Review of Bright Red Fruit, by Safia Elhillo, read by the Author

Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Bright Red Fruit

by Safia Elhillo
read by the Author

Listening Library, 2024. 7 hours, 55 minutes.
Review written September 16, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

This book reminds me of The Poet X, by Elizabeth Acevedo. In both books, we’ve got a young poet author writing about a teen poet growing as a poet and learning to perform her poetry – but also in conflict with her mother about a relationship.

In this book, our teen poet is Samira, whose family moved to DC from Somalia. Through no fault of her own, Samira has a reputation with the aunties as a Bad Girl, and she’s tired of her mother not sticking up for her. But when a poet in his twenties shows an interest in Samira and in her work, she feels like here’s finally someone she can talk with about things that matter.

As Samira gets close to Horus online, her girlfriends don’t understand how much he’s come to mean to her. Meanwhile, her aunt encourages Samira’s interest in poetry, but doesn’t know that Samira is using an open mic to meet Horus in person.

There are lots of red flags in the relationship, but we understand why Samira has pulled away from the people who would have helped her see that. I do like the way the book navigates the situation when trouble comes.

All along in the book, there’s a metaphor about Persephone. Persephone doesn’t have a whole lot of agency in the myth and is fooled into eating the bright red fruit of the underworld that dooms her. But the story is told as a struggle between Persephone’s mother and Hades. I like the way this book – and this poet – explores more deeply what it might have been like from Persephone’s perspective.

If I haven’t made it clear, even though I listened to the audiobook version, I could tell that the book is beautifully written in verse. This is one it would probably be worth reading in print form as well as the audiobook to better appreciate the art of the poetry.

safia-mafia.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/bright_red_fruit.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?

Review of One of Us Is Lying, by Karen M. McManus

Contemporary, Mystery, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

One of Us Is Lying

by Karen M. McManus
read by Kim Mai Guest, MacLeod Andrews, Shannon McManus, and Robbie Daymond

Listening Library, 2017. 10 hours, 44 minutes.
Review written June 9, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

So — I finally got this wildly popular teen thriller read after hearing an interview with the author about her 2024 book, Such Charming Liars. I enjoyed this one tremendously.

The set-up is that five high school students get detention with the notoriously technophobic teacher at the school because someone planted a phone in their backpack – all five of them.

And then one of the students has a fatal allergic reaction after drinking water. They try to save him, but his epi-pen is missing, and all the epi-pens have been removed from the nurse’s office. It turns out there was peanut oil in the cup.

All four of the remaining students are suspects. It turns out that they, along with many other students at the high school, had strong motives for killing Simon. He ran a gossip website that was always accurate — and all four of them had secrets queued up on his admin site, ready to post.

There are four narrators to this audiobook because all four of the teens get to give their perspective. Their secrets have repercussions, and the pressures of the school finding out those secrets affect their lives beyond the murder investigation. And of course, there’s a murder investigation going on, too. The four kids include the girl who gets good grades and has her plans for Yale under control, the jock who’s getting recruited to play baseball, the rich girl who runs in the popular crowd, and the social outcast who’s already on probation for drug dealing. Because they’re all viewpoint characters, they all get our sympathy, and we become invested in the question of which one is the murderer.

This is an excellent thriller about interesting characters, and I’m happy to see it ended up being the start of a series, so I’ve got more books on my list immediately.

karenmcmanus.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/one_of_us_is_lying.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Hearts That Cut, by Kika Hatzopoulou, read by Mia Hutchinson-Shaw

Audiobooks, Paranormal, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Hearts That Cut

by Kika Hatzopoulou
read by Mia Hutchinson-Shaw

Listening Library, 2024. 12 hours, 20 minutes.
Review written June 27, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Let me start out by saying that I love the recent trend of fantasy duologies instead of trilogies. Honestly, I’m probably more delighted with it because I’d gotten used to trilogies, so every time I pick up a second book expecting a dark middle act and instead get a triumphant ending and don’t have to wait for more – I’m almost giddy with delight.

I’ve also found that books where I had reservations about the first one in the series, especially world-building details (How would that really work?) – I forget about those reservations when I read the second book probably because I’ve gotten used to the ideas and am now ready to treat them as underlying assumptions. This happened recently with Ghostsmith and happened again with Hearts That Cut. I don’t think this is a flaw in the authors’ world-building. I think it’s my tendency to be highly critical of world-building when it’s first presented to me. In the case of this book’s predecessor, Threads That Bind, it was hard for me to get on board with a world where invisible threads connect people with everything they love. Our heroine, Io, has the ability to see those threads – and cut them. All I could think about was how hopelessly tangled those threads would get. But in this book, I’d already accepted the idea and the magic governing it, and wasn’t worried about that.

Another quibble with the original is the existence of the Otherborn – descendants of gods with specific powers. First off, there are just a multitude of different types of Otherborn, all with a different color shining in their eyes when they exercise their powers, and how would anyone remember them all? But more unrealistic is that certain Otherborn – such as Io’s family – always have a certain number of siblings. And it’s not like Io and her sisters were triplets. What if their parents hadn’t actually wanted to have three kids? Would Io’s older siblings not have gotten their powers? And how are there so many different Otherborn with specific numbers of siblings? Like the nine Muse sisters, for crying out loud? How does that work out?

But I actually didn’t think much about all that when I was listening to this book. (I thought about it again when I went to write this review. Probably shouldn’t have!) And I ended up loving this book. There’s some time manipulation involved in the plot (because of specific powers by certain individuals), and I usually don’t like that – but in this case it was handled well, as a problem to be solved, and I loved how it all came together.

As the book opens, Io is traveling through the Wastelands with Bianca, the former Mob Queen of Alante, who has been turned into a wraith with a severed life thread. She’s trying to track down the gods who ordered the deaths at the end of the last book, and she has hold of a gold thread leading her in that direction. But that plan gets stymied.

She’s left behind Edei, the young man she’s connected to with a Fate thread, and worries that the thread is fraying. Does Edei not want to be with her? And does he feel manipulated into loving her?

I like the way the plot progresses – though I don’t want to give away anything from the first book. I like the community spirit in the Wastelands that Io and Bianca find among people fleeing the many natural disasters gripping their continent. And I like the scrappy band of folks who eventually assemble and who try to make things right against all odds.

So whatever you may think about the likelihood of a world featuring fabulously gifted descendants of the gods in a post-apocalyptic landscape – Kika Hatzopoulou gives us plenty of depth and insights about such a world. I was a bit ambivalent after the first book, but I’m so glad I read on, because now I’m convinced the two make a magnificent story about the resilience of humanity itself.

kikahatzopoulou.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/hearts_that_cut.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Escaping Mr. Rochester, by L. L. McKinney

Historical, Teen Fiction Review 0

Escaping Mr. Rochester

by L. L. McKinney

HarperTeen, 2024. 337 pages.
Review written September 4, 2024, from a library book.

If you’ve read my reviews for very long, you probably know that I love retellings and reimaginings. My favorites are the ones where you think, “Oh! That could be what *really* happened!” — telling the same events from a different perspective that casts things in a whole new light.

Now, I also have to confess that as a teen, Jane Eyre was one of my all-time favorite novels. Yes, as a romance. Coming back to it as an adult, especially with the help of retellings, I’m a little horrified by that opinion.

Escaping Mr. Rochester was a reimagining of Jane Eyre, not a retelling. A whole lot of details were changed, but the skeleton of the story was the same. Our main character is Jane Eyre, coming to be a governess to the young ward of Mr. Rochester at Thornfield Hall. Unbeknownst to Jane, Mr. Rochester has locked up his wife Bertha, and is keeping her in the attic, with the help of an elderly servant tending her. Jane hears strange noises that everyone else denies.

All that big picture is the same as in Jane Eyre, but very few of the details match. The Mr. Rochester of this book is simply a villain, through and through. And something of a cardboard one. His motivation for everything he does is to pay gambling debts. Jane is repulsed from the moment she sees him. She finds out about Bertha fairly early on, and the two of them manage to spend time together, lay plans (to escape, of course) – and fall in love. Of course, plans in a house ruled by such a villain don’t always run smoothly.

Don’t get me wrong – the story is a whole lot of fun. I would have enjoyed a few more nods to original. Like meeting Mr. Rochester when he falls from his horse. And him being somewhat more charming to Jane to start, maybe. Of course, I admire in this Jane that she’s not in a hurry to cozy up to her employer and has a great concept of what’s appropriate in that situation. But part of the power of the original is that you really can see how a sheltered Jane would fall for him. This Mr. Rochester was pretty one-dimensional in his evil. Adele, too, in this version didn’t consistently act or talk like a child.

So this book is not up there with my absolute favorite Jane Eyre spin-off, Reader, I Murdered Him, which has the events of the book all happen as portrayed, but show us Adele after she’s grown up and sent to boarding school. And that one shows a more subtly sinister Mr. Rochester.

However, all that said – this was a fun story, using the basic skeleton of Jane Eyre to show us Jane and Bertha outwitting an evil and contemptible Mr. Rochester and ultimately triumphing over him. And yes, there’s an appropriate use of fire.

llmckinney.com
epicreads.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/escaping_mr_rochester.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Ghostsmith, by Nicki Pau Preto, read by Molly Hanson

Fantasy, Teen Fiction Review 0

Ghostsmith

by Nicki Pau Preto
read by Molly Hanson

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2024. 13 hours, 34 minutes.
Review written August 30, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.

I am delighted to report that this epic fantasy series from Nicki Pau Preto ended up being a duology, not a trilogy, so I have happily finished the complete story.

I enjoyed the second volume even more than the first. The plot is still a bit convoluted. There are betrayals and reversals, but it felt organic to the story. She doesn’t do a whole lot of catch-up, and it was almost a year since I read Bonesmith, so basically I took what they said was happening at face value and pretty much gave up trying to fully understand how the magic worked. And it did feel like it was hanging together more than before – maybe because there was less need to explain things in the second book, and the characters understood how the magic works and used it.

I also had gotten over the coincidences from the first book – mainly that our main character Wren is dealing with long-lost family. I was reminded of one unlikely thing when another character listened and watched at the very same door where Wren had gotten her earth-shaking revelations and this character also didn’t get caught. But this character didn’t learn as crucial information, so the unlikelihood didn’t bother me nearly as much.

The story itself had me listening eagerly the whole way, wondering how in the world our crew was going to come out on top. In fact, there was only about an hour left before I figured out that this wasn’t, in fact, a trilogy, where everything would be terrible by the end of the second book. (Hence my joy in learning it’s a duology.)

Wren’s trained all her life as a Bonesmith, but learned in the first book that she inherited from her mother the powers of the Ghostsmiths. Bonesmiths can manipulate the bones of the dead, but Ghostsmiths can manipulate their ghosts. In the first book, Wren and her companions learned what had gone wrong in the world and in the Breachlands and that there were powerful people (coincidentally related to them) trying to get even more control. In this second book, they’re trying to shut down the source of leaking magic and thwart those who want to take power. But there are not many resisting with them. And those they are fighting have an incredible amount of power.

It all ended up being a wonderful yarn with a satisfying ending. The snarky and scrappy win out!

nickipaupreto.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/ghostsmith.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Nine Liars, by Maureen Johnson

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

Nine Liars

by Maureen Johnson
read by Kate Rudd

Katherine Tegen Books, 2022. 11 hours, 2 minutes.
Review written August 3, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I’m happy that I’m caught up reading Maureen Johnson’s Stevie Bell books. They began with a trilogy, and teenager Stevie Bell looking into a long-ago mystery at Ellingham Academy, the elite private school she was attending in Vermont – with more people turning up dead in the present. After solving that mystery, Stevie has become internet famous as a detective. In The Box in the Woods, she solves another cold case at a camp over the summer – with new deaths, of course, and in this book there’s yet another cold case for Stevie to solve.

This time the mystery happened in England in 1995. In the present day, it’s November, and Stevie’s in school in Vermont, trying to keep a long distance relationship going with David, who is studying in London. Then he pulls strings to get Stevie and their friends a week in London in a custom study abroad program. No surprise that Stevie gets pulled into a cold case – this time it’s because of David’s English friend’s aunt. Also no surprise that not everyone involved in the present day investigation will stay alive.

I enjoyed the way the mystery was presented – with plenty of chapters taking us back to 1995 and the group of nine theater students who’d just graduated from Cambridge having a house party at a manor house – and having a wild time until two were found dead.

I know that Maureen Johnson has spent a lot of time in London, and her writing about the students in London brought me right back to London myself. I like the way she gives intriguing mysteries to these distinctive characters we’ve come to care about. So while you could read this book on its own – the mystery is self-contained – why would you want to tackle it without enjoying all the history of Stevie and David and their friends?

maureenjohnsonbooks.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/9_liars.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Throne of Glass, by Sarah J. Maas

Fantasy, Teen Fiction Review 0

Throne of Glass

by Sarah J. Maas
read by Elizabeth Evans

Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021. 13 hours, 4 minutes.
Review written August 19, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.

Sarah J. Maas’s books are wildly popular at our library, so that we’ve hit the cap on some of the ebooks and can’t keep up with the holds list. I decided to see what all the fuss is about and started in on the Throne of Glass series. I followed the order I found online and read the prequel novellas, collected in The Assassin’s Blade first, which may have taken a little bit of mystery from the main character, Celaena Sardothien, in this book. But I don’t think it was a bad thing to already know her and be impressed with her skills. I also know her history and the people she reasonably holds grudges against – though she doesn’t know who betrayed her and sent her into slavery in the mines, and I do.

At the start of this book, the prince of the empire has taken 18-year-old Celaena out of the mines, where she’s been slaving for a year, surviving despite the high odds against that. The prince tells her she has a chance to win her freedom. He is sponsoring her in a contest to determine the king’s champion. If she loses, she’ll have to go back to the mines. If she wins, she’ll have to serve the brutal king – responsible for killing her parents when his army destroyed her people – for four years as champion.

So the stakes are high. I already knew about Celaena’s incredible skills, so her confidence didn’t feel misplaced to me, but she’s up against some powerful opponents, and she has plenty of work to do to prepare. On top of that, contestants begin dying – killed brutally with their insides ripped out.

Celaena does have allies in the palace. The prince chose her because he knew it would anger his father. He has put his captain of the guard in charge of monitoring her progress. And Celaena befriends a visiting princess, whose language she learned in the mines, where so many of those who spoke it were also enslaved.

The story is absorbing with its high-stakes contest. I’d heard that Sarah Maas’s books have explicit sex, but not this series, or at least not this book. There is some kissing, but not a lot. In fact, the book seems to be setting up a love triangle, but that kind of fizzles out at the end, and I’m expecting more to develop in one side of that triangle in the next book.

Although I did enjoy the book, it hit a number of my pet peeves. Not badly enough that I stopped listening (as I have been known to do), but enough that I’m withholding a star. The first was the terrible king with a noble prince for a son trope. Yes, the king is awful, responsible for the deaths of thousands – but the prince is different. Really!

The second pet peeve this book hit was the Noble Thief trope. Someone was forced into living a life of crime, but they’re good at heart and when good things happen we all cheer. Disney’s Aladdin popularized this one. In this book, our main character isn’t a thief – she’s an assassin. An incredibly skilled assassin, the best in the kingdom, at seventeen years old. She knows multiple ways to kill people with her bare hands – and yet it’s not her fault. She was taken in by an assassin and forced to learn the trade. And she learned it well, so that despite her small size, she can kill almost anyone. And she’s good at heart. Really!

The third one was about writing style. The point of view didn’t stick with the main character, but dipped into other heads here and there. It wasn’t often enough to really make them viewpoint characters, and it felt a little undisciplined. Tied in with that, the writing felt a little overdramatic. Yeah, sure, she’s the best assassin ever. A little more telling than showing. Though it’s possible that was from the way the narrator read it – but I think it was in the words themselves.

Despite all this, I think I’m going to continue with the series (though I may have to wait until after this year’s Cybils Awards to read on). Celaena is growing on me. I think there are six more books in the series, and I’m hoping eventually the brutal king will get his comeuppance. Also, Celaena’s been through a lot. I’d already love to see her find love and friendship. And have her loved one not die horribly right away. Though I do have a feeling she’s in for a lot more trouble first.

sarahjmaas.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/throne_of_glass.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?

Review of The Box in the Woods, by Maureen Johnson

Contemporary, Mystery, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Box in the Woods

by Maureen Johnson
read by Kate Rudd

Katherine Tegen Books, 2021. 9 hours, 13 minutes.
Review written June 27, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I’ve been meaning to read this book for ages, probably since it came out in 2021. Not sure why I never did, but I’m not going to make the same mistake with the next book in the series.

The Box in the Woods features Stevie Bell, the teen detective of the Truly Devious trilogy. Because of her success with that case, Stevie is given an opportunity to look into another cold case – The Box in the Woods. In 1978, four teenagers were in the woods outside summer camp at night smoking pot, and they got stabbed to death. Three of their bodies were stashed in a box in the woods. It sounds like a teenage slasher film, but it’s real to the family members and the people of the town.

The new owner of the camp offers Stevie a summer case to solve, and she can bring her friends. What could be better than friends and murder?

Now, the folks in the nearby town aren’t thrilled about that old case getting dredged up. And sure enough, before long there’s a modern-day death of someone important to the case. The reader will not be surprised that investigating further puts Stevie and her friends in danger.

This book is a wonderful teen mystery/thriller. I liked listening to it, as the reader gave personality to the characters, including Stevie’s obsession with murder. The solution was one of those oh-yes-it-all-makes-sense revelations. We also got more insight into the relationships of Stevie and her friends.

You can read this as a stand-alone mystery without having read the first trilogy, but having the background makes it that much more fun.

maureenjohnsonbooks.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/box_in_the_woods.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Songlight, by Moira Buffini

Fantasy, Teen Fiction Review 0

Songlight

by Moira Buffini

Harper, September 3, 2024. 376 pages.
Review written June 18, 2024, from an advance reader copy sent to me by the publisher.

I probably wouldn’t have picked this book up if I’d realized it’s by a debut author – I read enough debut novels last year on the Morris Award committee. But this one ended up standing up with the best of them. If I were still on the Morris committee, I’d have put this book forward for further consideration.

The setting is a far distant future dystopian earth after mankind destroyed themselves in nuclear war. But some people have telepathy – which they call Songlight – and those people are hated and feared by the powers that be – and all others are taught to hate them, too.

The community of Northaven is rigidly controlled, all under the Brethren at Brightlinghelm. The boys will go off to fight the Aylish. And after they’ve served for ten years, they’ll come back and be rewarded with a First Wife from the choirmaidens. They can choose a Second Wife for pleasure, but the girls who are left are going to be made sterile and serve in a Pink House as Third Wives for soldiers.

Meanwhile, any deviation – adultery, love for anyone other than wives – is punished, but especially those who have the Songlight, who are called unhuman.

This story especially features two teenage girls, Lark and Nightingale. They meet each other in the Songlight, but both are in danger of being discovered. Lark is mourning her lover, Rye, who was taken away to have brain surgery that will turn him into a compliant shell. Nightingale’s own father is an Inquisitor, who must find and root out the unhumans.

Those two are our main viewpoint characters, but we get the perspectives of several other people as well, as we learn that there’s unrest even in the seat of power. Then when Lark is almost lost at sea, she’s saved by the Aylish, and they are coming on a mission to make an overture of peace. But how can two peoples with such a history come together?

The story is well-told, and I was pulled into the intrigue – my biggest disappointment is that it’s the start of a trilogy and doesn’t really resolve at all. I hope by the time the sequel comes out, I remember what happened – things aren’t looking good at this point, but all our heroes are in a position to make a difference.

Something the book portrays well is how hard it is for young people to go against what they’ve always been taught, and how much it takes to leave what you know, even if that is a bad situation. But people in power are invested in keeping things the same, even as people start to realize that’s not best for anyone.

I do hope this book gets some attention so the sequels come soon! I want to know what happens to these characters and the people they love and what it looks like when they come fully into their power.

EpicReads.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/songlight.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Royal Scandal, by Aimée Carter

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Royal Scandal

by Aimée Carter
read by Kristen Sieh

Listening Library, 2024. 11 hours, 21 minutes.
Review written July 16, 2024, from a library eaudiobook
Starred Review

Royal Scandal is a sequel to Royal Blood, but left me frustrated because I’m going to have to wait to get a finish to the story.

In the first book, we learned about the alternate reality world of this book where King Edward VIII did not abdicate his throne to marry Wallis Simpson, and the history of the British monarchy has been completely different since then. Our protagonist is Evangeline Bright, known to her friends as Evan, the illegitimate daughter of the reigning King of England. She grew up in America, living with her grandmother and then in boarding schools. But at 18, she was brought to England and King Alexander acknowledged her as his daughter. And the furor that ensued was the topic of Royal Blood.

In this book, the scandal and chaos only deepens. Someone’s leaking information to the tabloids about the long failed marriage of the king and queen, and they don’t know where the leak lies.

But then things get deadly. The day after the assassination attempt against former President Trump, I listened to an episode in this book where someone shoots at Evangeline. Somehow that made it seem very real. And things escalate horribly even from there, with signs that a terrorist group is responsible. And someone seems to be trying to pin it on Evan.

But how can Evan fight the weight of public opinion? How can she possibly clear her name? And how can anyone get proof that it’s not her?

By the end of this tension-packed book, they’ve figured out who is responsible, but they don’t have details as to how, and they don’t have any proof. But Evan has a plan….

All I have to say is this author better hurry up and write the next book!

aimeecarter.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/royal_scandal.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?