YA

Book Review | Divine Rivals | Rebecca Ross

Book Review | Divine Rivals | Rebecca Ross

What could a war with the gods, a magical typewriter, and a rival journalist have in common? Well, Iris… When her brother, Forest, is compelled to fight in the war the god, Dacre, started, Iris is left to fend for herself and her mother. She even dropped out of school, going to work in the city’s newspaper. But when there’s only one slot for a full-time columnist available, Iris is pitted against a rival employee, Roman. Iris copes with her brother's leaving by writing letters to him and slipping them under her closet door. Every time she opens the door they’re always missing and she doesn’t question the small wink of magic, hoping they could be getting to her brother, until someone responds. This isn’t Forest. Iris’s world begins to fall apart, taking her to the front in search of her brother. But the magic continues and Iris soon learns what the war really means and who might be her mysterious correspondent.

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Book Review | Message Not Found | Dante Medema

Book Review | Message Not Found | Dante Medema

They say parents shouldn’t have to say goodbye to their kids, but best friends shouldn’t have to say goodbye either. Bailey can’t stop blaming herself. It was her house that her best friend left in the middle of a snowstorm. She was the one who didn’t ask Vanessa about the text message that made her frown. Now Vanessa is dead and Bailey wants to know why she was driving through the mountain pass instead of heading for home. Stealing her mother’s chatbot, Bailey compiles every piece of information she has about Vanessa, asking the bot questions in hopes that it can explain everything to her. But sometimes the truth is worse than your imagination.

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Book Review | Loveboat, Taipei | Abigail Hing Wen

Book Review | Loveboat, Taipei | Abigail Hing Wen

When Ever is sent to a summer program in Taipei, she thinks that her world is over. There’s no auditioning for her dance scholarship, and her parents won’t even let her take her dancing gear with her. All they want her to do is focus on going to medical school in the fall. Yet this prestigious summer program is not what anyone expected. As soon as she arrives, Ever is informed of the rules – sneak out to the clubs at night, show up half drunk to your classes the next day, and try to meet your future spouse. Ever loves the break from her parents’ control, but rebelling against her parents’ wishes might just be the exact opposite of what she needs. As her life slowly spirals out of control, Ever is forced to come to grips with what she really wants.

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Book Review | The Darkest Part of the Forest | Holly Black

Book Review | The Darkest Part of the Forest | Holly Black

Children can have a cruel, absolute sense of justice. Children can kill a monster and feel quite proud of themselves. A girl can look at her brother and believe they’re destined to be a knight and a bard who battle evil. She can believe she’s found the thing she’s been made for.
Hazel lives with her brother, Ben, in the strange town of Fairfold where humans and fae exist side by side. The faeries’ seemingly harmless magic attracts tourists, but Hazel knows how dangerous they can be, and she knows how to stop them. Or she did, once.
At the center of it all, there is a glass coffin in the woods. It rests right on the ground and in it sleeps a boy with horns on his head and ears as pointed as knives. Hazel and Ben were both in love with him as children. The boy has slept there for generations, never waking.
Until one day, he does…
As the world turns upside down, Hazel tries to remember her years pretending to be a knight. But swept up in new love, shifting loyalties, and the fresh sting of betrayal, will it be enough?

Goodreads

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Book Review | The City Beautiful | Aden Polydoros

Book Review | The City Beautiful | Aden Polydoros

The City Beautiful is about a Jewish immigrant named Alter living in Chicago during the World’s Fair. All he’s trying to do is keep his head down and earn enough money to bring the rest of his family to America. What he’s not prepared for is being possessed by his friend’s dybbuk after his friend is found dead in the fair. Led to believe that the death was no mere accident, Alter reconnects with someone from his past while searching to find who might have killed his friend.

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Book Review | A Court of Thorns and Roses | Sarah J. Maas

Book Review | A Court of Thorns and Roses | Sarah J. Maas

Feyre’s one job is to keep her family alive during the harsh winter, but when she kills a wolf to get the prey that they’re both after, she finds out that she killed no ordinary wolf but a Faery. Her punishment… either forfeit her life or spend the rest of it in the faery realm. What she doesn’t expect to find there though, is a caring faery who plans to let her live out her life in peace. A faery that has provided for her family while she’s gone. And a faery trying to keep the faery realm together. Now Feyre, a mere human, might be the last chance at saving what’s about to be destroyed.

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Book Review | Graves for Drifters and Thieves | Sophia Minetos

Book Review | Graves for Drifters and Thieves | Sophia Minetos

Jae is a girl on her own. A girl trying to find her father. Taken by ghosts, Jae thinks he’ll be in the Outlands. One problem… the Rangers are the only ones allowed access. Working as a bounty hunter in hopes of gaining the notoriety to become a Ranger herself, Jae stumbles on her biggest bounty when members from the Harney gang sit in her booth at a bar one night. She doubts her luck could be this great. Jae agrees to join them on their next heist in hopes that she can thwart their plan and drag them to the sheriff instead. However, nothing is as the bounty paints it and she learns the deadly gang is on their own hunt. A hunt that could possibly help her reach her father. But getting their help would be to become the very people that she hunts.

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Book Series | Daughter of Smoke and Bone | Laini Taylor

Book Series | Daughter of Smoke and Bone | Laini Taylor

Around the world, black hand prints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky.
In a dark and dusty shop, a devil’s supply of human teeth grows dangerously low.
And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherworldly war.
Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real, she’s prone to disappearing on mysterious "errands", she speaks many languages - not all of them human - and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she’s about to find out.
When beautiful, haunted Akiva fixes fiery eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself? - Goodreads

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Book Review | The Tenth Girl | Sara Faring

Book Review | The Tenth Girl | Sara Faring

Mavi has a second chance in life teaching at a remote boarding school recently reopened 60 years after it was closed. She’s not the only one running from her past, from the government that arrested her mother. The school is also running from the rumors around it’s original closure. About the sickness that swept it’s halls. As the weather turns cold, the house begins to morph and change, practically falling down upon the heads of its occupants, and the new students begin to complain of weird things happening at night. No one would question it if the staff wasn’t given a weird set of rules when they first arrived - no one is to leave their rooms at night. So who is visiting the girls? And who are the others Mavi is warned about? And why are there only nine girls when there’s meant to be ten? Compelled to help the girls and to figure out about her missing student, Mavi breaks the rules which tumbles her into the truth behind the school’s reopening.

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Book Review | The Year of the Witching | Alexis Henderson

Book Review | The Year of the Witching | Alexis Henderson

Living in the shadow of her mother’s past, Immanuelle tries her best to abide by the rules of her society. But as the other girls grow into themselves and are marked as brides, Immanuelle still feels different. Then one day, walking home from town with her goat, the worst happens. She goes into the forbidden Darkwood where she stumbles onto the very thing that haunts it - the witches. And these witches have a gift for her. The diary of her dead mother. A diary that spells out a curse. When the first curse is bestowed upon her home, Immanuelle tries to find a fix that just ends up leading her down to a path of questioning the society she was born into.

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Book Review | Slay | Brittney Morris

Book Review | Slay | Brittney Morris

No one knows what Kiera does with her free time. They don’t know that she’s created an online video game that’s over 500,000 strong. They don’t know that she’s created a safe gaming environment for black people. And they don’t know that she’s scared when one of the gamers winds up dead over a dispute about the game. As the news travels the world, bringing awareness to the very real fact that her game may be discriminating, Kiera struggles to show that she’s just wanting black people to feel like themselves for once. But then an unknown entity threatens to bring down everything that Kiera and the game stand for.

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Book Review | Scavenge the Stars | Tara Sims

Book Review | Scavenge the Stars | Tara Sims

Sold to a debtor’s ship to pay off her family’s debt, Amaya is almost free when she makes the decision to defy her captain and save a man from drowning. That act of rebellion costs her her ticket off the ship. Jumping overboard to escape her debtor’s life, the man she saves offers her the one thing she wants more than freedom - revenge. The pair team up together with plans to take down the same man that has ruined both of their lives. Disguising herself as a Countess in hopes of becoming friends with the man’s son, the son soon discovers his own secrets, ones that he hopes he can use to save his sick sister. That is until Amaya and his world tangle together in a spectacular fashion.

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Book Review | An Enchantment of Ravens | Margaret Rogerson

Book Review | An Enchantment of Ravens | Margaret Rogerson

Painting may seem like the best career for an extremely talented artist like Isobel, but not when your clients are the dangerous faerie who will try anything to trick you. Still, they need humans to do craft. Isobel takes great care with each of her clients, making sure to use their payment to protect her family. That is, until she angers one of her most important clients, Rook, by painting him as she sees him. Rook will not have it. Kidnapping her in the middle of the night to stand trial for her crimes, they end up far from their intended destination, realizing that the very thing Isobel painted, is the truth that lies beneath Rook’s glamored skin.

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Book Review | Fable | Adrienne Young

Book Review | Fable | Adrienne Young

Four years…. It’s been four years of Fable scraping together whatever she could with her own two hands, trying to survive since she was dumped on the shores of Jeval with nothing but a wicked scare down her arm and a plan to find the man that put it there, her dad. All she needs to do is survive a little longer while she dives for gems that can bring her the coin she needs to buy passage off the island. It looks like she might do just that until the men on the island stop ignoring her and want what she scrounged together. Being chased off the island, Fable runs to the one ship she knows, a ship that’s always traded with her, begging for passage to finally start the search for what’s owed to her - a place on her father’s ship, the most notorious trader. A man with a reputation that follows him everywhere.

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Book Review | The Tiger at Midnight and The Archer at Dawn | Swati Teerdhala

Book Review | The Tiger at Midnight and The Archer at Dawn | Swati Teerdhala

Esha is a legend, but no one knows. It’s only in the shadows that she moonlights as the Viper, the rebels’ highly skilled assassin. She’s devoted her life to avenging what she lost in the royal coup, and now she’s been tasked with her most important mission to date: taking down the ruthless General Hotha. Kunal has been a soldier since childhood, training morning and night to uphold the power of King Vardaan. His uncle, the general, has ensured that Kunal never strays from the path—even as a part of Kunal longs to join the outside world, which has been growing only more volatile. Then Esha’s and Kunal’s paths cross—and an unimaginable chain of events unfolds. Both the Viper and the soldier think they’re calling the shots, but they’re not the only players moving the pieces. As the bonds that hold their land in order break down and the sins of the past meet the promise of a new future, both rebel and soldier must make unforgivable choices. - Goodreads

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Book Review | I Killed Zoe Spanos | Kit Frick

Book Review | I Killed Zoe Spanos | Kit Frick

Anna thought her new job in the Hamptons was a chance at a fresh start. She could get away from it all before starting college in the fall, but her nanny job soon comes with its own haunting details. Like the fact that she resembles a local girl, Zoe, that went missing New Year’s Eve. Details about Zoe surface in Anna’s mind. Details that a stranger shouldn’t know, making those around Anna worried that she might have played a part in Zoe’s disappearance. Especially, when Anna starts to believe that she came out to the Hamptons that same New Year’s Eve.

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Book Review | Bent Heavens | Daniel Kraus

Book Review | Bent Heavens | Daniel Kraus

It’s been two years since Liv’s dad disappeared. He didn’t just walk out of the door, leaving her and her mom to try and survive. He disappeared after being abducted by aliens. At least, that's what he said during the year he was back. A year he spent building the crazy traps that Liv and her friend Doug still check every Sunday. Liv just wants to survive her last year of high school in a town where everyone knows the story. Where she walks a thin line as a normal girl. A thin line that’s cut when she finds an alien in the traps that her dad built. Her dad was right all along. But what does one do with the alien? How does one use it to help her find her lost father? How does she finally prove that her dad was right this whole time?

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Book Review | The Vanishing Deep | Astrid Scholte

Book Review | The Vanishing Deep | Astrid Scholte

Tempe’s world consists of nothing but water. Water that took her entire family from her. As humanity tries to survive on floating islands, diving for treasures from the old world, Tempe turns to one of the last pieces of land - Palindromena. This is where technology exists to bring back your loved one for 24 hours. Using her life savings, Tempe goes for answers, wanting to know why her sister is said to have a hand in their parents’ deaths. Sometimes answers aren’t easy and when Tempe’s sister realizes that she’s been brought back, she doesn’t want to stay locked inside four walls. She wants out. She wants to search for their parents.

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Book Review | Daughter of Smoke and Bone | Laini Taylor

Book Review | Daughter of Smoke and Bone | Laini Taylor

Karou is an art student with a talent for magical stories and a head full of blue hair. Students gather around for her wild creations, but sometimes a little shadow appears, whisking her away to a shop full of teeth run by the devil, her boss, and one of the very creatures featured  in her stories. But the doors that Karou uses to travel the world begin to be marked by a single hand print. Handprints placed by mystical creatures with fiery eyes. When Karou stumbles across one of these creatures, it unlocks a past of secrets, love, and a world of untold torment.

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