Category Archives: Reviews

Read This!: HOLDING COURT by K.C. Held

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Holding CourtHolding Court by K.C. Held

Summary: Sixteen-year-old Jules Verity knows exactly what’s in store at her new job at castle-turned-dinner-theater Tudor Times. Some extra cash, wearing a fancy-pants dress, and plenty of time to secretly drool over the ever-so-tasty–and completely unavailable–Grayson Chandler. Except that it’s not quite what she imagined. For one, the costume Jules has to wear is awful. Then there’s the dead body she finds that just kind of…well, disappears. Oh, and there’s the small issue of Jules and her episodes of what her best friend calls “Psychic Tourette’s Syndrome”–spontaneous and uncontrollable outbursts of seemingly absurd prophecies. The only bright side? This whole dead body thing seems to have gotten Grayson’s attention. Except that the more Jules investigates, the more she discovers that Grayson’s interest might not be as courtly as she thought. In fact, it’s starting to look suspicious…

This book has it all – a winning heroine, a quirky cast of characters, a chilling mystery, an unexpected love triangle , not to mention a gorgeous castle. The reader is carried along by Jules’ funny and warm narration as she approaches the fantastical events of the story – including her own inconvenient psychic blurts – with practical humor. This is the kind of book you’ll be excited to dive into each time you sit down to read; spending time with Jules and her friends is just fun (dead bodies notwithstanding).

HOLDING COURT is out now.

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Read This!: THE CASE FOR JAMIE by Brittany Cavallaro

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The Case for Jamie (Charlotte Holmes #3)The Case for Jamie by Brittany Cavallaro

Summary: It’s been a year since the shocking death of August Moriarty, and Jamie and Charlotte haven’t spoken. Jamie is going through the motions at Sherringford, trying to finish his senior year without incident, with a nice girlfriend he can’t seem to fall for. Until strange things start happening to him. Strange things that might mean nothing at all—or that someone is after him again. Charlotte is on the run, from Lucien Moriarty, and from her own mistakes. No one has seen her since that fateful night on the lawn in Sussex. Charlotte wants it that way. She knows she isn’t safe to be around. She knows that her Watson can’t forgive her. Holmes and Watson may not be looking to reconcile, but there is someone who wants the team back together. Someone who has been quietly observing them both. Making plans. Biding their time. Someone who wants to see one of them suffer and the other one dead. Holmes and Watson face the ultimate test: they must unravel the case of their lives without unraveling each other.

Given how much I absolutely adored the first two books in this series, it will come as a surprise to no one that I savored this third installment twice, just basking in its awesomeness, before I could bring myself to review it. I was afraid, in the beginning, that this would be an anxiety-inducing book, because the idea of Jamie and Charlotte being apart was difficult for me. But Cavallaro is such a masterful storyteller that even when they are apart, we see, in chapters alternating Jamie and Charlotte’s points of view, how much they are still entwined in each other’s lives, and how they are being irrevocably drawn back together. And when their paths do collide again, at exactly the right time and place, and in the most Holmes-and-Watson way possible, well, it’s just magic. Jamie and Charlotte occupy an important place in my heart, of course, but Cavallaro made me fall in love with so many other characters too, even when I was resisting like mad. (Especially Elizabeth, the girl Jamie dates when he’s trying to get over Charlotte. There is no earthly way I should like Elizabeth, and yet, she won me over in a few pages.) With gripping action, realistic relationships, and characters that are funny, flawed, and real, this book does not disappoint. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to read it again.

THE CASE FOR JAMIE is out now.

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Read This!: AMINA’S VOICE by Hena Khan

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Amina's VoiceAmina’s Voice by Hena Khan

Summary: Amina has never been comfortable in the spotlight. She is happy just hanging out with her best friend, Soojin. Except now that she’s in middle school everything feels different. Soojin is suddenly hanging out with Emily, one of the “cool” girls in the class, and even talking about changing her name to something more “American.” Does Amina need to start changing too? Or hiding who she is to fit in? While Amina grapples with these questions, she is devastated when her local mosque is vandalized. 

My 12-year-old son and I listened to the audiobook version, beautifully narrated by Soneela Nankani in a way that perfectly captures Amina’s loving heart and earnest nature. Khan has accomplished the remarkable feat of creating a warm, funny school and family story that takes on a variety of issues – dealing with prejudice, navigating friendships, overcoming fears – without ever once feeling like an “issues” book. Religious details that may be unfamiliar to non-Muslim readers occupy the story in a natural, straightforward way that informs without lecturing or information dump. This book also contains, through Amina’s mentions of the treatment she has received from classmates over the years, some of the truest depictions of microaggressions I have ever read – how they occur, how they are discounted by the people who perpetuate them, but how heavily they can weigh on the psyche of a marginalized person. As a reader, I was spellbound by Amina’s story; as a writer, I was inspired by Khan’s masterful use of craft; as a parent, I was grateful for such an engaging story that has led to many important conversations with my son.

AMINA’S VOICE is out now.

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Read This!: THE TOMBS by Deborah Schaumberg

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The TombsThe Tombs by Deborah Schaumberg

Summary: New York, 1882. A dark, forbidding city, and no place for a girl with unexplainable powers. Sixteen-year-old Avery Kohl pines for the life she had before her mother was taken. She fears the mysterious men in crow masks who locked her mother in the Tombs asylum for being able to see what others couldn’t. Avery denies the signs in herself, focusing instead on her shifts at the ironworks factory and keeping her inventor father out of trouble. Other than secondhand tales of adventure from her best friend, Khan, an ex-slave, and caring for her falcon, Seraphine, Avery spends her days struggling to survive. 
Like her mother’s, Avery’s powers refuse to be contained. When she causes a bizarre explosion at the factory, she has no choice but to run from her lies, straight into the darkest corners of the city. Avery must embrace her abilities and learn to wield their power—or join her mother in the cavernous horrors of the Tombs. And the Tombs has secrets of its own: strange experiments are being performed on “patients”…and no one knows why.

Sixteen-year-old Avery Kohl has been working as a welder in an ironworks factory ever since her mother was locked in the Tombs asylum and she and her father had to flee their respectable middle-class life. The skills Avery has developed in creating perfect metal connections are only appropriate, as she discovers that she has powers that let her see the connections between lives, and help heal other people’s auras. But in New York City in the throes of the Industrial Revolution, such powers are dangerous, and there are plenty of greedy men who want to use Avery’s powers for their own gain – just as they have been using her mother’s. When Avery’s burgeoning powers attract attention from the mysterious men in crow masks who drag people off to the Tombs, she has to go into hiding with her mother’s Romany friends. She hatches a desperate plan to free her mother…only to find that the greedy industrialists are getting ready to unleash an awful plan on New York City, one that threatens the lives of every worker in every plant and factory. And Avery and her friends may be the only ones who can stop it. Filled with intrigue, adventure, romance, and all the cool steampunk flourishes a reader could ask for, Schaumberg’s debut melds history and fantasy to create an absorbing world just beyond the known.

THE TOMBS is out now.

Read This!: TOO FAT, TOO SLUTTY, TOO LOUD: THE RISE AND REIGN OF THE UNRULY WOMAN

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Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly WomanToo Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman by Anne Helen Petersen

Summary: There have been unruly women for as long as there have been boundaries of what constitutes acceptable “feminine” behavior, but there’s evidence that she’s on the rise–more visible and less easily dismissed–than ever before. In Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud, Anne Helen Petersen uses the lens of “unruliness” to explore the ascension of eleven contemporary powerhouses: Serena Williams, Melissa McCarthy, Abbi Jacobson, Ilana Glazer, Nicki Minaj, Kim Kardashian, Hillary Clinton, Caitlyn Jenner, Jennifer Weiner, and Lena Dunham. Petersen explores why the public loves to love (and hate) these controversial figures, each of whom has been conceived as “too” something: too queer, too strong, too honest, too old, too pregnant, too shrill, too much. With its brisk, incisive analysis, Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud will be a conversation-starting book on what makes and breaks celebrity today.

This book is a wonder. Peterson articulates so many frustrations and furies that I have personally felt, and that I know other women have felt, and documents the way our society attempts to limit women in a way that is precise, articulate, and utterly undeniable. Her choice to center each chapter around a specific female celebrity and how she is supposedly “too” something is inspired – these studies are not so much about the women themselves as they are about how the women are seen, discussed, and applauded or vilified by the world around them. This book is an absolute must-read for anyone who is interested in understanding what all women experience in large and small ways as they dare to exist in a world that constantly tells them that they only have worth in relation to men.
Some choice quotes:

“’Shrillness’ is just a word to describe what happens when a woman, with her higher-toned voice, attempts to speak loudly. A pejorative, in other words, developed specifically to shame half the population when they attempt to command attention in the same manner as men.”

 

“To be an unruly woman today is to oscillate between the postures of fearlessness and self-doubt, between listening to the voices that tell a woman she is too much, and one’s own, whispering and yelling  I am already enough, and always have been.”