YA

Book Review: Chasing Echoes

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Chasing Echoes
by Jodi Perkins

My rating: 3 / 5
Genre: YA fantasy romance

Topaz “Taz” Aevos and her sisters each have powers that they can’t explain. Taz’s seem to be the most useless, though, since all she can do is make things fall. But when her youngest sister becomes the victim of a cruel prank during a school dance, she’s not the only one who wants to use a supernatural power to punish the prankster, Stryder Black. He also gets cursed into a time loop by someone who didn’t appreciate his prank, and when his path crosses further with Taz, the curse could become fatal.

The premise and at least some of the fantasy aspects in this book are interesting. I get what the author was going for with the reveal regarding Taz and her sisters’ powers, and there’s even a villainous aspect that will spill over into future books without feeling too much like a contrived cliffhanger. However, the time loop aspect of the story could have been done better. Stryder starts to fall apart after only 3 loops, which seems fairly quick for a “tough guy,” especially one who’s been warned he’s in a loop rather than being completely in the dark and wondering if he’s just going crazy. And his theories about how the loop works, both for him and for those “outside” the loop vary wildly and don’t always make sense to me.

There are also several cliches in the story that bugged me, including what turned out to be the change Stryder needed to make in order to break the curse. It was always my least favorite aspect of Groundhog Day and just made me roll my eyes here. (This is already semi-spoilery, so I won’t be more specific to avoid full-on spoilers.) I also had a difficult time buying that Stryder’s prank, brutal as it was, was worth the curse put on him, and the curse-giver, when confronted, was far too casual about the whole thing.

Overall, the book isn’t bad (especially for one that’s self-published, since it’s not full of errors, though it could have used a little more proofreading). But I think it’s more suited to an audience of people who like more contemporary romance or romantasy. I’m okay with both of these but prefer that the romance be a little more substantial than what I found here, and I might have liked a little more explanation about some of the fantasy elements. But if you’re interested in time loop stories and contemporary romance with fantasy elements, you might just enjoy this book.

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Book Review: The Disappearances

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The Disappearances
by Emily Bain Murphy

My rating: 5 / 5
Genre: YA historical fantasy

When Aila’s dad is drafted to fight in WWII not long after her mom’s death, she and her little brother Miles are sent to live with an old friend of their mom’s in the small town where their mom grew up. The siblings quickly begin to notice some strange things about their new home, like the lack of mirrors in the entire house. And how the flowers in the backyard don’t have any smell. As it turns out, every seven years, the people in the town lose something, like the ability to smell or dream. It’s been happening for 35 years and no one knows what made it start or what might make it stop. And the next Disappearance is only days away.

This is one of those books that leaves me struggling to figure out where to start with my review. I was so caught up in the story that I had a really hard time putting the book down and ended up staying up an hour later than normal to finish it. The Disappearances, the way the town reacts to them, their attempts to counter them—all of it comes together in an intriguing story. Add to that Aila’s and Miles’s grief over their recent loss, worry for their endangered dad, and difficulty in settling into a new town, which is all really well done and feels authentic. 

As the main story is unfolding, we get glimpses of another plot that seems to have connections to the main story, though it isn’t immediately clear what those connections are. But as the story goes on, more and more hints are dropped. I actually looked something up online based on a clue from the book and made a connection before the book brought it up. I had no idea why it was significant, but the excitement I felt at my realization was just further proof of how invested I was in the book. I can’t say a lot due to not wanting to spoil anything, but I already mentioned how caught up I was in the last quarter or so of the book. There are some details that aren’t explained in the end, but nothing that was left unexplained bothered me. I don’t need to know how the “magic” worked. I just loved the way the author worked everything out. It actually reminded me of Holes, which is not really touted as fantasy, yet has a curse-related overall arc that is similar to this book. I also have to admit that the book doesn’t feel particularly historical, even though it’s set in 1942, but I just didn’t care enough to be bothered by it. I don’t give 5 stars easily, but I haven’t enjoyed a book of this genre this much in a while. If the book interests you at all, I strongly urge you to give it a read!

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Book Review: The Infinite Glade

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The Infinite Glade
The Maze Cutter #3
by James Dashner

My rating: 1 / 5
Genre: YA dystopian

Not only did this book have a lot of the same problems as the previous two—too many characters, too little to care about, too many factions and no clear understanding of who was good or bad—but on top of all of that, there was far too few answers given. Elements that were touted as super important throughout the trilogy (like the Cure and the Evolution) are seriously downplayed here and never come to fruition of any kind. More characters are added that end up being completely pointless and a POV character added in the previous book also really had no point by the end. I struggle to understand what Dashner was going for in general or why these books didn’t get stopped before publication. But here’s the thing that is probably important for anyone reading this review to know: I didn’t particularly care for the first trilogy either. I liked the first book and truly wanted to know more about the world set up within it. But it felt like Dashner had written himself into a corner and proceeded to pants his way through the rest of the series, which ended up a convoluted, shallow mess. It was probably my mistake to read this follow-up trilogy, but I really hoped that it would be more of a call back to The Maze Runner, something that could possibly redeem the world for me. Instead, it deteriorated even further. This means that I obviously don’t recommend this trilogy to anyone. And yes, a lot of people enjoyed the first trilogy more than me and thus might enjoy this follow-up more too. Beware, though, that the overall rating, at least on Goodreads, of this trilogy is quite a bit lower than for the original trilogy, and reviews I’ve read indicate that plenty of people who loved the original didn’t like these books nearly as much.

I received a free review copy from the publisher in exchange for my honest unedited feedback.

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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: Finding Phoebe

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Finding Phoebe
by Ellie Katz

My rating: 3 / 5
Genre: Coming of age YA drama

Growing up, Phoebe Carasso developed a stutter that made life difficult for her. She survived up to and through high school by relying on her twin brother, David, to talk for her, protect her, and be her best friend. After graduation, David goes to college out of state, while Phoebe is staying near home, thus forcing her to face the world on her own.

The heart of this story is overall well done, with Phoebe learning who she is without her brother and trying to navigate social situations that she used to avoid. Though “avoid” really means that she went to social events with her brother but sat in the corner. What I find the most interesting about this book is the exploration of an introvert that might not be a true introvert, but only became such due to psychological issues. Her stutter does not manifest around people she’s comfortable with, so being around strangers or mere acquaintances, which during her adolescence included everyone outside of her family, she either wouldn’t speak or would give only the shortest of responses when addressed. Thus, she’d be wiped out from every social encounter, which is the mark of an introvert. However, to my mind, at least, when Phoebe gets out into the bigger world, she actually seems quite happy to be around people. Maybe not to the point where she gains energy from it, as an extrovert would, but when she’s mostly with friends and in situations she’s grown comfortable with, she doesn’t seem as sapped of energy when she doesn’t spend as much time trying to avoid stutter. It made me question the source of my own introvertedness, if perhaps it at least wouldn’t be as strong as it is if I didn’t have the social anxiety issues that I have.

On the other side of things, though, this book suffers from being fairly bloated. There is a lot of focus on what is being eaten at meals, on outings Phoebe and various friend groups go on, and on minor details in the plans being made for those outings that are completely unnecessary to the story. By the halfway point, I started to do a lot of skimming when Phoebe and her friends were going to go ice skating or to a museum, and I think the book could have been cut down by at least 100 pages and not suffered any loss to the story and character development.

Phoebe herself comes across as nearly a Mary Sue. Yes, she has a couple of flaws, but outside of her stutter and a stubbornness that crops up close to the end of the book, she’s interested in everything, great at everything she tries, and, even though she spent all of her life until now in silence, somehow a great friend and host without really having to try too hard. She attracts everyone she meets, whether they knew her when she was still quietly sitting in her brother’s shadow or have only met her as she’s tried to break free. And there are times when she is talking to someone she only just met, says more than the 2-3 words that help her avoid her stutter—multiple full sentences that I thought must be a triumph for her, but turned out to not be anything? Maybe she was doing her other trick, very carefully enunciating the words, and the author felt it would be tedious to explain that every single time she did that, but since the alternative is that Phoebe just doesn’t stutter and somehow isn’t aware that she’s managed to avoid it, I think the reminder would have still been helpful.

Due to Phoebe’s tendency to be great at nearly everything she tries her hand at, this book has almost no conflict. Her brother provides most of it, but overall, it feels really shallow and…nice. I don’t know another word for it. Maybe because the book’s author is a psychotherapist, the characters are really good at analyzing themselves and each other (when they get past Phoebe’s stubbornness and take the time to discuss their issues). It just felt overall shallow and unrealistic to me. However, since my issues with the book are probably more based on my own personal preferences as a reader and a writer, if you’re interested in the book, please check out other reviews at the link below.

I received a free review copy from the publisher in exchange for my honest unedited feedback.

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Book Review: Sunrise on the Reaping

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Sunrise on the Reaping
The Hunger Games prequel #2
by Suzanne Collins
Read by Jefferson White

My rating: 5 / 5
Genre: YA dystopian

Spoiler notice: The following review will contain some spoilers for The Hunger Games trilogy and The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.

I’m just going to say up front that I did not expect to care about this book. Similar to the other prequel, I didn’t think it was necessary. Why do we need to see Haymitch’s games? We already know he wins and we even know how. Why do we need to be shown yet another reaping, another Hunger Games? And hearing my daughter call it “Sunrise on the Weeping” over and over didn’t endear it any more to me—she hadn’t read it yet but had seen that online. I’m not a particularly emotional person, and I dislike it when I feel an author is trying to manipulate my emotions, which is what I anticipated here. I am here to say that I was mostly wrong in all of my assumptions. I even teared up a few times while listening to the audiobook, though still not as much as my daughter did when she read it.

I expected a rehashing of the same basic elements from the first book in the trilogy, but the reaping was different; the training time was different; the Hunger Games were very different. It really is its own story overall, while being connected to the main series and the previous trilogy in ways that I absolutely loved. I’ve seen many TV shows where there’s an episode that shows some time in the past, and the connection between characters that know each other in the main timeline of the show is shown earlier than it should have been and feels awkward and forced. In this book, there are several characters from the main trilogy that show up, and none of it feels awkward and forced (except one, but I can live with that). I really liked seeing everyone that appeared, and their roles brought events from the main series to light more. After my daughter read it, we discussed so many nuances that we both had found in it, and I just really appreciate the continuity and detail that Collins included.

I have to admit that the last part of the book dragged a little for me, but I think that was one of those areas where there was emotion that didn’t affect me like it does others. The epilogue, though, was brilliant! Overall, any issues I had with the book were minor enough that I can’t even bring the rating down half a start. I really liked it and look forward to reading the series again some time to be reminded of some of the related details. I did listen to the audiobook, and Jefferson White was an overall good narrator (though maybe if I’d read it instead of listening to the audiobook, I could have glossed over some of what dragged so much at the end). If you’ve read the main series and aren’t sure about reading this prequel, I’d definitely recommend it, though I highly recommend reading The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes first if you haven’t yet.

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Book Review: The Final Gambit

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The Final Gambit
The Inheritance Games #3
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: YA mystery, romance

Spoiler notice: The following review may contain some spoilers for the previous books in the series, starting with The Inheritance Games.

Avery Kylie Grambs is now only weeks away from inheriting the huge estate left to her by a stranger, but not only does she still have to live at Hawthorne House for the rest of that time in order to inherit, she has to survive. When a stranger shows up asking for help, Avery Kylie Grambs may not trust her, but she can’t stop the Hawthorne brothers from forming their own opinions—opinions which may or may not lead to destruction. A very risky gamble.

I wasn’t a huge fan of the first 2 books in the series, but I pressed on for my daughter, who considers this one of her favorite books series ever. That is mostly because I was not a fan of the love triangle/romance angle in the first 2 books, which was based way more on physical attraction than I prefer and involved Avery Kylie Grambs toying with the hearts of 2 brothers. In the first couple of books, I assumed Avery Kylie Grambs was going to end up with Grayson Davenport Hawthorne, if only because of romance tropes I’m used to, so I was surprised that she “chose” Jameson Winchester Hawthorne by the end of book 2. I thought that would mean that there would be a lot more angsty romance stuff in this book, but fortunately, it wasn’t as bad as I expected (not that there wasn’t some, though, including weird flashbacks to a scene that I figured I must have forgotten in book 2 but turned out to not actually be in book 2 and eventually, after teasing us about it several times, was shown in its entirety in book 3). But that means that I was able to enjoy this third book more for the puzzles and investigation, which were always the main draw of this series for me.

Though this ended up being my favorite book of the series, I still didn’t love it, and that has a lot to do with the fact that I started to strongly dislike Avery Kylie Grambs in this book. And Grayson Davenport Hawthorne. Though I liked Jameson Winchester Hawthorne more, so I guess the brothers part evens out some. (I still think they’re all ridiculous though). Xander, who has been my favorite Hawthorne brother throughout the series, retains his place and actually has an arc in this book that was one of my favorite things about the series.

Here at the end of the main series, I have to say that I am not much of a fan of Jennifer Lynn Barnes’s style. Both her prose style and her overall plotting style. In my review of the previous book, I mentioned that we seem to get an answer for why Tobias Hawthorne left his entire estate to Avery Kylie Grambs, who was a complete stranger to him, making it a very risky gamble, but in the 2nd book, we’re given a different reason, but with half the book to go, we find out that that actually isn’t the reason either, and by the end, I didn’t know if any answers given in that book were “final” or not. Yeah, no, they’re not. It’s one thing to let a story or mystery stretch over 3 books, but it’s a whole other thing to give “fake” answers along the way that are discounted in the next book. I just do not care for that. As for her writing style, if you were at all confused or annoyed by my usage of full names throughout this review, then you understand my feelings. This is not the only time I’ve seen/heard full (either first and last or even first-middle-last) names used in what is supposed to be a romantic setting, and I’d heavily dispute whether there is actually any romance in that. But here, it’s used all through the story, including by the villain, and I’m sure that’s not supposed to be romantic. Even besides that, Barnes has a tendency toward repetition, with phrases, scenes, etc. Like “a very risky gamble” being overstated to death by the end of this book.

I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to continue with the series that follows this one or the bridge book. Part of me feels like it could be better, because the love triangle will be behind us and Avery is in them less, but part of me feels like it could be a waste of time if my other issues with these books persist. I’m interested in one of Barnes’s earlier series, so I may read some of that to see if I can handle reading her books outside of this trilogy. As for this book and series though, I think most people probably won’t be bothered by the same things as me and would enjoy this more than I did. But if you struggle with high-angst love triangles or a love triangle involving siblings (or the normalcy of people who barely know each other sleeping together, which I didn’t even get into in my review), you might want to pass on the story.

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Book Review: The Maze Cutter

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The Maze Cutter
Book #1
by James Dashner

My rating: 2 / 5
Genre: YA dystopian

Spoiler notice: The following review will contain spoilers for the series that precedes it: The Maze Runner series.

Seven decades after the events at the end of The Death Cure, the final book in the previous series, the lives of the descendants of those who were sent to an island to live in peace and safety are disrupted. A ship appears bearing a woman who insists that some of them need to come back to the mainland with her. Meanwhile, the 3 parts of a mysterious authority group called the Godhead are at odds with each other.

I don’t think I’ve ever finished a book and felt like I was given so little info as I did at the end of this book. Things happened, but ultimately, nothing happened. It was a 250-page set-up for whatever is going to come later, but all that happened here is that we’re given little tiny bits of info that don’t really amount to a whole picture of anything. People are taken by one faction, then another, then another, and in the end, I have no idea who is with who and who is good or bad.

I don’t actually remember a lot about the end of the main series, but I remember that I felt like James Dashner had gone off the rails. The first book was good, but things just went all sorts of weird directions after that. This is basically a continuation of that. I decided to give this continuation series a try because of how much I liked The Maze Runner (the first book, not the entire series) and hoped maybe we could get back to those somewhat simpler roots. That is definitely not what we have here. One good thing, though, is that this first book makes it pretty clear that Dashner has plotted the entire continuation trilogy from the get-go, which is not at all what I feel like happened with the first trilogy. It seemed like he wrote the first one, was pleased it went well, and then just pantsed the rest of the trilogy. This feels like the opposite so far, but the first book doesn’t seem to have its own story goal that gets resolved, at least nothing I can pick out, which explains why I felt like nothing really happened.

I’m going to continue this series, but only because I jumped the gun and requested an ARC of the 3rd book in the trilogy. Since it’s one long story, I can’t exactly just skip the middle book. I do hope it gets better, but at this point, I wouldn’t really recommend the book to anyone, whether you’ve read the original trilogy or not. (On the other hand, if you enjoyed 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 this book more than me.)

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Book Review: Edgeland

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Edgeland
by Jake Halpern & Peter Kujawinski

My rating: 2.5 / 5
Genre: YA fantasy

Friends Wren and Alec live on Edgeland, the nearest island to the Drain. People from all over bring their dead to Edgeland to be prepped for the afterlife, before sending them into the Drain, a gigantic hole in the middle of the ocean from which nothing ever returns. Alec works for one of the houses that preps the dead, while Wren is an orphan who has to survive by her wits and is trying to save enough to leave Edgeland. But when she is accused of killing a prominent man, she has to escalate her plans, which leads her and Alec to take a huge risk…one that leads them right into the Drain.

This book is not a sequel Nightfall, the other book by these authors that I read, but I was still excited to learn that there was a book set in the same world. These authors are really good at coming up with intriguing geological and environmental world features and creating a sense of urgency in the plot. Though it takes a little while for the main action given in the synopsis (Wren and Alec falling into the drain) to happen, the build-up isn’t boring. Then when our two main characters go down the Drain, I was really interested to see what kind of strange, new world the authors came up with. And it was, like this book’s predecessor, fairly atmospheric and creepy for a while. But then, also like the predecessor, it hit a point where nothing new enough or surprising enough came about, and I started to not really care much about what happened to any of these characters.

I also have to say that I didn’t really feel like the afterlife/religion side of things was the best way to go. And that’s not even because I’m a Christian, since the fictional religions here didn’t hit close enough to home to even remotely make me feel like the authors were poking fun at Christianity (I can’t speak to their intention, just to how I viewed it). However, it just never really made a whole lot of sense to me.

The two religions stem from the day/night cycle in this part of the world—day lasts for 72 hours and night for 72 hours. The Suns come out in the day and the Shadows come out at night, and they only mingle (with sometimes violent results) during dusk and twilight. But though both sides have different origins for their beliefs, they don’t seem to believe anything different enough for it to make sense that they’re so opposed to each other. They just hate each other because they’re taught to hate each other, which I guess is kind of a commentary on real life, but not really. In real life, the religions that are most opposed to each other generally have quite different beliefs and definitely do not believe in the same afterlife, whereas the Suns and Shadows all believe that when they die, their bodies will be sent down the Drain to purgatory, where they will live in the same place as the other faction, just on different islands.  So they can keep hating each other without being near each other…sounds like a fun afterlife. Of course, the intention is to eventually move on to “heaven,” of which the religions don’t seem to have much knowledge, but I’ll bet they’re still hoping to be kept separate. Then, without going into spoilers, what actually awaits down the drain isn’t quite what they’re expecting, yet in some ways, isn’t that far off. In the end, I was left with too many questions about who on earth and why on earth (well, not earth, but…you know what I mean) to feel that I really enjoyed the book that much. It wasn’t bad overall, and I think that some people who like darkish fantasy in the teenage age range would enjoy it. Though I’d recommend Nightfall (same authors, same world) over this one.

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Book Review: The 5th Wave

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The 5th Wave
Book #1
by Rick Yancey
Read by Phoebe Strole & Brandon Espinoza

My rating: 2.5 / 5
Genre: YA sci-fi

After the alien mothership appeared, there were 4 waves of disasters that left very few humans alive. Those that are left don’t know who to trust. And they don’t know when the 5th wave might come.

I was there for part 1; I was in it. Cassie is alone, trying to survive the harsh, cold winter, with no idea if any other humans are even left alive or not. In disjointed flashbacks, she tells us the story of the first 4 waves. Then comes part 2, where we switch to another POV: Zombie (just a nickname), who just managed to survive the wave that killed the largest number of humans. The story shifts gears here, as Zombie is living on a base with a lot of other people. He doesn’t seem to know what Cassie knows, though, which is not to trust anyone. I started to get a little confused about who was really good or bad at this point too, but I was still there, still engaged. Then part 3 takes another turn, a short section with a new, more mysterious POV, and the follow-up to that is part 4—back to Cassie. There begins my least-favorite aspect of the entire book: the romance.

To be fair, I often don’t like romance in YA books, because they’re too immature for my tastes. But here we have Evan, who is mentioned in the official synopsis but doesn’t appear until 1/3 of the way into the book. Evan is kind of creepy, lurking around outside of doors and disappearing for chunks of time with no explanation. But he’s good-looking, and Cassie has been alone for a while, so…romantic, I guess.

Then part 5 comes. I haven’t mentioned it yet, but Cassie has a 5-year-old brother who was taken away by soldiers and whom Cassie is determined to find again. And that’s where we go with part 5. Fortunately, it’s only 25 pages, but having the 5-year-old as a POV character felt like taking a huge left turn. And I’m not really sure it was necessary. From there, we go back and forth between Zombie’s and Cassie’s POVs, as Zombie is turned into a soldier and Cassie makes plans to look for her brother, with Evan acting as an anchor holding her back. Zombie’s parts are generally fine, and serve to propel the reader’s understanding of the world forward more than Cassie’s do from this point on, since she’s mostly just focused on 2 people—Evan and Sammy (her brother). I hated Cassie’s sections (and pretty much Cassie herself) from this point on, because she keeps finding more and more reasons not to trust Evan and yet talks herself out of letting it make a difference. Because she’s falling for him or something? I just didn’t care anymore. And then to make things worse, the romance turned into a potential triangle at the end of the book, in a way that I really didn’t like.

I listened to the audiobook, and the narrators were good, but even there, since there are technically 4 POVs by the end, splitting the extra 2 smaller ones between the narrators of the main characters is a little weird. Plenty of books have both male and female POV characters and use only one narrator, so maybe this one would have been better off with just one. That’s the least of my issues with the book though.

In case it’s not clear, I don’t really recommend this book to anyone. I was telling my 15-year-old daughter about it as I went along (without spoilers), and most of the things that bothered me as I went didn’t concern her. By the end, though, a few of the romance-related things did make her decide not to read it, but that means that other teens, at least, might find more to like here than I did. For me, there ended up being too much focus on romance and not enough on plot.

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