YA – Page 20 – Cannonball Read 17

A teenage wizard girl and her somewhat sentient cookie and sourdough do big stuff

A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher

February 27, 2022 by CoffeeShopReader Leave a Comment

I was a little late to the A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, but I’m glad I finally got it; this one is both fun and a little inventive. The basic story is plucky heroine with limited resources faces off against unknown and then known end-of-the-world kind of badness, and triumphs with the help of some friends. Said heroine is 14-year-old Mona, who lives as a magic user in a world mostly suspicious of magic. Mona’s magic only works on baked goods, which is just […]

Fascinated, then Restless

We Were Restless Things by Cole Nagamatsu

January 30, 2022 by Sofi Keren 2 Comments

Sometimes a book gets packaged as something it’s not, which always does it a disservice since the reader is expecting something different than they get. They may love the new, surprise story or they may be annoyed that what they hoped for wasn’t within the book they picked up. I’m somewhere in the middle with this novel. We Were Restless Things is about a mysterious lake in the woods that only appears to teenager Noemi Amato and occasionally to her friends once Noemi has taken […]

Goose Girl Redux

Little Thieves by Margaret Owen

January 29, 2022 by Pooja 3 Comments

“I think there are lives that make it easy to be good. Or what most people call good. When you have wealth, status, family, it’s easy to be a saint, it costs you nothing. I can’t say if you’re a good person or not. But the more I know of you, the more I understand that the world keeps making you choose between survival and martyrdom. No one should fault you for wanting to live.” Vanya is the goddaughter of Death and Fortune, but that […]

Did you just yada yada yada the apocalypse?

Not Your Sidekick by C.B. Lee

January 20, 2022 by Debcapsfan Leave a Comment

More post apocalyptic fiction! This time, we don’t really get into the why things happen and what caused this, this book takes place long into the future, where there are metahumans with super powers, and heroes and villains. Not Your Sidekick, by C.B.Lee tells the story of Jessica Tran, living in a futuristic town where her parents are minor celebrity super heroes. Her sister is a much bigger super hero working for the League of Heroes. Jess is bi, and has a big crush on […]

Are Giants Scarier than Climate Change?

Love in the Time of Global Warming by Francesca Lia Block

January 9, 2022 by Sofi Keren 4 Comments

If I made a short list of the books that mattered to me as a teenager in the late 90’s, the Weetzie Bat series by Francesca Lia Block would be at the top. I have vivid memories of finding their brightly colored covers in the teen section of the library and checking them out over and over to read her dreamy, magical stories of life in a fantasy LA. Love in the Time of Global Warming is a much later novel of hers, coming out […]

If a certain two movies were combined with a certain novel this is what you’d get

The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

January 8, 2022 by CoffeeShopReader 1 Comment

The Inheritance Games is basically Knives Out meets The Westing Game with a touch of any standard YA romance. The heroine Avery comes from a poor background with a good bit of family disfunction, but she plans to get out of that by going to college for actuarial science. These plans are interrupted when she finds out that she’s been named heiress to a massive fortune left to her by Tobias Hawthorne, whom she’s never heard of. To get the billions, all she has to […]

Zirza on A Gothic Classic for a ReasonIt's one of those wish-you-could-read-it-again-for-the-first-time books. I loved it.
Emmalita on “It came to something when you found yourself hoping that the footsteps you heard were ghosts.”I loved the ending! I don’t think it’s been out long enough to talk about why though.
Dixie on Track Her Down by Melinda LeighI am just starting Track Her Down and I have read them all in order till now and thought I...
Roland of Gilead on How can you give us the gift of a crazy character named Rando Thoughtful and then just as suddenly take that gift away? We need to talk, Uncle Stevie.I came across this randomly years after it was written because I was searching "Random Thoughtful. But I have the...
Emmalita on “Only you, Em, would refer to heartbreak as a distraction. I think I would have a more sympathetic response if I asked to marry a bookcase.”Oh my goodness, Gallifrey was beautiful. I’m sure her mittens were gloriously murdery.

Help Our Mission