Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews

The Hawthorne Legacy

By Jennifer Lynn Barnes.

Previous book here.  I'm going to keep the public review of this vague, and then discuss details below the spoiler cut.

I liked this book a whole lot better than the last one, because it finally Gets Down To Business and actually works on explaining--WITH REASONABLE REASONS--why Avery was tapped to inherit the Hawthorne millions despite not genetically being a Hawthorne. (Which frankly was a whole lot better than what book one posits, i.e. Avery's birthdate and the anagram of her name. Come on.) I'll get into that stuff below the spoiler cut, but it's mostly actually a reasonable reason--or is for most of the book, anyway. There was a last minute swerve I DID NOT LIKE (sigh), but the book at least tries to justify it, I suppose. But I really enjoyed the mystery they had going on and unraveling the missing person case that's the heart of this book. We find out who's secretly related to who, including how Skye's idiosyncratic (also "duh") naming schemes for her children are pretty obvious as to their paternities, hah. And there's a past dramatic event that has kicked off everything, including the puzzles to solve. I liked how that worked. 

I did enjoy how most of the characters band together to work on solving the mystery, including helping Avery when she's unable to physically go to places.  I also like how Max at one point is actually liberated from her parents on her 18th birthday and happily joins in the case. There may be some vibe between her and Xander, as he'll make her some droids. That's very sweet. 

As for the romances: Avery vacillates between Jameson and Grayson in this book. I don't really get the "relationship" with her and Grayson, which seems to have some attraction, but Grayson mostly doesn't want to act on it and says he wants to stay friends, and frankly, he doesn't spend that much time with Avery for us to get to know him or care. Meanwhile, Jameson has personality out the wazoo and likes to hang out with Avery and nickname her and puzzle solve with her, and after awhile he is All In on this, and I was all "Jameson, I am down with you, please." I did like how Max suggested that Avery figure out which guy she wanted by imagining which one would come up to her if she was on a cliff alone. At first Avery is all "Actually, I imagine myself alone," but later, well... I'm good with it, I'll say that. 

What's not great: see below spoiler cut. I'm also rather stumped as to how Avery survives a near-death experience that involves a coma, but we don't even really find out what injuries she suffered and after she comes out of the coma, she's fine? Shouldn't that have been more injurious? Did she get burned? Unable to walk? Anything? It's also kind of unclear what happened regarding the rule that Avery can't spend more than 3 nights a month away from "home." Is there a loophole for the hospital? I'm unclear, but we're told the rule wasn't violated...somehow? 

I'm going to give it four stars overall because I think it's a vast improvement and fairly well satisfying compared to the last one, even if I'm a wee bit bothered by the one swerve. Good job! Now on to the spoiler discussion!

Heiress Apparently

By Diana Ma.

18-year-old* Gemma Huang has moved to LA to become an actress, and she's just got a prime role as a gender-bending lawyer in a modern rom-com remake of "M. Butterfly." There's two directors: a jerky guy, and an amazing Chinese woman, Eilene, who Gemma is a fan of. Eilene privately tells Gemma that the two of them need to work to take over the movie together, since god knows Jake, the other director, doesn't have good ideas about the movie. Which is to say that her guy character, Song, has bad hair, baggy suits and is terrible gay stereotyping. Blech! But Gemma's in her first big role ever--how much power does she have on this?

• I note that Gemma is playing a lawyer, which makes me wonder on the age here?

Added bonus on top of that job stuff, and suddenly going long-distance with her new boyfriend who seems nice but jealous of her career, is that Gemma's always had no other family but her parents growing up. Dad's an orphan and Mom won't say anything about her past, other than forbidding Gemma to ever go to China. Naturally, this new movie she booked is filming in Beijing, so she takes the job and doesn't tell them where she's going.  Why didn't her mother want her to go there? I'm reminded of the comments about why Vorlons wore encounter suits on Babylon 5: we would be recognized by EVERYONE. Likewise, Gemma finds out that she has a twin: she's the spitting image of famous rich Chinese socialite Alyssa Chua and everyone thinks she's her. (In fact, that's how she's landed the role..) Gemma gets mobbed by fans and paparazzi, surprise, and one guy, Eric Liu, mistakes her for Alyssa and soon gets into conversation with her. Eric's family and Alyssa's have been feuding for years, and Eric's concerned that his little sister Mimi is now friends with Alyssa. Gemma ends up meeting Alyssa and it turns out they're identical cousins from twin mothers.  Gemma's mother left/was disowned from the family years ago, and obviously she'd like to find out what the heck is going on. So in between working on the movie, Gemma teams up with Eric, on the frequent trail of Alyssa and Mimi.

I really liked this book. It reminds me a wee bit of Crazy Rich Asians, but much better written and with more depth. I enjoyed the unraveling of the family mysteries, especially regarding Gemma's mom. I enjoyed Gemma getting closer to Eric--who's legitimately nice as well as rich--and eventually Alyssa. I enjoyed the discussion of cultural differences, like how Gemma can't view the Internet outside China after a week of VMP use, Alyssa's Weibo fame, who's heard exactly what about the Cultural Revolution/Tiananmen Square Massacre and what's banned online to find out there. And I really liked how homosexuality is discussed and handled here--the book makes a point that even if the government isn't gay-friendly, in real life people are much cooler about it. This comes up both in Gemma's personal life and in the movie, as Jake doesn't like it when Gemma thinks that given the plot of the movie, it should have more of a bisexual vibe. And when we finally find out why Gemma's mom split from the family, it's like OMG! (And that will be a prequel book.) There's also a super cool family secret that I loved. 

It's a really heartwarming, touching story and I really liked this one. Four stars! About the only thing I find a wee bit bothersome is that we don't really get to find out how the entire movie goes so much, as I was curious about that. 

The Other Side of Perfect

By Mariko Turk.    

Alina, our narrator, is a teenage girl who was diehardedly pursuing a professional ballet career until she shattered her leg and will never be able to do pointe like she used to again. Now she's forced to go to school full time, to cope with her little sister Josie still being able to pursue her own modern dance career, and figure out what to do with her life now. The answer is to audition for and get into the school musical, Singin' In The Rain, as "The Vamp." She can still dance enough for a musical, after all.

Alina's a very nice girl who's still deeply upset about what happened to her, and she gets triggered at times by it all. and doesn't always behave well, like fleeing events when she's upset. But making new friends and literally taking notice of her hot neighbor who's in the play--HE EVEN KNITS,, HOW ADORABLE IS THAT--certainly helps. She also has a certain sympathy with Diya, her love interest Jude's ex, who everyone hates for ditching Jude as a date for a dance to go to a singing competition she got into at the last minute. Alina definitely understands that drive, even if most people don't.

Then there's the racism issues (Alina's half-Japanese) that came up during her ballet career that at the time she tried to brush off. Specifically, her ballet teacher ALWAYS casting her as "Chinese Tea" in The Nutcracker and her best friend Colleen (African-American) as "Arabian Coffee" year after year and having some kind of legit-sounding excuse to always assign them those parts instead of oh, Giselle. This was something Alina tried to cope with at the time, but being outside of ballet now gives her a new perspective. Especially when she sees that her sister's dance school doesn't insist on doing a traditional "Chinese Tea" dance and how well that works. I did like when Alina and Colleen finally confront the teacher about her racism. Even though the teacher is just speechless and walks off, I like to think they made a point.

Alina's friendships in this are really great. She can't bear to text Colleen back about her dance career, but they establish that she still cares. Alina's new friend Margot is fun, and Alina builds a friendship with Diya even though the rest of her friend group isn't into that.

And Jude...Jude is just adorable. Love him. I do enjoy the plot setup that makes Alina and Jude have to behave in a sexy manner in a play, because they have to, because the teacher is (inappropriately!?) egging them on, because it's a play....WHY DOESN'T THIS EVER HAPPEN TO ME IN REAL LIFE, JUST SAYING?!?!* 

• she says, about to embark on play #4 with a certain someone...

When Jude is all "I'm not okay to be in a relationship with anyone" you're all "dammit!!!!"  I was kvelling and feeling same. 

Quotes on love declaration:

• "I was about to tell him I wanted to be so much more than that. That I understood he was going through stuff but I loved him anyway, and we could figure it out together,"
• "You haven't declared your undying love for him! And you haven't declared your undying love because you think he doesn't want you to. That's where you're wrong." "He said he wasn't ready for a relationship." "But did you tell him you were? Because that could change things." 
• "There's a reason I did the musical: Ethan Anderson." 
• "I don't want to be just friends with you! I want more than that, I've wanted more than that for a while, I just didn't know if--" Jude clicked off his seat belt, flew across his seat, and kissed me."

  Four stars. Highly recommended for schmoop and performing. 

My Plain Jane

By Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows.

This book is a retelling of Jane Eyre, except (a) with the Bronte family in it instead of Jane's long-lost cousins, and (b) ghosts! Namely, Jane (or anyone else who's temporarily died and come back) can see ghosts, which makes them suitable for employment by the Royal Society for the Relocation of Wayward Spirits. Jane is actually even more than just a seer now--she's a Beacon, who attracts ghosts and theoretically can tell them what to do. And despite Jane's plainness, ghosts find her absolutely beautiful. (Though I did wonder about what ghosts Jane knew in life thought about this?)) Anyway, Helen Burns has stuck around as Jane's ghostly best friend. Her current living best friend is Charlotte Bronte, who's already working on her future writing career, based on Jane's life. 

Upon meting a Society member--one Alexander Blackwood--and seeing that they trap ghosts in objects to stop them from harassing people--Jane doesn't agree with their methods (and is concerned about Helen's safety) and refuses, A LOT, to join their ranks. She'd much rather be a governess, thankyouverymuch, and so she hies herself off to her new job at Thornfield, where the owner is weird but hot and things are weird. Though Helen is around to point out that Rochester's behavior is straight up weird, Jane's had next to no contact with men all her life, women are raised in their society that men are everything, and you get the drift.

Alexander's boss is putting the pressure on him to hire another Beacon, as they haven't had one for quite awhile. His current enthusiastic but inept assistant is Branwell Bronte, and Charlotte is totally desperate to both get out of Lowood and get another job and she'd LOVE to work for the Society. So everyone sneaks into the Thornfield house party, and, well, the plot is a lot better with ghosts, especially ones that can possess you. I really liked what the authors did with this plot. Much like their other stories I've read lately, adding in one new fantastical element really improves everything, and makes Rochester's behavior MAKE A LOT MORE SENSE. The entire plot now makes A LOT MORE SENSE, and that's glorious. 

This is definitely less romantic than any other books in the series, as the vague budding relationship between Alexander and Charlotte really doesn't get much play here and I didn't really care about it. Ah well. As for Jane...well, the ending has a surprise there, hah hah.

Overall, four stars. Good job, y'all!

Quotes:

• "Charlotte had always known Jane to be a kind, thoughtful sort of person. Even when she was committing murder, she was thinking of others." 
• "As a general rule, Alexander found everything suspicious. Like, why didn't women's clothes have pockets?" 
• I'm amused at the ah....ghostly cameo from book 1, hah hah.

 

My Contrary Mary

By Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows.

If you watched the TV show Reign, THIS ONE'S FOR YOU.

Here's the sequel to My Lady Jane, with cameos from the original cast but focusing on Mary, Queen of Scots, who cameo'd in the last book. This one's not quite as fun as everything else I've read in the series, but mostly because this is pretty serious shit here. Mary's evil uncles are trying to by proxy take over several countries in Europe at once, and Queen Catherine de Medici is up to her own aims. As the death count (or presumed death count) rises, poor Mary and Francis are trying to figure out how to thwart everyone, while very slowly transitioning into more of a romantic relationship.

France is a Verity country, and Mary and her people are secretly animal people, which of course comes in handy when trying to thwart these things. Mary and Francis are the main characters, along with the made-up Aristotle de Nostradame, teenage daughter of Nostradamus. Ari's more of a master potion maker than a fortune teller (the gag in this book is that all of her visions are of modern-day movies and make no sense to anyone), and her dad may or may not be losing his marbles--but in this world, if he says a frog is ruling France, well, that may be literal :P Ari is employed by Queen Catherine as another spy/lady-in-waiting to Mary, but since Ari is both a nice girl and secretly in love with one of Mary's ladies, she's sympathetic to their aims. 

Mary's life was incredibly depressing, if you read history/watched Reign, especially the last few years with her super shitty evil last two husbands. Happily, this book rectifies that situation. The authors themselves say, "We wish history had been kinder to Mary, Queen of Scots, but it just...wasn't. These things happened, and they sucked." But ah...it won't be as bad as it could have been here. I did crack up at the snark about how history could have gone at the end. 

Quotes:

• "I see a girl with pale hair singing in the snow. She wants to let go, but I don't know what it is." -typical vision for Ari
• "During this time in history, approximately 92 percent of women were named one of four names: Mary, Anne, Catherine, or Jane, which led to many cases of mistaken identity." (I note that the authors came up with nicknames for the Four Marys who were ladies in waiting.)
• "Sometimes the woman cuts off the biscuit supply for no reason." -King Henry, not being let in on the reason. 
• After Ari gives King Henry a blinding potion so he can't insist on watching Mary and Francis consummate their marriage: "And yet, I can't bloody seeeee!" the king cried out in agony. "I told you to stop doing that so much," said Catherine. The entire room went quiet."

Anyway, this is still a fun book even as it deals with serious/depressing subject matter, and has a happy ending. Four stars!

 

My Lady Jane

By Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton and Jodi Meadows.

As previously mentioned, I read another book by these authors and loved it, so I devoured this one in like 24 hours. It's...sort of...a series? Or at least it's historical Janes being rewritten, anyway.

This tells a much happier version of the Lady Jane Grey (she of the "queen for nine days and then beheaded" life story) story, featuring her, her bestie/cousin King Edward, and her future husband, Gifford Dudley. Oh yeah, and people in this world can spontaneously develop the ability to turn into animals,* which they may or may not be able to control, but it runs in families and appears to run rampant in nobility/this world. Of course, there' s also people who are totally against them (Verities). However, ever since King Henry VIII suddenly turned into a lion and ate his jester, England's been more friendly towards these people existing. But will that last?

* I feel like a jerkass saying this, but I can't spell or pronounce the word for these types of people. I don't know where the authors got that word (I can understand where garou came from, but this one? Confused), but that word just kind of broke my brain every time they said it. It's a similar effect to whenever I'm trying to read up on that Eurovision Icelandic band. Love y'all, can't say or spell it correctly and am an idiot.) 

Poor young Edward IRL died young of illness, and at the beginning of the book is told he's dying and he's told by his advisor, John Dudley, that he needs to appoint an animal-friendly heir, and his oldest sister Mary is a straight up hater. Dudley manages to talk Edward into making Jane (or at least her sons) his heir, and to have her married off to his younger son Gifford. Gifford spends his days (uncontrollably) as a horse and his nights as a man, and nobody can be arsed to get up the nerve to tell Jane about this until she finds out the morning after the wedding. Guess how :P Though Gifford is hot and sweet and a closet poetry writer/public performer of said poetry. Jane's an extreme book nerd and despite some protest and writing her cousin a letter about the whole thing, takes it relatively well. 

Then Edward's dog alerts him to the fact that he's being poisoned, and he figures out it's all a plot to get him off the throne, and he needs to make a break for it...leaving Jane to her brief royal stint, being thrown into the Tower, and....well, there's good plot reasons why people can suddenly turn into useful animals under stress. (I note that the story of how Edward's grandmother became a skunk is hilarious.) So things shall end better for our sweet, smart Jane, her sweet, loyal horse/husband, and the well-meaning Edward, who finally meets a girl and at one point has to meet his ex-fiancee, Mary, Queen of Scots. (More on her later.) 

Anyway, this was great fun and super sweet and the romantic couplings were adorable and you really root for them. I definitely enjoy the whole animal-aspects thing, how it works in the plot, thematically, personality-wise, all of it. I enjoy that this goes a lot better than real life. Four stars! I had a great time reading it. 

Quotes:

• "Which brings us to on fateful afternoon in the royal court of England, when King Henry VIII, during a fit of rage, transformed into a great lion and devoured the court jester, much to the audience's delight. They clapped enthusiastically, for no one really liked the jester. (Later, the courtiers discovered the incident was not a rehearsed act of artful deception, but indeed an actual lion masticating the jester. When the audience found out the truth they no longer clapped, but they did remark, "That clown had it coming.")
• "The head of the Verity Church was not pleased with King Henry's decision, but every time Rome sent a missive denouncing the decree, the Lion King ate the messenger. Hence the phrase, Don't eat the messenger."
• "It was only an engagement, after all. She'd been engaged before. Four times, as a matter of fact." ... "Well, I'm sure he'll be just as wonderful as the other fiances were."
• "Dearest Jane, Sorry I made you marry a horse. Your father-in-law is trying to kill me. Send help." 
• "There were also a handful of invitations to preside over state events, visit various nobles' country homes, and attend something called the Red Wedding. Jane checked the "will not attend" box without giving this last invitation a second thought. As if she wanted to go to any more weddings."
• "Once, she made Father so angry that he turned into a lion, and we were afraid he'd devour her, but then she turned into a skunk and sprayed him right in the face.. It took weeks for him to be rid of the smell." 

Mind the Gap, Dash and Lily

By Rachel Cohn and David Levithan.

Previous book here. 

It's another Christmas later, and things have changed. Dash has gone to college...in Oxford, where he's not really enjoying much of it except for hanging out with his grandma, Gem. (Thank goodness Dash has one good relative!) Lily's taking a "gap year" to work on her dogwalking business, which has now turned into an Instagram business in which she sells dog treats, dog clothes, etc. "Lily Dogcrafts" has become so popular that people recognize her when she flies to England to visit Dash for Christmas. 

Anyway, I think this one is my favorite with regards to D&L's relationship--there's not much drama over whether or not they get together or are going to break up, even if they are long distance. D&L are cool and chill with each other and are pretty much ignoring Lily's family grumbling that they don't want her settled down with this guy at her age and all that jazz. At one point someone suggests they elope and D&L are like "the hell?" and "ah, clearly you're just trying to screw with us a bit." 

Most of the drama here is regarding their futures. Dash is feeling kind of limited on his academics and mostly friendless in England and wants to go back home, while Lily's considering going to a dog school in England, but not just to be with Dash. When asked what they want to do with their lives by his grandma, Dash says he wants to work with books--basically being a book editor, I think. So she contacts someone to work on that, which is sweet. Lily, ah....decides she wants to work with dogs, specifically being a "dogtrepreneur," a word that definitely makes people look askance, instead of going to Barnard like her family insists on. Dash, thankfully, comes up with a more plausible schooling plan with regards to that idea. 

Even though we're in England for this one, there's cameos by pretty much everyone regardless of location, and I rather liked the schoolmates of Dash's that got introduced in this one.

Overall, I really enjoyed this. I don't know if this is the last in the series or what exactly, but if it is, it's a great note to end on. Four stars. 

The Inheritance Games

By Jennifer Lynn Barnes.

Avery Grambs is just trying to get by. Her mom's dead, her dad's a deadbeat, and she's being nominally raised by her older sister Libby, who's in an abusive relationship and Avery's about ready to start living in her car to avoid that situation. She has dreams of going into actuarial science and making a life for herself as soon as she can.

And then out of fucking nowhere, she finds out that she's inherited billions of dollars from Tobias Hawthorne, a now-dead billionaire Texan SHE'S NEVER HEARD OF BEFORE IN HER LIFE. She's forced to live in the family mansion in Texas for a year and isn't allowed to throw out any of the mostly-disinherited family members, most of whom are reasonably cheesed off at not getting much money in the will. We're told the will is diehard, that if anyone challenges it they lose their money, and that in a previous will, Tobias planned to disinherit his entire family anyway and just give the majority of the money to charity. And no, Avery ISN'T in any way related to the Hawthorne family (DNA testing appears to have gone on quickly offscreen). SO WHY THE HELL DID SOME STRANGER GIFT A TEENAGER BILLIONS? 

All Avery gets in a posthumous letter from her benefactor is a note saying "I'm sorry." THE FUCK? 

Naturally, the female relatives in the family--Tobias's daughters and one confusingly-vaguely-related teen girl named Thea--Have Issues with this. And then there's four hot young grandsons ranging from 17-22 hanging around the house. Nash, the oldest "rescues" people and at one point was engaged to Avery's new lawyer (huh?). Grayson is suspicious of Avery. Xander and Jameson are friendlier and more intrigued, but particularly Jameson, who introduces Avery to his grandfather's obsession with puzzles and how this is all some kind of giant puzzle to be solved. 

So essentially this book is about solving the mysteries that a dead guy left behind, combined with the mystery of Dead Girl Emily--the housekeepers' granddaughter who had bad health and various entanglements with the teenagers. And Libby's shitty abusive boyfriend is all PAYDAY!!!!! and gets more and more horrendous as the book goes on, of course. 

I'll say this: it's intriguing, but not much is solved or resolved by the end of this, which I found VERY FRUSTRATING. By the end of the book you will only have slightly more of a clue as to "why Avery?" and I was really irritated by that. I also can't figure out for the life of me if I am supposed to be rooting for Avery to have any kind of romance with any of the Hawthorne boys. She kisses one of them, but seems to get attracted to at least the younger three at different points, and they're all a mix of "I'm not sure if they're good or bad or have ulterior motives or WHAT" here. Do I want her to be with any of them? Is that a good idea? HELL IF I KNOW WHAT IS GOING ON HERE.

I'm not even sure if I want to read the next book (though I did reserve it at the library, I admit it...), given how irritated I am at the finish of this one. I usually really like this author's books (The Fixer and The Long Game being my favorites for tricksy shit) and you'd think this is more of the same, but the vague open-door-ness of this one was just frustrating as fuck and as things went on and you're more like "I don't think much of anything is going to resolve here," uck. There's one Crucial Reveal at the end about someone we've barely heard of that suddenly becomes A Big Deal. I also kind of wondered at the attention paid to Avery's perpetually-locked-up best friend Max, who seems to only be there so Avery can't manage to have a conversation with her most of the time? The girl needs support outside of the situation and she can't get any, apparently. 

I don't know....it was just a frustrating experience for me to read this book. Kinda leaves a bad taste in the mouth when reading it made you annoyed and mad, and usually the author's a lot better at not doing that. Three stars. 

A Deadly Education

By Naomi Novik.

This is a book I've been vaguely debating reading for a year. On the one hand, I like Naomi Novik books. On the other hand, the concept behind this one is depressing as fuck. I saw it in the library, I flicked open the first page, and the narrative voice was so compelling that I grabbed it.

The concept behind this book is that magically gifted people--apparently just young kids to especially teenagers though--are just walking bait for every single hungry magical monster roaming the world, of which there are MANY. Kids/teenagers are just literally constantly being eaten. And to quote the book, "the best solution that all the most powerful and brilliant wizards of the last century and more have been able to come up with," is to have all teenagers go to a magically automated high school of death, with no adults, no teachers, just magically automated learning for 4 years, while monsters are constantly attacking them. You seriously need a bodyguard just to take a shower. You can't have any contact with the outside world, more people die than survive, and "graduation" is trying to fight your way out of the school while all the monsters attack, and nobody's been able to fix the "scouring machinery" in the graduation hall for the entire existence of the school. And this is literally the best solution they have to keep as many teens alive as possible. Why is anyone having kids if this crap is going on? 

So yeah, DEPRESSING AS FUCK CONCEPT OF HORRIBLE DEATH SCHOOL. To quote our narrator,

"For the last three years, I've had to think and plan and strategize how I'm going to survive every single meal in here, and I'm so tired of it, and I'm tired of all of them, hating me for no reason, nothing I've ever done. I've been tying myself in knots and working myself to exhaustion just to avoid hurting any of them." 

Meet Galadriel "El" Higgins: her Welsh mother Gwen and her Indian father Arjun fell in love and got pregnant in the Scholomance, and he got eaten by a maw-mouth at graduation getting her out. Gwen is the biggest giant good happy hippie you ever heard of in your life...and in compensation, her daughter is prophesied to be a horrible murdering dark wizard and her father's family would have nothing to do with her after that. El loves her mother, but learned at age 9 that literally nobody in their hippie commune would lift a finger to save her life when she was being attacked. "People don't like me enough to help me even if I scream." And virtually nobody likes her, as she gives off bad vibes. And to be fair, El is justifiably Very Cranky about how her life is going. Her affinity is for being gifted with say, mass murder curses every time she just wants a spell to mop the floor. She's "strict mana" (not fueling herself with any life force) and actively trying to NOT GO EVIL. Trying very hard. The poor girl needs to be liked on some level because one can't survive alone, but it's extremely hard going. 

At the beginning of the book, El is angry/snarky about the school hero, Orion Lake, saving her bacon. Orion basically is the Class Hero from Buffy, having saved hundreds of lives (to be fair, his power affinity helps with that sort of thing). He's from an enclave--enclaves being the safest way to live as a wizard, if you can get a group to take you--and he's famous and popular and whatnot. This is the sort of thing that makes El want to barf, even though she has secret plans to try to earn her way into an enclave circa senior year if she can just figure out the ah, likeability issue.  However, as she gets to know the guy as a real person, she develops sympathy and friendship for him, given his issues.  "He was living the same garbage story I was, only in mirror image." While this book really doesn't get very romantic, given the circumstances, you enjoy how El is all "I treat him like a normal person, why don't the rest of you try it?" to his enclave-mates. El also makes a few friends of her own during the book, which is great.

At the end (I note that El and company are in their junior year, so there's one more year/book to go in this duology), the seniors point out that Orion has saved too many lives over the course of his career--not only does the school not provide enough food for that many people to eat, it means the mals only get hungrier and therefore more seniors are likely to die, and they're resentful of this. This leads to a scheme of Orion, El, and various seniors trying to fix the scouring equipment in the graduation hall so less people die. 

(I'm not entirely sure I understand all the technical details of the magic, scouring equipment, etc.to be honest.)

Anyway, this is disturbing and depressing but interesting? I like El. She's cranky AF and unpleasant but you root for her anyway, given what she's dealing with. Orion is an interesting situation as well. I liked El's eventual friends/allies that she makes, and even Chloe, a New York enclaver who starts out not liking El but finding hidden depths in her later, has potential.

And then there's the fact that El figures out how to take out a mal-mouth (the kind of creature that ate her dad) all by herself, and then continues to be utterly shaken and horrified that she managed it and realizes that's not something she can let get around. Maybe her powers for mass destruction could be used that way...? 

We'll see in book 2, I guess. Four stars.  

The Perfect Escape

By Suzanne Park.

This is a nice, sweet story with a fun premise and ah....some definite surprises.

Nate is an entrepreneurial lad from a family that's not doing too well financially, looking to make some big bucks. He works at an escape room, where he meets Kate and they hit it off in a friendly way pretty quickly. Both of them are into escape rooms and zombies and could use some cash, so they team up to enter a weekend survivalist competition together.

Nate's family situation is fairly normal--dad just lost his job, he has a little sister who keeps being a 5-year-old, he's got a pointless crush on a female friend that obviously I'm not really concerned about given that Kate exists. There's a wee bit of mystery regarding not knowing too much about his family members when anyone's assigned to do a family tree in school, but that's eventually explained. 

However, Kate's in a bad way. Her mom died and her father's a big time tech entrepreneur who, after her mother's death, is basically tech-stalking, drone-stalking, helicopter parenting her to the point where it sure does seem like she's in jail. I note that she has recently turned 18 but still in school, but her dad sure acts like she has no choice in doing what he says. The amount of nitpicking and stalking he does... He nitpicks every penny she spends (72 cents over budget!), every phone call she makes or gets, going over allotted Internet usage by 14 minutes, there's a house robot to take her vital signs... It's incredibly creepy. Nate actually admires her dad, not having any idea that it's her dad. He's got a cardboard popup of the guy, and imagine poor Kate's reaction upon seeing that! (I note that Kate's last name is a generic one, so it's not totally obvious that they might be related.) 

I do seriously wonder if this book is a bit ahead of us in time/in the future from the technology used in it? It feels about fifteen minutes into the future, for various reasons.  

Overall, at least until we get to the point of the competition, it's a sweet friends-to-something-more relationship between Nate and Kate, who are nice people. They have awkward moments ("I left my wig in his car!" "I feel forced to eat a burger I don't want to eat!") but get over it. There's a bit brought up about how Nate's a scholarship student at a snooty school and someone's trying to get him to commit grade fraud, but it doesn't get as much play as you might think.

And then comes the competition... This goes into straight up spoiler territory so I'll have to address it in detail in the spoiler cut below. What I will say above the cut is that I was suddenly very surprised and things go from fairly normal world (other than Daddy Techstalker) to HOO BOY I WAS NOT EXPECTING THIS territory. I felt like I was suddenly reading a Jennifer Lynn Barnes book, THAT kind of levels of twists. It didn't match the previous tone of the book, so it was a huge surprise. Like "conspiracy theories are real!" level of it. I'm not saying that makes it bad, but I definitely didn't expect the book to hit that level of craycray. Like Kate's life, I can see some level of craziness happening given what her dad is like, but to have it end up all over Nate? Dang. 

Overall, it's a very good book, but it definitely takes A Jump and escalates in ways I was not expecting. I also kind of wonder how things resolve with Kate's dad, but again, that's spoiler cut territory. I'm giving it three and a half stars. If you want to know why, check the spoiler cut.