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On The Radar: April YA Books To Know

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“On The Radar” is a monthly series meant to highlight between 9 and 12 books per month to fit a budget of roughly $300 or less. These lists are curated from a larger spreadsheet I keep with a running list of titles hitting shelves and are meant to reflect not only the big books coming out from authors readers know and love, but it’s also meant to showcase some of the titles that have hit my radar through review copies, publicity blasts, or because they’re titles that might otherwise not be readily seen or picked up through those traditional avenues. It’s part science and part art.

April’s 12 titles showcases a variety of continuing series, new titles by long-time favorites, and a handful of YA books which have seen some good buzz.

Book descriptions come from Goodreads and reasons for them being on your radar are mine and mine alone. Titles are alphabetical, with pub dates beside them. Titles with a * in front of them are books that are starting or a continuation of a series.

 

*The Complication by Suzanne Young (4/24)

Every cure has a cost.

Tatum Masterson learned this after years of being monitored by The Program. She witnessed it when her boyfriend, Wes, came back changed, erased. And now, even the newest “cure” has a heavy cost—one she and Wes paid.

The Adjustment came into Tatum’s life just when she thought she needed it most, a promise for Wes to get back his forgotten memories. But when the procedure went wrong, a revelation shattered everything Tatum thought she knew.

Now, with no one left to trust, Tatum must find out what really happened last summer. And with the help of the boyfriend she lost, Tatum will have to dig into the past and future of The Program and its handlers.

And discover the true cost of a cure.

 

Why it should be on your radar: It’s the sixth entry into the New York Times Bestselling “The Program” series. Young’s knack for capturing teen dialog will appeal to readers who love the series and will hook new readers.

 

*Defy The Worlds by Claudia Gray (4/3)

An outcast from her home — Shunned after a trip through the galaxy with Abel, the most advanced cybernetic man ever created, Noemi Vidal dreams of traveling through the stars one more time. And when a deadly plague arrives on Genesis, Noemi gets her chance. As the only soldier to have ever left the planet, it will be up to her to save its people…if only she wasn’t flying straight into a trap.

A fugitive from his fate — On the run to avoid his depraved creator’s clutches, Abel believes he’s said good-bye to Noemi for the last time. After all, the entire universe stands between them…or so he thinks. When word reaches him of Noemi’s capture by the very person he’s trying to escape, Abel knows he must go to her, no matter the cost.

But capturing Noemi was only part of Burton Mansfield’s master plan. In a race against time, Abel and Noemi will come together once more to discover a secret that could save the known worlds, or destroy them all.

 

Why it should be on your radar: It’s the sequel to the popular book Defy The Stars, which was released last year. Claudia Gray is a YA staple author in fantasy and science fiction.

 

Devils Unto Dust by Emma Berquist (4/10)

Ten years ago, a horrifying disease began spreading across the West Texas desert. Infected people—shakes—attacked the living and created havoc and destruction. No one has ever survived the infection. Daisy Wilcox, known as Willie, has been protecting her siblings within the relatively safe walls of Glory, Texas. When Willie’s good-for-nothing father steals a fortune from one of the most dangerous shake-hunters in town, she finds herself on the hook for his debt. With two hunters, including the gruff and handsome Ben, to accompany her, she sets out across the desert in search of her father. But the desert is not kind to travelers, and not everyone will pass through alive.

Western meets horror for this riveting story about survival, family, and inner strength. Tense, short chapters propel readers from one action-packed scene to the next, while Willie’s distinctive, introspective voice deepens the emotional stakes with every turn of the page.

 

Why it should be on your radar: This is a debut novel with a ton of buzz surrounding it. It’s a western-meets-horror, and the film rights were already snapped up.

 

*Dread Nation by Justina Ireland (4/3)

Jane McKeene was born two days before the dead began to walk the battlefields of Gettysburg and Chancellorsville—derailing the War Between the States and changing America forever. In this new nation, safety for all depends on the work of a few, and laws like the Native and Negro Reeducation Act require certain children attend combat schools to learn to put down the dead. But there are also opportunities—and Jane is studying to become an Attendant, trained in both weaponry and etiquette to protect the well-to-do. It’s a chance for a better life for Negro girls like Jane. After all, not even being the daughter of a wealthy white Southern woman could save her from society’s expectations.

But that’s not a life Jane wants. Almost finished with her education at Miss Preston’s School of Combat in Baltimore, Jane is set on returning to her Kentucky home and doesn’t pay much mind to the politics of the eastern cities, with their talk of returning America to the glory of its days before the dead rose. But when families around Baltimore County begin to go missing, Jane is caught in the middle of a conspiracy, one that finds her in a desperate fight for her life against some powerful enemies. And the restless dead, it would seem, are the least of her problems.

 

Why it should be on your radar: Significant buzz has been building around this title, and with trailers for the book having been shown in theaters prior to Black Panther, readers know it’s coming.

 

*Given To The Earth by Mindy McGinnis (4/10)

Although she was born to save the kingdom by sacrificing herself to the rising sea, Khosa’s marriage to King Vincent has redeemed her. As the Queen of Stille, she’s untouchable. But being Queen hasn’t stopped her heart from longing for the King’s stepbrother, Donil. And it hasn’t stopped her body from longing for the sea itself, which still calls for her.

While Khosa is made to choose between loyalty and love, Dara is on a mission for vengeance. Years ago, the Pietra slaughtered the entire Indiri race, leaving only Dara and her twin, Donil, alive. Now, spurned by King Vincent, Dara has embarked on a mission to spill the blood of Pietra’s leader, Witt, and will stop at nothing to show his people the wrath of the last Indiri.

As the waves crash ever closer to Stille, secrets are revealed, hearts are won and lost, and allegiances change like the shifting sand.

 

Why it should be on your radar: This is the second book in a duology which has been described as perfect for fans of Sarah J. Maas.

 

*Inferno by Julie Kagawa (4/24)

INFERNO

What if dragons walked among us in human form? Enter a modern fantasy of heroes, sacrifice, forbidden love and enemies turned allies who have no choice but to fight side by side… Don’t miss the epic conclusion as Ember, Riley and Garrett face off against Dante and the Talon dragon clones. Join them…or burn.

 

Why it should be on your radar: This is the fifth and final installment in Julia Kagawa’s popular “Talon” series. Readers who love epic fantasy are reading this series already and will be itching for its conclusion.

 

 

 

Leah On The Offbeat by Becky Albertalli (4/24)

Leah Burke—girl-band drummer, master of deadpan, and Simon Spier’s best friend from the award-winning Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda—takes center stage in this novel of first love and senior-year angst.

When it comes to drumming, Leah Burke is usually on beat—but real life isn’t always so rhythmic. An anomaly in her friend group, she’s the only child of a young, single mom, and her life is decidedly less privileged. She loves to draw but is too self-conscious to show it. And even though her mom knows she’s bisexual, she hasn’t mustered the courage to tell her friends—not even her openly gay BFF, Simon.

So Leah really doesn’t know what to do when her rock-solid friend group starts to fracture in unexpected ways. With prom and college on the horizon, tensions are running high. It’s hard for Leah to strike the right note while the people she loves are fighting—especially when she realizes she might love one of them more than she ever intended.

 

Why it should be on your radar: Fans of Simon — in the book, in the film, or both — are already itching for this companion novel about one of his best friends.

 

Picture Us In The Light by Kelly Loy Gilbert (4/10)

Danny Cheng has always known his parents have secrets. But when he discovers a taped-up box in his father’s closet filled with old letters and a file on a powerful Silicon Valley family, he realizes there’s much more to his family’s past than he ever imagined.

Danny has been an artist for as long as he can remember and it seems his path is set, with a scholarship to RISD and his family’s blessing to pursue the career he’s always dreamed of. Still, contemplating a future without his best friend, Harry Wong, by his side makes Danny feel a panic he can barely put into words. Harry and Danny’s lives are deeply intertwined and as they approach the one-year anniversary of a tragedy that shook their friend group to its core, Danny can’t stop asking himself if Harry is truly in love with his girlfriend, Regina Chan.

When Danny digs deeper into his parents’ past, he uncovers a secret that disturbs the foundations of his family history and the carefully constructed facade his parents have maintained begins to crumble. With everything he loves in danger of being stripped away, Danny must face the ghosts of the past in order to build a future that belongs to him

 

Why it should be on your radar: Gilbert’s first book was a Morris Award finalist, and her sophomore title has been garnering a ton of buzz and positive reviews.

 

Stay Sweet by Siobhan Vivian (4/24)

Summer in Sand Lake isn’t complete without a trip to Meade Creamery—the local ice cream stand founded in 1944 by Molly Meade who started making ice cream to cheer up her lovesick girlfriends while all the boys were away at war. Since then, the stand has been owned and managed exclusively by local girls, who inevitably become the best of friends. Seventeen-year-old Amelia and her best friend Cate have worked at the stand every summer for the past three years, and Amelia is “Head Girl” at the stand this summer. When Molly passes away before Amelia even has her first day in charge, Amelia isn’t sure that the stand can go on. That is, until Molly’s grandnephew Grady arrives and asks Amelia to stay on to help continue the business…but Grady’s got some changes in mind…

 

Why it should be on your radar: A fun, feminist romance from New York Times Bestselling author Siobhan Vivian will appeal to fans of Sarah Dessen, Jenny Han, and Morgan Matson.

 

*Stormcaster by Cinda Williams Chima (4/3)

The empress in the east—the unspeakably cruel ruler whose power grew in Flamecaster and Shadowcaster—tightens her grip in this chilling third installment in the series.

Vagabond seafarer Evan Strangward can move the ocean and the wind, but his magical abilities seem paltry in comparison to Empress Celestine’s. As Celestine’s bloodsworn armies grow, Evan travels to the Fells to warn the queendom of her imminent invasion. If he can’t convince the Gray Wolf queen to take a stand, he knows that the Seven Realms will fall. Among the dead will be the one person Evan can’t stand to lose.

Meanwhile, the queen’s formidable daughter, Princess Alyssa ana’Raisa, is already a prisoner aboard the empress’s ship. Lyss may be the last remaining hope of bringing down the empress from within her own tightly controlled territory.

Multiple intricately interwoven storylines converge in this gripping novel about a brave, coordinated effort to undermine a horrific tyrant.

 

Why it should be on your radar: The theme of this month’s “On The Radar” continues — it’s another book in a fantasy series by a New York Times bestselling and incredibly well-established SFF YA writer.

 

The Summer of Jordi Perez (And The Best Burger In Los Angeles) by Amy Spalding (4/3)

Seventeen, fashion-obsessed, and gay, Abby Ives has always been content playing the sidekick in other people’s lives. While her friends and sister have plunged headfirst into the world of dating and romances, Abby has stayed focused on her plus-size style blog and her dreams of taking the fashion industry by storm. When she lands a prized internship at her favorite local boutique, she’s thrilled to take her first step into her dream career. She doesn’t expect to fall for her fellow intern, Jordi Perez. Abby knows it’s a big no-no to fall for a colleague. She also knows that Jordi documents her whole life in photographs, while Abby would prefer to stay behind the scenes.

Then again, nothing is going as expected this summer. She’s competing against the girl she’s kissing to win a paid job at the boutique. She’s somehow managed to befriend Jax, a lacrosse-playing bro type who needs help in a project that involves eating burgers across L.A.’s eastside. Suddenly, she doesn’t feel like a sidekick. Is it possible Abby’s finally in her own story?

But when Jordi’s photography puts Abby in the spotlight, it feels like a betrayal, rather than a starring role. Can Abby find a way to reconcile her positive yet private sense of self with the image that other people have of her?

 

Why it should be on your radar: It’s a queer girl rom com, which will always be needed on shelves for young readers.

 

 

*Trouble Never Sleeps by Stephanie Tromly (4/24)

No one makes getting into trouble look as good as Philip Digby—and he looks good doing it. Now that he’s back in town, he’s plunged Zoe (and their Scooby Gang of wealthy frenemy Sloane, nerd-tastic genius Felix, and aw-shucks-handsome Henry) back into the deep end on the hunt for his kidnapped sister. He’s got a lead, but it involves doing a deal with the scion of an alarmingly powerful family, not to mention committing some light treason. Zoe and Digby are officially together now, and she’s definitely up for whatever closure this new caper might offer, even though this mystery will come with a twist neither expected.

With acerbic banter, steamy chemistry, and no small amount of sarcasm, Zoe and Digby are the will-they-or-won’t-they, charismatic crime solving couple you’ve been waiting for.

 

Why it should be on your radar: This is the third installment in the humor-soaked YA mystery series “Trouble Is A Friend of Mine.” Bonus for a lead character of color by an author of color.

The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert

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Fantasy is my original genre love, but I haven’t been reading nearly as much of it as I used to. Not much has been clever enough to grab me. Thankfully, Melissa Albert is here to renew my interest with her creative and beautifully written take on a modern fairy tale.

Decades ago, Alice’s grandmother wrote a book called Tales From the Hinterland, a collection of short, dark original fairy tales that became a cult classic. It’s out of print and copies are hard to find – so hard to find that copies tend to go mysteriously missing or stolen, even once they’ve been acquired. Alice wants nothing to do with the book or its fans, until her mother is kidnapped by a group referring to themselves as the Hinterland. In order to find her mother, Alice must team up with a teenage boy who’s familiar with the stories. Together, they go looking for the Hinterland.

This book starts out completely realistically, as if it could be a contemporary story of a kidnapping and the intrepid teens who set out to solve it themselves. But there are early hints that the magic might be real – three ordinary objects left behind on a table that nonetheless indicate they are much more; a sighting of a woman on the street who looks normal but also strangely out of place in a way that’s difficult to explain; a readheaded man from a decade ago who hasn’t seemed to age. Figuring out how these elements all fit together makes for an enthralling, page-turning read.

The details are what make this story stand out. Albert sprinkles small excerpts and characters’ retellings of Tales From the Hinterland throughout her book, making the Tales seem real – like we as readers could hunt down a copy for ourselves, if were so (un)lucky. The tales themselves are lovely dark stories, inspired by Grimm and Perrault but still entirely Albert’s own thing. And every detail that Albert places in her story, aside from and complementary to the Tales, is important, too. They are clues to the larger mystery, the one beyond what happened to Alice’s mother: what the Tales really are and how much Alice’s story is intertwined with them.

This is a treat for any teen who loves contemporary fantasy, dark fantasy, retold fairy tales, and surprising endings. It’s skillfully plotted, beautifully written, and shows its influences clearly but still manages to be original and fresh. Highly recommended.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

CLICK, CLICK, SEE: Revisioning the Verse Novel as a Genre, a Guest Post from Author Cordelia Jensen

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I’m really excited to share this fascinating and insightful piece from YA (and middle grade!) author Cordelia Jensen. Jensen’s debut novel, Skyscraping is one I adored, and when I heard she had another verse novel coming, I couldn’t wait to read it.

Earlier this month, you might remember poet Amanda Lovelace sharing some of her favorite YA novels in verse. This essay digs into how those verse novels are structured, and offers up a wealth of additional verse novels for your reading needs. It will also pique your interest about The Way The Light Bends, out tomorrow, March 27.

But without further ado, Cordelia!

 

 

There is a wide debate about what makes a verse novel a verse novel. Generally, verse novels incorporate some conventions of poetry while telling a story. The most common poetic conventions used are: an increased use of white space and line breaks, an emphasis on imagery and on a playfulness with words, for instance by using repetition, alliteration or rhyme. However, something freeing about the verse novel is that each author essentially gets to decide how much poetic convention they might incorporate into their book. For example, some verse novelists tell a story in individual poems like in Melanie Crowder’s Audacity, whereas others use more of a stream-of-consciousness format such as Martine Leavitt’s My Book of Life By Angel, which is broken up only with lines from Milton’s Paradise Lost. How do these poetic choices then come to inform their story construction? What do verse novels have to do to make a story work? What do they get to bypass? How do the poetry conventions actually work to reveal story and lend themselves to creating a stronger novel?

For Skyscraping’s debut I wrote a post on imagery construction for E. Kristin Anderson’s blog Write All the Words! The post outlines the way Thanhaa Lai uses the image of the papaya to reflect the emotional growth of Hà in Inside Out & Back Again. I did my graduate work at Vermont College of Fine Arts on how authors can use imagery to reflect the psychosocial developmental stage and changing identity of the main character. Verse novels, because of their hybrid nature, have the ability to do this more than poetry or story. Skyscraping uses celestial imagery throughout the book because Mira, the main character, is studying astronomy and this pursuit helps her reflect upon the changing constellation of her family. In The Way the Light Bends, Linc is a photographer and, therefore, photography is used as the lens through which she sees the world and ultimately fuels her emotional growth. When writing verse novels, it is important to ground your image system in the reality of the main character. For example, in Home of the Brave, Kek’s emotional state is reflected in the weather since there is such a stark contrast between the weather where he lived in the Sudan versus the weather in Minnesota. The imagery makes sense because it describes what is on that character’s mind. This is often not true in poetry itself—a poet may skip from image connection to image connection because poetry does not need to be grounded in context or character. In fact, it is often purposefully not. However, in verse novels, imagery construction is as much reliant on poetic convention as it is on story convention.

As a verse novelist, having the ability to play with white space freely is great fun. In The Way the Light Bends, the main character is a gifted artist and this allowed me to play more with white space—to see myself as a sculptor—more so than I ever had before. Sometimes the play was just about the word itself, such as the word “up” being up a line from the word that precedes it. But, often, the interplay with white space doubled in meaning because of the story. So, for example, in the beginning of the book Linc sees herself as alone and as the rest of the world partnered around her, therefore she describes herself this way:

 

 

Here, the white space is used in a poetic way but it is a testament again to character and context that gives the lines their emotional depth. If this poem was read without the rest of the story you may not understand why Linc is feeling isolated. Read in context, you not only understand this but there is also a story promise set up that Linc will find a sense of belonging.

There are a few aspects of verse novels that make storytelling different than writing a conventional novel. The first is less emphasis on, and more creative freedom with regards to, dialogue. For example, in Skyscraping, I used recorded conversations between the main character and her father to give readers more access to the father’s voice. But no matter what, there will be less dialogue in a verse novel than a conventional novel because of the poetic form. This often presents a challenge to the author: How do you create fully fleshed out secondary characters with minimal dialogue? Even more challenging, how do you do this without having the lengthy narrative description you might in a novel? There are a number of ways verse novelists deal with this. The first might be to use multiple points of view that are stylistically different. This is something I explored in Every Shiny Thing, the co-authored Middle Grade book I have coming out in April. In this story, my character’s point of view is in verse, whereas my co-author, Laurie Morrison’s, character is in prose. Often, she was able to round out characters in her sections—through dialogue and description—that I, writing in verse, could not. There are other verse novels that span the thoughts of many characters, such as The Last Fifth Grade at Emerson Elementary by Laura Shovan, which incorporates eighteen points of view. But what about in a singular point-of-view verse novel? Can you show a secondary character’s emotional growth without including their point of view?

The answer is yes, but it is harder. One way to do this is to go back to a poetry device—imagery. In Caminar by Skila Brown, Carlos describes animal spirits as a way for us to see people in his life. And this comparison allows for the reader to see people as “proud” roosters or “smooth and fast” jaguars, giving us a deeper vision of that character. Another way to give more information about a secondary character can be if this character takes up a lot of room in the main character’s head. If so, the character will often speak to the point of view of this character in their minds, and, if there is a great sense of longing, come back in flashbacks, as in Jacqueline Woodson’s Locomotion.

Another storytelling difference in verse novels is the fact that you don’t need to transition the reader from scene to scene as much as you might in a novel. So, for example, you might begin a poem “the next day…” without having to write a whole paragraph about what happened between one day and the next. While this can sometimes feel jarring to the reader, linking imagery from one poem to the next, or keeping the tone of the poems similar, may help build connective tissue throughout and establish a more fluid and continuous narrative. Of course, it’s all a matter of personal preference, and some readers say the white space itself makes a verse novel more readable because it offers time to breathe, time to transition.  

When I am writing verse novels, I often think of poems not as scenes but as moments or snapshots. In fact, one “scene” might be comprised of 3-4 overlapping poems or, just as often, one “scene” might be just one poem. Regardless, each of these “scenes” needs to bring your reader somewhere new. And, in addition, each scene must use white space, and incorporate some poetic language while developing character and story. That is quite a lot to do.

There are some poets and some novelists who look down on the verse novel form as something that doesn’t match the standards of their genre. I believe verse novels are their own genre and ought to be seen as both defying and incorporating the “rules” of poetry and the “rules” of storytelling. In an article for the ALAN review entitled “Verse Novels and the Question of Genre,” author Michael Cadden shows the verse novel in the center with its genre influences around it: novel, poetry and drama. He argues the drama genre is also an influence over the genre in as much as the verse itself can be seen as a sort of inner-monologue. Cadden argues that the modern verse novel is a great starting point to teach all three of these traditional genres plus teaching students about the creative strengths of the verse novel itself. Cadden says: “What the verse novel lacks in description and extended narration, it makes up for in its insistence that the reader provide those things on his or her own, both demanding and enabling the reader to imagine appropriate and personally satisfying images that match the context of the soliloquy and/or dialogue-driven narrative. By using the verse novel as touchstone text to learn more about three distinct genres, we would be learning how the verse novel itself is its own thing rather than a failed version of something else.”  

Maybe more useful than thinking about what a verse novel isn’t, we might think about what it is: a highly-readable, emotional journey of a character(s) undergoing life-changing events as shown in a series of image-driven moments.

As photographer, Linc in The Way the Light Bends would say, we might envision the experience of reading or writing a verse novel this way: “Click/Click/See.”

 

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Cordelia Jensen holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and teaches creative writing in Philadelphia, where she lives with her husband and children. She is also the author of Skyscraping. Follow her on Twitter @cordeliajensen.

 

About The Way The Light Bends

 

A powerful novel in verse about fitting in, standing out, defining your own self-worth, and what it takes to keep a fracturing family whole.

Virtual twins Linc and Holly were once extremely close. But while artistic, creative Linc is her parents’ daughter biologically, it’s smart, popular Holly, adopted from Ghana as a baby, who exemplifies the family’s high-achieving model of academic success.

Linc is desperate to pursue photography, to find a place of belonging, and for her family to accept her for who she is, despite her surgeon mother’s constant disapproval and her growing distance from Holly. So when she comes up with a plan to use her photography interests and skills to do better in school–via a project based on Seneca Village, a long-gone village in the space that now holds Central Park, where all inhabitants, regardless of race, lived together harmoniously–Linc is excited and determined to prove that her differences are assets, that she has what it takes to make her mother proud. But when a long-buried family secret comes to light, Linc must decide whether her mother’s love is worth obtaining.

A novel in verse that challenges the way we think about family and belonging.

This Week at Book Riot

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Since I forgot to round up last week’s links, this week’s is jam-packed. Dig in!

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • This week brings a new episode of Hey YA! Eric Smith and I talk about the CCBC’s diversity numbers from 2017, books about teen changemakers, YA readers for Women’s History Month and more. Tune in!

 

 

A couple more links from other spheres of the internet:

 

 

What I’m Reading Now

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Land of Permanent Goodbyes by Atia Abawi

Oof. This is a hard book to read. It’s a refugee story and follows teenage Tareq from his home in Syria eventually to Europe. It’s heartbreaking on every single page, even though Tareq himself isn’t real. His story is similar enough to so what so many real teens are going through right now. Abawi, who is a foreign correspondent, grew up and was educated in America but now lives in Jerusalem; before that, she was in Afghanistan. She herself is the child of refugees. So Abawi does have more credibility than most others would in the way she portrays Tareq’s story, which includes much of his family’s death in the bombing that also destroys his home, his journey through parts of Syria controlled variously by Assad’s forces or ISIS, and his travels to Turkey, which is where I’m currently at in the book.

Abawi handles her topic well, and she writes her characters with empathy and nuance – even one young Isis recruit. She excels at creating tense scenes, particularly on Tareq’s drive through Syria where he must pass through ISIS-controlled checkpoints. Her narrative style isn’t completely working for me, though. She’s telling the story from the point of view of Destiny, which acts as an intrusive narrator at times, but at other times seems to fade away so that the story seems much more traditionally told. When Destiny suddenly re-emerges, it’s jarring. Sometimes, too, Destiny falls back on platitudes that aren’t as deep as they’re meant to be. I can’t help but draw parallels between Destiny here and Death in The Book Thief. Unfortunately, Destiny comes up short in the contest.

The Cruel Prince by Holly Black

I love fantasy, but fairies were never a huge draw for me, even as a teenager. But I read The Darkest Part of the Forest a couple of years ago for Cybils and thought it was pretty great. Holly Black knows her way around the English language, and she’s a fantastic world-builder. So far I’m enjoying her newest, which has received tons of accolades, but I’m not loving it. The writing is good, the characters are engaging, the narrative voice is distinctive, and Black’s fairy world is both beautiful and repulsive, making it fascinating to get lost in. I think the plot, which involves a human girl named Jude who has been raised among the fairies due to the fact that her half-sister is half-fairy, is just a bit too slow-moving for my tastes. I’m about halfway through and I feel like I’ve just gotten to the good stuff: she’s taken a job as a spy and has started to get herself entangled – only partly willingly – in a political struggle between several different power players in the fairy court.

Caitlin Kelly narrates the audiobook, which is how I’m reading this one, and she does a great job, particularly at getting across the danger, and Jude’s fear, of her situation, both in her spy endeavors and simply by existing as a human among fairies, who view humans as playthings and not worth the short life given to them. I suppose given all of the acclaim, I wanted to be blown away, so while I’m enjoying the read, it’s a bit disappointing not to be in love with it all.

White Rabbit by Caleb Roehrig

I’ve been on such a mystery kick lately (for over a year now!). I just can’t get enough of them. I heard lots of good things about Roehrig’s first book, Last Seen Leaving, and I had an arc of his second one just sitting there, practically begging me to read it. Who am I to resist? I’m about 100 pages in and it’s solid so far. It focuses on a teenage boy, Rufus, who is still smarting from being dumped by his hot and closeted boyfriend Sebastian a few months ago. When Rufus’ unpredictable half-sister April calls him and asks him to come over to help with something serious, Sebastian is trying to talk Rufus; he tags along to April’s instead. And when the two boys walk into April’s house…it’s a crime scene. Literally. April is kneeling over the body of her dead boyfriend holding a knife, covered in blood. She insists she didn’t do it, but was passed out and doesn’t know who did. Do we believe April? If we do, who is the guilty party – one of April’s many obnoxious, bigoted, probably violent friends? April’s drug-dealing older brother (Rufus’ half-brother)? Someone else?

It’s a solid setup, dropping a healthy dose of coming-of-age angst into an intriguing murder mystery. Most of the characters so far are terrible people, but in interesting ways. I’m about a third of the way in and I don’t have any idea who the culprit could be at this point. I’m eager to find out!