cardturner was published in 2010, and I’d never heard of it until I stumbled upon it at the library this year (2019). I was really excited and a little confused, because it didn’t seem possible that I could be completely unaware of a novel by a popular, bestselling author who is also one of my personal favorites. I hate to say it, but there’s a reason The Cardturner has stayed mostly under the radar.

What’s it about?

Alton’s great-uncle is extremely rich and extremely old, so Alton’s family has been waiting for him to die. They’ve been trying—and failing—to butter up Uncle Lester for years in the hopes that they’ll make off well when the old man finally kicks the bucket. Things seem to be looking up in that regard when Uncle Lester—called Trapp—hires Alton to drive him to and from his bridge sessions and to act as his cardturner. Trapp is blind, which means that he needs Alton to physically play his cards for him. Despite Trapp’s cold-heartedness and apparent lack of interest in Alton as a person, Alton finds himself growing interested in the game and in Trapp’s complicated past personal life.

What’d I think?

In his forward, Sachar writes that, “My publisher, my editor, my wife, and my agent all said I was crazy. ‘No one’s going to want to read a book about bridge!’ they told me on more than one occasion.”

Sachar’s publisher, editor, wife, and agent were right. Here’s the thing. I’d be happy to read a book about bridge players. I don’t want to read a book about BRIDGE. When the story focuses on Alton’s relationship with Trapp, it’s interesting. Alton slowly gets to the bottom of the mystery surrounding Annabel, Trapp’s former bridge partner, and it’s heartbreaking and fascinating. It’s not quite Sam-and-Katherine from Holes, but it’s definitely affecting.