Keri’s beloved older brother Jake has just committed suicide. Jake had always seemed like a happy young man, and the suicide is both unexpected and traumatizing for Keri and her family. Because of Jake’s suicide, Keri reconnects with her old friend Janna, whose brother had also committed suicide some years ago.

Only Janna doesn’t believe the deaths were suicides. She introduces Keri to her friend Sione, whose brother had also committed suicide recently. Janna and Sione have been researching the suicides that occurred in their New Zealand town of Summerton, and they determined that there was one suicide per year, always around the same time. They are also curious about the fact that Summerton is always prosperous, always sunny at the turn of the year, and no one ever really seems to leave. The two girls and the boy investigate the suicides and it slowly becomes apparent – to Janna at least – that magic is at work. Keri and Sione are less sure, but all three follow the clues to determine what is really going on. Danger, heartache, and a little bit of romance ensue.

One element I really enjoyed about The Shattering was the diversity in the cast. Both Keri and Sione are at least part Maori. With Sione, who looks lily white but has a Maori name, this tends to be a problem. With Keri, it’s not as much of an issue. I like that Healey handled it this way. She is able to simultaneously show that non-white characters in teen fiction can be in a story that is not mainly about their race, as well as show the reality that race does matter.

The Shattering is told from Keri, Janna, and Sione’s perspectives in alternating chapters, although only Keri’s is first-person. While this may seem like an odd choice, it works. Keri is clearly the protagonist and we identify and sympathize with her the most, but Janna and Sione are also well-drawn, fully-fleshed characters with believable flaws that don’t prevent them from being likable. It can be difficult to portray three grief-stricken teenagers in such a way that they all clearly have their own voice, but Healey pulls it off admirably.

I normally avoid mysteries that have a magic or supernatural flavor. Since I like to try to puzzle out the solution myself as I read, I need to know that the laws of physics will be followed: the culprit isn’t invisible, doesn’t have superpowers, and can’t stop time. If magic is on the table, then it’s almost impossible to know the rules and therefore impossible to deduce the answer. Really, it could be anything.

Usually, that’s no fun. Not so with The Shattering. Healey is honest with her use of magic and doesn’t spring magical elements on the reader as a cheat or deus ex machina. She presents the reader with a set of rules, albeit not the rules we usually find in the real world, and she does it believably by showing how the main characters eventually transition from being deniers to believers. That way, when the characters (in particular Keri) buy into it, the reader does too.

The end of The Shattering is what lifted this book from a four star to a five star for me. Obviously I can’t say much about it, but even after the main thrust of the book has been resolved, Healey has more to say about life and love and death and grief. It’s moving, and despite the fantasy elements of the novel, it’s also true.

Review copy received from the publisher. The Shattering hits shelves September 5.

Nalia is the crown princess of the country of Thorvaldor, raised to know that she will one day be queen. Except she’s wrong – she’s called into the throne room one day and told by the people she thought were her parents that her real name is Sinda, and she’s a false princess.

When the real Nalia was born, the Oracle gave a prophecy that stated she would die before she reached age 16. Therefore, the princess was taken to a safe location and another baby – Sinda – was brought in to take her place for sixteen years. Now that the real Nalia has survived to age sixteen, the charade can end. Nalia is brought to the palace and welcomed by the citizens of Thorvaldor, while Sinda is sent to a country town to live with her aunt (her real mother abandoned her and her father died some time ago).

Sinda, while not proud, finds this arrangement almost unbearable. Her aunt is a dyer, a trade which Sinda knows nothing about, and her attempts to learn are fruitless. Furthermore, the woman is cold and unsympathetic, and the townspeople gossip about Sinda. She has no real friends there and misses Kiernan, the noble boy who was her dear friend at the castle.

When Sinda discovers that she has magical abilities, she leaves her aunt and the country town and moves back to the capital city. She’s taken in as an apprentice by an eccentric old female wizard and begins to settle in to a content – if not completely happy – life. But things don’t remain calm. Soon, Sinda uncovers a conspiracy involving her, Nalia, and yet another girl in another place. She and Kiernan dig into the past in order to expose the person who set in motion a plan to topple the ruling family sixteen years ago.

There were a lot of things I really enjoyed about The False Princess, Eilis O’Neal’s debut novel. Sinda has a strong, interesting voice. She’s believable with understandable strengths and weaknesses. She seems like an actual teenager, not an adult who occasionally makes bad decisions. Most importantly, she grows throughout the novel – she learns to stand up for herself and not just accept what is given to her. She learns to ask (or fight) for more.

The plot itself is fairly standard, but that’s not a bad thing. People who pick up books like these want a fun mix of magic, adventure, and romance, and that’s exactly what O’Neal delivers. And she did manage to surprise me at a pivotal moment, which I really appreciated.

Mandy Williams narrates the story slowly, in a soft but clear voice that is perfect for contemplative Sinda. She doesn’t give much variation for other characters, but that doesn’t harm the story. It’s told in the first person, so the minimal differentiation makes sense.

That said, I felt like the writing was lacking in parts. In half a dozen spots, I was able to speak the story aloud simultaneously with Williams – and I had never read or listened to the book before. This indicates clichéd or unoriginal prose, which is too bad. O’Neal is deft at characterizing Sinda, but the writing lacked sparkle otherwise.

I’d hand this one to fans of re-told fairy tales and books in the vein of Ella Enchanted (though it doesn’t come close to Gail Carson Levine’s level of humor and charm). It doesn’t deliver anything new, but it’s a tried and true kind of story and it’s told well. As a tween or young teen, I just know I would have pictured myself as Sinda (who is somewhat timid, has brown hair, and loves to read) as I read the book. It’s definitely a winner.

In Heather Dixon’s debut novel Entwined, Princess Azalea’s mother has just died, leaving behind twelve daughters and an emotionally distant husband.  The king grieves for his dead wife but leaves his twelve daughters to their own devices, his only real interaction with them occurring when he institutes a mandatory period of mourning, to last an entire year.  For that year, the girls are not allowed to go outside, they must wear black, they must cover all mirrors, and they are not allowed to dance.  This last requirement is the worst, since dancing is one of their true joys and something they shared with their mother.

The old, ramshackle palace the girls live in has some magic in it, though, and one night, Azalea and her sisters find a secret passage to an underground place where the sun shines and the Keeper, who lives there, allows them to dance all night to their hearts’ content.  But the Keeper is more malevolent than he seems, and he has plans for the girls, for the king, and for the kingdom in which they live.

I’m a sucker for fairy tales re-told, and the Twelve Dancing Princesses has been a popular one lately.  It’s not one of the best known, so it hasn’t been done to death like Cinderella has, but it does present some unique challenges.  For one thing, if you’ve chosen to write this particular fairy tale, you’ve automatically saddled yourself with twelve characters.  Making each of these characters distinct from one another without resorting to cliches has got to be a monumental challenge, and authors have attempted it with varying levels of success.

With Entwined, Heather Dixon succeeds at this better than others I’ve encountered recently.  For one thing, she doesn’t take the easy way out and completely marginalize all but one of the princesses.  Azalea is clearly our protagonist, but there are two nice subplots involving the next two eldest princesses.  There’s also enough interaction between the sisters that the reader gets an idea of at least some of their personalities, although not all of the sisters are fully realized.  Putting myself in the shoes of the author, though, it makes me slightly panicky thinking about how to make twelve characters three-dimensional in a single debut novel.

One thing I really enjoyed about Entwined was the description of the dances.  I’m not a dancer myself and have always envied those who were able to move with such grace.  Reading Entwined, I was able to see each of the dances in my mind’s eye – they’re beautiful and have their own more metaphorical magic, in particular the “soul curtsy” which is featured in a pivotal moment in the book.  Dixon’s writing shines at these points.

Of course, there were a couple of sticking points.  First and foremost: the story dragged in the first 100 pages or so.  There’s a lot of exposition and it seems to take quite awhile before Dixon buckles down and gets to the meat of the story.  It’s important to set up the background and establish the character’s relationships, but ideally these aspects should be developed over the course of the story, not crammed all into the first section before the real story begins.  Once I was past those first pages, though, I was hooked.

Dixon also tries to do something different with both the magic and the kingdom’s government.  This can be risky since the reader doesn’t already have a frame of reference to absorb the new information.  The author must be careful to explain such nuances of the world clearly and precisely, otherwise it won’t be understandable.  I’m afraid I never really did understand how the magic in Dixon’s world worked, and neither did I fully understand how the world’s system of government worked (there’s their father the king, who has some power but no money, and then there’s a prime minister, who appears to have lots of money, and another political party that opposes the king, and it’s more than a little confusing and I never did figure it out).  It’s clear that Dixon tried to make her world markedly different from the carbon copies seen in fairy tale re-tellings, but she didn’t quite succeed.

There were a few other small things that niggled at me, but all in all, Entwined is a good addition to the long list of these types of stories.  There’s three (yes, three!) sweet romances and a nicely creepy baddie.  There’s no real question how it will end, but the journey there is an enjoyable one, made more enjoyable by the interesting characters and often funny subplots Dixon incorporates.  I read Entwined about the same time as I read Merrie Haskell’s very different middle-grade twist on this same fairy tale, The Princess Curse, which publishes in September (and I’ll have a review for that one a bit closer to that date).  It’s interesting to compare the two, but I admit I’m done with the Twelve Dancing Princesses for awhile.