Katherine Arden’s The Bear and the Nightingale is a Russian fairy tale that requires an investment of your time and attention, but the payoff is so worth it! Arden painstakingly creates this world, the characters, the forest, the village, the home, the conflict – all of it, with such detail and ache and emotion.
Marketing for the new young adult book The Girl at Midnight by Melissa Grey spends a lot of time comparing it to other popular books in the genre, including Cassandra Clare’s City of Bones and Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke & Bone. Most early reviews have also noted the similarities. But what I hope doesn’t get lost in the noise of mentioning these other books is that THIS one is very, very good.
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From the opening lines of Melinda Salisbury’s debut novel, The Sin Eater’s Daughter, I felt swept forward into a world of uncertainty and tension. After the first paragraph alone, I wanted to ask a half-dozen questions.
Rather than frustrate me – which it could have easily done – I found myself engaged and excited at being a few steps behind the narrator, anxious and ready to understand unfamiliar words and their meanings, and get a handle on the complex world of the author’s creation.
The world of Victoria Schwab’s The Archived is so unique in YA fiction right now that it requires some explanation before I dive into the review.
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Kristin Cashore’s Young Adult debut novel, Graceling, is a wonderfully-written fantasy novel that despite certain fanciful elements, turns out to be truly heartfelt and human.
BOOK:30 