Author: lakendrag

“#MeToo with a magical twist.” – Kirkus Reviews

How To Succeed in Witchcraft is a young adult with fantasy elements that are used to soften the blow of the heavy subjects in the book. Magic is given an explanation for how terrible things could happen in a society supposedly above sexually and racially motivated crimes without denying the horrible things people do. This book is beautifully written and faces the hard truths of the world accurately without shying away from them. Shay and Ana are fleshed out, believable characters. Sometimes when authors put characters in hard situations, they fall apart because the character isn’t strong enough do what the author intends. This isn’t the case in this book. Even the side characters make decisions that feel like something a real person would do.

Shay Johnson is junior at T.K. Anderson Magical Magnet School, she’s one of the top contenders to winning the full-ride Brockton Scholarship. This scholarship is the only way for Shay to get into a magical licensing school, which is the only way for her to make enough money to support her family. Her main competition is Ana Alvarez who has won every aspect of their academic competitions. The only was to victory is impressing Mr. B (short for Brockton), the shady drama teacher who is head of the scholarship committee. Mr. B persuades Shay to star in this year’s aggressively inclusive, racially diverse musical. Shay agrees even though she’ll have to put up with Ana playing the other lead. But with rehearsals underway, Shay realizes Ana is not the despicable one and Shay could use someone in her corner once she finds herself on the receiving end of Mr. B’s unpleasant and unwanted attention.

This book has a predictable storyline. It’s obvious from the beginning what is going to happen, but the characters are compelling enough that they make How To Succeed in Witchcraft a fun ride regardless of whether you figure out the plot. It’s also just a good dissuasion of the society we live in. Things like sexual assault and racism are hard to talk about and How To Succeed in Witchcraft does a good job of telling a beautiful story that demonstrates healthy relationships and contrasts them to the unhealthy ones. This book is about standing up for what is right no matter how hard that will be, because that is what our world needs in order to bring about any real change. Broph mentions that as a society we like to sweep our problems under the rug. How To Succeed in Witchcraft is about why that will never work in the long run. How To Succeed in Witchcraft similar to Aiden Thomas and Sabrina the Teen Witch.

After the first settler on Titan, one of Jupiter’s moons, trips her distress signal, neither remaining country on Earth can afford a rescue on its own, so two sworn enemies are unknowingly installed in the same spaceship. Ambrose wakes up on the Coordinated Endeavor, with no memory of a launch. His brooding shipmate, Kodiak, has barricaded himself away. Nothing will stop Ambrose from making his mission succeed—not when he’s rescuing his own sister. In order to survive the ship’s secrets, Ambrose and Kodiak have to work together and learn to trust one another. Once they discover what they are truly up against, love is the only way…

“Intimacy is the only shield against insanity. Intimacy, not knowledge. Intimacy, not power.” ― Eliot Schrefer, The Darkness Outside Us

Throughout this dystopian sci-fi there is a ton of mystery surrounding the mission, but all of that is overshadowed by the ridiculous relationship between Ambrose and Kodiak that only occurs because of the stereotypical exceptions that teenagers can’t not have sex. As much as I tried to dislike this book for its romantic aspects, it was quite likable. The plot was the typical apocalypse but with new twists and turns that were fun even if some were predictable.

“This lifetime is yours to make what you will of it” ― Eliot Schrefer, The Darkness Outside Us

This book was a finalist for the National Book Award in Young People’s Literature. Which is awarded to books of the highest quality written by Americans and published by American publishers. While Schrefer does have an interesting writing style, his word choices and sentence structure are unique, this book is not outstanding by any other definition. Nothing was captivating, I never felt like I couldn’t put it down. Truly exemplary books are hard to put down. This was a good fun read with amazing character development. It did have a slow start which was very well done. I would recommend this book to fans of apocalyptic sci-fi, fans of the enemies-to-lovers trope, and fans of Aiden Thomas.

“‘Well, we’re hardwired not to accept our own demise. Daffodils are a lot more chill about it.’
‘Okay, but we can be like daffodils together.”  ― Eliot Schrefer, The Darkness Outside Us

“The first step to seeing is seeing that there are things you do not see.” 
― Akwaeke Emezi, Pet

Pet is a young adult fantasy/speculative fiction novel by Nigerian author Akwaeke Emezi. It is a National Honor Book, a Stonewall Honor Book, and a Walter Dean Myers Honor Book. The National Book Award is an annual award given to books of the highest quality written by Americans and published by American publishers. According to the American Library Association website: “The Stonewall Book Awards are presented to English language books that have exceptional merit relating to the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered experience.” The Walter Award, began in 2016, is a book by diverse authors whose works feature diverse main characters and address diversity.

“Monsters don’t look like anything, That’s the whole point. That’s the whole problem.” 
― Akwaeke Emezi, Pet

Lucille has no monsters anymore. Jam and her best friend, Redemption, have grown up with this lesson all their life. But when Jam’s mother paints Pet, a creature that looks like a monster, who emerges the painting with a drop of Jam’s blood. Pet has come to hunt a monster which lurks in Redemption’s house, but needs Jam to find the answers it can’t. Jam is forced to search for a monster amount the people she loves most.

“So, yes, people forget. But forgetting is dangerous. Forgetting is how the monsters come back.” 
― Akwaeke Emezi, Pet

Pet is an intestine exploration of how to explain all the bad things, the hard things, in the world. The book is slow moving as all the characters are held back by their fear of knowing. Pet says that you see what you want to see, and this is what Jam spends the book overcoming. Dealing with traumatic subjects is hard and Emezi does an excellent job portraying that. However, Jam is not a particularly interesting character which hinders the readers ability to get into the story. Objectively, the books concept is very interesting and unique. Unfortunately, Jam is bland. She is more than the minority groups she belongs too, but still isn’t interesting. Jam is the most fleshed out charcter, and is only the typical naive child in a cruel world, not much more. She has a healthy relationship with her parents though.

“Angels aren’t pretty pictures in old holy books, just like monsters aren’t ugly pictures. It’s all just people, doing hard things or doing bad things. But is all just people, our people.” 
― Akwaeke Emezi, Pet

Pet is an excellent read if you like books that sound auditory and books about societal problems. Would recommend to anyone who likes real world problems written in more palatable ways.

Love Radio is not your typical toxic YA romance novel, and it follows two teenagers, Dani and Prince, as they learn how to love each other and themselves.

Love Radio begins with Danielle and Prince processing a previous relationship. Prince’s was long term and Dani’s lasted only an evening, but both weighed down the characters in different ways. Prince has been crushing on Dani since middle school, but the first chance he gets to talk to her, he fumbles badly. In an effort to redeem himself, Prince offers Dani three dates and bets her that he can make her fall in love with him in three dates. Dani agrees, and throughout their relationship they push each other to fix their relationships with themselves and with their friends. Prince helps Dani write her college essay with a hat, so she can live out her dreams in New York. Dani gives Prince an opportunity in his career as a DJ, which helps him come to term with his mom’s MS.

This book is well written and authentic. It shows healthy relationships with real world problems. Such as dealing with a new relationship after sexual assault and saving the worthy friendships after losing the toxic ones. The problems that each character has are legitiment and they struggle to overcome them. However, I hated this book. Maybe it’s because I disagree very strongly about getting silk wet, but Dani in particular fell flat. She struggles all throughout the book about whether or not she loves Prince, but by the end I don’t feel like she grew as a character at all. I was not sympathetic to her either, which I find odd because stories about sexual assault usually hit close to home. I don’t know what it was that put me off of this story, but reading it, I could not help thinking about how wrong it felt. The romancy parts did not effect me as they should have. The only part that pulled on me emotionally was the twist at the end before the book had another twist to end happily. I did not like the ending either. It felt like it lost the emotional residence because Dani and Prince ‘overcame’ their problems, but they didn’t heal in any way and they healed very quickly. The only character I truly like is Mook, because he ignores nuns to read books.

I would recommend this book to anyone who reads romance novels. Fans of Twilight, The Hunger Games, any book that focuses on unhealthy relationships. Teens in particular need to read a book like this one, because it is starting the conversation about health relationships and we need more of that. Love Radio is a good place to start, but you might leave disappointed. Read Tamora Perice instead.

“We all deserve a big love story,” Mom says as the love scene fades out. “There’s nothing better.” 
― Ebony LaDelle, Love Radio

The “Holy human pressure cookers Batman” but darker.

“Trust nothing, suspect everything. If you want to figure out the truth, you shouldn’t just be standing here, trying to get me to talk. Go out and see color for yourself.” 
― Marie Lu, Batman: Nightwalker

Before there was Batman, there was Bruce Wayne, the typical nosey teenager. Bruce Wayne, the 18 year old heir to Wayne Enterprises, does not like parties with people who only like him for his money. In his haste to leave the party, which happens to be for his 18th birthday, he runs into a police chase. Bruce decides that because his car is the only car which can catch the criminals, he must be the one to catch the criminal, which the police do not like. As punishment for interfering with the police, Wayne is given community service in Arkham Asylum. In Arkham he meets a mysertious girl, Madeleine Wallace, who is locked up with the worst of the worst. She even refuses to talk to anyone but him. Madeleine aids him in his quest to learn more about the Nightwalkers, a criminal orgianization that has recently started terrorizing Gotham’s streets and one Wallace has ties with. The Nightwalkers are a clear parallel to the League of Assassins, with a Madeleine instead of a Talia Al Gaul. I spent the entire book thinking Madeleine is Talia, and was slightly disappointed to find out otherwise.

“Fear clears the mind. Panic clouds it.” 
― Marie Lu, Batman: Nightwalker

As is typical for a Marie Lu book, Batman: Nightwalker was good, but it doesn’t quite compare to Lu’s other books such as The Young Elites, Legend, or Warcross. Batman: Nightwalker is still enjoyable in the moment, but as time passes, it is forgettable. However, the clues laid for the detectives to uncover is wonderful. The twists and turns Madeleine challenges Bruce with both emotionally and as a detective are done in Lu’s typical style, which is to say, excellent. Whether Batman is a new or an old character to readers, the fast pacing and the compelling characters, makes Batman: Nightwalker a compelling read despite lacking some accuracy to the original material. For example, Bruce has no training and his parents deaths do not seem to influence him to do good, he just inherently is morally perfect as the stereotypical main character’s are.

“You have a heavy heart, for someone with everything.” 
― Marie Lu, Batman: Nightwalker

Any causal Batman fan will like this book. Die hard fans would shred it. However, Lu does introduce Bruce Wayne to readers as if we don’t know him, so no prior knowledge is necessary. This book is for any fan of Marie Lu or Marrissa Mayer’s.

“Can you ever truly comprehend anything about something, or someone…unless you experience it for yourself?” 
― Marie Lu, Batman: Nightwalker

Somnath Sarkar writes in “Romance in Literature: Definition, Examples Characteristics” about the changes in the genre of romance over the years. He defines romance as “Any tale of adventure, whatever the origin of its matter, could be a Romance, and the adventure could be chivalric or merely amorous.” The article states that the purpose of a romance is to be “…an escape from realism.” Meaning, according to Sarkar, that in the old style romance novels, “The sexual love, if any, is but the rarefied expression of courtly love.” The story was about the adventure the characters went on that may have lead to love and may not have. The point of the genre was not to create a toxic love between broken people, but a world that allowed readers to escape through the characters to a better place.

Prior to the 21st century a romance novel meant something other than it does now. The changing definitions of genres are of little consequence. The problem lies in the types of relationships portrayed, specifically unhealthy ones, in modern romance. In American society we romanticize things that have no business being romanticized, in large part as a mechanism for healing. For example, traumatic events or mental health problems. This feeds into modern day romance which causes problem for the young people reading YA as we are easily influenced before our prefrontal cortex is full developed as 25, at the earliest.

An example of a beloved romance YA novel is Twilight. However, Edward clearly displays abusive behavior both stalking Bella and attempting to control her by isolating her from her support system. He also threatens to kill himself if anything happens to her and frequently scares by driving too fast or abandoning her in the woods after breaking up with her.

Another example of an unhealthy relationship in YA is Katniss, Peeta, and Gale’s love triangle in The Hunger Games. Gale and Peeta have a conversation in The Mockingjay where they acknowledge that they both love Katniss and they don’t know which one of them she will pick, but they agree it will be the one she can’t live without. Katniss and Peeta’s PTSD is explored thought the series and is used to show how the games have broken them and Katniss in particular. Katniss regularly uses both Gale and Peeta for her own benefit and casts them off when no longer useful. Peeta is cast off after the first games, then Gale before the second. This cycle continues until the epilogue were the readers are still in the dark over which man Katniss choose. The Hunger Games popularity caused for the same cycle as Twilight‘s popularity. More and more copycats.

The problem with Twilight besides the toxic relationships, is that it set the precedent for all of the copycats to create their own unhealthy relationships in order to benefit from the popularity of Twilight. This cycle has to be broken. Books are influential and they need to unhealthy relationships, but not in a way that romanticizes or allows the reader to think such relationships are okay. Writing about unhealthy relationships sells books but people take these relationships out of context and assume that is how real relationships work.

Works Cited

Sarkar, Somnath, “Romance in Literature: Definition, Examples Characteristics.” All About English Literature, 9 May 2022, https://www.eng-literature.com/2022/05/romance-literature-definition-examples-characteristics.html. 

Red Queen, Glass Sword, King’s Cage, War Storm

If The Hunger Games was high fantasy.

“Rise, red as the dawn.” – the Red Queen series

Mare Barrow, a girl from the Red slums, makes her electrifying debut at the Queenstrail. She meets the Silver Burner Princes Cal and Maven Calore. A love triangle develops where the love is a burning obsession coupled with an intoxication of the idea of what love should be between Mare and Maven, and a hope of what could be between Mare and Cal, if they didn’t live in a racist society. Mare and Maven join the Scarlet guard which is an organized rebellion spanning multiple countries. Farley, who is a leader in the Scarlet Guard, helps Mare find her way as a figurehead for the rebellion and equality for red bloods and newbloods in a Silver world. The Silvers rule Norta and some of the surrounding kingdoms such as the Lakelands because with silver blood comes powers like telekinesis, superhuman strength, healing, and manipulation and control of natural elements, animals, metal, and minds. Reds are slaves, and this tale is a clear parallel to the American Civil War.

“I’m red, I’m nothing, and I can still make you fall.” – the Red Queen series

Mare is a Newblood and the Newbloods have different, stronger, powers than Silvers. Newbloods are able to not only manipulate a particular element, but also create it. This scares the Silvers so much that they lower the conscription age of Reds who fight in the war against the Lakelands, which is just another way of saying Red execution. They give Reds a curfew which if broken in punishable by death.

“Thinking all Silvers are evil is just as wrong as thinking all Reds are inferior.” – the Red Queen series

I have read many dystopian fantasy books, but this series has an allure about it strong enough that I could reread it two years later. Often I find rereading books hard because when you know what’s coming its easy to stay aloof from the story. Not with Victoria Aveyard. She is able to construct a complex plot with many characters and subplots, and while it is fairly predictable in some regards, it is also captivatingly beautiful. I found some characters very annoying, which was really nice as their annoyingness stemmed from being so real, and it wasn’t annoying because they weren’t human enough, but because they were too human. They were annoying like its annoying to use annoying so many times in a row, annoying but not wrong.

“Anyone can betray anyone.” – the Red Queen series

The story is a mess of character desires which is what makes the characters frustratingly real. Mare and Cal loving Maven no matter what he did is an example that stays through the entire series. Cal in particular had trouble letting go of the little brother he had before Queen Elara Merandus took a knife to Maven’s brain. Even characters like Elane, who were minor, had both relevance and weight. The really interesting thing about Mare’s character is how questionable her morals are at times. I think it really demonstrates her strength as a character because her struggle between right and wrong and what has to be done no matter how bad the outcome. Mare willingly gives herself up to the king to save her friends, knowing she will be tortured and killed if she’s lucky, but she is also accused of being a monster at every turn for her willingness to let lives be expendable and forcing people to do what she wants (murder Silvers) by kidnapping and incitement.

“Words can lie. See beyond them.” – the Red Queen series

Anyone who enjoys books in the style of the Hunger Games or Holly Black will enjoy the Red Queen series or if you’re still friends with someone who tortured you.

“We can’t choose who we love. I wish, more than anything, that we could.” – the Red Queen series

Medema’s young adult mystery, Message Not Found, portrays the emotional toll of a death that needed a ton of pop rocks and Bob Ross to heal.

I loved this book. Medema explores grief so accurately and writes so beautifully that the idiocy of teen romance never falls flat even when Bailey got too close to Cade and I really wanted her to have been the one thrown off the mountain. The book is relatively slow going, but I think that suits the healing one does after a death. However, Message Not Found is never bland. The slowness is only ever truly slow if the mystery aspects are of little interest.

In the middle of an Alaskan winter, Vanessa, the perfect book girl, swerves off a mountain pass road and falls to her death, leaving behind her best friend, Bailey, and her boyfriend, Mason. Late in the night, after the Champagne wore off, Vanessa leaves Bailey’s house to go partying with Mason. A mysterious text has Vanessa panicking, and Bailey is left with a thousand questions unanswered when Vanessa dies far from her house, a place where she had no business being. As everyone around her jumps on the bandwagon of grief, Bailey wonders what could have been so important it cost her best friend’s life? Jackie-mom has a software AI that Bailey steals and then steals phones, anything that might hold a piece of Vanessa, and uploads all of Vanessa’s digital footprint to the AI. As the bot, called V, is given more information, it paints a startling picture that leaves Bailey wondering. As she heals, reconnects with her ex-boyfriend, Cade, and grows closer and closer with Mason, she discovers the untold truths of Vanessa’s life, while navigating college applications.

I would recommend this book to everyone who likes Y/A mystery or needs grief counseling.