Review of Celestial Monsters, by Aiden Thomas,

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Teen Fiction Review 0

Celestial Monsters

by Aiden Thomas
read by André Santana

Macmillan Young Listeners, 2024. 12 hours, 36 minutes.
Review written January 25, 2025, from a library eaudiobook

I finally got the sequel to The Sunbearer Trials read. It’s been a while, but it didn’t take too long to remember what happened at the end of the other book before those dread words “To Be Continued.” Let’s just say that their world is on the brink of the apocalypse, and Teo needs to save it, with the help of his best friend and the semidios boy he’s in love with.

I still enjoy the world of this story – a modern world, but it’s ruled by gods, which I think are mostly from Mayan mythology. There are quite a few transgender characters, one who switches to gender neutral pronouns in this book, which everyone is agreeable to – and it’s awfully refreshing.

The story itself is a bit too much like an older Rick Riordan book (older because more swearing) for me to get hugely invested. I have trouble with the mythology that requires human sacrifice – or any sacrifice – and I can’t quite understand how any world could get by a couple weeks without the sun. Ummm, how does that work, even if the sun is really the sun god? It’s best not to ask and try to immerse yourself in the story.

Other than that, there were lots of fights with the powerful “Celestials” released by the failure at the end of the last book. And an overarching plan to make things right that left a lot to chance. There were relationship things going on, and one of the viewpoint characters was the person who caused all the trouble, and they were beginning to get an inkling that was probably a bad idea. Our main character figuring out that sacrificing a child of the gods every ten years was a bad idea didn’t hit me too hard, I’m afraid, because, Duh? (I know, it’s what they grew up with. But I wasn’t super satisfied with what the alternative was, either.)

All that said, it’s a fantasy story with a main character who has wings and can talk to birds – which may not be as good in a fight as the powers the other demigods have, but it seems like it’s a lot more fun.

aiden-thomas.com

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Review of On the Bright Side, by Anna Sortino

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

On the Bright Side

by Anna Sortino
read by Jesse Inocalla and Elizabeth Robbins

Listening Library, 2024. 8 hours, 41 minutes.
Review written January 17, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2024 CYBILS Award Finalist, Young Adult Fiction
2025 Schneider Family Honor Book, Teens

This is now the third Young Adult Fiction CYBILS Finalist I’ve read and oh my goodness, the second-round judges are going to have a difficult decision. I read Anna Sortino’s first book, Give Me a Sign, in 2023 for the Morris Award, and although it wasn’t a Finalist, let’s just say that I remembered it and wouldn’t have guessed it was a debut if I hadn’t been specifically reading debut novels.

That first one was about a group of deaf kids. This one features one deaf girl, Ellie, and begins when her boarding school that had immersive American Sign Language is being shut down – right before her Senior year of high school.

Ellie had gone to that school since she was twelve, and she’d been dating her boyfriend since then. But now he’s moving to the other side of the state, and he doesn’t want to try to keep things going long distance. So Ellie has to go to a school with hearing kids, and she’s been torn away from everything she’s used to.

And her home isn’t a refuge. Ellie has a hearing aid and cochlear implants and she reads lips, so her parents never bothered to learn sign language. Her hearing sister is heading off to college, so her parents are stuck with her, and it feels to Ellie like they’re obviously settling for the less preferred daughter. So she’s got a lot she’s not happy about that first day of high school.

Our other narrator is Jackson. He was on the soccer team last year, and just as he was about to kick the ball and win the state championship, his leg went numb and crumpled on him. He was fine afterward, so everyone thought he just choked. But more and more weird things happen to him. His parents are both health nuts who urge him to work through anything.

And he’s a nice guy, involved in lots of things at the high school. So the guidance counselor asks him to help make the new deaf student comfortable and give her a tour of the school.

The book is about their budding relationship, but meanwhile, Jackson is having more and more weird things going on with his body – numbness, vertigo, fatigue, and more. On a day that he’d planned to go to a museum with Ellie for extra credit, he ends up with severe vertigo and vomiting. His parents take him to Urgent Care, where he’s given a CT scan, which is normal. By the time the doctor sees him, the vertigo has passed. So they tell him it’s probably benign positional vertigo and give him some exercises to do.

My goodness I wasn’t prepared for how hard that scene would hit me! The thing is – back in 2011, when I was 47, I had severe vertigo and vomiting – and the E.R. did a CT scan, but by the time I saw the doctor, I felt better. They told me my migraines had changed and sent me home – and it turned out to have been a stroke, which we learned when I had another worse one a couple days later. So I was just cringing for Jackson when I heard this scene. No! Don’t send him home!

And Jackson continues to have strange symptoms – and in the present day, I’ve been having a set of strange symptoms – not exactly like Jackson’s, but including vertigo – and that part just built tension in me. Especially with his parents urging him to “shake it off” and not be lazy.

I won’t tell you his diagnosis, but it’s all described so vividly that I wasn’t surprised when the author said in a note at the end that this is a condition she shares.

The book is an excellent story about two teens getting to know each other and dealing with some hard things – but it’s also a great look at disability and how it’s not obvious when you’re looking at someone that they have a disability. And it’s also not their fault. Sometimes life throws hard things at a person, but you keep your identity. Ellie is good at giving Jackson perspective on his new disability, and it all unfolds in a realistic way as they navigate what it means for their relationship.

annasortino.com

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Review of The Sunbearer Trials, by Aiden Thomas

Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Sunbearer Trials

by Aiden Thomas

Feiwel and Friends, 2022. 405 pages.
Review written October 28, 2022, from a library book
Starred Review

Here’s another wonderful fantasy with a transgender character front and center. As with the outstanding book Cemetery Boys, there is again a gendered element to the magic. In Teo’s case, he’s the son of Quetzal, the goddess of birds, and has wings. Those wings are brown and dull-colored like a female bird, even though he’s been taking testosterone for about a year. So instead of binding his breasts, which he no longer needs to do after top surgery, he binds his wings to hide them.

But that isn’t central to the plot (and we know from the beautiful cover picture that’s going to work out). What the book is mainly about are the Sunbearer Trials.

As a prologue, we get the story of how the gods made humans and the land of Reina del Sol. There’s also a hierarchy of gods, which is explained, with the Gold gods next after Sol and the Jade gods after that. Then there are the Obsidian gods who are selfish and destructive and whom Sol bound in the heavens by sacrificing their life.

Every ten years, there must be a new sacrifice to renew that protection. And to choose the sacrifice, ten children of gods compete in the Sunbearer Trials. The winner becomes the Sunbearer, who goes to the cities of Reina del Sol with the renewed Sol Stone. The loser becomes the new sacrifice.

So it’s a little like the Hunger Games, except only one competitor dies.

With that mythical background, I was surprised to find the story is about a modern civilization with television and internet and posts going viral. But gods, dioses, live among humans. Teo is a semidios, one of the children of a god.

The Gold semidioses go to a special Academy to train to be heroes. With the abilities they inherit from their parents, it’s expected that they will spend their lives protecting humans, and they train for the Sunbearer Trials along the way. Teo’s mother Quetzal is a Jade goddess, so Jade has to go to public school with mortals. The only ability he inherited, besides his wings, is the ability to talk with birds.

Normally, all the competitors in the Sunbearer Trials are Gold semidioses. But this year, Teo is chosen, and so is thirteen-year-old Xio, the son of the god of Bad Luck. It doesn’t seem at all fair, since neither Teo nor Xio has been trained for the trials, so Teo is determined to help Xio not be the sacrifice, as well as trying to avoid it himself.

Warning: This book ends with the words To Be Continued. But the book itself tells about the Sunbearer Trials, which take place in five different cities of Reino Del Sol. So you learn much about that world along the way.

Teo isn’t the only queer character in the book, and nonbinary characters and people with two dads (for example) are considered completely normal, which is all lovely and refreshing. And one of the semidioses competing was Teo’s best friend when they were much younger, but ever since he started at the Academy, he treats Teo as if all that meant nothing.

This book reminded me very much of Rick Riordan books, since, after all, it involves half-gods. There’s also witty banter and smart aleck remarks between the characters. Which all is not necessarily my favorite kind of fantasy, but kids do like it, and I did love the inclusion of multiple genders as a matter of course. There were some details about the world that made me wonder, but it was so much fun hearing about the different gods’ cities, I didn’t let that bother me as much as I might have if I weren’t as invested in the story.

And yes, I will want to find out what happens next.

aiden-thomas.com
fiercereads.com

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Review of Shut Up, This Is Serious, by Carolina Ixta, read by

Award Winners, Contemporary, Teen Fiction Review 0

Shut Up, This Is Serious

by Carolina Ixta
read by Frankie Corzo

Quill Tree Books, 2024. 10 hours, 19 minutes.
Review written January 22, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
2025 Morris Award Finalist
2025 Pura Belpré Young Adult Author Award

Shut Up, This Is Serious is about a high school senior named Belén whose life seems like it’s falling apart. Her best friend Leti is pregnant, and Leti’s going to love that baby – but she hasn’t yet dared to tell her racist parents that her boyfriend, the baby’s father, is Black.

As for Belén – she stopped caring about classes last year when her father left them and took her mom’s savings. Belén feels like no one even sees her anymore. So when she finds a college guy who’s willing to have sex with her, she doesn’t let herself notice all the things that are wrong with that, because it makes the heaviness lift for a little while.

But when she learns she has to complete one major English assignment in order to save her grade and graduate, she’s also paired with a partner whose hopes of going to the college of his choice are riding on it, too.

And that description doesn’t do justice to all the ways the pressures on Belén are portrayed and interwoven. She does lots of coping in bad ways, but let me say that the story does end with a hopeful note, and it’s an earned hope through the novel.

I was on the Morris Award committee a year ago, so it’s fun to see what they’ve discovered this year. I’ll admit it wasn’t my favorite read – a little too painful to read about the ways she wasn’t coping well. But wearing my committee hat, I do want to say that this is an outstanding debut novel, with nuanced characters and situations, and I hope the first of many more to come from this author.

carolinaixta.com

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Review of The Darkness Outside Us, by Eliot Schrefer, read by James Fouhey

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

The Darkness Outside Us

by Eliot Schrefer
read by James Fouhey

HarperAudio, 2021. 9 hours, 49 minutes.
Review written January 10, 2025, from a library eaudiobook
Starred Review

Wow! I’d be very sorry I missed reading this book in its publication year – except for the lovely fact that I have the sequel in my Holds queue already. This is powerful space travel science fiction, with a side of a sweet love story between two young men.

The book is narrated by Ambrose Cusk, the son of the powerful owner of the Cusk Space Travel Corporation and the DNA of Alexander the Great. He’s been training for space travel, and he wakes up on a spaceship on a planned mission to rescue his sister Minerva, who sent out a distress beacon from Titan.

Funny thing, though – he doesn’t remember the launch. The ship’s operating system, which has his mother’s voice, tells him he was in a coma for two weeks. Next he discovers that his ship has been joined to a ship from the one other country on earth, Demokratea, and there is a space traveler on the other side of the ship, named Kodiak. Both of them have been assigned maintenance tasks that the O.S. tells them are urgent to accomplish before they arrive on Titan.

Ambrose works little by little on earning Kodiak’s trust. Unfortunately, at the same time, they lose trust in the operating system. It won’t explain to them why neither of them remembers the launch. Or why some other details don’t add up. And then Ambrose finds some blood and hair with DNA that matches his own, but no memory of such an injury.

Well, solving this mystery is by no means the end of the book. Dealing with what they learn is what makes the book so interesting. And the ins and outs are expertly crafted. I have to say that I can get extremely nitpicky about science fiction, and easily skeptical as to whether things described could actually work. In this case, there was nothing in the book that triggered my skepticism at all, and I loved the way the author thought of repercussions and reactions to what was happening that seemed realistic when they happened – but hadn’t crossed my mind at all. (I hope that’s vague enough to be intriguing without giving anything away!)

This was also a lovely exploration of love during extreme circumstances. Ambrose and Kodiak don’t have anyone else to love, but the book beautifully showed how their love and appreciation for each other grows under duress.

And there’s so much more I wish I could say! In couched terms, I will also say that this is a book that could have gotten repetitive, and I loved the way the author kept the reader guessing and expanded on the ideas in surprising ways. He also had the two teens acting consistently with their characters – but still surprising us and making us think about the emotional and psychological turmoil they were going through – and how we might react in such a case.

Okay, I’ve probably said enough. If you like science fiction at all, read this book!

eliotschrefer.com

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Review of Give Me a Sign, by Anna Sortino, read by Elizabeth Robbins

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Give Me a Sign

by Anna Sortino
read by Elizabeth Robbins

Listening Library, 2023. 9 hours, 21 minutes.
Review written September 23, 2023, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Give Me a Sign is a story about Lilah, a 17-year-old who’s hard of hearing and looking to find her place in both Hearing culture and Deaf culture. Her school friends seem to get tired of repeating themselves when Lilah doesn’t understand, but they also aren’t careful about letting her see their lips when they talk so she can use lip-reading to help. When Lilah lands a summer job at a camp for the Deaf and Blind that she once attended as a camper, she looks forward to increasing her American Sign Language fluency – but when she arrives, she wishes she could pick it up more quickly.

There’s not a whole lot of plot to this book, but there’s enough to keep it going. Will the potential summer romance with that cute Deaf counselor work out? Will the camp get enough funding to continue, or will this be its last year of existence?

What drives the book, though, is Lilah’s interactions with the world around her. And that window into her world is fascinating enough to make this book a great read (or listen). She has some hearing, so she struggles whether she’s even “allowed” to call herself Deaf. And her family never taught her to sign, so can she learn, or should she continue to just try to fit in with the hearing folks around her?

Lilah encounters people from many different backgrounds in this book, and there’s a strong message that people have different responses to their own hearing loss, and each person should get to make their own choice about how they want to live in the world, whether hearing aids or cochlear implants or sign language, or some combination of all of the above. She also learns to speak up for herself and not be ashamed of being Deaf and to tell her friends what she needs.

And all of this is wrapped up in a fun story of summer camp, so its strong message doesn’t feel like medicine, but like an interesting window into someone else’s world. I also imagine that for many Deaf teens out there, it may provide the delightful experience of seeing someone like themselves as a protagonist. The author reminds us at the end that Lilah’s experience isn’t representative of every Deaf person’s experience. But the book itself does a lovely job reminding us that we are all individuals and we should all be able to make our own choices.

annasortino.com

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Review of Icarus, by K. Ancrum

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Icarus

by K. Ancrum
read by Kirt Graves

HarperTeen, 2024. 8 hours, 32 minutes.
Review written January 14, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2024 CYBILS Award Finalist, Young Adult Fiction

Oh my goodness. After the CYBILS Award Finalists were announced, I put all the books on hold (I do a program for other librarians about award winners, and this *probably* gives me a head start for ALA award winners), and this was one of the first audiobooks to come in. And it is amazingly good! If the other Finalists are anywhere close, the second round judges are going to have a difficult time.

This isn’t a retelling of the Greek myth, but it borrows themes from the myth. Our hero is indeed Icarus, a teen who lives alone with his father, but he lives in modern times. He and his father are both expert artists – but they’re also expert thieves. Icarus has been trained all his life to steal objects of art from the mansion of Angus Black and replace them with forgeries. And now that his father’s hands have begun to shake, all the active work falls on Icarus.

At school, Icarus makes a point of having one friend in each class – so that he’s not part of a friend group that expects him to do things with him after school. He’s never had anybody over to his house, and he never can have anybody over to his house. His goal is to stay under the radar.

But then some of those classroom friends start noticing that he can’t stay awake. They seem to care, which Icarus isn’t sure he can handle.

At the same time, Icarus gets spotted when stealing in the Black mansion – Angus Black’s son is there, with no phone and no internet and a cuff to keep him in place. They develop a friendship that looks like it’s going toward romance – and as the reader, I got awfully worried about how it would turn out once it was revealed that the son’s name is Helios. Because I know how that story ends.

So there’s lots and lots of tension in this book, and teens in tough situations – but there are also beautiful portrayals of friendship. Icarus learns how to be a friend and how to accept friendship. And all of the interactions and character growth make this book shine brightly – while keeping up the tension throughout the whole book. And yes, tender romance. Oh, and the audiobook is wonderfully done, too. This book will linger with me for a long time to come.

kancrum.com

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Review of Twenty-four Seconds from Now…, by Jason Reynolds

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Twenty-four Seconds from Now . . .

A LOVE Story

by Jason Reynolds
read by Guy Lockard

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2024. 4 hours, 28 minutes.
Review written January 7, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2024 CYBILS Award Finalist, Young Adult Fiction
2025 Capitol Choices selection

Yes, this is a book about a seventeen-year-old boy having sex for the first time. And it turns out to be very sweet.

I was afraid it would go into detail about each second building up to the moment of connection. But no, it’s much more interesting than that. It does open with “Right now” where the teenage boy, Neon, is in the bathroom of his girlfriend Aria’s house, looking at a picture of her dog – a dog he dislikes that is now living in his own house – and feeling extremely nervous about what’s supposed to happen in approximately twenty-four seconds from now.

But instead of going into excruciating detail about those seconds, the story backtracks to 24 seconds before that – when they were kissing in her bedroom, and he had to excuse himself to go to the bathroom, he was so nervous.

But then we look at 24 minutes before that – when he was using the whole note knocker on her front door (made by his family’s door knocker company), bringing her the chicken nuggets that she loves.

And then it switches to 24 hours before that – when he was interviewing other students for their high school’s video yearbook, which Aria also works on. And he was having his sister make a special door knocker for Aria to take to college with her. And his sister has some good advice about what’s going to happen.

And then we move to 24 days before that – when he walks with his Gammy and that same dog to visit his grandfather’s grave and he hears Gammy tell the story of how they met, and gives Neon some advice about love. And he’s talking with Aria because they want to have sex, but they want to make it special. And his mother has some good advice.

And then we see 24 weeks before that – when Neon took the dog off Aria’s hands, because her mother didn’t like his barking – and Gammy fell in love with that dog. And his father has some good advice.

And finally we see what happened 24 months ago, when Neon was at his grandfather’s funeral, and an out-of-control dog interrupted them, and he met Aria, and his life was never the same again.

Before we finally come back to the present and what’s about to happen.

And all of this shows us the story of these two teens and their families. And how much they care for each other and care about each other. And there’s some good advice in what Neon hears.

And no, it doesn’t describe the details. This isn’t a how-to manual. But it shows the thought and care and love that went into the decision these two teens make. A decision that’s ultimately, as it should be, about the two of them.

I don’t think of this as a book that promotes teens having sex so much as a book that promotes teens giving thought and care into their decisions about when and whether to have sex. And it tells a good story, too! The strategy of going backward in time piques our interest and is used extremely effectively.

jasonwritesbooks.com

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Review of Kingdom of Without, by Andrea Tang

Science Fiction, Teen Fiction Review 0

Kingdom of Without

by Andrea Tang

Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2024. 275 pages.
Review written December 19, 2024, from a library book.

I loved the setting of this novel in a future Beijing where society has become literally stratified – the poorest live in the Sixth Ring and have to pass checkpoints to even be allowed to enter the lower rings. The Sixth Ring has a strict curfew, patrolled by androids, and life is difficult. As the book opens, Ning’er has just sold her artificial arm and leg on the black market, because she has a friend who can get her a new one, and she needed cash to make rent on her small place. Her father is addicted to the drug Complacency, and takes any of her money he can access to get more. He is the one who sold her natural limbs long ago to get some cash.

So when Ning’er gets the offer of a job pulling off a heist, she can’t afford to let it go. It turns out the job is from the Red Yaksha, a powerful force of resistance against the current corrupt regime. But when she learns that the person behind the Red Yaksha’s mask is the Young Marshal – the son of a chief minister and an up-and-coming member of the gendarmes – Ning’er has some rethinking to do. If she takes the job, she’ll have to work with a team and break into the biolabs of the corporation that produces Complacency.

So it’s a heist novel with many political ramifications and bad guys who control the lives of the powerless and make those lives worse and worse. I wanted to love the book, but as the heist went down, I’ll just say that some details got murky for me. I very much hope there will be a sequel, and that will make it more clear what actually happened at the end.

All the same, I am a fan of Ning’er, a scrappy girl with a prosthetic arm and leg, scratching out a living – but beginning to hope maybe that changes can be made and that the powers that be aren’t invulnerable.

AndreaTangWrites.com

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Review of My Throat an Open Grave, by Tori Bovalino

Paranormal, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

My Throat an Open Grave

by Tori Bovalino

Page Street YA, 2024. 301 pages.
Review written December 30, 2024, from a library book.
Starred Review

Based on the cover, not being a horror fan, I honestly didn’t expect to even like this book. I expected I’d give up after about twenty pages, deciding it’s not for me. I did not at all expect to read it avidly and to be sorry I was finished at the end because I loved it. I didn’t expect to recognize shades of my own upbringing in its pages and to have my heart go out to the girl telling the story.

Now, I also don’t like books where religious people are the bad guys – except, well, when they deserve to be. This book portrays a rural village in a forest – where the church is the center of the community and it’s all about purity culture. The girls are given a “Love Waits” ring and told that if they “give themselves” before marriage, they will be broken and worthless.

But they’re also told about the Lord of the Wood. Sometimes he comes into the village and takes babies. And then the villagers send a girl to the Lord of the Wood to get the baby back. Only no babies or girls have ever returned.

And now it’s Leah’s turn. She’s convinced that because she was worn down by her baby brother’s cries and wished for respite – that must be why the Lord of the Wood took him away. And her mother is convinced it’s Leah’s fault, too. So the whole village gathers in the church. Her mother brings her forward, the pastor marks her with a bloody hand print, and together the whole village sends her across the river to the Lord of the Wood.

And then she meets the Lord of the Wood, and he’s not what she expected at all. In fact, that part is what made me love the book. There’s a whole community on the other side of the river. They’re kind, compassionate, and patient with Leah, and she begins to be able to see herself more clearly.

There’s magic in this book, and magic in the Lord of the Wood and the community living in the forest. But it’s not the sinister magic Leah was led to believe in, and the people she meets there win her heart, as well as winning over the reader.

But she also has to reckon with what she learned about her home village. And about herself.

This isn’t so much a book for horror fans as it is a book shining light on the damage that purity culture can do and celebrating self-determination and the beauty of young lives – rising above judgment.

Trust me! It’s a wonderful book!

toribovalino.com

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