The Hand on the Wall by Maureen Johnson

Summary from Goodreads:

Ellingham Academy must be cursed. Three people are now dead. One, a victim of either a prank gone wrong or a murder. Another, dead by misadventure. And now, an accident in Burlington has claimed another life. All three in the wrong place at the wrong time. All at the exact moment of Stevie’s greatest triumph . . .

She knows who Truly Devious is. She’s solved it. The greatest case of the century.

At least, she thinks she has. With this latest tragedy, it’s hard to concentrate on the past. Not only has someone died in town, but David disappeared of his own free will and is up to something. Stevie is sure that somehow—somehow—all these things connect. The three deaths in the present. The deaths in the past. The missing Alice Ellingham and the missing David Eastman. Somewhere in this place of riddles and puzzles there must be answers.

Then another accident occurs as a massive storm heads toward Vermont. This is too much for the parents and administrators. Ellingham Academy is evacuated. Obviously, it’s time for Stevie to do something stupid. It’s time to stay on the mountain and face the storm—and a murderer.

In the tantalizing finale to the Truly Devious trilogy, New York Times bestselling author Maureen Johnson expertly tangles her dual narrative threads and ignites an explosive end for all who’ve walked through Ellingham Academy.

New York Times bestselling author Maureen Johnson delivers the witty and pulse-pounding conclusion to the Truly Devious series as Stevie Bell solves the mystery that has haunted Ellingham Academy for over 75 years.

Review:

My husband and I are both librarians. We have very different taste in books. Occasionally, we find ourselves crossing over to each other’s bookshelves, but this is usually for graphic novels or sci-fi. This series is one of the rare breeds we both lovingly adore. We were both counting down the days for this book’s release.  I got it first from my library, and read it in one day, so I could then pass it to him. He came home at the exact moment it was all revealed to me, and I went, “I had no idea!” very loudly as he came in the door –making his wait even harder. But, it’s been so nice to talk to him about it (after he’s finished it of course).

Any way, what I’m trying to say is this: these books are so good that even my 39 year old husband (librarian) who mostly reads adult sci fi, comic books, and historical non fiction was counting down the days to its release and then he too, read this book in under 24 hours. He does like to read mysteries sometimes too. But still, Maureen Johnson is a master. And we could not wait to find out who the murder was, and how everything tied together.

To be honest, the books hadn’t gone how I thought they would. I thought Stevie would solve the current murders first and then the historic one. I liked that it was a little different. Though, I was wondering how the third book would keep me interested knowing that Stevie had solved the big one by the end of book 2. Did she really solve it? Maybe there was more to it. And I guess I wanted to see how things would resolve with David. What on earth was that fight about?

Book 3 answered all these questions and then some. Johnson went into the past a lot, highlighting even more the characters and the setting the of the original crime. I’m glad I finally got to learn the why of things. I might have known the who from before, but not why. And by doing this, the author brought to light the relevance of the the crimes of today and the how and why everything truly was connected.

Besides connecting all the dots, resolving the romantic plot lines, and solving the murder, there’s also a colossal snow storm, more secret passageways, more deathly accidents, more panic attacks, and more scary moments of suspense that will have any reader’s hearth thumping. This book has it all. Most all though, it has amazing characters. I’ve come to love Stevie and her quirky friends. I’d hate for the school to close –not just because I want Stevie to solve the case. But, I want machines to be built, fantasy novels to be written, and everyone else to succeed as well.

I have loved all 3 books in this series. I have been surprised over and over by the multiple murders. I have panicked with Stevie. And I’ve needed answers so badly that I’ve counted down the days for book releases with my husband. I’ve given books in the series as gifts. And despite reading the books first from the library, I also own them all. I highly recommend these books to mystery fans (particularly Agatha Christie fans), and those who like good character driven stories –who don’t mind a lot of historical flashbacks. But, I know people who like these books who don’t normally go for these kinds of stories too. They are well-written, well thought out, and are just plain fun. I give this a 10/10.

The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate

Summary from Goodreads:

Ivan is an easygoing gorilla. Living at the Exit 8 Big Top Mall and Video Arcade, he has grown accustomed to humans watching him through the glass walls of his domain. He rarely misses his life in the jungle. In fact, he hardly ever thinks about it at all.

Instead, Ivan thinks about TV shows he’s seen and about his friends Stella, an elderly elephant, and Bob, a stray dog. But mostly Ivan thinks about art and how to capture the taste of a mango or the sound of leaves with color and a well-placed line.

Then he meets Ruby, a baby elephant taken from her family, and she makes Ivan see their home—and his own art—through new eyes. When Ruby arrives, change comes with her, and it’s up to Ivan to make it a change for the better.

Katherine Applegate blends humor and poignancy to create Ivan’s unforgettable first-person narration in a story of friendship, art, and hope.

Review:

I feel like I failed some kind of Children’s Librarian test because I had not read this book before….and the weirdest of all weird things is I seriously thought I had…like if you had asked if me if I had read it, I would have told you I had and I would have believed it! How many other books do I believe I have read, but actually haven’t?

In other news, I LOVED this book, and I am so glad I came to my senses and finally did read it. What a sweet, remarkable story. Normally, I don’t go for books about animals. I never liked them (maybe this has something to do with my delayed reading of the book). But, wow, Ivan. I loved him immediately. I loved how he saw the world, and how he saw art. I loved how he connected to people and other animals. And I loved how he wanted to do right by everyone around him, no matter how no one seemed to do right by him.

There were several scenes that brought tears to my eyes, and not all of them even made sense. The first time Ivan made art that wasn’t a picture of something directly in front of him made me cry…When Ivan told Ruby a joke for the first time, I also weirdly had tears in my eyes. Then other times, it did make sense, like when Ivan said goodbye to Bob…And when Ivan watched a video of Ruby…Oh my God, I was legit sobbing.

I think what gets me the most about it all is that Ivan doesn’t do anything for himself (aside from eat a few yogurt raisins). He does it all for Ruby and Stella. He doesn’t try to save himself or change his story. He does everything selflessly. He brings all these changes, makes all these sacrifices, and creates all this art all to help someone else.

This is a book of kindness and love and friendship above all else. Yes, it’s about a remarkable gorilla who can paint pictures, and teach himself to write! It’s about the treatment of wild animals. It’s about unlikely friendships. It’s about cages versus homes. It’s about good humans versus bad humans. But, mostly, it’s about kindness and love. And who doesn’t need a good story about that? I give this a 10/10.

Stargazing by Jen Wang

Summary from Goodreads:

Moon is everything Christine isn’t. She’s confident, impulsive, artistic . . . and though they both grew up in the same Chinese-American suburb, Moon is somehow unlike anyone Christine has ever known.

When Moon’s family moves in next door to Christine’s, Moon goes from unlikely friend to best friend―maybe even the perfect friend. The girls share their favorite music videos, paint their toenails when Christine’s strict parents aren’t around, and make plans to enter the school talent show together. Moon even tells Christine her deepest secret: that she sometimes has visions of celestial beings who speak to her from the stars. Who reassure her that earth isn’t where she really belongs.

But when they’re least expecting it, catastrophe strikes. After relying on Moon for everything, can Christine find it in herself to be the friend Moon needs?

New York Times–bestselling author-illustrator Jen Wang draws on her childhood to paint a deeply personal yet wholly relatable friendship story that’s at turns joyful, heart-wrenching, and full of hope.

Review:

I saw this one going out a lot at my library, and it looked really cute, so I decided the next time it came across my desk, I’d take it home with me. I didn’t even realize it was done by the same person who did The Prince and the Dressmaker, one of my all time favorite graphic novels! I was not disappointed. This book was great. I read it (like all good graphic novels) in one sitting.

It definitely had a younger feel than The Prince and the Dressmaker. I would give this book to those looking for a good read-a-like for Smile or Sunny Side Up. It’s a friendship story that anyone can relate to, with themes of jealousy, family, empathy, and growth.

I loved the art. I loved that the characters aren’t perfect cookie cutter versions of what kids are supposed to look like. They aren’t all super skinny with perfect symmetrical faces. The characters still look cartoonish, but more authentic and relatable. It’s nice to see real girls in real shapes and sizes from different backgrounds. I can see lots of young girls reading this and seeing themselves in the pages.

I don’t want to talk too much about the plot because I feel like it’s hard to talk about, without giving a lot away. Just know that it’s sweet and believable. I can see a lot of young people loving this one and I’m always happy to have something to recommend to kids who need something after finishing all the Raina Telgemier books for the fifth time. I give this an 8/10.

The Land of Roar by Jenny McLachlan

Summary from Goodreads:

The new middle-grade fantasy that will make you believe in magic!

When Arthur and Rose were little, they were heroes in the Land of Roar, an imaginary world that they found by climbing through the folding bed in their grandad’s attic. Roar was filled with things they loved – dragons, mermaids, ninja wizards and adventure – as well as things that scared them (including a very creepy scarecrow. . .)

Now the twins are eleven, Roar is just a memory. But when they help Grandad clean out the attic, Arthur is horrified as Grandad is pulled into the folding bed and vanishes. Is he playing a joke? Or is Roar . . . real?

Review:

As I mentioned on Goodreads, I was shocked my library system didn’t have this book! But, then I realized it’s not out yet in the US. I picked this book up on my honeymoon in Paris in September, not even realizing it wasn’t out here! It’s a British book. This makes sense. It’s by a British author that I like for a past series called Flirty Dancing.

Now, I probably have to wait 2 years for book 2, which is a travesty because this book was adorable! It definitely reads on the younger side of Middle Grade, with lots of cute illustrations. But, also, there’s lots of family drama, suspenseful adventure, magic, dragons, feminism, and laughs. Overall, I really loved this.

Normally, middle grade adventure stories don’t do it for me. They have to be very special to hold my attention. They don’t normally have the same level of suspense, character development, or mystery that I really need. This isn’t always true. I have been proven wrong with this judgment more and more over the recent years, and while I wouldn’t have bought this in Paris, if I didn’t think I’d be wrong here too (at least a little bit), I wasn’t expecting to fall so deeply into this story. I ate it up. There’s just something so true about the brother/sister relationship here that takes center stage to the whole fantasyland. I easily could have read this book if it were twice as long. I wanted more.

There’s a definite Peter Pan/Golden Compass theme here about growing up and what it means for our imaginations. And I like how the author blurs the lines between fantasy and realistic fiction. Growing up and fitting in with the cool kids in the real world is very different from growing up and fighting scarecrows in a magical world. But, everything is always weirdly connected. And I like that there was a slight darkness to it all too. It’s not all flying horses and riding dragons, though that’s really awesome. I give this one a 9/10.

A Good Week in Books (213)

So, I know I said I was doing better health-wise….Well, then…I had a 6 day (longest yet) whopper of a migraine alongside a sinus infection and hello new medication and infrequent reading schedules again. I have somehow managed to read 5 books since my last blog post though (thanks in some part to audio books). And I unfortunately have had another migraine since that terrible one. They don’t call it chronic for no reason. On the plus side, I’m flying through Netflix shows like no tomorrow (with my computer screen tilted at weird angles so the light doesn’t bother me).

I bought myself the last book in a fantastic mystery series that I’m obsessed with. And I received a big box of new pretties from Macmillan that I cannot wait to get started on. I have no headache today, so I guess I’ll take advantage of that as much as I can.

The new books:

The Hand on the Wall by Maureen Johnson
Lucky Caller by Emma Mills
Black Girl Unlimited by Echo Brown
Dark and Deepest Red by Anna-Marie McLemore
Rogue Princess by B.R. Myers
The King’s Questioner by Nikki Katz
Gone by Nightfall by Dee Garretson
How to Speak Boy by Tiana Smith

Children of Virtue and Vengence by Tomi Adeyemi

Summary from Goodreads:

After battling the impossible, Zélie and Amari have finally succeeded in bringing magic back to the land of Orïsha. But the ritual was more powerful than they could’ve imagined, reigniting the powers of not only the maji, but of nobles with magic ancestry, too.

Now, Zélie struggles to unite the maji in an Orïsha where the enemy is just as powerful as they are. But when the monarchy and military unite to keep control of Orïsha, Zélie must fight to secure Amari's right to the throne and protect the new maji from the monarchy's wrath.

With civil war looming on the horizon, Zélie finds herself at a breaking point: she must discover a way to bring the kingdom together or watch as Orïsha tears itself apart.

Review:

This was a good book 2. It wasn’t quite as good as I wanted it to be, but it was still pretty solid. It took me a little too long to get my bearings and remember all the characters and where things were left after book 1. Once I finally put all the pieces together, I was there and ready for action, but action was kind of a long time coming.

There’s a lot of slowness and sadness in this book. There’s more death. And poor Zelie is just so tired of failing over and over. It’s hard for her to see all her accomplishments from book 1 because of all of the loved ones she’s lost and the person who’s betrayed her. She’s a bit broken in this second book. She’s less sure. I found myself actually liking Amari more than Zelie for much of the book.

I wanted to slap some sense/strength back into Zelie. And I think Amari and everyone else wanted to do this too. On the other hand because of Zelie’s attitude we get to meet the rebellion. And they are awesome. The magic is awesome. Watching Zelie’s people embrace magic again is just the best.

A lot goes down politically and it felt a little more like a soap opera of a political event than an actual civil war. Everything that happened within the family of the monarchy just seemed over-the-top and cliché. Gone was the scariness of book 1, and it was kind of replaced with an evil Disney villain instead….and not in a good way.

Beside that though, I couldn’t put the book down. I love the mythology and folklore behind it all. I love the cast of characters and how flawed they are. I love seeing them realize each other’s flaws and learn to work around them. It’s not easy sailing for this friendship. The last 50 pages was a whirlwind of action, and oh my goodness that ending! I had to re-read it a few times to make sure it actually happened. It’s going to be a long wait for the last book.

All in all, this was a solid book 2. It wasn’t as good as book 1 (though they usually aren’t). The characters were amazing. The world was even more developed and fascinating than before. I liked the suspense and action (though it did take a hot minute to develop). The monarchy/bad guy situations was a little too cliché for my liking, but who knows what will happen in book 3. I have high expectations for it. I give this one an 8/10.

Say Her Name by Zetta Elliott

Summary from Goodreads:

Say her name and solemnly vow

Never to forget, or allow

Our sisters’ lives to be erased;

Their presence cannot be replaced.

This senseless slaughter must stop now.

Award-winning author Zetta Elliott engages poets from the past two centuries to create a chorus of voices celebrating the creativity, resilience, and courage of Black women and girls. Inspired by the #SayHerName campaign launched by the African American Policy Forum, these poems pay tribute to victims of police brutality as well as the activists championing the Black Lives Matter cause. This compelling collection reveals the beauty, danger, and magic found at the intersection of race and gender.

Review:

I don’t believe I’ve ever reviewed a book of poetry on this blog before. I do sometimes read books that I don’t review. They are often adult fiction or nonfiction, and sometimes they are poetry books. I guess there’s not a lot of YA poetry out there. When I received this book, I was so excited to get a chance to talk poetry here. Not only is this a YA poetry book, but it’s a feminist, Black Lives Matter YA poetry book.

I was going to just read a couple of poems when I first got it, and get back to the rest of the book later (after I finished a couple novels I was reading). But instead, I actually, read the whole book in one sitting. It’s beautiful. And like books of short stories, some poems spoke to me more than others. The poem, “Lullaby” made me cry. The poems “Black Lives Matter” and “Men Made of Glass,” gave me goose bumps. Other poems I’ve read over and over and they just resonate so strongly with me.

Each page is accompanied by these colorful, graphic prints. The illustrations are done by Loveis Wise. And they make the book a celebration. Without them, the whole thing would have a very different vibe. The pictures allow the words to be honored and celebrated, and not just mourned and cried over. And the words deserve celebration. They are seriously goose bump inducing.

The author does a write-up at the end to explain the inspiration for her work. A lot was inspired by famous black women poets, some I recognize, some I don’t.  Now, I want to go look up the ones I don’t know. A lot of her words came from her reactions to recent events of racism and violence. And seeing what inspired the poet to write gave even more power to her words. All in all, I loved this book. I plan on keeping it nearby so I can go back and re-read these beautiful poems whenever I need to. I give it a 10/10.

Call Down the Hawk by Maggie Stiefvater

Summary from Goodreads:

The dreamers walk among us . . . and so do the dreamed. Those who dream cannot stop dreaming – they can only try to control it. Those who are dreamed cannot have their own lives – they will sleep forever if their dreamers die.

And then there are those who are drawn to the dreamers. To use them. To trap them. To kill them before their dreams destroy us all.

Ronan Lynch is a dreamer. He can pull both curiosities and catastrophes out of his dreams and into his compromised reality.

Jordan Hennessy is a thief. The closer she comes to the dream object she is after, the more inextricably she becomes tied to it.

Carmen Farooq-Lane is a hunter. Her brother was a dreamer . . . and a killer. She has seen what dreaming can do to a person. And she has seen the damage that dreamers can do. But that is nothing compared to the destruction that is about to be unleashed. . . .

Review:

I don’t know why I was weirdly hesitant to start this book. Maybe I felt like I really said goodbye to the characters of the Raven Cycle and I wasn’t prepared to enter back into this dark, magical world yet. Or maybe I knew this would be a little tough to read because Ronan was a little tough to read. Or maybe I was just in denial. This book was everything. Maggie Steifvater is a genius.

She somehow combines a tragic love story, with top-notch family drama, supernatural darkness of epic proportions, art, heists, fairy markets, nightmares, and creatures and places I haven’t even begun to understand yet alone have ever seen before. They say all stories are basically taken from stories that have already been told. I feel like everything Stiefvater writes is something that has never been done before. She shocks me in her ingenuity. Even in a genre (paranormal romance) where I have read each trope before and there are millions of tropes, this just reads as new.

I was hooked from page one. I was even hooked on the characters I didn’t think I’d like (aka: the new ones). I was fascinated by the new characters and glad to have some more females in the story. I’m also so interested in learning about the dreams. There’s so much to what Ronan can do that I don’t even think he knows yet. And I can’t wait to read about him discovering it.

And then there’s Adam! Ahhh. I love the love story! I ship them so hard. All the mistakes and awkwardness and moments in Boston were just pure gold. Also amazing were the texts with a certain favorite character from the series before. I definitely recommend reading the Raven Cycle books first. This one won’t make that much sense without the knowledge given in the previous books.

The suspense in this book is amazing. The stakes are high. Everything is life or death. And I loved every second of it. This author is a master at tying all the little pieces together, and I cannot wait to see where everything goes. I cannot wait for the next one. This gets a 10/10.

A Good Week in Books (212) / Where I've Been Lately

Happy New Year! What a crazy, remarkable, love-filled, heartfelt year. 2019 was both one of the best years of my life and one of the hardest ones. I got married to my best friend. We went to Paris on our honeymoon. I celebrated with friends and family. I had my first married holiday season.

I was also diagnosed with severe migraines (added to some other GI health issues I’ve been diagnosed with in the past couple of years, and my health became more challenging). I’ve seemed to have finally found some help in dealing with the pain though, so that’s good news. I lost 35 pounds this year, which is good for my health, but I still have a long way to go.

I also lost a family friend (granted one I haven’t spoken to in a long time) to suicide and this hit me hard. I always really loved this person and even writing this now, brings tears to my eyes. I have now lost two people to suicide.

Any way, my reading this year took a bit of a hit. Migraines make reading super hard. I did get more into audiobooks than ever before. But, I think I’m finally back on track to where I want to be. I only read 75 books last year (compared to my normal 100). And a lot of those books were graphic novels. I’m aiming for 100 again this year. We’ll see what happens! I’ve read 7 books since my last blog post, so I guess I need to play catch up here too.

I received 1 new one for review (thanks Freeform Books), I bought 1 new book for myself as a holiday present, and I received 1 other book as holiday present from a good friend.

Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson
Reverie by Ryan La Sala
What I want you to see by Catherine Linka