“If there were more people who cared, who believed in the rights of all living things, maybe the planet could be saved.”
I created a poster to best show the plotlines of this book. The book is made of several individual stories, so a regular plot summary was not the best choice to properly display this book’s content.
This book was so interesting. There isn’t quite one narrative. The book is split into several different stories that are all connected but also not at the same time. Each story is about someone in the family tree but will have nothing to do with the previous story. This made it hard to really understand the concept of the book as a whole, but I enjoyed it. The stories were all so uniquely enjoyable. I didn’t always understand what was going on, but I thoroughly enjoyed the book. All the stories were about indigenous characters. They were an interesting take on indigenous stories. The book is a collection of stories inspired by old Cherokee stories, but the stories are also horror fantasy stories.
I would recommend this to anyone who is looking for really unique short horror stories. I haven’t read anything quite like it before. I think this book is also good for people looking to read Cherokee stories with a spin. These are not only inspired by Cherokee stories but also by classic horror stories and they range from vampires to zombies to werewolves. Some stories also focus on the monsters of humanity, like domestic violence and suicide, which are also very present. I would also be cautious to read this if you are not a fan of gore. There isn’t a whole lot, but the little bit that is present can be graphic.
YA Horror enjoyers will be delighted by what Andrea L. Rogers has to offer. From stories about vampires to sexual assault to fantastical sea creatures, Man Made Monsters is sure to wow any interested reader. Anyone who is looking for a well-written and wildly entertaining indigenous book will be well satisfied with this one, and I’m sure they would love it as much as I did.
Cold is a murder mystery novel, nominated for the North Star Book award, that focuses on teenagers Todd, who was murdered, and Georgia, who is trying to figure out what happened to Todd, even though she doesn’t know Todd. Todd’s dead body was discovered in the woods by the park, naked and frozen. Before the discovery, Todd’s ghost is awakened and gets attached to Detective Daniels and Greevey. When Georgia finds out about the murder, it continuously plagues her mind and she decides she must visit the park where Todd was found.Detectives Daniels and Greevey are in charge of Todd’s murder case. They stop by Todd’s old all-boys school but none of the other students would say much about him. The principal also didn’t have much information, although several students and the principal thought Todd had a rather odd relationship with a teacher named Mr. McVeeter. When looking through old files, they find out that Todd was part of a tutoring program with a couple of other kids but nobody wanted to participate. One of the students at Todd’s school in the program happened to be Georgia’s brother, Mark. Mark led her to believe he had never met Todd before but when she sees a picture of Todd, she realizes that Todd has been to her house before. As Georgia begins poking around into Todd’s murder, she begins snooping in Mark’s stuff where she finds several hundreds of dollars. Not knowing what to do and how this was connected to Todd, Georgia takes it and hides it in her locker at school. During the detectives’ investigation, the clues begin pointing more and more toward Mr. McVeeter as the murderer. Mr. McVeeter was gay, as was Todd, which explained his lack of friends. The clues suggested Mr. McVeeter had an inappropriate relationship with Todd, but is that the case?
Cold was a mediocre book. The real murderer ended up being very predictable. It didn’t actually feel like a mystery to me because I had already thought of who the murderer probably was. Also, several of Georgia’s parts felt irrelevant to the story. I didn’t gain anything by reading about her going through her daily life at school. It only felt like there were a couple parts of hers that pertained to the main story. The rest of her story felt like it should’ve been in a different book. She had a lot of self discoveries but they weren’t crucial to the storyline and discovering what truly happened to Todd. For Todd’s parts of the book, it felt more like it was about the detectives than it was about Todd. It didn’t look like we were finding out what had happened to Todd. Instead, it was just Todd recounting how his life used to be.
I would recommend this to people who are just dipping their toes into the murder mystery genre. There really isn’t anything gorey or graphic and it was a pretty mellow book. I would also recommend this to anyone who isn’t a fan of huge plot twists. As I previously mentioned, this was a fairly predictable book. Cold is also a good book for those looking for LGBTQ+ characters. There are quite a few in the story and both of the main characters are.
YA Murder Mystery enthusiasts may be disappointed by what Mariko Tamikai has to offer. While it is a murder mystery with good LGBTQ+ characters, it is not a very good murder mystery. It’s lacking the plot twists that are so evident in many murder mystery stories. But for those who are just getting into the genre, it’s probably a good book to start out with.
Squire is about a teenage girl named Aiza who lives in Bayt-Saji. Aiza is of the Ornu people but she lives with her family amongst the rest of Bayt-Saji. Aiza isn’t fulfilled by her life in Bayt-Saji and hounds her parents to be able to enlist for Squiredom. When Aiza gets permission, she sets off to begin her training. There, she meets Husni and Sahar with whom she becomes fast friends. Aiza keeps working harder and harder up until the day of her first Squire exam. She goes into it confidently but somehow ends up failing. After failing, General Hende puts Aiza on armory night watch, where she begins night training with the groundskeeper, Doruk. She keeps training with him and improving so much that she gets sent out on a 24-hour patrol with 5 other cadets. While out there, they are attacked by an Ornu ambush and Husni gets badly injured. To save Husni, Aiza has to reveal that she is also Ornu. In a twisted turn of events, she gets immediately promoted to Squire. As a result, all of her friends no longer trust or like her. On her first day as a Squire, she patrols with a Knight in an Ornu village where she meets one of the boys from the ambush. When she gets too angry and attacks him in the woods, she learns some things about the General that make Aiza rethink whether or not she wants the Squire’s life.
I really enjoyed Squire. I don’t usually read graphic novels, but I found that having pictures to put with the names was really helpful. When reading, I come up with my own imagining of what characters look like and sometimes I get upset the author’s actual design is different than mine. The story itself was wonderful. When you look at the story from a baseline perspective, there is a narrative of racism that I think is an excellent focus for the plot. There should be more and more books like this that show it is possible to overcome racism and prove that kids should fight for what they believe in, even if the adults around them tell them otherwise. I appreciated the fact that there wasn’t any romance in this book. I’m not usually looking for it in what I read but it’s usually there anyways. I enjoy stories that are more about building strong positive friendships instead of about romance and sex.
I loved some characters, but I also hated others. I really liked Husni. I thought he was funny and there was more to him than his first impressions. However, I hated Husni’s friend Basem, who operated on blind faith even after being proven wrong. There wasn’t anything wrong with how the characters were written but there are always heroes and villains in the story and quite often I find myself hating the villains. General Hende was another character I didn’t like because she messed with the kids’ perceptions of each other and manipulated all of them, Doruk included. I also loved the pacing of the book. A lot of time passed by the end of the story but with the way the scenes were created, there weren’t boring details dragging down the story. I genuinely felt like I didn’t have any problems with the writing in this book. Every character felt like they had their own reason for existing within the story and there were no unnecessary details that were wasting time.
I would recommend this to anyone who likes coming-of-age stories. The story felt like it was Aiza’s time of maturing and realizing what was actually going on in the world around her. I think that this book is pretty suited for anybody to read. There isn’t any gore, sexual activity, or heavy topics unsuited for younger readers. This isn’t really a fantasy novel but rather more of a historical fiction, so this isn’t the book for anyone who is a fantasy enthusiast. This is also not the book to read if you are looking for romance. The book is solely about Aiza and her friends taking control of the oppression that they are facing.
Young Adult Historical Fiction readers will enjoy a fast-paced graphic novel by Sara Alfageeh and Nadia Shammas. Those who often are disappointed by the overwhelming amount of romance in most YA literature will be delighted by Squire, which has absolutely none. Anyone looking for a coming-of-age story based around dealing with racism and making it better will love this one.
