Review of Bone Gap, by Laura Ruby

bone_gap_largeBone Gap

by Laura Ruby

Balzer + Bray, 2015. 345 pages.
Starred Review
2016 Printz Award Winner

I read this book because it won the Printz, and probably would have given up otherwise. This book contains magical realism, which isn’t really my thing. I like fantasy that makes logical sense. I know that sounds silly, but I like there to be logical rules to the magic and a reason for the magic to exist. This is much more free-form, with gaps.

However, the writing is beautiful. I came to care deeply about Finn and the people around him.

Here’s how the book begins:

The people of Bone Gap called Finn a lot of things, but none of them was his name. When he was little, they called him Spaceman. Sidetrack. Moonface. You. As he got older, they called him Pretty Boy. Loner. Brother. Dude.

But whatever they called him, they called him fondly. Despite his odd expressions, his strange distraction, and that annoying way he had of creeping up on a person, they knew him as well as they knew anyone. As well as they knew themselves. They knew him like they knew that Old Charlie Valentine preferred his chickens to his great-grandchildren, and sometimes let them roost in the house. (The chickens, not the children.) The way they knew that the Cordero family had a ghost that liked to rifle through the fridge at night. The way they knew that Priscilla Willis, the beekeeper’s homely daughter, had a sting worse than any bee. The way they knew that Bone Gap had gaps just wide enough for people to slip through, or slip away, leaving only their stories behind.

Weeks before the story starts, Roza slipped away. Finn is the only one who was there. He knows a man took her away, and Finn didn’t stop him.

Finn was confused. He thought she wanted to go with the man — until it was too late. Until he saw her hands slapping at fogged glass and the gleaming black SUV was swallowed up by the gathering dark.

And then he wasn’t able to describe the man. Finn told how he moved, what he was like. But that isn’t enough. Everyone is angry with him, and no one really believes Roza didn’t just decide to leave as mysteriously as she arrived.

Finn’s brother Sean, especially, thinks that he’s been left again. He doesn’t believe Sean that Roza wouldn’t do that, that Roza is in trouble. If there was a man, why can’t Finn describe him?

The chapters about Finn and Sean are interspersed with chapters about Roza in her strange surreal captivity. The man keeping her can speak flawless Polish and can effortlessly change where he’s keeping her.

Finn has a lot to learn about himself, about Bone Gap, before he can find Roza. And Roza has an important part in her own rescue. There are shades of the story of Persephone here and plenty of atmospheric paranormal elements.

I should mention that I like the way very realistic elements were woven into this mythic story. Finn has a good reason for his troubles describing the man who took Rosa, and Sean has good reasons for not trusting people. I like the way magic and reality are beautifully woven together in this lovely book.

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Review of The Raven King, by Maggie Stiefvater

raven_king_largeThe Raven King

Book IV of The Raven Cycle

by Maggie Stiefvater

Scholastic Press, New York, 2016. 439 pages.

This is a grand and ambitious cycle of books. Maggie Stiefvater’s writing is lyrical and evocative. The story is unlike anything I’ve ever read — ley lines running under Virginia, a family of psychics, a girl who magnifies the magical gifts of others, a man who’s part tree, a rich private high school student searching for a long dead Welsh king who will grant wishes, another boy who can dream things up – and make them real. And then there’s the curse that if Blue kisses her true love, he will die. And the blooming romance between Blue and Gansey, that rich kid searching for the long-dead king.

I liked the voice in which the book is written. I like the way the author focuses on different characters by turns, starting new chapters with the words, “Depending on where you began the story, it was about…” about many, many different characters.

All that said – and I certainly was going to read every word of this book after reading the earlier three volumes – this is not my favorite kind of fantasy. I like fantasy books where the magic makes logical sense to me, operates by rules. The magic in this book seems much more nebulous and hard to follow.

There’s also a whole lot of darkness here, along with gory death.

And yet the author pulled off a satisfying conclusion. Well, maybe it was a slight let-down. Since I didn’t fully understand how the magic worked, I was a little befuddled by how all the plot threads wrapped up – but mostly satisfied.

And did I mention the wonderful writing? Yes, the story’s dark. Yes, it’s confusing in spots, but you will be pulled along into this world and into the lives of these characters, flawed but lovable, muddling through, trying to make sense themselves of some powerful magic.

This series isn’t one I’ll necessarily ever read again – but I thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent with it.

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Review of Romancing the Dark in the City of Light, by Ann Jacobus

romancing_the_dark_in_the_city_of_light_largeRomancing the Dark in the City of Light

by Ann Jacobus

Thomas Dunne Books (St. Martin’s Griffin), New York, 2015. 276 pages.
Starred Review

When I saw author Ann Jacobus at the YALSA Symposium, I knew I’d met her at a small conference, where she’d been an organizer. I assumed it was one of the many KidLitCons I’ve been to, but when I had her sign her book and mentioned KidLitCon, she said No.

As soon as I turned away, I remembered, and went right back to her table. I should have known – when, after all, the reason I decided to get a copy of the book was that the Eiffel Tower is on the cover and it’s set in Paris – I met Ann Jacobus at an SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) conference in Paris almost exactly ten years before I saw her in Portland, and she was indeed one of the organizers.

Ann Jacobus did set the book in Paris because of having lived there. (Paris tends to capture people’s hearts.)

Now, I’m not the best reader for a dark book – I don’t tend to enjoy them. This book is dark, and it took me awhile to get it read because of that.

But the book is well-written, and the concept is intriguing. Summer is in Paris staying with her Mom, trying to repeat and finish her senior year of high school, because she keeps getting kicked out of schools in America. She has to finish high school and graduate from college before she turns twenty-two in order to inherit her grandfather’s wealth.

There’s a lot of pressure on her, and Summer doesn’t like it. She thinks a lot about death. She researches burial customs of different cultures on the internet. Her father died years ago. Summer carries his flask with her, filled with vodka to help her get through.

Summer would like to have a romance in Paris, and she meets two people who might fulfill that desire. One is a student at her school, Moony (Munir), who walks with a limp because of a bad car accident when he was younger. Moony is uncommonly kind – and he doesn’t deserve to have Summer’s mess in his life.

Kurt is a handsome man Summer meets at a Paris metro station, just after a woman throws herself onto the tracks in front of a train. Kurt keeps showing up. He seems to know Summer’s thoughts. There’s a smell of decay about him.

I said this book is dark. That darkness, in Summer’s life, is personified in Kurt. Yes, there are some paranormal elements going on. They are done with excellent touches, making me want to reread it now I know all that’s going on – but I don’t want to give it away for other readers. Let’s just say that we watch more and more things in Summer’s life fall apart.

The novel doesn’t end badly, though – and that’s because of Moony. And Ann Jacobus shows us Moony’s character, persistence, and kindness in a way that we believe the ending.

But Moony isn’t perfect. We also see hints that he’s not helping Summer because he doesn’t know anything about despair or problems. And that works into the ending as well.

There’s more I’d like to say, but it gives too much away. (Feel free to talk about the ending in the comments if you’ve read the book!) This is a well-written book about a suicidal teen, set in Paris. (The title is perfect!) There are Suicide Prevention Resources at the back of the book, and it actually ends up a hopeful tale.

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Review of Belzhar, by Meg Wolitzer

belzhar_largeBelzhar

by Meg Wolitzer
read by Jorjeana Marie

Listening Library, 2014. 8 hours on 7 compact discs.
Starred Review

Jam Gallahue has been sent to The Wooden Barn, a boarding school in Vermont for “highly intelligent but emotionally fragile” teens. After she lost her boyfriend, Reeve, she’s withdrawn from everything and everyone.

On her first day of classes, her roommate is jealous when they discover that Jam’s been put into Special Topics in English. No one knows why everyone claims the class is life-changing. There are only four other students, and a teacher who will retire at the end of the term. They will be studying Sylvia Plath. The teacher, Mrs. Quinnell, gives them each a red leather journal and tells them to write in it twice a week. She’ll be collecting them at the end of the term.

When Jam writes in the journal, she’s transported to another place, a place outside time, and she is together with Reeve again. She can’t do anything new with him in that place, but she can actually feel him and see him and talk with him. When she comes back, five more pages of her journal are filled in with her own handwriting.

The other members of Special Topics in English have their own traumas to deal with. Before long, the class members all figure out that each one is being transported to another place, where things are right again, every time they write in their journals.

But the journals will be completely full by the end of the term.

This story could have been trite and problem novel-ish. But the author has crafted the story well, revealing information a little bit at a time. Each student in the class has a compelling story, and we also learn more and more about what Jam went through, and how she interacts with her fellow-students.

There’s a fine overarching message about dealing with trauma and being able to get on with life. But the book is good because the story is told in a compelling way.

It’s also a tribute to the healing power of words – both written yourself and written by others.

This book has some healing power of its own.

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Review of Blue Lily, Lily Blue, by Maggie Stiefvater

blue_lily_lily_blue_largeBlue Lily, Lily Blue

Book III of the Raven Cycle

by Maggie Stiefvater

Scholastic Press, New York, 2014. 391 pages.

Why in the world was I thinking this is a trilogy? All along, they carefully called it The Raven Cycle, not The Raven Trilogy. Yes, some extreme things happened in this book, but they just inched the plot further along, rather than wrapping things up, as I had hoped.

I’m not crazy about this series — It’s a darker story, with more occult elements, than I usually like. But I can’t look away! And I’ve come to care about the characters. I’ve even come to believe in a romance between Blue and Gansey — and that took some skilled writing!

This cycle of books is like no other fantasy I’ve ever read. We’ve got a bunch of entitled rich kids and their scholarship friend and a girl from the hills looking along a ley line in West Virginia for a buried Welsh king. And all sorts of amazing supernatural things are happening while they’re looking.

In some ways, this felt like a bridge piece. It wasn’t as striking as either the first or the second book. And the characters were dealing with consequences from the second book, looking for Maura, and getting much closer in their quest to find the sleeping king.

There’s not a lot I need to say. If you’ve read the first two books, this strings you along with more of the same. Maggie Stiefvater is an amazing writer, and manages to make her crazy world seem plausible, even as not a bit of the story is predictable.

I may not be crazy about this series, but one thing’s for certain: I will be reading the next book as soon as it comes out.

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Review of Boys of Blur, by N. D. Wilson

boys_of_blur_largeBoys of Blur

by N. D. Wilson

Random House, New York, 2014. 195 pages.
Starred Review
2014 Cybils Finalist

The first page of Boys of Blur pulls you in:

When the sugarcane’s burning and the rabbits are running, look for the boys who are quicker than flame.

Crouch.

Stare through the smoke and let your eyes burn.

Don’t blink.

While cane leaves crackle and harvesters whir, while blades shatter armies of sugar-sweet sticks, watch for ghosts in the smoke, for boys made of blur, fast as rabbits and faster.

Shall we run with them, you and I? Shall we dodge tractors and fire for small handfuls of fur? Will we grin behind shirt masks while caught rabbits kick in our hands?

Shoes are for the slow. Pull ‘em off. Tug up your socks. Shift side to side. Chase. But be quick. Very quick. Out here in the flats, when the sugarcane’s burning and the rabbits are running, there can be only quick. There’s quick, and there’s dead.

Boys of Blur can be thought of as Beowulf in the Florida swamp. With zombies.

Charlie Reynolds has come to Taper, Florida with his mother, stepfather, and little sister, to attend a funeral. The funeral is happening at a white church on a mound outside of town on the edge of the swamps, in the middle of muck, and ringed by a sea of sugarcane. The funeral is for Charlie’s stepfather’s old football coach, and his stepfather has been asked to coach the high school team in his place.

Charlie was in the cane where his stepfather had been raised and played his first football. Over the dike and across the water, he knew he would find more cane and the town of Belle Glade, where his real dad had been raised and played his football.

Soon, Charlie meets Cotton, his stepdad’s second cousin, and Cotton says that makes them cousins, too. He takes Charlie into the cane and shows him a mound topped by a stone. The stone has a dead snake on top, and a small dead rabbit beside it. But that’s only the first strange thing. They see a man wearing a helmet and carrying a sword.

There’s drama and danger here. There’s tension, because Charlie’s mother knows his father lives near, and Charlie sees the old familiar fear in her eyes.

And there are secrets in the cane, in the swamp, in the muck. Why do dead animals keep appearing at certain places? And what is the foul stench that comes up in the swamp at night, while Cotton and Charlie watch the helmeted man digging in Coach Wiz’s grave? And is that sound the scream of a panther?

This book is a bit more mystical than I tend to like my fantasy. But it’s excellently carried out, so it didn’t bother me while I was reading that by the end I wasn’t sure exactly what had happened. Think Beowulf in the Florida swamp — with zombies — and you’ll have the idea — Friends fighting monsters together.

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Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of Greenglass House, by Kate Milford

greenglass_house_largeGreenglass House

by Kate Milford

Clarion Books (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), 2014. 373 pages.
Starred Review
2014 Cybils Finalist, Speculative Fiction for Elementary and Middle Grades
2014 Sonderbooks Stand-out, #3 Children’s Fiction

Here’s a snowed-in mystery for kids with some non-traditional elements. It’s the start of Christmas vacation, and Milo was counting on some quiet down time with his parents. Milo’s home, Greenglass House, is itself something of a character in the book.

Milo Pine did not run a smugglers’ hotel, but his parents did. It was an inn, actually; a huge, ramshackle manor house that looked as if it had been cobbled together from discarded pieces of a dozen mismatched mansions collected from a dozen different cities. It was called Greenglass House, and it sat on the side of a hill overlooking an inlet of harbors, a little district built half on the shore and half on the piers that jutted out into the river Skidwrack like the teeth of a comb. It was a long climb up to the inn from the waterfront by foot, or an only slightly shorter trip by the cable railway that led from the inn’s private dock up the steep slope of Whilforber Hill. And of course the inn wasn’t only for smugglers, but that was who turned up most often, so that was how Milo thought of it.

Milo had lived at Greenglass House ever since he’d been adopted by Nora and Ben Pine when he was a baby. It had always been home. And he was used to the bizarre folks who passed through the inn, some of them coming back every season like extended family who showed up to pinch your cheeks at holidays and then disappeared again. After twelve years, he was even getting pretty good at predicting who was going to show up when. Smugglers were like bugs or vegetables. They had their seasons. Which was why it was so weird when the huge old bell on the porch, the one that was connected to the winch that drove the cable that in turn hauled the car up its tracks, started ringing.

The whole family is very surprised to have a guest the first day of Milo’s Christmas vacation, especially on the afternoon just before a big snowstorm is forecasted. They are even more surprised when four more guests follow. None of the guests will give details about when they expect to leave. All of the guests are vague about why they are there. And the snow continues to fall.

Mrs. Pine is quick to ask for help, so she goes out to the town for groceries and to get Mrs. Caraway and her daughter Lizzie to help out. Milo is frustrated by all the bustle when he’d expected a quiet vacation, so he hunkers down in one of his favorite places for when the hotel is full of guests, behind a high-backed loveseat. He got absorbed in the stories in a book one of the guests lent to him.

But the spot wasn’t private enough, and that’s when he meets another important character in the book.

Another girl, about Milo’s own age whom he had never seen before, was peering curiously at him over the back of the loveseat. This had to be Lizzie’s younger sister, Meddy. Milo had heard plenty about Meddy but had never met her. “Hi,” he said quietly, trying to tamp down annoyance at being looked at so closely while he was in one of his special places. “You must be Meddy. I’m Milo.”

Meddy Caraway looked as though she was just about as happy with this arrangement as Milo was. “Hello.” She yanked off her knitted cap, and static electricity sent her short reddish-blond hair shooting out like a spiky halo around her red face.

Yay, vacation.

Meddy is a bit annoying. Milo was looking at a chart one of the guests dropped. It’s a mysterious chart and looks like some kind of navigational chart, but it’s not of anywhere he’s heard of. Meddy grabs it and asks about it and all the guests coming at once, and she suggests that they start a campaign. Milo asks her what she means.

“It’s an adventure within a game world. Our game world is your house, and our adventure – our campaign – is going to be figuring out the mystery behind that chart.”

“Okay . . . how?”

She beckoned Milo closer, and he clambered off the hearth to crawl down behind the tree beside her. “We’re going to explore the house and investigate the guests,” she explained, “and along the way we’re going to look for clues. But first, you need a character.”

She explains to Milo about role-playing games and choosing a character. His character, named Negret, is a blackjack, an escaladeur. “Escaladeurs are masters at getting over walls and through fortifications and sneaking around things like castles and fortresses. They’re reconnaissance experts, one of the types of characters you send to gather information.”

Meddy chooses a character she calls Sirin.

Meddy scratched her head. “Well, there is a kind of character I’ve always wanted to play. It’s called a scholiast. They’re these winged creatures who follow angels around like familiars, and they’re not supposed to act in ways that change the course of events. But they love adventures, and they never get to have any, so when you come across one – they’re usually non-player characters, meaning you run into them and get information or clues or tools or something – you can almost always convince it to help. But I don’t see why a player couldn’t be one. I love the idea of a scholiast who’s decided to have an adventure, even though she isn’t supposed to. Do you mind if I try playing one?”

He shrugged, curious. “Why would I mind?”

“Well, for starters, Sirin would have to be invisible to all the other non-player characters – meaning everyone but you.”

Milo grinned. “I have to pretend you’re invisible?”

“Milo,” Meddy said sternly, “Sirin’s an otherworldly creature who’s not supposed to interact, just observe – unless ordered to do something by her angel. She’d have to be invisible to everyone but Negret. And that would make Negret the captain of our campaign. Sirin wouldn’t be comfortable being in command. She’d just be excited to be able to join the adventure. But she might be very useful in terms of seeing things Negret can’t. And she’d have unearthly powers that might come in handy.”

So they begin the game. And, right away, the chart disappears. This is where the book isn’t so much a traditional mystery. There’s no dead body. But some things are stolen, and Negret and Sirin work to recover the items and figure out who took them.

But the main mystery of the book is finding out why each of the five guests from that first night came to Greenglass House. With all of them, it ties in to the history of the house itself, which was once owned by a famous smuggler, Doc Holystone.

The mystery does involve finding out who the thief is, but there’s a lot more to it than that. Milo gets the guests to tell stories in the evenings (like the characters in the book he’s reading) and the tales intertwine in lovely ways. Meanwhile, ice and snow keep everyone at Greenglass House, each with their own reason for being there in the first place.

Perhaps the biggest weakness in the book is the coincidence that all these characters arrived at the same time. Because most of the reasons for being there are quite different from each other. But since that’s the foundation, the beginning situation, it’s easy for the reader to go with the story… what if all these characters decided to descend on Greenglass House at the same time?

This book is good for readers who enjoy a puzzle, but this puzzle has plenty of heart to go along with it, and interesting characters, and smugglers, and adventure, and hidden treasure.

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Review of The Swallow, by Charis Cotter

swallow_largeThe Swallow

A Ghost Story

by Charis Cotter

Tundra Books, 2014. 318 pages.
Starred Review
2014 Cybils Finalist, Speculative Fiction for Elementary and Middle Grades
2014 Sonderbooks Stand-out, #11 Children’s Fiction

I don’t think of myself as liking ghost stories, but this didn’t feel like a typical ghost story to me. This is a cozy friendship story and a girl-in-a-big-family-finding-a-friend story.

Sections in this book alternate between the voices of Polly and Rose. Their houses are next door to one another, and it turns out that their attics adjoin. The houses overlook the cemetery.

Rose has always been able to see ghosts, and she hates it. Polly has always wanted to see a ghost, and she isn’t sure that Rose isn’t one herself. She’s so pale and otherworldly.

Polly says:

I’ve always wanted to see a ghost. More than anything. I keep watch at my window for hours, I go for walks in the cemetery almost every day after school and I read all the ghost books I can find at the Parliament Street Library.

Rose says:

I never want to see a ghost again. I’m sick of it. Ladies all in white who follow me down the street, sad men in suits who sit at the back of the bus, children in nightgowns floating out hospital windows – I wish they would all disappear.

Rose hasn’t seen any ghosts, for some reason, since her hospital stay a few months ago. But then, when she hears Polly through the wall of her attic, she thinks they’re back. Polly, after hearing Rose’s voice, thinks she’s finally met a ghost.

Rose says,

I felt sick to my stomach. I was not used to invisible ghosts. And I certainly was not used to ghosts that talked so much. Especially out loud.

My heart sank. I hadn’t seen one ghost since I’d got home from the hospital, and I had really hoped they were gone forever. And now here was a ghost, right in my attic, in my own special nest. Where one came, the rest would follow, and I just knew I’d go stark raving mad if I couldn’t keep them away from me.

“Tell me,” said the ghost, “did you die a horrible death? Are you doomed to wander the ghostly regions between the land of the living and the life beyond?”

“Stop playing games,” I said. “You know I’m not a ghost. You’re the ghost, and you’re pretending to think I’m a ghost to drive me crazy. It isn’t going to work. Go away. All I want to do is sit in my attic and read my books and sing my songs in peace. Is that too much to ask?”

“Do ghosts read?” asked the ghost. “That’s very interesting. Do you have to turn the pages or can you sort of absorb the story by holding the book and pulling the words into your head?”

“I – am – not – a – ghost!” I said slowly and firmly. “Ghosts don’t read! They’re ethereal. They haunt people. They follow them down the street, they watch them when they’re doing their homework, they lurk behind gravestones, they hide in people’s attics –“

“For someone who says they’re not a ghost, you seem to know an awful lot about them,” said the ghost.

I opened my mouth but no words came out. This was the most infuriating ghost I had ever met.

I love the part – in the next chapter – where they figure out what’s actually going on. Rose had gotten frustrated and shouted out, “MY NAME IS ROSE MCPHERSON AND I LIVE AT 43 CEMETERY LANE AND I AM TWELVE YEARS OLD AND I AM NOT DEAD!”

She continues:

It felt good to lose my temper. I made a lot of noise, but the ghost didn’t seem at all put out.

“Wait. Where did you say you live?” she asked calmly.

“43 CEMETERY LANE!” I repeated.

Silence.

“Hit the wall again,” suggested the ghost.

THUMP.

“Umm . . . Ghost?” she said.

“My name is Rose!”

“Ummm . . . Rose?” she said.

“What?”

“I live at 41 Cemetery Lane. Next door.”

It took me a minute to figure it out. “You mean you’re in your own attic? On the other side of the wall?”

“Yes,” replied the ghost. “I guess you’re not a ghost after all.” She sounded disappointed.

“But why is it I can hear you so clearly?” I asked. “As if you were right here beside me?”

“I am right here beside you,” she said, starting to tap against the wall. “This wall must be really thin, not like the brick wall downstairs.”

“That must be it,” I said. A great feeling of relief swept over me and I spoke without thinking. “So you’re not a ghost either. You must be one of the dreadful Lacey children who live next door.”

“Who says we’re dreadful?” asked the girl.

Oops. “Um – my mother.”

“Oh,” said the girl. “Well – she’s right. We are.”

The girls agree to meet in the cemetery – and then find a grave with Rose’s name on it. Rose is convinced she’s not a ghost, but who is Winnifred Rose McPherson, who died at twelve years old, 40 years earlier?

The girls build a friendship. They research this other ghost. And then they find a way to go secretly into each other’s attics. But Rose’s home does have a ghost – and she’s angry, and doesn’t seem to want Polly to go into her attic.

This book is indeed a ghost story – but it’s also a friendship story, and a story that warmed my heart, despite the ghostly chill.

chariscotter.com
tundrabooks.com

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Source: This review is based on a book sent to me by the publisher to evaluate for the Cybils Awards.

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.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of Chasing Power, by Sarah Beth Durst

chasing_power_largeChasing Power

by Sarah Beth Durst

Bloomsbury, New York, 2014. 368 pages.
Starred Review

Sarah Beth Durst does it again! She manages to make her paranormal novels distinctive and loaded with magic, and unlike anything that’s gone before.

What would you do if you had the power of telekinesis – able to make things move using only the power of your mind? Kayla has that power, at least for very small things. And what she chooses to do with it is steal.

She uses little things like a razor blade, thread, gum, a ball of tinfoil, and a dull fishing hook, and she uses them cleverly to take jewels and money from the upscale shops on State Street in Santa Barbara, California, in such a way that no one notices.

Kayla lives with her mother, Moonbeam, in Santa Barbara. For years, they’ve been in hiding from her father, who killed her older sister Amanda. Although Moonbeam has protective spells all around the house, she insists that Kayla not use her magic, or do anything at all that might gain her father’s attention.

Kayla doesn’t want to have to run again. They’ve been in Santa Barbara for eight years, and Kayla even has a best friend, Selena. But her mother doesn’t know about Kayla’s little adventures in State Street, or that this is how Kayla gets money to take care of them.

However, after she pulls off a jewelry store heist seamlessly, without arousing anyone’s attention, she notices a boy across the street, watching her.

He was tall with black hair that dusted over his eyes. Unlike the others, he wasn’t pierced or tattooed. He wore a clean black T-shirt and black jeans with boots. Kayla felt his eyes on her as she walked by and for an instant, she thought, He saw me; he knows. But no, that was impossible. It was far more likely he’d noticed her pink-streaked hair or her bikini top, which was the point of both. Also, she liked both. She flashed him a smile as she passed.

He didn’t smile back.

It turns out, the boy does know. And he’s got magical powers of his own, like nothing Kayla has ever seen before. But his mother has been kidnapped, and he wants Kayla’s help. Her magical help.

What follows is a wild adventure, traveling all over the world in quest of three ancient magical stones. They go to an ancient Mayan temple, to the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans, and many more places. It’s no surprise that someone else is after the stones, too, and whoever it is doesn’t seem concerned about keeping Kayla alive.

I like Kayla’s friend, Selena, and her computer help, getting background information. I like the realistic problems they deal with, while trying to access ancient magic – not staying out too late, for example, or getting Selena’s parents to approve of the boy she likes.

And then there’s this boy, Daniel. He wants Kayla’s help, but he doesn’t think to ask nicely for it. But here’s someone with magic, like her – and how did he know her name, anyway? And why does he have pictures of Kayla’s parents, together?

I’m not sure if I completely believed the way everything tied up at the end, but I was definitely happy with the Epilogue. I do like the way Sarah Beth Durst writes romance. The teens feel real – not perfect, but real. And this book – with the adults even more imperfect than the kids – wraps up in a nice way for the teens involved. An excellent read – a paranormal romance with some heft.

sarahbethdurst.com
bloomsbury.com

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Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

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.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of Unthinkable, by Nancy Werlin

unthinkable_largeUnthinkable

by Nancy Werlin

Dial Books, 2013. 392 pages.
Starred Review

After I read Impossible, by Nancy Werlin, on the way to vacation in Oregon, I made sure I went to Powell’s books to find copies of Extraordinary and Unthinkable to read as well. So together they gave my vacation a memory of some Extraordinary reading time!

Unthinkable is billed as a “Companion” to Impossible. And though technically you can read it without having read the others, it pulls together some threads from both Impossible and Extraordinary, so I’m happy with my choice to read them in order.

In Impossible, we learned about the family curse on Lucy Scarborough and all of her female line right back to her ancestor, Fenella Scarborough, who rejected an Elfin Knight and then was cursed. Fenella also has been unable to die for all those centuries, having to watch each of her daughters and granddaughters be tormented in turn.

When Lucy broke the family curse, she didn’t break the enchantment placed on Fenella. Now, Fenella just wants to be allowed to die.

Fenella goes to the faerie queen, begging to be allowed to die. But it’s not so simple. There’s a spell upon her, cast by Padraig, the one who cursed her family. The queen figures out that to break the spell, Fenella needs to complete three tasks of deliberate destruction in the mortal realm. She warns Fenella that this will involve terrible choices, but Fenella doesn’t care. She commits herself to the tasks.

And then Fenella learns that if she completes the tasks, not only will she again be mortal, but Padraig will die. If she fails? She will once again be Padraig’s slave.

And there’s more. The queen sends her brother Ryland along in the form of a cat to help Fenella, and then reveals more about the quest:

The queen nodded. “I am glad you mention your daughters. You will go to the two that survive, Lucy and her mother, Miranda. Tell them you have been freed and are coming to them for help to restart your life.”

“No,” Fenella was firm. “I will do this destruction my own way. I will keep Lucy and her family entirely out of it.”

The queen continued as if Fenella had not spoken. “They will want to love you and take care of you. They will not be suspicious.”

“I don’t wish to go to them,” Fenella repeated. “I would rather simply begin on the first task of destruction. Tell me. What must I destroy first?”

The cat butted his soft head against Fenella’s ankles. He did not make a sound, but Fenella heard his mocking voice in her head.

“No,” she said sharply. “No, you’re wrong.” She looked at the queen. “Isn’t he wrong?”

“He directed his thoughts to you, not to me. What did he say?”

“He told me –“ Fenella broke off. “He said that my family must be the target of each act of destruction. He said it would not be human destruction if there was no pain for me. For people I care about.” Her eyes were hot flame. “Tell me it’s not true,” she demanded.

The queen said, “Your first task is the destruction of your family’s safety.”

“No,” said Fenella.

“Yes,” said the queen, steadily. “You have agreed. You must go forward toward the death you desire, sowing destruction about you, or you will belong again to the Mud Creature.”

Fenella does join her living family. And she does come to love them. There is even a man she feels connected to. If she commits these acts of destruction, surely they will hate her. But if she doesn’t, starting the family’s curse again is truly unthinkable.

I won’t give any details, but I was surprised by what a beautiful ending Nancy Werlin pulled off out of this terrible situation.

As with the other books, the author did a marvelous job with the characters and relationships in this book. These people love one another, but they are caught up in an extraordinary and difficult situation. There’s even a hint of ways Fenella can work with the faerie realm in the future – I hope this means more books to come.

nancywerlin.com
www.penguin.com/teen

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

Source: This review is based on a copy I purchased at Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon.

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.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!