THE MYSTERY OF HOLLOW PLACES BY REBECCA PODOS {review}

Hardcover, 304 pages

Published January 26th 2016 by Balzer & Bray
Rating: ★★★★

The Mystery of Hollow Places is a deft little emotional mystery, featuring a likable teenage protagonist unraveling the mysterious disappearance of both her parents, one in her past and one in her present. It's about love, loss, mental illness, and the slippery illusion of self.

[W]ith enough time and the right conditions, precious stones could grow in hollow places.

Imogene Scott is seventeen and doesn't remember her mother, who left when Imogene was very young. All she really has of her is the fairytale-esque story her father told her every night as a child about how they met and fell in love. The centerpiece of this story is a stone heart, purportedly from the chest of Imogene's maternal grandmother, a representation of the illness that closed her off to the world. Imogene and her father are very close, and even the relatively recent addition of Lindy, their former therapist and her father's new wife.

The book starts with Imogene's father disappearing, leaving no note or explanation to his whereabouts except half of her grandmother's stone heart. Both Lindy and Imogene are distraught, but it is Imogene who decides to start with the clue the stone heart provides: she is sure that her father is looking for her mother. With her beautiful best friend Jessa in tow, Imogene starts piecing together parts of her mother's past from vague clues.

Imogene is a likable character. She's an introverted bookworm, content to spend time with her father or alone reading, particularly if the books were written by her father. Her mother's disappearance has left her with insecurity and fear related to abandonment. Imogene thinks her best friend spends time with her perhaps out of misguided childhood loyalty rather than simply because Jessa loves her. Imogene is mature and clever, but self-aware enough to recognize that she is still a child, especially when she allows herself to daydream that she will locate her mother and her father together and they will all be a family again, happy in their new roles.

I could forgive my mother for being cursed, and lonely and troubled waters. All of that made sense. But I don't think I'll be able to forgive her if she's happy.

Imogene is flawed but earnest, and I liked that. She doesn't serve as a symbol of resistance like the heroines of The Hunger Games or Red Queen, she doesn't have the highly sexed dark, pseudo-wit of teen murder mystery protagonists, she's anxious and self-conscious but smart and driven. She draws heavily on her father's books for inspiration in tracking down her mother, I thought that was a really nice character point as it really showed the closeness of Imogene and her father.

The Mystery of Hollow Places uses such strong metaphors for depression, weaving them in carefully in many places like the stories Imogene's father tells and the ways Imogene relates to everyone. Podos shies away from painting depression as any one thing; the suffering isn't beautiful, it's painful and consuming with each sufferer having to find their own path out.

I get closing up your heart because you're afraid to look inside and find out it's hollow. I get choosing to be alone because you're afraid that if the choice is out of your hands, you'll simply be lonely, and alone is okay, it's almost cool, in a way.

THE LITTLE MEN BY MEGAN ABBOTT {review}

ebook, 63 pages

Published September 1st 2015 by Head of Zeus
Rating: ★★★★

The Little Men is short. Very short. So short that it's probably better considered a short story than a novella. As such, this will probably be a very short review to match. The Mysterious Bookshop has published a series of short fiction from popular mystery authors that they're calling "Bibliomysteries". I'm definitely going to check a few more out, though I'll probably skip Anne Perry's because I may like murder in fiction but I'm not a fan of real-life murderers.

This story takes place in 1953 Hollywood, where failed actress Penny now works as a make-up artist on set. She's just been ditched by a Hollywood bigwig that uses and discards beautiful young women hoping that sleeping with him will grant them their big break on the silver screen. She rents a quaint little bungalow in Canyon Arms and befriends the elderly gay men living next door. They inform her of the bungalow's previous tenants, particularly a bookseller named Larry who committed suicide twelve years before, using the gas stove.

The furniture is still the same as it was when Larry lived and died there twelve years earlier, including all his books, and Mrs. Stahl, the landlord, admonishes Penny when she moves the bed a small distance from the wall. That's when things start to get weird. Penny is awakened every night at 2am by lights and noises. She begins to unravel, and we, the readers, become increasingly unsure of what is real and what is not, as she becomes sure that she is being tortured by little men and is being watched by Mrs. Stahl. The books and their former owner seem to awaken something in Penny, influencing her increasingly bizarre dreams and filtering into her everyday life, increasing her paranoia regarding the landlord.

Megan Abbott is great at creating a setting, her use of language and grimy descriptions of Hollywood transporting you there. It's easy to imagine. She deftly manages Penny's confusion and paranoia, cleverly weaving a possible murder mystery with a ghost story. The Little Men is fast and incredibly absorbing, a fun mesh of genres that you can read in a very short amount of time.

MY SUMMER OF LOVE BY HELEN CROSS {review}

Paperback, 248 pages

Published May 1st 2005 by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Rating: ★★★

You could meet a crazy girl and truly believe her to be your saviour.

My Summer of Love is a bit of a bizarre read, a precursor to decadent novels of bored, awakening teenage girls like Dare Me and bares more than a few passing similarities to the real life crimes of Juliet Hulme (now crime novelist Anne Perry) and Pauline Parker. There's an almost surreal dissonance they exemplify: the obsessive, sexualized friendship between two girls, pushing the boundaries of every relationship, dispersing pseudo witticisms about men and sex in that under-experienced but over-aware teenage way, and the seemingly inevitable slide into violence and criminality.

Mona is a fifteen year old girl living above her father's pub with her stepbrother Porkchop in a small Yorkshire town. She's awkward, immature, ostensibly addicted to alcohol and fruit machine gambling, and vacillates between bold confidence and startling naivete. Though Mona is not particularly likeable, she's easy to fall into as even her internal monologue contains a strong Yorkshire dialect, allowing me to easily hear her voice in my head.

She meets Tamsin Fakenham a posh girl with a dead sister. She's beautiful, condescending, manipulative and controlling. Mona is instantly entranced by her and they become fast, if unsteady, friends. Together, they're explosive. In their absence, Tamsin's parents believe that she has gone to stay with an old aunt while she studies for her exam, but is instead living in a strange fantasy world with Mona where they are awake all night, starve themselves and have sex constantly. But their manic lifestyle is far from idyllic, their friendship unstable and volatile, each trying to gain the upper hand in an unending game of oneupmanship. Mona often comes up short.

Helen Cross's writing works wonderfully in developing atmosphere; you feel a sticky, cloying quality as you read, matching the heatwave that invades the setting. The entire novel takes place over a single month, so this works particularly well to generate the frenzied obsession the girls have with each other and their increasingly daring acts of criminality.

While Mona's chubby, sensitive stepbrother Porkchop is the only remotely likable character in the entire novel, it didn't detract from my enjoyment at all. It may even have enhanced it as the near-mania that overcomes Mona and Tamsin will inevitably end badly and I was at the edge of my seat waiting for it. Ultimately, My Summer of Love is a taut, if sometimes confusing, coming of age story teetering on the knife edge of thriller.

Look what arrived today! A hardcover, autographed copy of The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon. It also came with a beautiful print of the cover art and four buttons!

Review coming soon!

KING'S CAGE BY VICTORIA AVEYARD {review}

Hardcover, 528 pages

Published February 7th 2017 by HarperTeen
Rating: ★★★

The Red Queen series is a pretty standard dichotomous dystopia and King's Cage is more of the same. North America has been divided into various smaller countries, most with two separate peoples: the Silver ruling class, who have silver blood and various superpowers, and the Red slave class, who have no powers, no money and no hope. Mare Barrow is discovered to have red blood and silver powers - the power to control electricity and lightning, and what resulted was a fairly standard YA novel. She was forcibly engaged to the second son of the silver king, Maven, while falling in love with his older brother and heir to the throne, Cal.

The second book improved upon that, spending more time on characterization and relationships, with a twist at the end. Mare trades herself to her tyrant ex-fiance, Maven, for the safety of her friends. Maven snapped a collar around her neck and led her about on a leash in front of Silver and Red crowds.

Mare comes across as a stronger character here. Red Queen was about hiding who she was from everyone; Glass Sword was her coming to terms with being the rebellion's figurehead (their very own Mockingjay) and the deconstruction of self; and in turn, much of King's Cage is Mare piecing herself back together and finding her strength even as she fades into a ghost. After his mother's death in the previous book, the reader is given the opportunity to see who Maven is without his cruel mother whispering in his mind, controlling him. What's left is not pretty. Maven himself is clever, cruel, and thoroughly obsessed with Mare. He's an interesting, if despicable character. I expect he gets romanticized a lot if these books have a prolific fandom.

THE RAVEN AND THE REINDEER BY T. KINGFISHER {review}

Hardcover, 191 pages

Published February 7th 2016 by Red Wombat Tea Co.
Rating: ★★★★★

There are not many stories about this sort of thing. There ought to be more. Perhaps if there were, the Gertas of the world would learn to recognize it.

What a delightful book. Quick and fun, The Raven and the Reindeer is filled with magic and wonder. A retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen, it is clever, modern yet wholly reminiscent of the fairytale I read as a child.

Kay and Gerta are born only days apart, their grandmothers the best of friends. Kay is born with frost in his eyes, blue like a husky's, and it leaves him cold, cold, cold. To Gerta, Kay is her best friend, the one person she loves most in the world. To Kay, she's the neighbour girl and is alright. Then one night Gerta wakes to see an ethereally beautiful woman in a sleigh pulled by giant otters, watches while Kay get into sleigh of the Snow Queen and is driven away.

Thus starts Gerta's adventure, as she loves Kay too much, she cannot leave him to the machinations of the Snow Queen and starts off north. She runs into a witch who enchants her, a talking raven, a clan of bandits, and a whole plethora of fantastical things and people. Among the bandits she endears herself to a beautiful girl with dark skin and a soft heart, who kisses Gerta and puts doubt in her heart about her love for Kay.

I adored the cadence of Kingfisher's writing. It's plain but very, very fairytale, in turns innocent and sweet, at times dark and bloody. Gerta is adorable; she's not the smartest or the prettiest but she's kind, hardworking, and determined, and that's endearing. Janna is a bright spark, brave and bold, changing Gerta's mindset.

The magic in the story is so interesting, mixing Finnish folktales and Sami culture, fitting naturally into the world, as natural as the trees. The idea of the snow queen and changing into animals is more fantasy, but the way it was weaved into the story felt more like magical realism. I liked that Gerta dreams of such interesting things, particularly when she dreams of the feelings of her surroundings.

"Words are like fish and you catch them and you get to keep them forever."

THE SWAN RIDERS BY ERIN BOW {review}

Hardcover, 384 pages

Published September 20th 2016 by Margaret K. McElderry Books
Rating: ★★★

I spent the last 50% of this book raging in disappointment. The Scorpion Rules was excellent; an interesting premise, an engaging and strong main character, and a strong, sophisticated plot that brought you along at a slow but steady pace. None of that is present in The Swan Riders.

At the end of the previous book, to save her own life and that of her fellow condemned Prisoner of Peace Elian, the main character Greta willingly became an artificial intelligence. While the first bit of the book dealt with how she adapted to her new expansive intelligence and inhuman experiences, Greta quickly became a background character in her own story. She went from a quiet but compassionate and firm natural leader to a passive person who was largely reduced to saying character names in an admonishing tone. Taking away an aspect of a character needs to be countered with the elevation of another aspect, if it's not, you just end up with a shadow character. That's what we got in this book: a shadow character. Perhaps it was intentional, perhaps not, but it didn't engage me.

For me, the plot of The Swan Riders was weak for one reason: Talis. I found it very, very hard to care about an AI that had spent the last few centuries committing genocide, mass murder, and ritual child murder as ways to force peace onto a resistant world. I didn't care that he was in pain or his 'journey'. It's like how the Star Wars prequels tried to make Darth Vader a sympathetic character: sorry, but petulant fascism is not interesting to me.

THE SCORPION RULES BY ERIN BOW {review}

Hardcover, 384 pages

Published September 22nd 2015 by Margaret K. McElderry Books
Rating: ★★★★★

Futuristic dystopian young adult novels are a dime a dozen, but The Scorpion Rules brought some new twists to old ideas.

It's at least five hundred years in the future, where the ice caps have melted and the face of the world has changed drastically. The countries we know are no longer, replaced by places like the Pan Polar Confederacy and the Cumberland Alliance. An oddly informal artificial intelligence named Talis keeps a peace, of sorts, by blowing up cities and maintaining a system of ritual hostage taking. The hostages, called the Prisoners of Peace, are the main characters of this story. All leaders of all nations must submit one of their own children to be a hostage in order to lead. When nations declare war on each other, the children are executed by the mysterious Swan Riders, the idea being that leaders are less likely to declare war if their own child's life is on the line.

The main character is named Greta Gustafson Stuart, Duchess of Halifax, princess of the Pan Polar Confederacy (basically, Canada) and has spent most of her life in one of Talis' preceptures, constantly watched over by AIs of all sorts. They look after goats and chickens, grow all their own food and live sparse, utilitarian lives being constantly prepared for ruling after their parents. Greta is strong, poised and quiet, though her mind is always working. Borders change in what used to be the United States and a new hostage, Elián, is brought to the precepture. Unlike the other Prisoners of Peace, Elián fights constantly, unwilling to accept their strict lives as lambs to slaughter and he is punished physically and mentally by the AIs for it.

STARFLIGHT BY MELISSA LANDERS {review}

Hardcover, 369 pages

Published February 2nd 2016 by Disney-Hyperion
Rating: ★★★

Starflight is a quick, fun caper in the vein of a teenage Firefly, complete with characters on the run from the law, rough space pirates, corporate corruption, and of course, teen romance.

Solara is eighteen, an orphan and was recently convicted of minor crimes, leading to tattoos across her knuckles. She's desperate to leave the rigid, hard place she lives for the Outer Rim, terraformed planets far past the end of civilization, frontier worlds where they might need a mechanic and won't care about her past.

Doran is also eighteen. He's everything that Solara isn't: he's rich, he's spoiled, he's a dick, and he's her old classmate she beat for an award. I personally think Doran could have been an even better character if he was actually a girl and the inevitable romance was queer. Now that we've got our two perspective characters, one male, one female, with a heaping dose of snark and dislike between the two we've got our obvious romance plot set and we're off to the races.

I mock because I'm tired of straight white teen romance as it's the most common thing in YA. However, I actually quite liked the romance in Starflight. Doran's journey from spoiled jerkwad to loyal friend and crewmember is enjoyable; Solara and Doran's alternating perspective works well for the plot as you can read both of their feelings change before their relationship does. The romance is one of the best aspects of this story.

The other characters on the ship all have their own secrets and motivations, some of which are revealed in the book, some of which are clearly left for the sequel (it features two other crew members as perspective characters). They work together well and that works for the book. I had a real soft spot for the tiny ship mascot, a tiny sugar bear named Acorn. I'm not totally dead inside. Add in various gangs of space pirates and the government chasing them and you've got a story that never truly gives you time to rest, rocketing from action scene to action scene.

CROOKED KINGDOM BY LEIGH BARDUGO {review}

Hardcover, 546 pages

Published September 20th 2016 by Henry Holt and Company
Rating: ★★★★★

[WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS AFTER READ MORE]

Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom worked together really well as a duology. With the first book more of a heist, fast-paced and relatively straight-forward, Crooked Kingdom is a complicated con, with twists and turns that wrap up all the loose threads from both books.

Kaz Brekker is again the standout character, his brilliant mind and ruthless ambition make him fascinating to read. The conflict between his desire to destroy Pekka Rollins and his complex feelings for Inej provides the most interesting threads, particularly when it comes to Kaz's inability to touch another person's skin without flashbacks and a panic attack.

Pekka Rollins and Jan Van Eck were suitable villains, the extent of their malice expanding from Six of Crows. Van Eck in particular was a great villain, serving to expand the perspective of his son, Wylan, who did not get his own point of view chapters in the previous book. Wylan's relatively innocent disposition works well in contrast to the personalities of the other characters, particularly with Jesper, with whom he starts a sweet romance.

ONCE IN A TOWN CALLED MOTH BY TRILBY KENT {review}

Hardcover, 224 pages

Published September 6th 2016 by Tundra Books
Rating: ★★★★

Once in a Town Called Moth is the kind of book you give a teenager if you want to introduce them to Canadian literature.

The premise is interesting enough: a young teenage girl and her father leave their small Mennonite community in Bolivia and settle in Toronto. Why they left is a major thread of the story.

The main character, Ana, is fourteen and just starting high school. After growing up in a reserved and small community, the city - and high school - is a bizarre world she's never before encountered. Ana is a lovely narrator, expressing how she is caught between worlds and emotions with aplomb.

The narrative switches between the present in Toronto and Ana's recollections of Colony Felicidad in Bolivia, which works in more than one way by revealing more of her past as well as containing pieces to the emotional puzzle Ana hopes to solve about her missing mother.

At just over 200 pages, Once in a Town Called Moth is a very quick read with only a small cast of characters and no romance. It's about Ana's struggle with family and identity, which makes it stand apart from a good number of other YA books. I thoroughly enjoyed it and would definitely recommend it as a relatively quick intro to the Canlit genre.

SIX OF CROWS BY LEIGH BARDUGO {review}

Hardcover, 546 pages

Published September 29th 2015 by Henry Holt and Company
Rating: ★★★★★

There was a lot of hype for this book, which put me off for a while as I often find myself left cold by the most popular YA, but luckily I very much enjoyed Six of Crows.

While it's fairly obvious that the book takes place in a pre-imagined world from another series, it actually made the book more enjoyable to have not read the others. Feeling dropped into another world is one of my favourite immersive techniques for writing and it worked particularly well for Six of Crows.

Each character was interesting in their own right, their motivations and pasts intricate and made the characters come alive. I particularly liked the complex relationship between Nina and Matthias, I felt that was more intricately written than most bland 'opposites attract' romances in YA. I also really enjoyed Inej - there was something about her I found easy to connect to.

One quibble however is that the characters are aged 16 to 18. It felt a bit ridiculous because based on their backstories and the roles they played in the story. I kept thinking they were each about five or so years older - still young, but not children. It made me wonder if the author made them teenagers so that the book would qualify as YA rather than any narrative need for the characters to be that age.

But overall, it was a fun, fast-paced heist book and I greatly enjoyed it.

AND I DARKEN BY KIERSTEN WHITE {review}

Hardcover, 475 pages

Published June 28th 2016 by Delacorte Press
Rating: ★★★★★

Where do I start with this book? I loved it. It was rich, vibrant and beautiful in so many ways.

The story is told in alternating chapters by brother and sister, Radu and Lada. Due to weak rule of their father, Radu and Lada are traded to the Ottoman Empire in exchange the safety of their home country of Wallachia. This worked particularly well as Lada and Radu were both full-bodied characters, their voices crisp and distinct, even as young children.

Radu and Lada accidentally meet the Sultan's third son, a young boy their age, and befriend him. From there the book truly starts. There is so much between the three of them that it's hard to label it a 'love triangle' as the relationships between Radu, Lada and Mehmed change and grow as the novel progresses. It is never boring or tedious because the love shared by the three of them is complex, complicated and sometimes very dark.

Lada is a brilliant protagonist. She's vicious, clever and passionate; her personality is almost too much to be contained. It is made clear to the reader early on that she is not like the 'ordinary' people who wish to live and love - Lada belongs to Wallachia. Her country is her first and only true love. She's fascinating to read. Radu, on the other hand, is sensitive and intelligent. He's a great counterpoint to Lada's calculated brutality and also fascinating to read. His homosexuality, rumoured historically, is explicit in the book. I loved that.

I just absolutely devoured the entire book. The language is rich and beautiful, the characters full and complex, and the story was delicious. It follows history a lot closer than other YA historical fiction but plays around just enough.

THE ABYSS SURROUNDS US BY EMILY SKRUTSKIE {review}

Hardcover, 273 pages

Published February 8th 2016 by Flux
Rating: ★★★★★

So not only have I been captured by pirates - I've had the misfortune of being taken in by theatrical ones

I loved this book. Actually, more than that, I have been WAITING for this book. YA sci-fi/fantasy books are chock full of brave teenage narrators that are engaging and engrossing but almost all of them are achingly, depressingly heterosexual.

Not here. Cassandra Leung, our protagonist, has dated girls in high school and has feelings for a young pirate girl named Swift. That's a major part of the book, not the main plot, but their relationship weaves itself through the narrative.

The Abyss Surrounds Us is a bit like Naomi Novik's His Majesty's Dragon meets Waterworld, except it vastly improves upon both by having the main character be an Asian teenage lesbian rather than the dull, dime-a-dozen straight white man. The plot isn't as complex as Novik's writing, of course, it's relatively simple and straightforward.

I found the conflict between the pirate captain, Santa Elena, and Cassandra to be far more interesting than the portions of the book dedicated to Bao, the titanic creature bred to attack ships. Santa Elena is cruel, ruthless and clever, ensuring the loyalty of the crew and attempting to improve their success rate. I wanted more of her. The lack of emotional connection between Bao and anyone else, including Cassandra, just made it hard to connect or particularly care about his fate. Especially when compared to the machinations of the far more interesting female characters.

Bao sees the hurricane behind Santa Elena, and he respects it. He sees no storm in me. Not yet.

The end definitely left me excited to read the second part; I want to find out what happens between Cassandra, Swift and Santa Elena. Though Santa Elena's presence was felt throughout the novel, always hanging over the burgeoning relationship of Cassandra and Swift, she was not heavily featured and I hope that there is more of her in the future.

SHALLOW GRAVES BY KALI WALLACE {review}

Hardcover, 360 pages

Published January 26th 2016 by Katherine Tegen Books
Rating: ★★★

I have no idea what I expected from Shallow Graves but I was pleasantly surprised.

Breezy Lin was murdered. Then she wakes up. She can't remember exactly what happened, but now she can tell who has killed another person before. Unable to go home, Breezy wanders, eventually finding herself at a scary religious cult that has some nefarious connections. I found it easy to get into Breezy's mindset and follow her story without thinking "but why?" I can't get enough of interesting perspective characters who are neither white nor straight (Breezy is biracial and bisexual).

Kali Wallace has created a really interesting story and a sinister world in Shallow Graves, fantastical in a modern way, mixing standard paranormal monsters into every day life. All sorts of creatures exist in all sorts of places that Breezy had never before noticed.

The story doesn't have the strongest plot, but in some ways, I liked that. Most of the novel is simply following Breezy along on her journey as she discovers terrifying things around her and about herself. Because Breezy is new to this paranormal world of witches and monsters beyond her wildest imagination, learning along with Breezy is interesting in and of itself.