Category Archives: Reviews

Read This!: HOUR OF THE BEES by Lindsay Eagar

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Hour of the BeesHour of the Bees by Lindsay Eagar

Summary: While her friends are spending their summers having pool parties and sleepovers, twelve-year-old Carolina — Carol — is spending hers in the middle of the New Mexico desert, helping her parents move the grandfather she’s never met into a home for people with dementia. At first, Carol avoids prickly Grandpa Serge. But as the summer wears on and the heat bears down, Carol finds herself drawn to him, fascinated by the crazy stories he tells her about a healing tree, a green-glass lake, and the bees that will bring back the rain and end a hundred years of drought. As the thin line between magic and reality starts to blur, Carol must decide for herself what is possible — and what it means to be true to her roots. Readers who dream that there’s something more out there will be enchanted by this captivating novel of family, renewal, and discovering the wonder of the world.

Absorbing, emotional, and bursting with magical realism, Hour of the Bees is a book that challenges readers’ ideas about what they know and what they think they know. Carol is a relatable, imperfect protagonist, struggling to deal with the changes in her family and her relationships and her own sense of who she is. Her resistance to the impossible ideas her grandfather states with such conviction is believable, as is her slow change of heart when unexplainable events support his tales of a life-giving tree in the desert. The details of the story may shimmer between literal and figurative like waves of heat in the desert, but the reader, like Carol, comes to see that it doesn’t matter if her grandfather’s stories are real or not – only that they are true.

HOUR OF THE BEES is out now.

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Read This!: PHANTOM LIMBS by Paula Garner

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Phantom LimbsPhantom Limbs by Paula Garner

Summary: Otis and Meg were inseparable until her family abruptly moved away after the terrible accident that left Otis’s little brother dead and both of their families changed forever. Since then, it’s been three years of radio silence, during which time Otis has become the unlikely protégé of eighteen-year-old Dara—part drill sergeant, part friend—who’s hell-bent on transforming Otis into the Olympic swimmer she can no longer be. But when Otis learns that Meg is coming back to town, he must face some difficult truths about the girl he’s never forgotten and the brother he’s never stopped grieving. As it becomes achingly clear that he and Meg are not the same people they were, Otis must decide what to hold on to and what to leave behind. Quietly affecting, this compulsively readable debut novel captures all the confusion, heartbreak, and fragile hope of three teens struggling to accept profound absences in their lives.

How do you bear the unbearable? That’s the question that plagues the characters in this sensitive, searing novel, as they all grapple with huge losses. Otis, the narrator, lost his little brother in a tragic accident, only to lose Meg, his best friend and first love, not long after. Only when Meg returns four years later does he begin to see how much Meg had suffered too, and how blind his own grief made him to hers. Fortunately, Otis has his smart-mouthed and prickly swimming mentor/best friend Dara, herself suffering literal phantom pains from the loss of her arm, to keep him grounded. Part sweet romance, part coming of age story, this is an immersive tale of redemption and emotional survival.

PHANTOM LIMBS is out now.

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Read This!: LAST SEEN LEAVING by Caleb Roehrig

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Last Seen LeavingLast Seen Leaving by Caleb Roehrig

Summary: Flynn’s girlfriend has disappeared. How can he uncover her secrets without revealing his own? Flynn’s girlfriend, January, is missing. The cops are asking questions he can’t answer, and her friends are telling stories that don’t add up. All eyes are on Flynn—as January’s boyfriend, he must know something. But Flynn has a secret of his own. And as he struggles to uncover the truth about January’s disappearance, he must also face the truth about himself.

This is a thrilling page-turner of a mystery, and the question of what happened to January McConville is only part of it. As Flynn pokes into the parts of her life that January kept from him – her new school, the troubles in her family, the workplace she never let him visit – the discovery of the conflicting realities she has constructed in different parts of her life make him question his own understanding of her. Flynn is a likeable and conflicted protagonist, and uncovering the truths about January also forces him to confront his own long-held secret. Where this thriller really shines is in the romance between Flynn and Kaz, simultaneously tentative due to the extreme circumstances under which they meet and made braver because of them. What could have been lurid sensationalism, given the genre, becomes a sensitive story of a young man struggling to live authentically.

LAST SEEN LEAVING is out now.

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Read This!: GIRLS IN THE MOON by Janet McNally

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Girls in the MoonGirls in the Moon by Janet McNally

Summary: Everyone in Phoebe Ferris’s life tells a different version of the truth. Her mother, Meg, ex–rock star and professional question evader, shares only the end of the story—the post-fame calm that Phoebe’s always known. Her sister, Luna, indie-rock darling of Brooklyn, preaches a stormy truth of her own making, selectively ignoring the facts she doesn’t like. And her father, Kieran, the cofounder of Meg’s beloved band, hasn’t said anything at all since he stopped calling three years ago. But Phoebe, a budding poet in search of an identity to call her own, is tired of half-truths and vague explanations. When she visits Luna in New York, she’s determined to find out how she fits in to this family of storytellers, and to maybe even continue her own tale—the one with the musician boy she’s been secretly writing for months. Told in alternating chapters, Phoebe’s first adventure flows as the story of Meg and Kieran’s romance ebbs, leaving behind only a time-worn, precious pearl of truth about her family’s past—and leaving Phoebe to take a leap into her own unknown future.

On the surface this is the story of Phoebe’s trip to New York to visit her sister Luna, who has just dropped out of college to tour with her band. The shadow of their parents’ past looms large, as Luna seems to be making the same choices as her mother at every turn, even as she resents the musician father who walked out on them. But as Phoebe confronts her sister and the secrets she has kept, she also comes to learn truths about her parents and their past, and gains the clarity to make her own choices, despite her fear of repeating their mistakes. As Phoebe comes to understand emotional truths about her parents’ relationship, it is fitting that her mother’s story unfolds in reverse between the chapters of Phoebe’s story, taking us a little further back in time with each appearance, until we see her mother where Phoebe is now, a young woman choosing between fear and hope. A compelling and lyrical exploration of female relationships and choices.

GIRLS IN THE MOON is out now.

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Read This!: DISENCHANTED: THE TRIALS OF CINDERELLA by Megan Morrison

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Disenchanted: The Trials of Cinderella (Tyme, #2)Disenchanted: The Trials of Cinderella by Megan Morrison

Summary: Ella Coach has one wish: revolution. Her mother died working in a sweatshop, and Ella wants every laborer in the Blue Kingdom to receive fairer treatment. But to make that happen, she’ll need some high-level support . . .

Prince Dash Charming has one wish: evolution. The Charming Curse forced generations of Charming men to lie, cheat, and break hearts — but with the witch Envearia’s death, the curse has ended. Now Dash wants to be a better person, but he doesn’t know where to start . . .

Serge can grant any wish — and has: As an executive fairy godfather, he’s catered to the wildest whims of spoiled teenagers from the richest, most entitled families in Blue. But now a new name has come up on his list, someone nobody’s ever heard of . . . Ella Coach.

I just love this book. I read an early version of it, and that was incredible, but now I have just read the final version and I am even more blown away. This is one of those books that I just want to shove at people and say, “READ IT and you’ll understand!”, but I will try to be coherent here in explaining why.

The land of Tyme is the most fully-fleshed out setting I have ever read in a fairy tale retelling. Seriously, there is so much going at every level, large and small, and all of it adds up to a place that feel more real than most stories set in the real world. Then there are the characters: Ella is smart and fierce and determined and funny and flawed – a heroine at once relatable and aspirational. We should all strive to be as awesome as Ella. Watching Prince Dash Charming stumble through the aftermath of the broken curse – and the uncomfortable realization of his own privilege – is at once painful and inspiring. And he and Ella together are just lovely. There are also tons of other incredibly well developed female characters in the story: Sharlyn, the prickly stepmother who shows herself to be one of Ella’s staunchest defenders; Queen Maud, whose moral compass holds more sway over her husband and son than she knows; Jules, the fairy with ulterior motives; and Lady Lariat Jacquard, a villain on par with Dolores Umbridge for pure bile.

Morrison is not afraid to take on big topics from the real world and present them in a way that makes sense to young readers. No one can come away from this story without a deeper understanding of privilege, economic systems, and the importance of fair labor regulations. Morrison takes the central themes of the Cinderella story – rags-to-riches, deceiving appearances – and spins them out into a tale about examining what lies beneath our assumptions about others and developing empathy. And how did I get so far without mentioning Serge and Jasper? The additional layers of story created by Serge’s burgeoning realization that cause to which he has dedicated his life has been corrupted, and by his relationship with Jasper, take this far beyond a typical fairy tale retelling. No series has combined whimsy with compelling issues from the real world as seamlessly as this since Harry Potter.

DISENCHANTED: THE TRIALS OF CINDERELLA is out now.

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