Catching Up

Okay, I've gotten woefully behind on a lot of reviews. I always intend to write about things and then don't, so here are quick blurbs on some of the things I've read in the past almost year or so. 

Second book in the Against All Gods trilogy. Just as good as the first. I'm partway through the third, but I put it down two months ago and haven't picked it back up. I need to, but I also don't want it to be over. 

A girl who's missing her best friend (she's away at camp) meets a new girl that's only in town for a carousel revival project. It's basically a coming of age story and very good. 

Same author only with adult, enemies-to-lovers lesbians.

I really love this author. She's the one behind the updated Anne and Jo graphic novels that I may or may not have reviewed. 

Just look up Kathleen Gros and enjoy her stuff. 

  

Parachute Kids and its sequel Outsider Kids are about three young immigrant kids who are trying to live on their own hiding in the US while their parents work to get over here legally. 

This one is an excellent read, but definitely some serious themes. Highly recommend them both. 

Sea Legs is about a girl that lives on a boat with her parents and their cat. They travel from place to place, sometimes staying a while to earn money and then the girl can go to regular school. Otherwise, she's homeschooled. This one is mostly light-hearted with some serious moments, but those moments get VERY serious. 

I think I've reviewed Peapod Farm here before. Very cute series about a city girl whose Mom gets divorced and they move to the country to live on a farm with her new boyfriend. His two daughters come stay with them on the weekends. He's an asshole in the first one, but improves as the series goes on. This is the third volume. I was disappointed Summer, who they teased last time as not being as mean as she seems, didn't play a role in this volume. I mean, she's there, but not in the capacity I expected. 

I've also read the newest in the Click and Sunny Side Up series. Those are always good. 

Switching back to regular novels. 

This thing is amazing. 

It flips between 1936, when the older main character is a teen, and 1978, when she's a curator at the Met. The second main character is about that age in the 1978 sections. 

It involves Egypt, fashion, the Met Gala, and a stolen artifact. 

HIGHLY recommend. I need to check out more of her books when I've done my TBR pile some justice. 

Flipping back to YA. I don't usually do YA romance unless it's tied in with some historical or fantasy theme, but this one caught my eye. 

Sadie Wen is a model student, fighting for the spot of valedictorian, and her mortal enemy is Julius Gong. For a bit of therapy, Sadie writes emails where she says exactly what she wants to say, mostly to Julius but also to other classmates and teachers. Well, in this book, they get sent out and she's got to deal with the consequences. 

There's a novella sequel to this that just came out and I'm looking forward to reading it, even though I usually don't do digital. 

The newest book from the same author. 

Former model Leah Zhang is on a guided trip through China that's supposed to immerse her in her culture. 

Naturally, the guy that ruined her life with a lie is along for the ride. 

I really enjoy this author. I'll definitely be keeping an eye on her. 

I have two more by her in my TBR that I need to get to. 

And finally, I've gotten back around to Irina Shapiro. I was rereading The Clique series and then started on Alphas, and I needed to also read something that wasn't so teen fluffy. 

Echoes from the Past is a Shapiro series that comes before the Nicole Rayburn ones I started with. But I need to read all nine of these before getting back to Nicole, as she's teaming up with Quinn, the main character of this series. 

They're very similar to the Nicole books. Half is set in the past. Half is in the present and deals with the main character's personal drama. The main difference is that Quinn is an archaeologist who has the power to see the lives of the people who owned the artifacts she finds. They have to be dead for her to see anything, but you can imagine how this would be useful to an archaeologist. She seems to not like it, and I get that you could never use it for anything academic, but I'd still love that ability to really see into the past. 

Okay, that catches me up. I'm planning on working through the Echoes from the Past series, while finishing my Alphas reread, then probably getting back to the final book in the Against All Gods trilogy. I need to also finish Ami, the second Guardians of the Dawn book, as the third comes out on the 19th and it's featuring my favorite character. 

Various Middle Grade Graphic Novels

The third Goddess Girls graphic novel came out recently and it was fun but suffered from the same problem as the first two. Namely, some of the character designs just aren't up to par. 

I still don't think Aphrodite would wear a ponytail. 

Makeover Athena was cute.

Hephaestus was really cute. He, Medusa and Pheme have my fave graphic novel looks overall. 

Atalanta was a little too girly for my taste. 

We didn't meet anyone else new. The story goes along with the original book, although they followed it a little TOO closely, because there are multiple mentions of Ares' blond hair and blue eyes...neither of which the graphic novel version has. 

These are cute but could be done a lot better. 

I don't know if I've ever talked about Kayla Miller's Click series here. The stories follow fifth grader Olive on her various trials. Click was about her finding the right act in a variety show. Camp had her meeting new friends at summer camp while dealing with her wet blanket friend Willow's constant clinginess. Act has Olive starting sixth grade and running for student council against two of her friends. Clash deals with cool new girl Natasha and how she randomly hates Olive. And Crunch is about Olive learning not to over-extend herself with too many activities. There's also a spinoff series featuring one of the BFF pairs in the supporting cast.  

This is a fun, light-hearted series that's less heavy-handed than some of the middle grade graphic novels. I love Olive's cool librarian aunt, who clearly has a crush on Olive's female guitar teacher. So cute. 

I've reviewed the first two in the Witches of Brooklyn series here before. I reread the second one before tackling this third one and I think this might be my second fave series after Berrybrook. I LOVE the art. 

It's summer and Effie is off to camp for a month. Witch camp! Apparently, green thumb is a real thing and it's a big deal for witches, so Effie is leaving the city to connect with nature for a month at this camp. She does so on her very first night there, waking up to find ivy entwined in her hair and her palms glowing bright green. This is way more than most witches get and it provokes envy in the cabin mean girl. 

I loved seeing all the different witch kids and their varied powers. That was great. The mean girl and Effie never came to terms with anything, although it was the girl's meanness that actually got Effie out of a tight bind (she accidentally woke a dragon and had to put it back to sleep). And there's a side plot involving that panda. He's the one whose room Effie is actually sleeping in. I forget how he's related to either Selimene or Carlota. But he connects with animals and when he got his heart broken, he turned into a panda and went to live in the Bronx Zoo. A girl came and sketched him one day and then his hands transformed back to human, so he came back home, only to have to go along to camp with Effie and be a counselor. The artist girl actually is one of Effie's counselors so their little sideplot romance is adorable. 

Definitely highly recommend this series. 

Then I tried out a new series called Peapod Farm. Jen (on the left) is dragged from the city to the country after her mom and dad get divorced. Her mom bought a farm to run with her boyfriend. Jen is forced to help and, on the weekends, the boyfriend's daughters come to help, too. 

This one was good but also frustrating. The boyfriend character is an ASSHOLE. He's not full-on abusive but he isn't very nice and he frequently gets away with it. Both Jen's mother and his eldest daughter Andi (on the right) excuse his behavior basically as "He's an asshole but that's just the way he is and we all deal with it." I mean, one of the things was really minor. Jen likes to be called Jen, not Jenny, but he keeps calling her Jenny. This is when the mother should step in and ask him to please call her kid by the name she wants to be called. It's not difficult but it never happened. There is a moment nearer the end where both his daughters side with Jen though and that was good. But Mom needs to grow a hell of a backbone. This is definitely semi-autobiographical, but there's a time when the author needs to realize that replicating reality is less important than good writing, unless you're writing an actual autobiography. Her stepdad never changed and she's choosing to portray that, but she should definitely give her dad character here some comeuppance. Stop showing the mom as weak and unable to stand up for her own child. 

I really enjoyed this other than the bullshit from the boyfriend character. The oldest daughter takes a while to grow on you, but she gets there. The younger daughter is awesome. I loved her. 

This one brings us to the fall. Jen is worried about school. She and Andi are working at the pumpkin farm's haunted hayride because the farmer's market is closed. Andi has a thing for the pumpkin farmer's nephew and Jen begins to feel left out. 

At school, the closest friend she finds is the boy in her class that's younger than everyone else. The class bitch teases them. The other kids seem to be liking her more nearer the end though. 

Jen's big frustration this time is that everywhere she turns there are people in relationships. She gets mad when people assume her male friend has to be a boyfriend, and not one but two people spout bullshit about how men and women can't be friends. I don't believe this is ever corrected by an adult and it needed to be. It's like I really want to fully love this series, but in each volume there's one major incident of bad writing that irritates me.

Everything works out in the end and even the class mean girl comes around. Turns out she's envious of Jen's art skills.