Review of I Don’t Wish You Well, Jumata Emill

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Mystery, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

I Don’t Wish You Well

by Jumata Emill
read by André Santana and five more

Listening Library, 2026. 10 hours, 7 minutes.
Review written June 9, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I Don’t Wish You Well is a novel about a teen journalist digging into an old murder case for a school project. When I realized that, I almost stopped the audiobook right there, because I’ve seen that basic plot before, and often it has felt like artificial motivation. I’m so glad I kept going. This book has lots of heart and plenty of layers of complexity in both the mystery and the multiple social issues behind the murders. Plus, the protagonist, Pryce Cummings, was a kid I grew to love – and his deeper motivation quickly became clear.

The novel opens as Pryce is on his way home after his Freshman year of college, where he’s a journalism major and has gotten some good articles published. He’s a little sore that he wasn’t chosen as a summer intern in the journalism department, even though that’s unheard of for Freshmen.

But he sees a comment on an article about a five-year-old murder case from his hometown – that maybe Douce, the Black gay teen everyone thought was responsible, didn’t murder the four football players after all. So Pryce pitches to his professor that he’ll investigate the murders while he’s home for the summer and do a podcast in the Fall.

Sure enough, when he interviews the commenter on his way home – he learns that the alleged murderer – who was found dead with a gun in his hand and evidence in his room – actually was hours away on the night of the first murder, but the police would never listen to his testimony.

Pryce has a personal interest in clearing that boy’s name. He is also gay, but not out to his parents. The whole town sees the murders as proof that being gay is depraved and sinful. Maybe if Pryce finds out the truth he can change the narrative.

And so Pryce begins asking questions. And begins finding things out. It turns out that the four football players who were killed had dark secrets in their pasts – and reasons many people may have wanted them dead. But if that happened, why did they kill and frame Douce? And why didn’t the police follow up other leads?

Since this is happening in a novel, we’re not actually surprised when Pryce’s investigation puts him in danger. The original killers wore a Trojan mask (used to celebrate the town’s football team), so it’s unnerving when Pryce starts seeing a shadowy figure wearing a Trojan mask.

Besides that, it’s Pryce’s brother’s senior year coming up – and he’s planning to lead the team to a winning football season. The football fans in town, which is pretty much everyone, aren’t happy about Pryce stirring up old ghosts.

The title? That’s because most people in town don’t actually want to know the truth. So they don’t wish him well in his efforts.

Once again, my summary doesn’t do this book justice. I was a little impatient with the set-up, but the book quickly got rid of all my skepticism. The case was much more than a class project to Pryce and besides the compelling investigation, he uncovered issues about power dynamics in a football town, about racism and sexism and marginalization of gay people. And it’s all woven together in a story about a kid you come to love.

jumataemill.com

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Review of Blood at the Root, by LaDarrion Williams

Award Winners, Paranormal, Teen Fiction Review 0

Blood at the Root

by LaDarrion Williams

Labyrinth Road, 2024. 419 pages.
Review written April 29, 2025, from a library book.
2024 Cybils Award Finalist, Young Adult Speculative Fiction

Blood at the Root is about a boy who learns he has magic in his veins and can go to a school for others like him and learn to control and wield his powers. Sound familiar? In this case, the boy is a Black boy named Malik, who’s been living in foster care for ten years, since he was seven. That was when his power manifested, his mother disappeared, and he remembers dead bodies in the noise and confusion. So he’s always felt responsible for his mother’s death.

But now Malik is seventeen, and he’s been emancipated. He’s going to break his young foster brother Taye out of a bad situation and head to California to start a new life.

But things don’t go as planned – and Malik’s powerful magical grandmother finds them. She sends Malik to the oldest HBCU of them all – Caiman University, where the students learn to harness their power. Malik gives in to the scheme after he’s sees pictures of his Mama at Caiman. Maybe he can find out what actually happened to her.

Meanwhile, kids are disappearing both inside and outside Caiman U, and some are being found with their magic drained. There’s talk that the dreaded Bokors are coming back, and rumors that Malik’s mother knew something about them.

You’ve got your traditional good-vs-evil story as Malik tries to learn to use his magic as well as figure out whom he can trust and which side is the good side.

This isn’t a kids’ magic school. It’s a university, and there’s plenty of cussing and partying, plus plenty of violence and some sex. I personally prefer fantasy novels where I understand how the magic works and have a better idea of where the plot is going and the motivations of the characters. This one did keep me reading. Where Blood at the Root shines is how the magic is rooted in Black history and culture. I love the dedication:

This is dedicated to the seventeen-year-old Black boy who the world told he doesn’t have magic.

Lemme let you in on a lil’ secret: you do.
It is in your blood; it is nestled deep in your bones.
It is in the very soil you walk on that’s been blessed by the sweat and tears of your ancestors.
Walk in it with pride.

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Review of Love at Second Sight, by F. T. Lukens

Audiobooks, Paranormal, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Love at Second Sight

by F. T. Lukens
read by Kevin R. Free

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2025. 11 hours, 41 minutes.
Review written May 29, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I love F. T. Lukens’ books! An Kevin R. Free reading them has gotten me feeling like I’m listening to a story told by a lovable friend.

Love at Second Sight is set in a world just like ours – except magic and paranormal abilities are completely normal. And so is being queer. In fact, queer is probably not the right term to use, because nobody bats an eye at Cam, our protagonist, having a crush on another boy. And everybody is fine with Cam’s best friend Al using they/them pronouns. People are cool with Al’s two moms.

But paranormal abilities, though all around them, are not quite as accepted by people like Cam’s parents. They’re hoping that for Cam’s Sophomore year of high school, he’ll make some new friends and spend less time with Al, who’s a witch. Cam doesn’t tell them about his crush on a werewolf. He’s starting at a new high school that has a much higher percentage of paranormal students than his old one.

And that first day of Sophomore year does not go well. First some little things go wrong, and then he gets stuck in the middle of a large fight between werewolves and sprites in the middle of a hall. He gets thrown against some lockers, and while he’s out cold, he has a vision of a girl who’s been stabbed and seems to be dying, and Cam in the vision is holding a bloody knife in his hands.

As things develop, it turns out that Cam has a paranormal gift that’s incredibly rare – he’s a clairvoyant who gets true visions of the future when someone touches him.

But that brings up the questions: Who touched him in the hallway? Who is the bloody girl? Can he warn her and save her life? And can he keep his parents from finding out?

After a video of Cam having another clairvoyant vision goes viral, Cam gathers a hodgepodge team of friends who help him deal with his new fame and help him identify the girl and try to save her. At the same time, all the various paranormal guilds and factions want to recruit him to form an exclusive relationship with them and give them an advantage over any adversaries.

There are plenty of obstacles and angst along the way, as well as time with that werewolf Cam has a crush on. The book is full of suspense with a mystery to solve, but plenty of humor to go along with it. And you can’t help feeling for a kid who thought he was a normal human suddenly having paranormal powers everybody wants a piece of.

Although the book is completely absorbing as a story and was not written as a parable, there are some parallels between how Cam is treated with paranormal abilities and how queer people are treated in our world. Those added resonance and made some horrible reactions feel all too believable. This also made me all the more satisfied with the lovely happy ending. This book left me smiling.

ft-lukens.com

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Review of Everything We Never Had, by Randy Ribay

Audiobooks, Award Winners, Historical, Teen Fiction Review 0

Everything We Never Had

by Randy Ribay
read by Ramón de Ocampo, Jesse Inocalla, Manny Jacinto, and J. B. Tadena

Listening Library, 2024. 6 hours, 42 minutes.
Review written April 29, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
2025 Asian/Pacific American Award for Young Adult Literature Winner
National Book Award Longlist

Everything We Never Had is a story of four generations of Filipino-American men. The first was Francisco, who came after World War II and tried to make money to send home to his family – but found instead prejudice, hatred, and low wages.

Francisco’s son Emil hated the way his father was never home, always traveling to organize the farm workers. He chose a different path and planned to go to college and make something of himself.

Emil’s son Chris wanted to play football and study history. But his father wanted him to focus on studies that would get him a good job some day.

And Chris’s son Enzo is dealing with anxiety. There’s talk of a pandemic, and his father asks him if he will give up his room so Lolo Emil can stay with them instead of in the retirement community. Enzo knows that Chris doesn’t like being with his father, and Emil doesn’t like being with them, but they can’t let him get sick and die.

I liked the way this book gives us insights into the things each generation had to deal with, including lots of history – and how it led to misunderstandings. The stories are interwoven a bit at a time, so I didn’t get the insights on most until after I’d already seen ways they weren’t a very good father. So this is an interesting exercise in learning to see from new perspectives.

Each man as a father tries to give his son everything he never had. Some are more successful than others. In the present-day pandemic, three generations need to learn to get along.

randyribay.com

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Review of Tall Water, by SJ Sindu and Dion MBD

Contemporary, Graphic Novel, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Tall Water

by SJ Sindu and Dion MBD

HarperAlley, 2025. 248 pages.
Review written February 17, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review
2026 Asian/Pacific American Literature Award, Young Adult Honor

Nimmi hasn’t seen her mother since she was a baby. Now she’s applying to universities to be a journalist, like her father. Her parents met when he was covering the war in Sri Lanka, and when his press pass expired, he took their baby to the United States, but her mother wasn’t able to get a visa to come join them.

Now after many years, her father’s press pass has been renewed, so he’s going to Sri Lanka. He says it’s too dangerous for Nimmi to come, but she takes matters into her own hands and joins him, because she wants to meet her mother.

Once there, Nimmi indeed sees some tough things. Her mother’s working at a UNICEF orphanage, being a mother to kids who need her.

And then the “Tall Water” of the title hits.

This graphic novel tells a powerful story with moving illustrations, gorgeously drawn. I read it in about a half-hour, and then I had to sit with it for a bit, because it that quickly got into my heart.

sjsindu.com
dionmbd.com

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Review of The Heart of the World, by Amie Kaufman

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Heart of the World

by Amie Kaufman
read by Nikki Patel, Homer Todiwalla, Suzie Rai, Vidish Athavale, Mela Lee, and Steve West

Listening Library, 2024. 11 hours, 22 minutes.
Review written March 25, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I have to say that I love the new trend of writing duologies instead of trilogies. There’s still some suspense waiting for the next volume, but you don’t have to do it all over again and wait for a third volume.

The Heart of the World finishes the story begun in The Isles of the Gods, about a prince and a sailor girl involved in international politics, doing magic, and meddling with the gods.

There’s no way to really set up this book without giving away what happens at the end of the first book, so let me speak in general terms. You’ve got five main viewpoint characters all voiced with different narrators. In this book, the gods find a way to show up in the human world, channeling some of their power through our protagonists and antagonist. And the gods are spoiling for a fight.

The last time the gods fought, an entire country was turned into a barren wasteland. Can our heroes stop the gods? Do they even want to, or is the gods’ influence too great?

A nice touch in this volume is that Selly is able to help Leander bear the load of the goddess’s power.

The audio production for both books is outstanding, with all the narrators excellent, and my all-time favorite audiobook narrator, Steve West, voicing the prince. The characters I was getting tired of in the first volume got more interesting when empowered by a god and when planning a double cross. Oh, and there’s a scholar who tries to save the world through research – with several great lines about how awesome librarians are.

This is a tale well-told of magic and power and love. May our characters keep the world from getting blown apart.

amiekaufman.com

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Review of Casters and Crowns, by Elizabeth Lowham

Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Casters and Crowns

by Elizabeth Lowham
read by Nick Mondelli and Jess Moran

Shadow Mountain Publishing, 2024. 12 hours.
Review written April 14, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Casters and Crowns is a sweet young adult fantasy and romance novel. I think of “Romantasy” as having sex scenes, so I’m not going to call it that, but there’s love across obstacles.

The setting is a kingdom where magic users are scorned and literally branded. And if shapeshifters are discovered, they are killed on the spot – though it is believed that they only turn up once every hundred years, so killing a shapeshifter forty years ago should have saved the kingdom for another sixty years.

There was one Caster in court – the widow of a nobleman. After her son is killed as a spy, she starts causing trouble against the king. Crown Princess Aria wants to prove herself as ready to rule, so she decides to visit the widow and negotiate peace. And then she gets cursed for her trouble. If she doesn’t find a way to break the curse in one hundred days – without being able to talk about it to anyone – she and all her family will die.

There was one other Caster at court, Guillaume Reeves, the other viewpoint character of this audiobook. His father recently died, but the king hasn’t yet allowed him to officially take his father’s position – because how could they allow such an honor to a Caster? Especially with the widow stirring up trouble?

But Aria meets Guillaume and wonders if she can learn from him enough about casting and curses to break the one on herself. Never mind that he’s handsome and kind. But both of them are keeping secrets from one another.

The book does have the trope of the harsh king with an heir who wants to turn things around. But I did find it refreshing that this time the heir was a young lady and the romantic interest oppressed by the king was a nobleman in his own right. (I’ve seen some with the opposite gender situation and it starts to feel like an abuse of power. None of that here.)

The characters are the kind you like to be around, with motivations like Aria wanting to prove herself and Guillaume wanting to protect his younger brothers. I like the thought given – even in a fantasy kingdom – to how governing should work. I enjoyed this one thoroughly.

elizabethlowham.com

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Review of Cursed Boys and Broken Hearts, by Adam Sass

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Teen Fiction Review 0

Cursed Boys and Broken Hearts

by Adam Sass
read by Torian Brackett

Listening Library, 2024. 9 hours, 25 minutes.
Review written March 24, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.

Here’s a gay teen romance that’s formulaic and predictable – but completely sweet.

I’m still blaming Annabel Monaghan’s book Nora Goes Off Script, about a writer for the Romance channel finding her own romance, for me noticing when a Romance Novel follows a pattern. But even though I knew where this book was going, I kept listening and enjoyed the ride.

The protagonist is Grant Rossi, a designer who’s been in a funk for a year since his boyfriend left him. He’s convinced that he’s cursed to always be left ever since he made a wish on his family’s legendary Wishing Rose at 13 years old – he’s convinced it doesn’t work for gay boys, especially since after making his wish, his childhood crush Ben got together with his summer boyfriend and dropped Grant. That all happened at Grant’s grandma’s funeral, and Grant hasn’t been back to the family vineyard and B&B since.

But now, to get out of his funk, Grant shows up at the vineyard and spends his summer helping his aunt and uncle bring it back into shape so they won’t have to sell it. There’s a lot of work to do, and Grant’s social media following will help – but then he discovers that Ben is there, working as a gardener, also helping get it all back into shape.

Oh, there’s also a nice thread about mental illness – Grant’s been diagnosed with anxiety – and nice modeling of making contact again with his therapist and restarting his meds to help him function better.

And, yeah, you can tell where this is going. There’s a big Rose Festival at the end to work toward. There are big misunderstandings and years of resentment to clear up. And Grant and Ben just happen to get thrown together and must work together to save the family business.

It all adds up to a fluffy story and a sweet romance. But sometimes fluffy and sweet hits just right.

adamsassbooks.com

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Review of The Faraway Inn, by Sarah Beth Durst

Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Faraway Inn

by Sarah Beth Durst
read by Soneela Nankani

Listening Library, 2026. 11 hours, 2 minutes.
Review written April 21, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I’ve loved Sarah Beth Durst’s books for years, so I’m delighted that now they’re hugely popular at the library. The only catch is that it takes longer for a hold to come in. Today I ordered more print copies for the library than my initial purchase because demand was so high – I’m happy that others have found this wonderful author.

The Faraway Inn is an inn deep in the wilds of Vermont. Sixteen-year-old Calisa hasn’t been there since she was very small, when her Mom Kate had a falling-out with Calisa’s great-aunt, Auntie Zee. But now Calisa needs a refuge after she discovered her long-time boyfriend cheating on her. She needs to rethink her whole future and where she’ll apply to college – because it’s not going to be with him. Mom Kate suggests Calisa stay at the Faraway Inn and help out Auntie Zee for the summer.

But apparently Auntie Zee was not in on the plan. She tells Calisa she’s going to have to leave, then gives in that she can stay three days. This is despite the fact that she can obviously use some help. The yard and garden are completely overgrown, inside is rundown, the front porch breaks when Calisa steps on it, and the only staff is Jack, the son of the groundskeeper. The groundskeeper left on a supply run and hasn’t returned.

Auntie Zee tells Calisa there are two rules in the inn: No opening doors without permission, and no asking questions. Calisa quickly accumulates lots of questions. She tries asking Jack, but he’s evasive.

The beginning of the book felt slow to me, because it took Calisa forever to figure out there was magic going on. I had to remind myself that she didn’t know she’s a character in a fantasy novel, so she wasn’t primed for it like I was as a reader. But the book becomes delightful after the magic becomes impossible to ignore, and it’s more a matter of finding out how it works to solve some tough problems – like finding Jack’s dad. And getting the inn in better shape for guests. Yes, there’s some romance, but it stays sweet and low-key.

There’s also some fun magic wildness in the guests from other realms, and it ends up being a happy story full of magical possibilities. And like Sarah Beth Durst’s other books (Go back and read them if you’re only discovering her now!), it’s a whole lot of fun.

sarahbethdurst.com

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Review of The Brightness Between Us, by Eliot Schrefer, read by James Fouhey

Audiobooks, Science Fiction, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Brightness Between Us

by Eliot Schrefer
read by James Fouhey

HarperCollins, 2024. 11 hours, 3 minutes.
Review written February 8, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

The Brightness Between Us is a sequel to The Darkness Outside Us – and it’s very much a sequel. Don’t read the second without reading the first. The good news is that both are outstanding. I was lucky that I didn’t start the first until after the second was out, so the only waiting I did was for my hold to come in.

This book begins on a distant planet with Ambrose and Kodiak, the universe’s last two surviving humans – and now two children, Owl and Yarrow, who were born from zygotes sent across the galaxy in their ship. Yarrow turns sixteen at the start of the book, and Owl will reach that age soon. So far, they are the only children to survive out of many attempts.

Our fledgling human settlement is up against two major challenges in this book. First, external to them, is the fact that the planet where they live is prone to comet strikes. They need to make a bunker before the next one strikes. The second one is more personal to them. Yarrow has undergone a strange personality change since his sixteenth birthday. He’s getting intrusive thoughts about killing all his loved ones.

And then a beacon appears – falling from space – with lights specifically telling Ambrose and Kodiak to find it. Well, it lands somewhere out in the unexplored part of the planet, where Owl has been hoping to explore anyway.

And after the beacon appears, the narration takes us back to earth many thousand years in the past – to the original Ambrose and Kodiak shortly after they learned that their supposed mission to Titan was a ruse.

And in the process of going back and forth between the two time periods, we learn more about the original twosome (and I love that they ended up meeting each other and together trying to escape capture). But we also learn that there is a reason for some of the troubles of the colony – and why the beacon got sent to try to fix them.

Now, the whole thing about the sabotage – that was the first place in this whole saga where the science got hard for me to believe. Let me just say I’m skeptical about that whole part. And I also wasn’t thrilled to go back to the younger, more hedonistic and immature Ambrose character. But once I got past those things, it was good to again watch Ambrose and Kodiak learning to work together. And the situation certainly gave the characters on the planet challenges to overcome together.

And honestly, by the time the book was past about the halfway point, I found myself looking for more excuses to listen. These characters – in all their iterations – have firmly found a place in my heart.

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