When Leigh Bardugo’s first novel from a new series dropped in 2015 and started getting all kinds of raves, I knew I’d have to go back post haste to the ever-growing TBR and pick up the first series, which I had been intending to read for some time. The Grisha Trilogy imagines a fantasy world based out of a Russian analog country, where those possessed of magical abilities are called the Grisha, and anyone who is not Grisha is probably either a peasant or a […]
Definitely fantasy genre now
When The Dark is Rising started I was very confused. It was supposed to be the second book in a series, right? But, it starts with completely different characters and in a different village than Over Sea, Under Stone. Only as time goes on, do we see the connection. Will Stanton is the seventh son of a seventh son and just about to turn 11 years old. Up until that point, he is a normal kid who has no idea there is anything special about […]
A treasure hunt adventure
I don’t know how I hadn’t heard about this series before now. It seems exactly the kind of thing that someone would have recommended to me, or I would have picked up in the library if I had seen it growing up, but I didn’t come across it until browsing my online library in my 40s. Fortunately, that wasn’t too late to enjoy it. Over Sea, Under Stone is the first book in a series of five called The Dark is Rising Sequence. Simon, Jane […]
A beginning without much substance, but some promise
3.5 stars Agatha Clay (although I’m going to assume that this is an assumed name, since she has another one in the TITLE of the book) is one of those diligent students, who no matter how much she wants to suceed just can’t seem to. She’s almost constantly late, she can’t really seem to make her inventions work and she’s a laughing stock at the Transylvania Polygnostic University. To make matters work, during a weird electrical incident in town, she’s robbed and her precious locket, […]
An engaging young adult mystery
When I went to my conference in November, I attended a young adult literature panel in which two of my brother’s friends presented papers. His friend D talked about bi-erasure in YA lit and standards by which we should measure literature. It was a fascinating conference paper. In the question-and-answer time, I asked him if there was a book in which a bi character was depicted most positively. He suggested Tess Sharpe’s Far from You, and I was happy to give it a try. Sophie […]
More Betsy. All the better.
So, the best thing about the Betsy books is that they are funny and honest without being overly moralizing or sentimental. The second book is even better than the first one, and it speaks to the pressures of being a young woman in a society that places so much importance on a certain “feminine” ideal. Betsy is now a sophomore in high school. Her relationship to school has definitely improved, though she (still) has yet to learn the importance of academic writing over purple prose […]
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