Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews

With and Without You

By Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka.

This is a very thoughtful and interesting book. 

Siena and Patrick have been together for three years of high school. They are pretty much an ideal, perfect, happy couple...except for how Siena is having the teenage equivalent of the quarterlife crisis. Am I too involved with Patrick? Do I have my own identity or do I just do Model UN because Patrick does Model UN? Maybe I should break up with him and see what it's like to be Single Siena again, she thinks. So she plans to break up with him. However, this gets thrown awry when Patrick tells her that surprise, his family's moving a few states away for his senior year!

You'd think this would make Siena be all "Sweet, here's a good excuse to break up!" but instead, she finds herself in a bit of a panic and committing to an LDR. Which....actually kind of works for her on some level in the relationship? Absence is making the heart grow fonder (and hornier), and theoretically this gives her some breathing space to quit Model UN and find her own thing...whatever that may be. (I loved her thing, btw.) Patrick obviously misses home and Siena, but is managing to find new things and people where he lives too.

I rather liked that these two didn't break up....well, I have to vaguely spoiler this one but you might have guessed it given the title: for most of the book, they stick it out despite whatever weird feelings one or both of them may be having. These two are thoughtful and caring towards each other, even if finding where they are different and not just PatrickandSiena has some weirdness to them. They seem pretty well adult for 17-18-year-olds and even if there's some pre-quarterlife-crisis-angst going on, they find their way through, and I really appreciated that. I don't think we see too many romances where the couple have been together enough to feel "stale" and then realize they still do want each other, but the authors make it work.

Four stars. 

This Is Not The Jess Show

By Anna Carey.

Jess Flynn lives in Swickley in the year 1998. She's got a crush on her best guy friend, Ty, even though everyone she knows keeps pushing her to date Patrick, the town hero (who she finds boring). Her sister Sara is dying of  Guignard's Disease. And a bunch of people are apparently sick with some kind of virus in town lately. 

Then things start to get weird: one of her friends drops a strange apple-logod device....and one day when she comes home, her dog isn't her dog any more, doesn't recognize her and bites her, and nobody knows what to say when Jess points that out. Remember that music teacher who started going on to her about the nature of reality and then disappeared....?

The rest of this review is a total spoiler and has to go below the spoiler cut. I'll say it's four stars, though. 

Caraval

By Stephanie Garber.

I'm not sure what is going on with this. 

Scarlett and (Donna)Tella are sisters with an abusive father, living on some kind of captive isle. Scarlett is obsessed with Caraval, some kind of magic show/game/thing her grandmother told her about it. She's written letters to the guy who runs it, Legend, asking that he come to her isle for years. But once she writes to tell him she's engaged (to some nameless count who writes nice letters), she finally gets an invite to Caraval, if she can just get herself to some other island. A suspiciously helpful "random" sailor named Julian helps the girls escape and then follows Scarlett into the game, for reasons of his own. The game turns out to be "find your sister 'cause Legend kidnapped her," and everything is mysterious and weird.

I can't say that things come out of nowhere in this one--I feel like things are set up in world and this stuff isn't out of the blue--but at the same time, things are confusing-ish, I suppose? Other players in the game don't really matter since the whole thing seems set up to deal with Scarlett's family drama. Weird, mysterious, magical things happen like having to literally die for a few days to get a dress (not worth it, I say). It's supposed to be all beautiful and mysterious and magical and mostly I was just "....I dunno, I feel as confused as Scarlett here." 

Scarlett's perennially vacillating between desperately trying to find her sister and developing the hots for Julian even though she doesn't want to. Julian's motives are god only knows what,  but he's hot and kind of helpful and Scarlett somehow trusts him anyway? They do give great hormones, though. Tella's not in the book much, but frankly she's kind of self-centered (even Scarlett thinks so) and probably not worth this much bother. However, I did enjoy a twist at the end regarding her that gave me much more respect for her character instead of always being a selfish bimbo-y girl. 

...I don't know. I wasn't quite in love with this one and wasn't sure if I was going to finish it? Maybe it's just a Not For Me But For Other People sort of thing. Three stars. 

All Our Hidden Gifts

By Caroline O'Donoghue.

This is an odd book.

Maeve is an Irish lass at a Catholic private school. While having to clean out The Chokey (yup, they call the closet this), she finds an odd deck of tarot cards that she has an affinity with, and starts doing readings for all the girls at school. Except there's one extra card called "The Housekeeper" in there, and she's got a knife, and the card will magically show up in the deck even if Maeve takes it out.

Maeve dumped her best friend Lily for popularity reasons, and feels guilty about it. When people harass her into giving Lily a reading, it goes terribly, and much like in Home Alone, Lily soon disappears. Did Maeve make her disappear? Or was it The Housekeeper? What the hell is going on here? Maeve appears to be a witchy sort of girl, and this seems to tie in with a former student at the school decades ago as well. She comse to the conclusion that Lily was somehow magicked away, and plans on getting her back.

In other fun news, someone else who appears to be magically gifted on the dark side and a total bigot is getting people to join his creepy group, The Children of Brighid, and they start committing hate crimes. 

Maeve also gets romantically involved with Lily's...presumably transgender/genderqueer/non-binary brother Rory, a.k.a. Roe. Their romance is very sweet and cute and fairly insta and cuddly, which I enjoyed. Though I admit I was totally confused as to how Roe appears to feel about gender (i.e. name change, women's clothing) vs. still going by male pronouns. Maeve pretty much calls him her boyfriend. I really, really expected Roe to change pronouns/officially go by something other than male and that felt HEAVILY foreshadowed, bit that never happened, which surprised me. I'm just another cisgender straight Karen so what do I know on this topic, I suppose. Others in the anything-but-straight community may have a more correct understanding/opinion on that one than me though. Maybe that's normal? 

As for the ending, I'm not sure what's going on, exactly. The main conflict gets more or less resolved, but some definitely creepy stuff is left open, possibly for a sequel? I guess we'll see?

I'm not really sure what to make of this at all. Three and a half stars, I guess. Intriguing but a bit confusing. 

 

How Not To Fall In Love

By Jacqueline Firkins.

"I'm thinking maybe you should take a break from dating for a while. At least slow down. Stop falling in love with every girl who lets you buy her an ice cream cone. Get to know someone before you name your future children."

"I don't. I didn't."

"Okay, without naming your future dogs, then."

"I like dogs. And Gimli's a good name for a pug."

Harper is the adultified child of a single mom who pretty much shepherds her mom through her mom's wedding business. Mom got knocked up as a teenager and apparently never really wanted a relationship again, and isn't the world's best at business running, so Harper seems to be involved a lot. Harper's pretty sick of bridal drama, reasonably so, though she likes her one coworker Pippa.

Harper had a wonderful summer love last year, but the dude dumped her immediately at the prospect of long distance, which kinda crushed her. Meanwhile her next door neighbor, Theo, is always constantly falling into insta-relationship with any girl he has interest in for like a minute. Theo sounds like a great, sweet, cute supergeek anyway, but he is also Dude Who Constantly Texts You Until He Scares The Girls Off. This leads Harper to the title premise: basically getting Theo to CHILL DA FUCK OUT and not dive into the deep end of the relationship pool. This pretty much does not work at all, I note, since Theo WANTS to be the guy who jumps into a relationship, darn it! But when Pippa, who's had her eye on Theo for awhile even if he's young for her, finally gets a date...could that work out, or just make things super awkward at work? 

Harper, on the other hand, finally starts dating Felix, the cute jock she's been eyeing for awhile. Felix is genuinely sweet and nice and wants commitment and love and I think he's great. BUT....

This is one of those Romantic False Lead/the whole "Edward vs. Jacob" thing where it's very obvious from the getgo that Guy A is going to win, no matter how great Guy B is. Therefore you're just killing time with Guy B while waiting around for the heroine to get her head out of her butt and go for Guy A. I'm not a fan of love triangles in general, but if one must write one, I feel that you need to establish both why Guy A is The One AND why Guy B, no matter how great he is, somehow quite isn't. Maybe he's Bill Pullman in Sleepless in Seattle and they're 'two rights make a boring," maybe he's Patrick Dempsey in "Sweet Home Alabama" where the only thing wrong with him is his mother. (That said, I vastly preferred Patrick to the husband character, who was an immature wanker and I did not root for him to win the girl. And I say that as someone who always feels neutral on Dempsey.) Like I may not agree with that last one, but at least there was a reason to not end up with that guy. 

In this book, there's nothing wrong with Felix, and that's pointed out in the book itself. He's really great. I really liked him. I rooted for him. Not that I didn't root for Theo on some level as well, but Harper was sexually attracted to him. They have a cute relationship. There's literally nothing wrong with a Felix/Harper pairing except that...he's not Theo. SIGH. I felt so bad for Felix. He deserves better. 

As for Theo, this is one of those "typical" "friendships" where oh gee, I never realized he was so darned attractive before! I somehow never realized how we snuggle together a hell of a lot more than any "platonic" relationship ever has! (AGAIN, RELATING TOO MUCH TO MY LIFE ON THAT LAST ONE.) It's pretty clear that on Theo's end, he just wants love already and he keeps throwing himself into other girls because Harper's never been openly interested. 

On the plusses of this book: the author writes great romantic heroes. They're both very sweet, nice dudes who deserve better. Harper has whopping sexual chemistry with both. And even if this isn't a book that's gonna go All The Way In Detail about teenagers making with the nookie, it's pretty emotionally hot, and I like that. I enjoyed Pippa (who thankfully isn't too fazed at how her own Romantic False Lead turn goes) as well. The final romantic resolution--at a Renaissance faire--really worked for me. 

On the minusses of the book: There's the Felix situation, as previously mentioned. Also I did kind of wonder why Harper's mystery dad and her mom's lack of interest in relationships came up periodically if the author ah, didn't really have any intention of making plot hay with it? 

And...I'm gonna go into spoiler territory, but it's a romance and frankly, y'all already know who's going to win pretty early on. Harper breaks up with Felix, wants to be with Theo, there's a bit of an incident...and then Theo bugs out of town for a month and is all "Let's just be friends" when he returns. I felt like this was Dragging Shit Out unnecessarily and I found it annoying. 

A note re: the cover: Harper appears to be a woman of color from descriptions in the book (mostly re: her hair), but the girl on the cover is a white cartoon. Marketing department might want to have thought about that one a bit? 

I'm conflicted here. Three stars overall, I guess. 

Before We Disappear

By Shaun David Hutchinson.

Jack and Wilhelm are two teenage boys living parallel lives (of sorts) in 1908-1909.

Jack was orphaned at age seven and was taken in by a magician/con artist (mostly going by "Evangeline Dubois" or "The Enchantress") as her more-or-less adopted child/assistant. She also took in an engineering genius, Lucia, a few years later. Jack is more or less pretty content working for Evangeline even though he knows she's kind of emotionally divey, but Lucia is pretty well cheesed off at not getting credit or getting the "well" treatment Jack gets by comparison. Jack's used to being a rolling stone and never gets too attached to any guys he's dating before he leaves again and hasn't thought super much about what else he might do with his life without working for Evangeline. 

Wilhelm is pretty obviously a fairy child (it's not spelled out here, but he's got magic powers and a whopping allergy to iron so you do the math) who was abducted at age four by "Theodore Barnes," a con artist/thief guy who's raised him/kept him imprisoned with iron the entire time. Teddy has been forcing Wil to rob things for him, as Teddy is hoping to become famous somehow, but so far his trait of leaving origami animals at the scene of the crime hasn't paid off for him. (This seems very Wet Bandits to me, just saying...) Teddy decides to change tactics and go from thievery to being a professional magician under the name Laszlo. 

Both magicians end up performing at the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in Seattle for several months, where their respective assistants meet and get to know each other, and Jack deduces that Wilhelm has magical powers and that's the only way he could pull off what he does. Upon finding out what's going on with Wilhelm being imprisoned and threatened, Jack vows that he's going to take "Laszlo" down. 

The guys both make some great friends along the way. Jack befriends Ruth, an African-American performer who's looking to become a doctor someday. She's hard and tough and determined and awesome. Wilhelm befriends Jessamy, the other assistant "Laszlo" hires for his show, who's a lovely girl and a future detective/reporter. Of course she and Ruth fall for each other. (I do note that Ruth is getting sexually harassed by George, a guy who keeps hanging around and Not Taking No For An Answer, grrr. ) And Lucia is tough and stubborn but awesome. I really enjoyed seeing this bunch team up as a gang to help Wilhelm. It's a great crowd.

This is a pretty short summary for a pretty long book (nearly 500 pages), as the author takes his time with people hanging out and getting to know each other. Really, the only critique I have of this book is that it probably could have picked up the pace a bit and been a bit more urgent, though I certainly enjoyed it and kept on reading anyway. I really liked all the teenage characters and how smart and kind and loving they were (though clearly they're in a bit nicer of an environment as gay kids than they would have been in real 1909, sigh). The parallels between Evangeline and Teddy are pretty clear, with Evangeline being not-the-greatest-person and pretty self-centered/rude-ish to her "kids," but she still seems to kind of care about them on some level, at least. Teddy, well, wants Wilhelm's love and ALSO for Wilhelm to fear him, which he unfortunately isn't able to comprehend that aren't two great tastes that go together.  Jack sums them up well: "Laszlo's like a monster who remembers what it was like to be a man and has fooled himself into believing he still is one. Evangeline flirts with being a monster but hasn't got the heart to really commit." 

I have a comment on Evangeline and Teddy, but it's going to go below the spoiler cut.

Anyway, I enjoyed this very much and recommend it and give it about 4.5 stars. I'm not sure if this is the sort of book that would warrant a sequel or not--it both wraps up well as is but has potential for more--but either way, I'd be good. I like these people and would be happy to see them all again. 

Aurora's End

By Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff.

Previous book here.

I haven't been quite as in love with this trilogy as I was with Illuminae, but this book is the best of the trilogy. It somehow levels up to me in a way the other two books did not. Review below the spoiler cut, but five stars. 

Only You in Everything

By Jennifer Ann Shore.

Cameron and twins Will and Bellamy Moreno, the boys next door, have always been very close. Though Cameron and Will got into a bike accident years ago that messed Cameron up some and messed Will up conspicuously (like, giant facial scar/leg issues). It's ah, entirely possible that Will has a complex about that. All three of them go to/work at a summer camp every year, and this is the last year before they go off to colleges. Last year Cameron tried to tell Will she's been in love with him forever and he shut it down and said he just wanted to be friends.

(Yup, that crap situation is why I bought the book. Relate too much.) 

Anyway, it's a pleasant read without that much plot?  There's a nice kid Cameron befriends. She's trying to figure out what art to make to win an internship or scholarship, something like that I can't exactly recall. Bellamy publicly changed genders awhile back and gets a girlfriend (Cameron's roommate, and isn't that cute). Cameron's sister and her shitty boyfriend show up on visiting day and the boyfriend acts like an asshole regarding Bellamy, and Cameron kicks him out and that's the end of that, pretty much. So, simple-ish and I felt like it could have used more oomph/plot/drama.

As for Will and Cameron: what did make me feel something in this book was Cameron and her feelings about Will. She's oddly fixated on his scar enough that it's kind of a motif in her art (that sounds creepy but I wasn't bothered), and she watches him and notices how he's feeling and doing, and I related to that. She does actually try to move on from him with another dude briefly. However, the resolution to this is pretty simple: Will admits he likes her, and there they go. Easy peasy. 

This isn't bad, but it doesn't have enough emotional oomph/plot to be memorable for me. Cameron's feelings for Will is what sold me on this, but otherwise I felt like it needed more? So, three stars. 

The Last Graduate

By Naomi Novik.

Previous book here.

It's senior year in the Scholomance, and how do I sum this up? Well, I'm going to go a bit beyond my usual "I try not to spoil beyond the first half of the book," but for reasons, because I have to discuss the themes of this. What happens is that El makes friends, and makes plans to get out for graduation, and then comes to the quite reasonable conclusion to her that she can get everyone out if they all band together. At first "everyone" is just her friends, then the senior class, and then literally the entire population of the school. And she figures out that the Scholomance itself hates that it's been doing such a poor job of protecting the students that it's supposed to be protecting, even the building itself wants to help.

HOW COOL IS THAT OF A PREMISE, EH? I love it so. It makes me want to post heart emojis. 

I continue to enjoy El's friends, and how they deal with her without being fazed by her natural cranky. I enjoy how El is shocked when she sees someone save someone else, or when she gets the idea to put together a group healing and people do it, and how when she's weirdly stuck in a room with freshmen for a semester, she basically adopts them against her own will. I enjoy that she gets an adorable smart mouse familiar that ends up being dubbed "Precious" even though El hates that sort of thing. It's all very sweet. As for Orion and the sorta-budding relationship between him and El, it does eventually, ah pick up more in an adorable way. I love the descriptions of their making out, I must say. I also like how El starts thinking of ideas as to what to do once she's out of the Scholomance, assuming she survives it and all. I won't get into that too much since clearly that'll be book three (if you look up the title of book 3, that's what she's going for), but that sounds really cool. 

If there's anything I sorta don't like, it's that the overall book execution can be hard for me to follow. Like there's constant spontaneous mal eruptions or whatever in between scheming and academics and it all feels a bit run-on and hard for me to follow at times. It's exhausting--but then again, so is El's life.

The book ends on a sudden event/cliffhanger, which I'll discuss below the spoiler cut. I will say that I have faith on this, though. Four stars. 

Quote Corner (all quotes El unless spelled out otherwise).

• "If you're wondering which of those two options I picked, then you must not know me, as pain and dismay were obviously my destination. I didn't even need to think about it."
• "It was one thing for the school to be out to get me, which I think all of us secretly feel is the case from the moment we arrive, and another for the school to be out to get only me, to the exclusion of literally everyone else....
• Aadhya to El: "I think that's like the third time you've asked to be ditched. You're like one of those puffer fish, the second anyone touches you a little wrong you go all bwoomp." I'm not gonna quote it all, but she also has a great rant about how Orion can't see or figure out people that aren't El and El thinks everyone should save total strangers, so they're perfect for one another.
• "They want someone who's going to cast death spells on their enemies. And if I gave them that, I wouldn't be me any more, so I might as well not go live in a bag of dicks."
• "Ah, the advantages of being a monstrous dark sorceress in embryonic form." 
• "Artifice is fundamentally about giving the universe a long and complicated story complete with attractive props in order to coax it to accommodate your wishes. I'm really more about shouting the universe into compliance with mine."
• "But I'd been overwhelmed by an instant eclat of idyllic vision: the two of us wandering the world together, welcomed everywhere by everyone, him cleaning out infestations and then watching my back while I put up Golden Stone enclaves with the power from the mals he took out." 
• "If you haven't eaten anything but tasteless slop in years and suddenly someone offers you a slice of chocolate cake, so what if you don't especially like chocolate cake, if you were interested in food at all, you'd at least think it over before you said no thanks." 
• "Mum always told me that you couldn't know what people would do in a crisis, but I'd thought she just meant you should forgive people for behaving like weasels under bad circumstances, not that a stale biscuit like Khamis might suddenly come over all heroic in a tight corner."
• Liesel: "It is not a complex problem to appear nice to people! You identify the most popular targets in each of your classes, learn what they value about themselves, and give them a minimum of three relevant compliments each week. So long as they think you are agreeable, others will follow their lead."

The Love Curse of Melody McIntyre

By Robin Talley.

The Beaconville High School theater department is convinced that their theater is cursed. The original theater burned down, there was a bad production of MacBeth when the new one opened, and now there's a history and a thorough Google Doc of all the injuries/superstitions, what have you, that the cast and crew have dreamed up over the years to try to thwart the curse. You may be sensibly thinking, "theaters do tend to have people randomly get injured and costumes and props go awry and shit/entropy/chaos happens," and you'd be right, but would kinda also have to agree that well, after your theater's been on fire, people might be concerned.

Anyway: everyone thinks the theater is cursed, and the cast and/or crew develop new superstitions to thwart the curse, and that's A Thing here. (The running gag of all these documents cracks me up.) 

Melody McIntyre LOVES being a stage manager. While I admire stage managers, I admit I am kind of baffled as to how they enjoy being that level of stressed out all the time. Melody, however, makes it clear that she loves being the one in charge, fixing all the problems, enough that she wants it to be her lifelong career. But after her most recent girlfriend Rachel takes it upon herself to dump Melody IN THE MIDDLE OF A SHOW, THE FUCK, the rest of the crew politely asks that she...not...fall in love with anyone during the next show, for curse purposes. Melody doesn't exactly feel like she can argue the point.

I'm going to do a bit of a rant here: Rachel is such a jerk! I'm still not sure why she was soooooooooo pissed at Melody enough that she thought that the only way Melody would notice a breakup was to do it IN MID-SHOW, but that is so utterly unprofessional even for high school that I wanted to smack her. Like if I were an adult I would have FIRED HER ASS. I don't care if Melody slept with your sister and kicked your dog, YOU DON'T DUMP THE STAGE MANAGER IN MID-SHOW. WHEN SHE IS SUPPOSED TO BE PAYING ATTENTION TO THINGS. And yet, not that much happens to Rachel over this and Melody doesn't even seem that upset about it? Like it's cool and fine to work together? Anyway, that was such egregious behavior I raged on Melody's behalf. 

Melody has apparently gotten around, or at least has something like six exes around the school and they don't seem to have had horrible breakups. Even she admits maybe she should take a break from dating after the Rachel debacle. However, when the school's Broadway stare, Odile Rose, decides she wants to be in Les Mis this spring, all bets are off because Odile is VERY INTERESTED in Melody. And I'll say this: these two have SUPER CHEMISTRY in like, every single conversation they have. (Take note, Hallmark, this is how it's done.) You never saw an actor so into stage managing before :P Even though Melody said she'd hold off, she just can't resist...and soon enough, secret relationship is going on. And then, of course, another disaster happens, and people start figuring out what's going on, and is it really all Melody's fault?

Overall, I loved the heck out of this. This is GREAT FUN. It's a really cool concept for a book. And as an actor (the crew in this show kind of scorn actors and seem to assume it's vice versa) who does kind of wonder why anyone would want the stressful job of stage manager--like I look at some of ours at the theater I perform at and hoooo boy do some of them seem quite stressed--this book sells you on why Melody LOVES being in charge and being the person who can solve all the problems. That's really cool. Added bonus is that I was reading the book while in tech week for a show. Odile and Melody fall fast, but it works. The curse plot is great, and there's fun side bits about how one of Melody's friends goes from tech to acting, dealing with a pouty lead actor, etc. 

I did like how Melody focuses on Odile being genuinely happy when acting, vs. when she's faking being happy. People at school assume she's a snot because she's been out of school doing Broadway or film or whatever, but she's not as into film work as you'd think, and is secretly uncomfortable about the whole thing. Melody's crush is based on seeing how delighted Odile is to perform, and that's adorable. "For a split second, I almost understood the appeal of acting." 

Really, the only thing I don't love about this is Rachel, who's really pretty inexplicably shitty and I'm not sure I ever got why (I think it's because Melody pays more attention to show running than her?), and then nothing really happens there. Rachel continues to work there, there's no issues, she and Melody more or less stay neutral, and then when Rachel suspects about Melody and Odile, you assume something awful is going to happen, but...sorta yes and sorta now? Confusing. I guess I just wanted Rachel to either get a comeuppance or apologize for her shitty timing or something. 

I note that the author said in her note at the back that she ended up writing it in an alternate universe where plays went on in 2020, which of course she had no idea about when writing the book in 2018-2019. She also gasp isn't a theater person and hasn't been in a show, but did wed an actor/singer/stage manager

But overall, four and a half stars. Really good, fun book.

Quote Corner:

From the "A Brief History of BHS Theater Superstitions--Spring Musicals Edition" document:

• Little Shop Of Horrors: "DO NOT TOUCH THE PUPPET AFTER DARK WE REALLY THINK IT MIGHT TRY TO EAT YOU THIS IS NOT A JOKE."
• Once Upon A Mattress: "All male principals must chant in unison before each rehearsal: "I recognize the textual and subtextual misogyny in this musical and I promise to always strive to do better in my life than these jackass characters."

From "The Scottish Play: What Went Wrong" document:

• "During tech, a plastic dagger that was branded as "retractable" did not, in fact, retract. Fortunately, that actor only needed a few hours at urgent care, but the actor on the other end of the dagger will probably need therapy for life."

On a related note, Odile on her career: "I got into this because I like to sing, and now all of a sudden I'm in this movie about spies murdering each other. I have to take lessons on how to use a hunting knife. They haven't finished the script yet, but I think I have to stab someone." 

From "Les Mis Crises To Date" document:

• Julio: Somehow got hit in the face without ever actually getting hit in the face."