Month: December 2025

Book Review: The Crossover Graphic Novel

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The Crossover Graphic Novel
The Giver series
by Kwame Alexander
illustrated by Dawud Anyabwile

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: Middle grade graphic novel

Josh and Jordan bell are 12-year-old basketball stars and sons of a man who was a player in his own time. Told from Josh’s perspective in a mixture of free-verse poetry and prose, their lives are all about basketball until Jordan gets a girlfriend. Then it seems like things only get worse from there.

I was recommended this book by a friend and had no idea what it was about, other than clearly a heavy focus on basketball. I’m sure I’m the completely wrong audience for it, being in my 40s with not much connection to basketball and not much of a poetry person either. Yet the basketball and poetry combinations appealed to me quite a bit, and when the greater story began to take shape, I was drawn into it. Josh struggles with the changes in his life and can’t really put words to his feelings, and I feel the author handled everything really well.

I have not read the original book that this was adapted from, so I can offer no comparison in that regard. But I believe this story in general and the graphic novel in particular would appeal to a demographic that might not be as interested in reading. And the poetic sections could definitely give some early exposure to an art form that is definitely not as widespread as it used to be. Overall, I recommend this book for preteens, male or female, and they don’t even have to be into basketball.

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Book Review: How to Cheat a Dragon’s Curse

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How to Cheat a Dragon’s Curse
How to Train Your Dragon #4
by Cressida Cowell
read by David Tennant

My rating: 4.5 / 5
Genre: Middle grade fantasy

When Fishlegs is diagnosed with a deadly dragon’s curse, the cure for which can only be found by raiding a particularly crazy band of barbarians, Hiccup defies his father to go on a quest for the cure.

This book brings a refreshing break in the formula, with Hiccup not just failing some kind of training and happening into a situation where he has to save the day. Instead, he deliberately sets out to save the day and even takes a different cohort along—Camicazi, his female counterpart from another tribe, who is a lot of fun in this book too. I wasn’t sure about this series after the first couple of books, but I find I’m quite enjoying it now. The narration is brilliant as always, and I recommend the audiobook for readers young and old alike, and really the book in general.

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Book Review: In the Light of the Sun

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In the Light of the Sun
by Angela Shupe

My rating: 3 / 5
Genre: Historical fiction

Rosa and Caramina Grassi, Italian Filipinas, are both extraordinary singers. Rosa, the older sister, lives in Italy with their grandmother, who was also a famous singer in her time, and attends a music school to develop her gift. Younger sister Caramina is only 14 and still at home in the Philippines, but dreams of one day following her sister to Italy. But as war comes to both Italy and the Philippines, both sisters are forced to re-examine their priorities and fight just to survive.

I don’t think I have a lot to say about this book, good or bad. It was just kind of okay, to me. Both of these angles of WWII are fairly fresh—I especially have never read a book set in the Philippines when the Japanese invade. The horrors they endured there were no less horrible than what was going on in Europe, and the author did a good job of showing some of that without getting too dark or graphic. However, the overall pacing is really slow, which might have been partly to do with the fact that the book covers a few years. But I think the author also focuses on details now and then that just aren’t that important to the story. Though each of these stories could have been interesting on its own, I’m not sure the choice to go back and forth between the basically completely disconnected sisters was the right one. The sisters are fairly similar in personality and actually even experience some very similar situations, so some of it felt really repetitive. There is even some romance involved, but it’s all so broad-scope, I found that I didn’t particularly have much interest in it. Overall, I could see a lot of people really loving this book. The writing is smooth and easy to read, and I really liked some of the side characters. If you’re interested in these less-explored aspects in WWII fiction and don’t mind a slower-paced book, I encourage you to check this out.

Thank you to Netgalley and WaterBrook & Multnomah for providing me a copy of this book to review.

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November in Review

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I read 10 books last month, which is more than it felt like. Between Thanksgiving and participating in a writing challenge all month, I didn’t spend as much time reading or listening to audiobooks. So 10 is a pretty good number!

Here are the books I read in November:

HTTYD 3
Finding Phoebe
Minor 2
Odd 1
Pageflex Persona [document: PRS0000040_00026]
House of Many Ways
Sea Before
Carpenter 21
Power cover, Kindle
Godhead
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How to Speak Dragonese by Cressida Cowell (4 / 5)
Finding Phoebe by Ellie Katz (3 / 5)
The Minor Rescue by Meredith Davis (3.5 / 5)
Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz (4 / 5)
Resistance by Jaye L. Knight (3.5 / 5)
House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones (3.5 / 5)
The Sea Before Us by Sarah Sundin (4 / 5)
Muzzled by David Rosenfelt (4.5 / 5)
Power by Kristi Drillien (5 / 5)
The Godhead Complex by James Dashner (2 / 5)

This list includes 2 ARCs and 2 re-reads. My favorite book from November was Muzzled. I started 3 series, continued 4 series, and finished 1 series. My ever-changing short list of to-be-reads, as well as a flag for the book I’m currently reading and an ongoing list of those I’ve read and posted about can be found here.

I’m also keeping my Goodreads page updated with a more extensive list of to-be-reads. Despite my almost too-long TBR list, I’m always looking for more to add. Feel free to offer suggestions of your favorites or just recent reads you enjoyed.

Book Review: The Godhead Complex

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The Godhead Complex
The Maze Cutter #2
by James Dashner

My rating: 2 / 5
Genre: YA dystopian

The Flare, the Cure, Cranks, the Maze, the Remnant Nation, the Godhead, the Evolution, pilgrims, villas, Orphans…I don’t know what is going on in this series anymore, it’s just so convoluted and bloated with characters and plot threads. The pacing is slow enough that even in this 2nd book in the trilogy, I feel like nothing really happens until near the end. That’s not to say that actually nothing happens, but it all felt so underwhelming. By the end of the previous book, I knew so little actual information, and then in this book, almost everything I thought I knew turns out to be either wrong or at least suspect. I still am not entirely sure who the good guys and bad guys are (maybe they’re all bad? or neutral? or just trying to survive?). And I really don’t care about any of the characters enough to want to hang in there to figure out what I don’t understand when everything is so messy.

I really wish that someone had explained to Dashner or any of his proofreaders that every single use of “god(dess)” in this book should have been a lowercase G. It’s a minor detail, but it grated on me that Alexandra, the our main connection to the Godhead (at least this is something of a title, so I guess the capital makes sense) in these books, is always referred to as a God with a capital G, amongst other uses of the word. I’m going to finish this series, but only because I jumped the gun and requested an ARC of the 3rd book in the trilogy. Considering my track record with this series, I can’t imagine the final book is suddenly going to make everything better. At this point, I wouldn’t really recommend this continuation series to anyone, whether you’ve read the original trilogy or not. (On the other hand, if you enjoyed the entirety of the first trilogy, that probably means that what bothered me about it doesn’t bother you, so there’s a decent possibility that you’ll enjoy these newer books more than me.)

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Book Review: Muzzled

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Muzzled
Andy Carpenter #21
by David Rosenfelt
read by Grover Gardner

My rating: 4.5 / 5
Genre: Mystery

When a fellow dog helper brings a conundrum to defense attorney Andy Carpenter, an ensuing sequence of events ruins his attempt at retirement when he ends up defending a man of murdering two people and faking his own death in a boat explosion.

As much as I enjoy the formula in this series, it’s nice to see it turned on its head now and then, and that happens big time in this book. Andy’s wit and snark is still wonderfully intact, as is his team of investigators and the tendency toward conspiracies in this series. The story overall isn’t a stand-out, and the main bad guy (at least the one we are aware of the most) doesn’t have quite the dangerous feel I’m used to. I think that’s because he actually doesn’t show up much. But there definitely still is danger, and Marcus’s services are fully warranted. In fact, Marcus has an incredibly rare special moment in this book! Grover Gardner continues to portray Andy perfectly. If it’s not clear, I recommend this book (especially the audio) for fans of mystery, crime fiction, and courtroom dramas, as well as the books that precede it in the series (and probably all that follow it, but I’m still working my way through).

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