Review of The Hedgewitch of Foxhall, by Anna Bright

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Hedgewitch of Foxhall

by Anna Bright
read by Fiona Hardingham, Alister Austin, and James Meunier

HarperTeen, 2024. 12 hours.
Review written May 29, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

This is another eaudiobook I chose because it is wildly popular with our library customers. And this time, I struck pure gold! I loved this book with all my heart.

Now, as any time where the narrators have gorgeous British accents, listening to these readers made me love it all the more. But the tale itself has everything I love in a fantasy novel — characters who defy expectations and live by their own rules, magic that is easy to understand and makes sense, a plot that gets you wondering how they’ll make it through but ties up brilliantly, and of course some romance. [In this case, plenty of romance but no sex between the characters. Nowadays, I like to let people know.]

This book is set in medieval Wales, and the Author’s note reveals that she took pains to be true to what we know of that history. Our title character is Ffion. She’s a hedgewitch, not affiliated with the giant coven in Foxhall her mother and sisters are part of — a coven that charges for people even to wait in line to request help. Ffion does small magic for people who can’t afford their prices. But much worse is that the coven doesn’t care what price they take from the land to work their magic — and Ffion’s fox familiar is caught up and killed in a fire of their making. Ffion is determined to do a summoning spell to bring him back — but she will have to do it before the new moon, when his spirit will depart for good.

There are two more viewpoint characters in this book. They are the princes Dafydd and Taliesin. They are being set against each other by their father the king. The court magician — before losing his magic altogether — prophesied the death of the king at the New Moon. Everyone’s sure it has to do with fighting the encroaching Mercians and their king, King Offa. So the king sets the princes on a task of destroying the dyke King Offa has built at the border of Wales. They believe this dyke is what has leached the magic from Wales and caused sightings of magical creatures to stop.

Taliesin goes to the coven at Foxhall to get help to destroy the dyke with magic, and gets no help from them — but does recruit Ffion to his cause. Instead of using the land to give her power, Ffion gains power from her work, and she plans to walk the entire length of the dyke to gain the power to bring it down — and gain the power to summon her fox while she is doing that. But also in their travels, they realize they will need to gain the use of three magical objects important to Wales — but it will take some work to convince the current possessors of those objects to relinquish them.

Tal’s competition is his older brother Dafydd, who has long said he doesn’t want to be king. Instead of spending time in court, he works as a blacksmith, where he feels he can do unambiguous good. But their father wants Dafydd to follow after him, and as it happens, he’s been having visions of Ffion for years – to be his court magician when he is king.

Something I love about this book is that I loved all the characters and honestly wasn’t sure who I wanted to win the kingdom or who I wanted to end up with Ffion. Both princes have their own strengths and weaknesses, and since both were viewpoint characters, they each had my sympathy as the reader.

And so most of the book is traveling through Wales, ultimately trying to bring back Welsh magic. With plenty of obstacles and interactions, adding up to a marvelous tale.

And I’m super excited to find another stellar author! I found another of her books already available as an eaudiobook, so expect to hear more.

annabrightbooks.com

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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.

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Review of The Assassin’s Blade, by Sarah J. Maas

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Assassin’s Blade

by Sarah J. Maas
read by Elizabeth Evans

Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021. 12 hours, 52 minutes.
Review written April 25, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.

I select youth and children’s materials for a large public library system, and by far the most popular author of all the books I purchase is Sarah J. Maas. All of her books consistently have long waiting lists. Since I love fantasy novels, I decided to see what the fuss was about. Now, it’s not clear that I picked the correct order. It turns out that this book I picked up was written as a prequel – so the events happen before the first book written. Anyway, Overdrive had it listed as number one in the series, so this is the one I’ve started with.

It turns out that The Assassin’s Blade is a collection of five novellas, all of them about Celaena Sardothien, at sixteen years old her kingdom’s most notorious assassin. I enjoyed the fact that each part was a contained story. Each novella had a sort of heist scene. Each novella has a complete storyline and a satisfying resolution (or, well, at least a resolution). Each novella happened directly after the one before, but I liked the way the action moved into each story as its own entity.

And the stories were compelling. Each one had a big challenge for Celaena. I definitely did not like the way it all ended, though I’m sure if I had read the books in publication order, I would have known where Celaena would end up. She’s a character worth following – forced to train as an assassin, she became the best. But when the king of the assassins wants her to facilitate a deal with pirates to get into the slave trade, she decides to free the slaves.

I got the flavor of a brutal world, with a ruthless king who has banished magic from the kingdom, but assassins and pirates and crime lords all doing their own thing. Celaena finds love in these stories and dreams of leaving the assassin’s guild and the continent altogether. The fantasy world where she lives is dark and sinister – but I enjoyed Celaena’s character, learning to shine in a difficult world.

I wasn’t completely hooked on this world, but I was hooked enough to put the next (first?) book on hold.

sarahjmaas.com

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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.

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Review of The Fire, the Water, and Maudie McGinn, by Sally J. Pla, read by Gail Shalan

Audiobooks, Award Winners, Children's Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

The Fire, the Water, and Maudie McGinn

by Sally J. Pla
read by Gail Shalan

Quill Tree Books, 2023. 6 hours, 36 minutes.
Review written May 20, 2024, from a library eaudiobook
Starred Review
2024 Schneider Family Book Award Winner, Middle Grades

Oh, I love this one! I’m so glad I finally got around to listening to this award winner — the Schneider Family Award is given annually to books with the best portrayal of a disability. Awards are given for three age levels, along with Honor books, and this one won the award for Middle Grades.

The featured character in this book is Maudie McGinn, a 13-year-old girl with autism. She’s supposed to spend the summer with her Dad in his cabin in northern California. But while they are out to dinner, a wildfire sweeps in, and they have to evacuate. They find a place to stay in the coastal town near San Diego where her Dad grew up, so they’re staying in a trailer in a campground on the beach.

But Maudie’s Dad has friends there, and Maudie begins to make friends there — something she didn’t do in Texas, where she lives during the school year with her mother and stepfather. Maudie has two terrible secrets, but everything with Dad and the ocean helps her relax and begin to understand her own value. Her father has many neurodivergent traits, like Maudie, and he never puts her down for them or scolds her for them. The fact that Maudie thinks this is of note makes us wonder about her life with her mother, and plenty of flashbacks round out the picture of how much better and safer she feels with her father.

But the ocean helps Maudie put all that out of her mind. She even starts learning to surf! And she decides to surprise her father by entering the beginners’ surf competition at the town’s big end-of-summer Surf Bash. Yes, I know that might sound unrealistic in a book summary, but it builds gradually, and yes, we’re with Maudie all the way. (Though as the reader, I did have reservations about her idea of surprising her Dad.)

Maudie’s neurodivergence is sensitively and beautifully portrayed from the inside. And the flashbacks about how her mother responds to her are viscerally painful. The narrator does a wonderful job with the audiobook, giving each person a voice that fits how they’re described in words.

The ending feels almost a little too tidy — but goodness, I would have been so angry if Maudie didn’t have happy times ahead to look forward to. And it wasn’t *every* single thing that worked out for them. I fell in love with this kid while I listened to her story, and I love how she learned that keeping secrets isn’t the road to happiness.

sallyjpla.com

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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.

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Review of Indivisible, by Daniel Aleman

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Indivisible

by Daniel Aleman
narrated by Adan Rocha

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2021. 8 hours, 35 minutes.
Review written November 2, 2021, from a library book
Starred Review

This audiobook tells the story of Mateo Garcia, who’s a junior in high school in Brooklyn and wants to get involved in theater like his friend Adam. His parents came to America from Mexico before he was born. Then his whole life gets turned upside down when his parents get detained by ICE. Suddenly the things he used to be concerned about fade into insignificance.

Mateo doesn’t want to tell his friends at first, but big secrets like that take a toll. And meanwhile, he needs to take care of his 7-year-old sister Sophie and help at the store his parents spent years establishing. Mateo and Sophie hope against hope that things will work out, but have to figure out several new setbacks. They just want their family to be together again.

This novel has lots of heart, mixing regular high school concerns like romance and friends with fundamental concerns about housing and family.

Listening to the audiobook did pull me into this story, rooting for Mateo and his family, and frustrated about the situation so many have been thrust into, when they just want to make a home for their family.

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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.

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*Note* To try to catch up on posting reviews, I’m posting the oldest reviews I’ve written on my blog without making a page on my main website. They’re still good books.

Review of Sheine Lende, by Darcie Little Badger

Audiobooks, Paranormal, Teen Fiction Review 0

Sheine Lende

by Darcie Little Badger
read by Kinsale Drake
illustrations (in the print book) by Rovina Cai

Recorded Books, 2024. 13 hours, 47 minutes.
Review written May 20, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I was so excited when I heard there was a prequel to Elatsoe coming out! Obviously, you don’t have to read them in any order. The events in this book happen first, but Elatsoe was written first. Reading Sheine Lende definitely made me want to reread Elatsoe, which was a Sonderbooks Stand-out and CYBILS Award Winner in 2020.

Like Elatsoe, Sheine Lende is set in a world just like ours – except that magic is a normal part of life. Different people have different kinds of magic available to them, and humans have contact with people from other realms, such as fairies.

Sheine Lende features Elatsoe’s grandmother Shane when she was a teen. Like Ellie, Shane has a ghost dog companion — well, it’s really her mother’s companion. Shane’s mother Lorenza has a pack of three hounds who are trained to track down missing persons. One of those hounds, Nellie, happens to be dead.

But when Lorenza goes missing herself when searching for two missing children, Nellie comes back to Shane, distraught. When Shane tries to take up the search again, she gets transported hundreds of miles away — and finds one of the children. But obviously, magical transport is involved and who knows where Lorenza and the little boy were sent? This was when humans were beginning to use transport by fairy rings. Going on the rescue ends up taking Shane on an epic journey. Also like Elatsoe, Shane gets an opportunity to use her powers to right an injustice against her people, the Lipan Apache.

Again like Elatsoe, this is a beautiful and uplifting book with characters it’s a delight to spend time with. I like the way Shane sees and cares for animals (Even insects! And mammoths!) and her little brother and people who are lost — basically anyone who needs help.

darcielittlebadger.com
levinequerido.com

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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.

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Review of Excuse Me While I Ugly Cry, by Joya Goffney

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

Excuse Me While I Ugly Cry

by Joya Goffney
read by Jordan Cobb

HarperAudio, 2021. 9 hours, 39 minutes.
Review written October 25, 2021, from a library eaudiobook
Starred Review

Excuse Me While I Ugly Cry is a teen romance with a lot of depth. Quinn is a senior in high school and one of the few Black girls at her private school. She pours out her private thoughts in her list journal. But one day, she accidentally picks up the journal of that cute guy in her study group instead of her own.

She works to fix the switch, but he’s lost her journal. Or so he says. Then someone anonymously starts blackmailing Quinn. If she doesn’t complete the items in her list to do before the end of high school, the blackmailer will start posting embarrassing pages from her journal on the internet – beginning with the revelation that she didn’t actually get into Columbia.

Quinn’s parents met at Columbia, and they’ve been planning on her going there since she was born, so Quinn didn’t manage to tell them she didn’t get accepted. She even forged an acceptance letter – and then they made the news known far and wide. Part of her list was to tell them the truth, but Quinn isn’t sure she can ever do that. Another item is to tell the guy she’s had a crush on for years how she feels – though that may be changing. Yet another is going to visit her grandmother, who’s in a nursing home with dementia. Quinn’s afraid she won’t even recognize her.

So she begins by tackling an easier item – visiting the two colleges where she did get accepted. And Carter, the cute guy who lost her journal, is willing to come along and help. Maybe he isn’t the blackmailer after all – though Quinn still isn’t sure she can trust him.

As Quinn works through all of this, she makes some new friends and gains some new experiences. And she does some things she was afraid of doing.

It all adds up to a fun read about a teen who made some mistakes, but is trying to pull herself out of them.

The only thing I didn’t like is that Quinn’s use of the list journal is seen as a bad habit. She wrote in the journal so she wouldn’t have to open up to actual people. I don’t think that’s the way it works. Journaling is good for you! And I think that opening up to a journal makes it easier to open up to actual people rather than harder. I think you’d be a lot less apt to stuff your emotions. So I hope she won’t give it up forever.

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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?

*Note* To try to catch up on posting reviews, I’m posting the oldest reviews I’ve written on my blog without making a page on my main website. They’re still good books.

Review of A Tempest of Tea, by Hafsah Faizal, read by Maya Saroya

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Teen Fiction Review 0

A Tempest of Tea

by Hafsah Faizal
read by Maya Saroya

Macmillan Young Listeners, 2024. 11 hours, 2 minutes.
Review written May 8, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.

I put this audiobook on hold because it’s wildly popular with our own public library customers. A Tempest of Tea is a heist novel with vampires.

By day, Arthie Casimir runs an upscale teahouse in the bad part of the capital city. By night, secret panels come open, and it transforms into a bloodhouse serving vampires, so they can sate their thirst with folks willing to be paid for the privilege, or with special coconut-mixed blood drinks. The bloodhouse is illegal, but Arthie has paid informants to warn her before raids so she can put the bloodhouse gear back into hiding.

Arthie’s an immigrant to the kingdom. When she was a child, colonizers killed her parents and took their land. Later on, she teamed up with another young orphan named Jin, and she figured out how to pull a magical pistol from stone and win the respect of the city. (Between her name and pulling the weapon from stone, I expected Arthurian overtones, but didn’t really find any more than that.) Together, she and Jin built up their teahouse and peddle tea and secrets.

But as the story opens, Arthie learns that the future of her teahouse is threatened. A mysterious figure comes and tells her she can save it if she will help him steal some compromising material about the king of the empire — housed in a citadel kept by elite vampires that is opened once a year for an exclusive charity auction.

So that’s the heist novel part. Arthie and Jin assemble a team and lay plans to pull off the heist. Of course things don’t go completely according to plan….

I wasn’t the best audience for this book, because although I do enjoy heist novels, I’m not a big vampire novel fan, and am also not a big fan of blackmailers and others consistently slipping under the law. They gave Arthie strong reasons for her contempt of people in authority, and I was won over to be on her side. My other problem, though, was that the plot was fairly complex and there was a pretty big cast of characters with the perspective switching frequently. I listen to audiobooks while I’m doing other things (makes housework so much more pleasant!), but I think maybe I missed some crucial details and wasn’t following along all that well in the middle. All the same, I wasn’t going to stop listening. And there is an annoying cliffhanger ending, and I think I will be compelled to find out how things turn out. (It’s said to be a duology, so yay, this is the only suspense required.) One of the most delightful things about this audiobook was at the end, they give us a conversation between the author and her husband about the book, which is truly delightful.

If you do like vampire novels or heist novels, and don’t mind a little not-quite-legal dealings from characters who have good reason to be upset with the authorities – then give this book a try!

hafsahfaizal.com

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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.

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Review of A Place to Belong, by Cynthia Kadohata

Audiobooks, Children's Fiction Review, Historical 0

A Place to Belong

by Cynthia Kadohata
read by Jennifer Ikeda

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2019. 9 hours on 7 discs.
Review written January 31, 2020, from a library audiobook

A Place to Belong opens at the end of World War II, with Hanako, her little brother Akira, and her parents on a ship going to Japan. Her family was imprisoned in camps during the war because of their Japanese heritage, and after the war, her parents were pressured to give up their American citizenship. Now they are headed to a village outside of Hiroshima, where Papa’s parents still live. On the way there, Hanako sees people and places devastated beyond her wildest imaginings.

Adjusting to Japan is difficult. And she is torn by the people – even children – begging for food. If she gives them rice, what if there’s not enough to feed her own brother? In school, she’s different from the other girls. Can she ever get them to accept her? Woven throughout the stories are memories from their family’s time in the camps and her resultant mixed feelings about America.

This was a part of the story of Japanese Americans that I hadn’t heard before, so I was fascinated by the details. I have to admit that the book felt long and didn’t have a driving plot – they were simply trying to survive, taking each day as it came. The love coming from Hanako’s grandparents toward the grandchildren they just met was a continuing warm bright spot, and did make me glad I stuck it out and listened to the entire book.

cynthiakadohata.com

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. 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.

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*Note* To try to catch up on posting reviews, I’m posting the oldest reviews I’ve written on my blog without making a page on my main website. They’re still good books.

Review of Killers of the Flower Moon, by David Grann

Audiobooks, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

Version 1.0.0
Killers of the Flower Moon

The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

by David Grann
read by Ann Marie Lee, Will Patton, and Danny Campbell

Random House Audio, 2017. 9 hours, 5 minutes.
Review written May 10, 2024, from a library eaudiobook
Starred Review

Once again I’m late to the party, but I’m enjoying listening to books that are hugely popular at Fairfax County Library. Obviously, this one got a second wind from the movie, but both the adult version and the young adult version still have long holds lists.

This book is a true crime historical murder mystery. Or rather killing spree mystery. There are three parts to this book, and the first section is about an Osage woman named Molly Burkhart in the 1920s. Like many of her Osage neighbors, Molly was incredibly wealthy because their tribe had retained rights to the oil under their land — the land the nation was given because the white folks thought it was worthless.

But there was an oil boom in the 20s, and enrolled members of the Osage nation received monthly checks that were enormous in those years. However, the government had a hard time believing Indians were competent to handle that much money, and Molly, like many others, was appointed a guardian who had to give permission for her to spend any of her own money.

But that’s not the worst of it. Beginning with her sister, one by one the people in Molly’s family began to die. Her sister from a bullet through her head. Another apparently poisoned. Another sister and her husband had their entire house blown up. And Molly’s family weren’t the only Osage people being killed. Dozens, maybe hundreds of people were murdered, with many of those murders covered up.

And that brings us to the second part of the book. At the time, there wasn’t a reliable police force. They could and did hire private eyes, but those weren’t always reliable either. But that was the time that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was being formed, and the next part of the book features Tom White, a federal agent trying to get to the bottom of the murders and bring the perpetrators to justice.

It turned out that finding out who was responsible was much easier than bringing anyone to justice. The white man responsible for killing Molly’s family had plenty of connections with people in power, and had killed so many that everyone was afraid to testify against him.

The third part of the book is about the author doing some investigation almost a hundred years later and finding about even more deaths in the Osage nation. All of these murders were about greed — people wanting a piece of that enormous oil wealth, and not valuing Indian life, and taking advantage of prejudice against the Osage people.

This book tells a tremendously sad story of great injustice and harm. As well as highlighting how badly our government treated people of the Osage nation. But the story is dramatic and riveting. May the light it sheds on that darkness help us all to change our ways.

davidgrann.com

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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.

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Review of A Study in Drowning, by Ava Reid

Audiobooks, Paranormal, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

A Study in Drowning

by Ava Reid
read by Saskia Maarleveld

HarperTeen, 2023. 10 hours, 32 minutes.
Review written May 13, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

This is another eaudiobook I checked out because it was very popular at Fairfax County Library — and one of the best results of that curiosity. I loved the heroine, Effy Sayre, a first-year university student in another world somewhat like ours in the 1950s or so. Effy was put into the school of Architecture even though her scores were high enough for the school of Literature, and literature is where her heart is — because no woman has ever been admitted to the school of Literature.

But when a chance comes from the estate of her favorite author Emrys Myrddin to redesign his family’s home, Effy jumps at the chance, and to her surprise, wins the competition. Effy loves Myrddin’s work so much, she can quote from all of his books, but especially his masterpiece, Angharad. The book is about a girl who loves the Fairy King and is taken as his wife, but who gradually realizes his cruelty — and is his undoing.

The book means a lot to Effy because all her life, she’s been plagued by visions of the Fairy King. Her mother never believed her and took her to a doctor who prescribed pink pills to make the visions go away. But Effy clung to the story of a girl who also saw the Fairy King and ended up triumphing over him.

But when she arrives to the far south coast of the country, things are not at all as she expected. The house she’s supposed to remodel is falling apart with decay, and the nearby sea is finding its way in. She’s greeted by Myrddin’s son, who has some very strange moments, and she never sees the author’s wife. And she begins seeing the Fairy King even when she’s taken her pills.

It turns out there’s a literature student also working at Myrddin’s estate, trying to access his letters and papers to write a scholarly paper about him. He’s pompous and stuffy. But when Effy learns he’s not even sure Emrys Myrddin actually wrote the Angharad, that seems a bridge too far.

But… things happen. This book continues on with a bit of a mystery and a big climactic scene full of danger. Ava Reid did an amazing job with the atmosphere of this book. The house is so decayed, so remote, so sinister, so close to the angry sea, and you get the feeling that the Fairy King might be real. And if so, he’s dangerous.

I do feel like I should mention when a novel for Teens has a sex scene. This has one, with a little bit of description. I did think the romance was beautifully done, with kindness and gentleness toward someone who’d formerly been abused.

Now, there were what felt to me like some big coincidences that allowed them to find crucial documents. And I can’t really believe that papers could have managed to stay intact in a metal box underwater. But those are quibbles. Overall, this wonderful book had me enthralled throughout and wanting to find more rote tasks to do so I could keep on listening. A truly wonderful book about a girl whose salvation has always been books — learning to stand up for herself in real life, despite all those who want to use her.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/study_in_drowning.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?