Book #4 of 2020: Loki: Where Mischief Lies by Mackenzi Lee A fun YA take on Marvel’s Norse-inspired Loki figure, informed by but not especially beholden to his characterization in previous stories. I didn’t spot anything in this novel that’s out of line with the established canon of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, even though it …
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Book #3 of 2020: Trust Exercise by Susan Choi This National Book Award winner is a very literary novel, with an experimental perspective shift midway-through reminiscent of similar recent works like Fates and Furies or Fleishman Is in Trouble. All are stories that I appreciate but don’t really love — for although I enjoy the …
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Book #2 of 2020: The Good Luck Girls by Charlotte Nicole Davis (The Good Luck Girls #1) I’d like to see more worldbuilding details and more distinctions between two of the supporting characters, but overall this is a rip-roaring YA fantasy western with a mainly female and POC cast. Five teen girls run away from …
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Book #1 of 2020: The Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson and the Olympians #4) Overall this is another fun Percy Jackson adventure, but there are a few issues that are bugging me about the series at large. Four volumes in, it still feels like author Rick Riordan is retelling ancient Greek …
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Book #250 of 2019: The Sittaford Mystery by Agatha Christie I like this Agatha Christie novel (also published as The Murder at Hazelmoor) for its plucky heroine and atmospheric wintry setting, but it’s perhaps not the best read for someone seeking a rewarding puzzle. Although I generally don’t mind when I can’t figure out the …
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Book #249 of 2019: The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton I think I was younger than its 14-year-old hero myself the last time that I read this novel, but it holds up pretty well from an adult perspective. Ponyboy is the quintessential good kid caught up in a bad situation, and the slim volume is …
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Book #248 of 2019: The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley Another novel that hooks me on its premise but somewhat loses me in the execution. I love the idea of teleporting soldiers coming unstuck along their personal timelines, experiencing their combat missions all out of order. It’s a genre twist on the jumbled chronologies in …
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Book #247 of 2019: Star Wars: Force Collector by Kevin Shinick Theoretically, there could be a decent story told about a Force-sensitive youth retracing the path of the earlier Star Wars movies and setting up the sequel trilogy. But this attempt unfortunately misses the mark for me. The characters are flat and juvenile, the overarching …
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Book #246 of 2019: Hope and Other Punchlines by Julie Buxbaum I don’t read much Young Adult literature that isn’t science-fiction or fantasy, but I found this to be a sweet and poignant little story about a pair of teens each haunted by September 11th. Hope was a one-year-old caught in an iconic photograph being …
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Book #245 of 2019: The Pursuit of William Abbey by Claire North Claire North’s latest supernatural thriller imagines a late-Victorian protagonist doomed to speak the truth in people’s hearts while the ghost of a boy he saw killed moves inexorably towards him. The closer the spirit gets, the less William Abbey can resist his compulsion, …
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