Author: lagrace

Year of the Reaper by Makiia Lucier is a fascinating book written in a world very similar to our own. The two main characters Cas and Lena go through a lot together in a very short amount of time. They become close friends and like everyone else had their own personal struggles. Cas and Lena meet each other in less than ideal circumstances and didn’t exactly start off on the best foot with one another. As the book progresses they become closer and get to know one another. Lena is a hothead who does what she wants and doesn’t like to listen to other people. Cas is a quiet person who has his own trauma. The book contains multiple genres including fantasy, romance, mystery, and historical fiction.

I greatly enjoyed this book and it was a fairly easy book to read without being short. The characters are all unique to themselves and very interesting. The books reflects on our world as well in a way. The people in this have to deal with a plague that they call the pestilence that kills many people. There are also many plot twists in this story that are both unpredictable and predictable afterwards. I felt like the pacing of the book was perfect. It wasn’t a book that took super long to read but it wasn’t necessarily an easy book to read either. It was also long and that helped to make up for the difficulty of it.

While the characters in Year of the Reaper are all very different amongst themselves, there are multiple scenes where they are very stereotypical. At the beginning of the book, Lena is attacked by an animal and Cas swoops in and saves her like a prince charming, like in a fairy tale. Also while some of the plot twists are very good and not predictable at all, there are a few that after reading them it’s hard to know how you missed them beforehand.

I think that the people who would enjoy this book are people who like the following genres: mystery, fantasy, romance, historical fiction, and books targeted toward young adults. This book is packed with adventure and deception and mystery.

The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes is a book that has many intriguing characters and a fascinating and captivating plot. In 2021 the book won the Edgar Award. The Edgar Allan Poe award is an award for mystery. It is a very prestigious award and has been given since the 1940s. The award is presented every year to a mystery writing author, in either fiction, realistic fiction, or nonfiction mystery.

Avery Kylie Grambs is just an ordinary girl at the beginning of the book. She has a happy life with her sister Libby. She then mysteriously inherits billions of dollars from a man she has never met. In order for her to get this money she has to follow a certain set of guidelines, and in order to follow those guidelines she has to live with the Hawthorne brothers for a year. Nash, Grayson, Jameson, and Xander are all boys who have grown up privileged and are very weary of Avery in the beginning.

I greatly enjoyed this book. It is full of twists and turns and is a truly intriguing story. The plot is interesting but also a bit stereotypical. The poor girl gets rich, life changes overnight, becomes famous and has to live with multiple attractive young men of the same age. While some of the overall plot is a little predictable there are many things that are uncovered throughout the book that truly surprise the reader. All the characters are unique to the book and even though someone are only talked about by others they all contribute greatly.

This is a young adult mystery book with multiple other underlying genres. Romance, thriller, and fantasy are all present in the book. The book is easy to follow and while it’s not overtly challenging it is a very easy book to stay interested in. The book is consistently leaving the reader at cliffhangers and coming back to them later in the story.

Iron Widow was written by Xiran Jay Zhao. It focuses on the life of 18-year-old Wu Zetian. Zetian starts as an ordinary farm girl living in one of the poor areas. She lives with her mother, father, brother, and grandparents and lived with her older sister. She signs up to be a concubine pilot and proves to be a mighty one after she takes over the Chrysalises and kills the boy that was supposed to be piloting it. She gets paired with the most powerful pilot after this incident and has a very complicated relationship with him.

I think that the book was very interesting and unique. There were multiple plot twists that weren’t predictable. The author’s style of writing isn’t distinctly different from others but the book itself was different. There is a stretch in the book about three-quarters of the way through the book that gets rather boring. It took me a while to get through it before it got interesting again. The characters in this book are all interesting and unique and all have their own stories. Yizhi is Zetian’s best friend and he is an interesting character. The man that Zetian is paired with is also very interesting and has a very dark past.

This book contains multiple genres. Some of the main ones are fantasy, young adult, fiction, and romance. A couple different genres come up later in the storyline, LGBTQ, and queer. This book is similar to the book War Girls by Tochi Onyebuchi. People who would enjoy this are people who like to read about women in power and women who have authority and got it for themselves.

Touching Spirit Bear focuses on the life of troubled young Cole Matthews. The book could be considered realistic fiction. At the beginning of the book Cole beats up a kid named Peteris is severely injured. Peter faces permanent effects from the attack while Cole is sent to a juvenile detention center. To avoid jail he agrees to spend a year on an island in complete isolation. While Cole is the main character there are multiple other characters in the book who play vital roles in the story. Cole’s father, mother, Peter, Garvey, and Edwin are all key characters in Cole’s development as a character.

I think that it’s a good book that discusses lots of tough topics in a way that’s easy to understand and comprehend. Some of the things the book discusses are also important topics that are very well explained. I liked the way the book was set up. The author starts in the actual time and has flashback-like moments all throughout the book. That’s how the reader learns about Cole’s past. The book can be a bit confusing in the beginning before you know the backstory of what’s happening. As the story progresses the author asks questions that’ll make you think.

I didn’t like the setup of the book. The timeline would jump back and forth between the past and the present. It took a while for me to understand what was happening and to understand the full story of what was happening. I also feel the end of the book was easy to predict. It was a classic character shift, and while it is a good book it was stereotypical. I liked the amount of detail the author put into the book and how real some parts of it were. The author also made Cole a relatable character in a way. He’s a teenager going through things that not everyone goes through but some of his emotions are something that most readers can understand.

I think this book would be enjoyable to people who are into nature. People who like realistic books that talk about difficult topics in a sensible way. Cole goes through a lot in the book and he becomes a different person. He started out as a person who was angry at the world and in the end, he was a calm person who was more at peace with himself. People who like reading books with drastic character changes and maturing characters would enjoy this or find it a compelling story.

The article “To kill, or to be killed, that is the question: murder and mayhem in young adult literature” brings up an interesting idea that in modern YA literature, the line between right and wrong is too often blurred and unclear. The author brings up the topic saying that in classic old fairy tales that there was a very clear distinction between right and wrong, a clear, straight line. The author then goes on to say how in modern contemporary books it’s beginning to get harder and harder to tell. How it can be hard to tell the difference between right and wrong or good and evil. The article says that even the good guys often have fatal flaws that are generally overlooked.

I think that when this idea is considered it really is a problem that not many people know about or acknowledge. People look up to the books they read, books are often a reflection of the reader. Characters are sometimes a reflection of the reader themself. People will read books with characters they can relate to in a way. People might carry that blurred line into the real world, and think that things that are wrong are ok. The author of the article doesn’t seem to have a particular opinion on the matter, just brings it to people’s attention. I think that this seems to be a very real thing that could potentially be a problem. 

Works Cited

Zaitzeff, Gretchen. “To kill, or to be killed, that is the question: murder and mayhem in young adult literature.” Voice of Youth Advocates, vol. 37, no. 5, Dec. 2014, pp. 16+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A424529991/ITOF?u=maine&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=038cf19e. Accessed 11 Jan. 2023.

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter is written about a teenage girl in the modern world who faces very real problems. Julia is 15 years old when the book first starts. She has an older sister named Olga and her two parents. The title of the book is based off of one of Julia’s most prominent feelings throughout the book. I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter is a domestic fiction book. That means it focuses on the lives of young, middle-class women and girls and how they live in this world. Throughout the book, Julia finds love while facing many other challenges such as school and her relationship with her mother, and trying to live her life.

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter is a book written in a very modern and a very real setting. It was an enjoyable book at points but boring at others. It has many cliffhangers and isn’t a very predictable book unlike some. Toward the end of the book it gets more interesting and addicting. The beginning of the book could be considered boring and uneventful excluding the death of Julia’s sister, Olga. Overall it was a decent book but I wouldn’t read it again.

The book was set at a slower pace and the author takes her time explaining things. Throughout the entire book, Julia is searching for truths and she doesn’t find many until the end of the book, she also finds many answers in Mexico. One thing about the book that was nice was that the main character was relatable. She was someone the reader could relate with and understand. Her friends were also displayed in this way. All the characters in this book face problems that real people face in the real world.

This book would be enjoyable to people who like modern world books, filled with modern day problems and situtations as well as unexpected twists and turns. Julia deals with body insecurities, mental health, and tragedy as a teenager and that can greatly impact someone in their adult life. It can also be relatable subjects for many people and a good book to read if they can relate in some way.

The Whispering Dark by Kelly Andrew is suspense packed novel full of loss and loneliness based in the modern world. College student Delaney Meyers-Petrov is deaf with very little experience in the real world. She enrolls in college hoping for a fresh start. She finds not only that but many other things ranging from romance to new friends to unlocking a part of herself she never knew existed. Colton Price is a assistant for Delaney’s professors with many dark secrets and a past that haunts him. He has friends in high places and a force to be reckoned with.

This book is written very well with strong characters that are interesting. You want to follow them throughout the book so you know what happens next in their own personal storybooks. There is plenty of suspense and cliffhangers throughout the book that also lead the reader on and draw them in to the story. All of the important main characters have something in their past that haunts them and keeps them going, they all have end goals. There are many twists and turns in the plot that add to the intensity of the story. Right when something that appears to be predictable is about to happen the author makes a complete 180° turn in the other direction with the story.

This book, while good is also very stereotypical at times. Two people who are forbidden from speaking to one another speak. Two people who are forbidden to love one another fall in love. The good guy isn’t always as good as he appears to be. And sometimes things are best left the way they are.

The book is a fantasy novel loaded with magical realism. The people who would enjoy this book are the people who like books filled with suspense and action. People who are ok with an ending that maybe they didn’t believe possible. The Whispering Dark is not a lighthearted book and can be very intense. It is not a book for someone who is looking for a happy story about two people who fall in love and ride off into the sunset together.