"When Life Hands You a Lemon Fruitbomb" by Amerie (from a Phoenix First Must Burn) for Timeslip Tuesday

When I saw this call to Blackout besteller lists with black voices yesterday, a trip to my local bookstore was inevitable.

I checked to see that the two books I knew I wanted to read (The Water Dancer, by Ta-Nehisi Coates, and A Song of Wraiths and Ruin, by Roseanne A. Brown) were both in stock, and they were, but by the time I reached the bookstore, they weren't anymore. Which is good, I guess, and it meant I had to browse the shelves (which I don't mind), and my eye was caught by A Phoenix First Must Burn: Sixteen Stories of Black Girl Magic, Resistance, and Hope, edited by Patrice Caldwell (YA, Viking Books, March 10, 2020), which of course I happily bought.

The very first story, "When Life Hands You a Lemon Fruitbomb" by Amerie, is a time slip story, and so it's the subject of today's post.   But it hurts to spoil it by saying what happens, because it's so good and the twist is lovely.  So I won't go into much detail, and you can just go ahead and buy this lovely anthology yourself if you want to read the story as it should be read!

However, in order to have a post about the time slip-ness of the plot, I have to write about it. So.

It's a story of Earth being invaded by aliens, nicknamed "orcs."  Earth fights back, and two brave black girls are among the humans who travel through a wormhole to push back against the invaders.  They are both serving as interrogators, trying to find information about their enemy that can save earth.  But the wormhole has taken them back in time, and there is no humanity on Earth to save this far back in the past.  There's only a distant plant, and the orcs, and legend the orcs have of something that will come to pass in the future.  And the two girls take the steps that will make that happen.

And, even biggest spoiler, the thing they will make happen is the orcs invasion of Earth, and the trip through the wormhole, each iteration creating an alternate beginning.  (Time travel via sci fi wormhole doesn't happen in YA very often, by which I mean I can't think of another example).

I needed that spoiler to make my main comment--it was such a brilliant placement of this story as the first one in this collection, because of course it leads into all the other fifteen alternate realities full of black girl magic that follow.

It's a great story, as are many of the other 15.  Some I liked more than others, but it's really strong collection, and there were several I loved.  But this one, I think, is my favorite.

(the second book I bought was Kingdom of Souls, by Rena Barron, which I had also been wanting to read!)

Limited Wish (Impossible Times #2) by Mark Lawrence

Limited Wish (Impossible Times #2) by Mark Lawrence (May 2019, 47 North), is the sequel to One Word Kill, which I reviewed here.  It begins with a brief recap of book 1, which was thoughtful, because though I remembered things more or less, this a complicated sort of time travel, with lots of alternate pathways and various twisty shenanigans of continuum manipulation.

When we meet Nick again, its still the 1980s, he's still 16, still in remission from Leukemia, and still playing D. and D. with his group of friends.  But now he's a student at Cambridge.  Knowing he was going to have to come up with the mathematics for time travel kicked him into high gear, and he mathematically muscled his way into studying with the one conveniently located person who might be able to work with him to do this.  But though the math goes well, the rest of his life is pretty crumby. Mia has broken off their relationship that had just begun in the first book, largely in reaction to fate throwing them together (more literally than is usually the case).  In D. and D., his saving throws are 1s, and in real life, statistically improbable events (like an exploding chip shop) are becoming everyday occurrences.  A build-up of paradoxes has caused time to become a shaken bottle of soda, and unless it's calmed down, it will pop, taking Nick with it.

Nick's future self, and someone else from his future, are showing up in his present and trying to figure out how to unravel the paradoxes.  Thought there's a violent element involved (slightly contrived), this unravelling is  basically a matter of social dynamics, calculated risks, and lots of good math (impossible without the contributions of a girl who's even more brilliant than Nick).  In the end, when Nick has to choose between two alternate futures to calm things down, it comes down to him deciding to act as if he were a free agent, like anyone else, choosing to be loyal to himself, right there in the present.

I don't really like complications for the sake of complications, and lots of alternate future paths spinning off in all directions don't do much for me.  But Lawrence does a rather remarkable job having both complications and alternate paths kept firmly within a coherent narrative with a single main story, that of Nick's experience as a 16 year old genius teen living with the fear of death from  cancer, and more ordinary social anxiety.  He is like the still center around which the busy story spins, although he is making his own interior journey.  He knows his choices will effect future time lines, but he has the wisdom in the end to realize that's true for everyone.

Adding to my enjoyment was Nick's love for math-- I like craft books, in which characters are immersed in the making of things they love, and for Nick, equations are his craft, and it was lovely (disclaimer--I don't do math myself, so this is considerable praise).  I also enjoyed the details of the D. and D. game--an alternate adventure of choices and consequences nicely nested in the main story.

I don't think the sleek sci-fi cover captures the feel of the book; something more 1980s campy fantasy would have been closer--beautiful Cambridge students falling out of a punt while an explosion happens in the distance sort of thing.

I would have been happy with the series ending here; though there is lots still unresolved, that's the way life is.  But I just realized there's a third book,  Dispell Illusion (another D. and D. spell...), and I look forward to seeing what illusions will be dispelled!

The Night of Your Life, by Lydia Sharp, for Timeslip Tuesday

This week's Timeslip Tuesday book, The Night of Your Life, by Lydia Sharp (Scholastic, March 2020) is one of the Groundhog Day type, in which the same events get replayed over and over. In this case, it's night after night of prom, all alike in going horribly wrong, but different in the particulars of disaster.

JJ has been looking forward to Prom Night almost since he started high school and became friends with Lucy. They'd agreed early in their friendship that if they didn't have "real" dates they'd go with each other, and this is what they are going to do--best, best friends enjoying a wonderful evening together. Except that when JJ almost crashes his car on the way to pick her up, his evening gets derailed, with disastrous consequences for Lucy. And she tells him their friendship is over.

But then he falls asleep, only to wake up again getting ready to go pick Lucy up....and maybe if he makes different choices, they'll have their perfect night. Nope, and nope the next night, and more nopes. Soon JJ's worry about a perfect prom becomes a worry about being caught in a chaotic time loop forever....and the loop gets even more complicated when he finally figures out what's obvious to just about everyone else--that he and Lucy are, in fact, more than friends. And when JJ finally realizes this (Lucy had figured it out before prom), and they kiss, then romance is thrown into the chaos as well.

Not surprisingly, things work out in the end....

There's a lot of queer representation with side characters--trans and gay friends, and JJ's lesbian moms--and though he doesn't label himself, JJ is pretty clearly demiromantic. He and Lucy make a good couple, and the tension of cheering for their relationship to work is a nice counterpoint to the tension of the time loop.

The time looping itself was never quite explained--there are two different possible triggers, and a possibly magical groundhog. But this lack of decisive clarity isn't bothersome as this is more a YA romance than a sci fi/fantasy story. It is a good thing JJ has his time loop experiences, because he needed this to be forced to think dispassionately (and later passionately) about his relationship with Lucy. It was a good kick in the pants for him.

In short, though it wasn't a book I found earth shakingly wonderful, it was a very fun read!


disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

The Good Hawk, by Joseph Elliott

The Good Hawk, by Joseph Elliott (Walker Books US, January 2020), is a magical version of early Scottish history (9th century-ish), with tons of heart and lots of violence that tells of two teens desperately trying to save their kidnapped kin.

15-year-old Agatha takes her job as Hawk very seriously, patrolling the walls of her clan's island home, always on the lookout for danger.  Though many are dismissive of her abilities (she seems to have Down's Syndrome) she knows she's a good Hawk.  She has a special gift, too, one she keeps hidden--she can communicate with animals.  Then one night she makes a mistake, and fires a burning arrow at one of her own clan's boats, and she's no longer allowed to be a hawk.

Her friend Jaime, always anxious, a thinker rather than a doer, was assigned to be an Angler, though he gets seasick. For reasons he doesn't understand, the clan has chosen him for another role--he must marry a girl from a nearby clan, though his own people haven't married for generations.  

Jaime and Agatha are friends, and their friendship ends up saving them both when Jaime's wedding day ends in disaster.  Raiders from Norveg attack while the clan is celebrating, and Jaime, Agatha, and the young girl who's now Jaime's wife, adrift in a boat, look on in horror as the enemy's ships carry away all of the clan who survive.  Knowing it's probably futile, they try to pursue the raiders across the ocean...but fate sets them on a different path.

Agatha and Jaime must travel across the mainland of Scotia instead, a place whose inhabitants were killed by a plague.  It's not, in fact, empty.  Nomadic Highland bull riders come to their aid, and thanks to Agatha's gift, help them along their way.  It wasn't just the stories of plague, though  that kept Agatha and Jaime's clan from leaving their island--there are stories that Scotia is home to deadly shadow spirits.  And this story is true, but the shadows were made to be a weapon....and poor, mad Queen Nathara, left all alone in a decaying castle with only the shadows when all those around her died, can command them...

It's an exciting adventure, told in the alternate voices of the two teenagers, in which the world of the story keeps getting bigger and bigger.  The beginning, where the kids are held tight in place by the traditions of their clan, is almost claustrophobic in its rigidity (and was slow to grab my interest) but as they venture out on their quest, they learn to value themselves for who they are, and not for what the clan expects them to be.  The magic of the world likewise keeps building, with the violence and tension of the shadows, and Agatha's growing realization of how important her gift with animals can be, makes this much more than a simple alternate history adventure.

Agatha's difference in thinking and moving are presented as being what they are, not something pitiable, but simply there, though her clan is not always accepting of her; some call her retarch.  She proves herself a hero, though--she is, indeed, a good Hawk, and her character is really what makes this book stand out.  Jaime's point of view provides a good contrast, giving the reader a more nuanced understanding of what's happening.

The violence of the book (the shadows rip people apart pretty ripingly) and the age of the main characters, suggest a YA audience, but there's an upper middle grade feel to the central quest and there's no romance for the main characters; I'd be comfortable giving it to an 11 or 12 year old as well as to older readers.

This  is first book in the planned Shadow Skye trilogy, and I'm very curious to see what Agatha and Jaime do next!

Here's the Kirkus review, which makes some additional points.

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher.

The Wind Eye, by Robert Westall, for Timeslip Tuesday

This week's Timeslip Tuesday book is an older English one--The Wind Eye, by Robert Westall (upper MG/YA 1976, still in print).  Westall's work ranges from picture books to adult, often exploring how the past hits the present in dark and mysterious ways.  Which is what happens in The Wind Eye....

It begins when a family, comprising a mother and her teenaged son married to a father with two daughters (one a young teen and one a little girl), setting off to the northeast coast of England to stay in the old house the father has just inherited.  They are not a happy family.  The kids get along fine, but the parents are not getting on well at all.

And then the past and the present collide.   St. Cuthbert still is a real person to the people of this part of the Northumberland coast, and he becomes so to the kids as well when they find a boat that travels back to his time, taking them out to the island that was his retreat from the world.   Along the way, there's a Viking raid, the miraculous curing of the youngest girl's burned hand, and the just as miraculous dispersal of the mother's constant fury at everyone and everything, an angry mob of locals protective of their saint, and the unassailable fact of the story that St. Cuthbert is real, and can work miracles. There's also considerable tension about whether everyone is going to make it back from the Dark Ages to the present in one piece....

So this sounded like one I should really love.  But it wasn't what I wanted it to be.  Before I say why, I want to say that it's well-written, and powerful, and vivid and magical.  But.

They inherit an old house on the coast in the north of England full of fascinating old things. Do we get to spend lots of time exploring and tidying the old house finding interesting things? No.

Does the mother, unsympathetically furious all the time, get stuck with all the domestic work in this old house with dubious modern amenities and no emotional support,  with no indication to the reader that she might like to have had different choices? Yes, and this is not something she gets angry about in particular.  Does she end up almost lobotomized by St. Cuthbert when he removes her constant state of angry tension so that she can't even drive past the speed limit?  Yes.  Does she find peace in baking? Yes.  Does she get any part of the time travel adventuring? No.  Do I like this?  No.  The fact that she is furious and over-reacting all the time (until the magical intervention of St. Cuthbert) is understandable, but exaggerated; it dehumanizes her almost as much as her pacification does.

The father seems like a decent chap at first, but it's made clear that he too is  not right--he's all encyclopedic knowledge, all conviction about facts, all distain for anything requiring belief without fact.  And when his fanatical atheism and St. Cuthbert clash, he almost dies (but doesn't), and is forced to admit he was wrong.  This tension between belief and fact is the central point of the book, and this bothered me because I don't think there has to be such a chasm between being a fact loving  historian and a lover of story/legend/the numinous that was a large part of the tension between the atheist father and Cuthbert as living proof of the power of God.  It was not a nuanced portrayal of an atheist realizing he was wrong.

The kids where good characters, though, and the time travel was really good--they'd go sailing out on a clear day, and the mist would come, and they'd be back in Cuthbert's time, occasionally seeing the goat-riding devils that tormented him, etc.....

Quite possibly, if you aren't me, as is the case for the many readers who love this book, it will speak to you more than it did to me.  But for me it was an "I really didn't mind reading this at all and parts of it were very good and I like St. Cuthbert but I will not feel the need to re-read it" sort of book.

Stolen Time, by Danielle Rollins, for Timeslip Tuesday

If you are in the mood for a real page turner of a YA time travel story (it only took me two and a bit hours to read 400 pages), with lots of twists, lots of great characters, and lots of action, look no further than Stolen Time, by Danielle Rollins (Febraury 2019, HarperTeen).

It begins in Seattle, in 1913, when Dorothy runs away from the marriage her con-artist mother has inveigled her into.  Her flight leads her to a time traveler, from New Seattle, 2077.  Ash is on a mission to find his mentor, the professor who figured out time travel technology, and who disappeared. leaving his team of young people gathered from different times without guidance and purpose.  Dorothy stows away in his ship, and Ash inadvertently takes her back to his own time, to a city devastated by earthquakes and inundated by tidal waves.

It's a city living in fear of a vicious gang, whose co-leader, Roman, was once one of the professor's brightest students.  But Roman wanted time travel to be used to save his city and its people before it was destroyed, and the professor refused to believe this was possible (for good reasons).

When Dorothy goes exploring by herself, and is kidnapped by Roman, she's caught in the greatest long-con of her life.  But who is its mastermind, Roman, or someone else entirely?  And why did the professor disappear, and where has he gone?  And can Dorothy find a place for herself with Ash and the other members of the professor's team, earning their respect for her skills, and not just being admired for her pretty face?  A trip back to a military base in the 1980s gives her the chance to do just that; but whose hands is she playing into?  Will she be on the side of the destroyers, or the saviors (and is saving anything she cares about actually possible?)

Dorothy is a fascinating character.  She's badly damaged by her horrible mother, who's used her as a beautiful pawn in various scams her whole life.  Even though Dorothy is a point of view character, I was never sure I liked or trusted her, but it's clear that it's not her fault she's the way she is. She's been taught never to trust anyone, and no one has given her any reason to trust them...until she meets Ash.  Ash, a young World War II pilot, is less complicated, but still appealing in his loyalty to his comrades.

And then everything goes bang at the end, leaving one tremendously anxious for the next book.  Don't be me, and look at the end of the first book half way through to make sure it comes out all right in the end, because it isn't the end!  Fortunately book two, Twisted Fates, comes out reasonably soon, in February of 2020 (but don't read the blurb for that yet, because spoilers).

It's good fun time travel through technology, with lots of different jumps through time and tangled timelines, that manages not to be too confusing.  An interesting twist is that time travelers start to get glimpses of their future lives...used to good effect to ratchet up the tensions of their present lives....

Waking in Time, by Angie Stanton, for Timeslip Tuesday

Waking in Time, by Angie Stanton (Capstone 2017), is a timeslip story set at college, combining two things I love in books! The start of Abbi's freshman year at UW Madison, where her grandmother and great-grandmother had both studied, is not as happy as she'd thought it would be. She is still grieving the recent death of her grandmother, and this casts a shadow over all the things she'd been looking forward to.

But she doesn't get any time to feel at home. The second morning there, she wakes up to find herself in the same college dorm, but in 1983. And as the book progresses, she keeps moving quickly back in time. Then she wakes to find her own grandmother is her room-mate. She's thrilled to get the chance to be with her grandmother again, and wonders if she'll find a clue about her dying request to "find the baby." And then she meets her great-grandmother, and finds out a sad truth about her family. Meanwhile, Will who started at the university in 1927 is traveling forward through time, and despite not recognizing each other at the far ends of their journeys, Will and Abbi become more than friends.

But how can they stop traveling, and find a time where they can stay together? Fortunately, there's another almost constant person they both meet--the brilliant professor at the future end of the timeline, who's an insecure student toward the beginning of it...and who specializes in the quantum physics of time travel.

I found the various different glimpses of the women's dormitory life fascinating, but they didn't interest Abbi as much as they interested me. She was most interested in Will (which didn't interest me that much; there wasn't quite enough meat to their relationship for my taste, being basically physical attraction and a shared problem), and in solving the family mystery, which wasn't all that mysterious. I wanted Abbi to be more curious and engaged with each different time period in a historical/anthropological way, and she just wasn't. In fact, she doesn't seem to be interested in anything at all intellectual. Oh well. She is, after all, in a rather deperate situation, so I cut her lots of slack in that regard.

Something that more actively bothered me was the implication of Native American sacred sites as one of the causes of the time travel (one of the mounds was levelled to build the women's dorm) which I thought was unnecessary and which invoked a sense of "mystical Indians" which I found unpleasant.

 But if you are a fan of fate bringing soul-mates together, you may well enjoy this more than I did! (Judging from the numerous five star reviews on Goodreads, it seems to be the case that cynical older readers who love academia and detailed minutia about the material culture of the past  are not the best audience for it....)

Voyages in the Underworld of Orpheus Black, by Marcus Sedgwick and Julian Sedgewick, illustrated by Alexis Deacon

Voyages in the Underworld of Orpheus Black, by Marcus Sedgwick and Julian Sedgewick, illustrated by Alexis Deacon (Walker Books US, August 13, 2019), is a strange, melancholy, moving fever-dream of a story.  It tells of young Henry Black, a conscientious objector battling the fires of the London blitz, who dreams of chronicling the war through his art and his journal writing (this journal constitutes the prose and pictures of the book).  His decision not to fight has created a rift between him and his father and brother, Ellis.  It's the loss of Ellis that hurts Henry most, and so he is glad that Ellis agrees to meet him at a London pub.  The two brothers don't exactly reconcile, but it is clear that their love is still alive at its roots.  And then, after Henry leaves the pub, it is bombed, as is the bus Henry was trying to take home.

When he wakes with a severe head injury in the hospital, his journal turns into a feverish record of his desperate efforts to find his brother and dig him out from the wreckage.  He is accompanied on his quest by Agatha, a German Jewish refugee child he met at the hospital, who is longing to find her parents.  Through the horrors of WW II London, the two of them travel, going ever deeper below the city.  And at last, they find what they were seeking.

Though Henry is not directly aware of it, he has a guide of sorts on his journey--Orpheus, who sees parallels between his own story and Henry's quest  to venture into the realm of death to bring back a loved one.  The reader, however, knows Orpheus is involved from the beginning; he presents his own poetic narrative alongside Henry's journal entries.  Orpheus' involvement gives a mythic gravitas to Henry's inchoate chronicle of his desperate journey through the hell of bombed London, and his prophetic words about future war, alongside strange futurist horrors dreamed of and drawn by Henry, lift this war from specific to universal terror.

It is not a fast, fun read.  You have to be in the right frame of mind, to take it as it comes and reflect and ponder without troubling too much about narrative coherence.  And I was able to do that, to an extent.  What held me back from being deeply involved was the poetry of Orpheus, which I did not care for.  I would much much much have preferred pure blank verse to the rhymes that kept popping up.  They just killed the mood for me.

I'm not quite sure who the perfect audience for the book is.  Greek mythology fans, looking for a retelling, might be disappointed; it's more an echoing than a reimagining (though small details were pleasing--Persephone, aka Kore, becomes a woman named Cora, for instance).  Some young readers might not have the patience to accept the strange.  But those young readers who do, in particular those drawn to thought-provoking meditations on history, will be rewarded.

dislaimer: review copy received from the publisher

One Word Kill, by Mark Lawrence, for Timeslip Tuesday

One Word Kill, by Mark Lawrence (47North, May 2019) , is a time travel story in which changes to the past create multiple timelines.  It's the story of 15 year old Nick, a math genius who enjoys playing D. and D. with his three buddies, and what happens when a girl, Mia, joins the game.  It's the story of Nick finding out he has cancer.  These concerns, even the fact that Nick might be dying, are back-burnered when a strange man starts stalking Nick, telling him that Mia is in danger and needs his help.

Saving future Mia involves a dangerous heist, and it also involves surviving the violent attentions of a gang of drug-dealing thugs, one of whom is a true psychopath.  Fortunately, the strange man is there to help when things get really ugly.

Turns out (and this isn't much of a spoiler, because it's told to the reader fairly early on) that this stranger is Nick from the future, come back to save future Mia.  Though his timeline's Mia might be in jeopardy, there are many many timelines in which this won't be the case, but future Nick is concerned only about saving the one Mia he knows, so he can't alter his own past too much, or he'll simply go off on a different timeline.  It's a delicate balance, and a delicate premise for the reader to except, because future Nick is making choices that present Nick can't entirely condone, choices that bring tragedy to one of the D. and D. boys.

It's not one that was exactly to my personal cup of tea-the heist and the violence of the gang members, and my inability to embrace future Nick's plans kept me from truly enjoying it.  That's a mater of taste, though, and not a criticism of the book.   It was fun going back to the 1980s, though, and the characters were great. Nick, being thoughtful and smart, and with a mathematical brain, adds a philosophical depth to the rushing around; here's a quote that captures, pretty well, how he's thinking:

"The equations that govern the universe don't care about 'now'. You can ask them questions about this time or that time, but nowhere in the elegance of their mathematics is there any such thing as 'now'. The idea of one specific moment, one universal 'now' racing along at sixty minutes an hour, slicing through the seconds, spitting the past out behind it and throwing itself into the future... that's just an artefact of consciousness, something entirely of our own making that the cosmos has no use for."

This sort of digression seems like it might slow things down, but it actually helps the story stay conherent, keeping the larger time-travel element of the plot in the forefront of the reader's attention.  

The relationship between Nick and Mia starts to become a romance, but given the circumstances, it doesn't get very far, so on that grounds this would be fine for younger tween-ish readers.  It's also quite short, and quite fast-paced (albeit with the aforesaid digressions), so it is not a daunting book, though it does require some focus to wrap your mind around it all.  Kids who want to read it for the D. and D. might feel a bit sore when gaming gives way to real life adventures, but what there is of the game is solid (and the book's title refers back to a spell that's important to the game...).

It's a self-contained story, but leaves room for more.  And indeed it's on Goodreads as "Impossible Times #1" so more should be coming, which pleases me.

The Square Root of Summer, by Harriet Reuter Hapgood, for TImeslip Tuesday

For those of us for whom summer feels faintly unreal, with its langerous heat and the disaloution of the routines of the school year, and all the work that needs doing outside, here's a romantic timeslip story of in which reality does indeed become unraveled. The Square Root of Summer, by Harriet Reuter Hapgood (Roaring Brook Press 2016), is a story of a teenaged girl's grief and growing-up, the wormholes that are moving her back and for from her past to her present, and her efforts to understand what's happening through math and introspection.

 Last summer, Gottie (short for Margot) lost her grandfather, the cornerstone of her family. Before that, she lost her childhood soulmate, Thomas, when he moved away and left her with a hole in her memory. After that, she lost her heart to her older brother's friend Jason, who ended up dumping her. Now Thomas and Jason are both back in her life, but she is unsure of where her heart stands in relationship to them. And her bottled-up unhappiness and uncertainty is pushing her away from her best friend Sophia.

When wormholes to her past start opening up in front of Gottie, the cork to her bottled-up feelings is popped. And as she revisits her past, though she's mostly just a spectator, things change. Some seem like changes of the better--chance to fix mistakes. Other changes seem disastrous. Gottie, fascinated by theoretical physics, tries to make mathematical sense of what the universe is doing around her, but instead finds both the math, and her forced introspection, starting to make more sense of her own life and choices. And so in the end she comes to the point of being able to hold on to real love, while still mourning what has been lost. I loved Margot's fascination with math. It didn't made mathematical sense to me, but since I figured it wouldn't I didn't try hard; on the other hand, I liked reading the math, and it did work for me as metaphor (although almost everything works for me as metaphor...). I liked the way the time slips played out, forcing Gottie to look at her past choices and how they continue to play out. I wasn't quite convinced that her grief was sufficient catalyst for it all to happen, as us readers are led to believe, but whatever (catalyst shmatalyst, as long as it's a good story). And I'm never really a fan of childhood best beloved friend morphing into true love, but again, it worked for the story. I was somewhat thrown off at first by Americanisms; in a book by an English author set in England I don't expect to find college, kindergarten, and Jello....but the Americanisms only caught my eye the first part of the book, as if some Anglo-averse editor lost interest, because "jumper" instead of sweater, for instance, appeared later on...On the other hand, it's been thirty years since I lived in England, and so maybe they do say college to mean university more commonly these days. Short answer--not my favorite time slip YA, but a pleasant romantic story with interesting time slip physics.

The Opposite of Always, by Justin A. Reynolds, for Timeslip Tuesday

The Opposite of Always, by Justin A. Reynolds (Katherine Tegan Books, March 2019), is a sweet, funny, poignant time travel YA with a lot going on in its briskly turning pages.

Jack, a high school senior, and Kate, a college freshman, meet and fall hard for each other.  Their chemistry is immediate, and their enjoyment of each other's company seems to Jack to promise the possibility to love.  Jack's two best friends, Franny, the boy he's been best buddies with forever, and Jillian, the best friend he was in love with before she started going out with Frannie, hit it off with Kate when they finally get to meet her, and all seems golden when she agrees to go to prom with Jack.  But then Kate doesn't show up on prom night, and Jack is only just able to find her in the hospital to say good-bye before she dies from complications of sickle cell anemia.

That isn't the end of the story.  Jack loops back in time to meet her all over again.  Over and over, trying to save her, and sometimes messing up his friendship with Franny and Jillian, and not saving Kate after all.  Some choices are disasters, others promise that Jack might be able to get through Kate's medical crisis to a happy ending...

Jack and Kate are a great couple, even after seeing their relationship multiple times.  Their lively banter is a delight!  Franny and  Jillian are solid supporting characters, each with their own issues (Franny's dad, for instance, is just getting out of prison, though there's lots more to Franny's story) and any reader would want to have these friends.  It's also nice to see good parents--Jack's mom and dad are supportive and present in Jack's life, and madly in love with each other, and they also are beautifully supportive of Franny.

Though we revisit the same general timeline of events multiple times, there's enough that's different in the repercussions, in the dialogue (these are some of the snappiest teens in their jokes and comebacks and banter I've read), and in Jack's growth as a character (it's not dramatic growth, but rather a growing up a bit, and realizing he can't fix things as if he were a puppeteer).

The cast of characters is diverse; as shown on the cover, Jack and Kate are both black, and Reynolds makes this clear very naturally and gracefully, without dumping direct description all over the place.  Franny is Latinx, Jillian's dad is West African.

I enjoyed it very much, and though it's well over 400 pages long, it only took a few hours to read it because the pages were turning so fast (and of course at one point they turned very quickly indeed to the end, because I had to make sure it turned out all right.  Which it does).  My only regret is that somehow Kate's death, even the first time, didn't make me all that sad, even though I liked her lots.  I'm not sure why this was; perhaps because I went it to the story knowing about the time loop, but I would have liked to have found it more moving.....

We never know why or how the time loop happens, which might bother some people (and bothers Kate herself a little bit when she finds out--she wonders why the universe would bend itself to save her--but that's not something I myself care too much about.

short answer--a really impressive debut, and a great read!

The Clockwork Ghost (York, book 2), by Laura Ruby

The Clockwork Ghost, by Laura Ruby (middle grade/YA, Walden Pond Press, May 15 2019), continues the adventure begun in The Shadow Cipher without missing a beat.  Twins Tess and Theo, and their friend Jaime, are still following a twisting trail of impossible clues through an alternate New York of mechanical marvels.  They still have more questions than they have answers.  And they still have enemies, most notably a nasty piece of work  and his henchwomen who want to eliminate the threat they might pose to greedy plans to revamp the city.

There's no point in recapping the story.  It is a dream of puzzles and ciphers and mechanical machinations as clues are found and followed.  And it is a very bright and vivid sort of dream, that doesn't make sense exactly but never leaves the reader twitchy and wondering if there will be an ending or not. And the clues and such are cool, and are anchored into the history of the city.

But what I loved most were the three kids at the heart of the story--their person-ness was never overwhelmed by the bright and shininess (or sometimes dimness) of what was happening around them.   Their characters don't Develop in a journey from a to b, but rather become more and more strongly who they are.  As a reader who finds it off-putting when action and adventure leaves a character with no time for me to get to know them, I appreciated this lots.

There are also many touches of humor and whimsy that pleased me very much, as did many direct discussions of social justice issues.

And then the ending.  I hope we don't have to wait two more years for the third book!

I liked the first book lots (here's my review) but I liked this one more, mostly because as someone who works professionally in historic preservation the threat to the historic apartment book in the first book was much too uncomfortable for me!  The threat to historic buildings is still here, in a general sense, in this one, but not right in one's face.

In my review of the first book, I said:

"At one point the kids hear the story of a zoo giraffe who escaped captivity and threw itself into the river, and they sit, "watching the water together, imagining giraffes loping gracefully beneath the surface, making their way home" (page 246 of the ARC).  Which I think might be the overarching metaphor of the whole book (or perhaps not), but which in any event is an image I love."

And this feeling I have about the metaphor of the giraffes (impossible home-goings, the beauty of the unreal and impossible, the graceful loneliness of giraffes/people doing their best)  is even stronger now I've read the second book.

If you want a more coherent sort of synopsis, here's the (starred) Kirkus review.

Note on reader age--this is being sold as one of those 10-14 year old sort of books, not clearly YA because there's no romance/sex/growing up in a YA sort of way, but one that will appeal to kids older than MG.  Basically give it to smart thoughtful kids/grown-ups who have the patience not to want answers right away.

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

A Curse so Dark and Lonely, by Brigid Kemmerer

I love reimaginings of Beauty and the Beast; it's always so fun to see what different twists each author brings to the story!  And so it was with great pleasure that I devoured A Curse so Dark and Lonely, by Brigid Kemmerer (Bloomsbury YA, January 29, 2019), because her twists are great fun and add considerably to the basic story.

"Beauty" is Harper, a girl from our world, with a family in trouble, cerebral palsy, and a very strong will.  "Beast" is Rhen,, who lives in a castle haunted by the curse of a nasty enchantress, with his faithful Commander of Guards, Grey, his only companion.  The breaking of the curse requires the usual love between Beauty and Beast, but in this retelling, Rhen is only a beast for part of each season of the curse, and reverts to human back at the beginning of a new season, over and over again.  Grey can pass into our world, from whence he has brought many young women, hoping one will break the curse.  Harper wasn't a girl he intended to bring back, but when she witnessed what looked to her like a girl being kidnapped, she intervened...and got taken instead.

Harper is determined get home....and smart enough to realize how impossible that is pretty quickly.  Rhen (still human) and Grey and Harper, alone in the castle with Harper gradually picking up the clues that things are terribly awry, makes for good reading all by itself (they are all interesting characters, hiding things from each other and themselves), but this is just the introduction.

Where this retelling really broke the mold, and I loved it for doing so, was acknowledging that there's a world outside the cursed castle.  Rhen is the prince of his country, and his people have been suffering, and though he took action at the beginning to try to ameliorate things by closing the boarder, an enemy invasion is imminent.  The closed boarders and lack of cohesive government have caused more mundane problems as well, and Rhen has thought there was nothing he could do about any of it and so he didn't bother trying.

Harper blazes through this misconception like a meteor.  For instance, if your castle produces magic food every day, you feed it to the starving masses.  And her fresh perspective works wonders in Rhen.  His brain, frozen by the bloody horror of his situation, starts to think of the bigger political picture, and what he can and cannot do, and the story become one not just of fairy tale romance, but of Political Machinations/Desperate Schemes, during which romance may (or may not) be happening.
Viz the romance--this isn't actually a love story, though there's enough tension and maybe love in the future not do disappoint the romantic.   I appreciated that Harper, who is in fact a kidnapping victim, doesn't start swooning right and left over either of the two handsome men she is stuck with.  Instead, she thinks about them, finding things to question, and things to admire, in both. And she brings hope to both that there might be an end to the curse....as all three of them do some hard thinking about what they are responsible for, and what they aren't, and what they can do with the choices they have been given.

So lots of interesting twisting of the parent story (there are more that I didn't mention) make this a fabulous read for fairy tale fans, fans of desperate political/military maneuvering, and fans of slow burning trust into (?) love in the future.  Harper is perhaps a bit too good to be true, but her strengths and smarts allow her to play her role convincingly.  The author worked hard to make this a realistic portrayal of someone with CP, and there are things that are hard for her to do as a result (dancing, for instance), but her CP doesn't define her, or keep her from accomplishing what she sets out to do.  Thinking about this, I'm very glad that she struggled with knife throwing (one way to pass the time in an enchanted castle where you are being held against your will), because it kept her from being too perfect (she never does get really good at knife throwing).

If Harper is maybe too good to be true, the evil fairy character is too one-dimensionally bad to be true.  Her motivations are petty (at least, that is how they are presented to the reader) and she's sadistic with no clear point to it all (she reminded me of the evil computer overlord in "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream").  Maybe there is more to her that we didn't get to see here, but it may also be that she's just a really villainous person because that's how she rolls.  I like my villains to have, if not possible redemption arcs, at least a backstory that's not petty....so I'll hope for the former.

It's a long book, almost 500 pages, but the twists keep adding interest, and keep coming, so it didn't feel dragged out.  Most of the story is set in the magic world, but toward the end Washington D.C., and new characters, come into it, bringing fresh energy to the story (and a sweet gay couple). Give yourself a nice long weekend to read it in, and then join me in waiting for the next book (at least one sequel has been promised).

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

On the Wasteland, by Ruth M. Arthur, for Timeslip Tuesday

I was so sure that On the Wasteland, by Ruth M. Arthur, illustrated by Margery Gill, would finally be the book of hers that I truly loved.  The plot hits all the right notes for me.  The heroine, Betony, is a smart, orphaned girl drawn to the lonely wasteland at the edge of the Suffolk coast, and happily for her the orphanage gives her freedom to wander around in it alone (nice orphanage!).   She makes friends with the old couple whose house is an overturned boat (this isn't something I actually look for in books, but it is a nice touch).   This friendship leads her to working part time in the manor house (for which I give it bonus points) where she's given the run of the library (lots of bonus points).  And there's the handsome teenaged grandson of the lady of the manor, with romance to come hinted at (this would have gotten more bonus points back when I was a young teen myself.  Hardened cynical me rolls eyes, but in a kind way).

And on top of all that, there's a time slip plotline--in the Wasteland, Betony is sometimes swept into the past, when Vikings were settling in Suffolk (not exactly invading, but not invited by the Saxons either, so not peaceful).  At first she is just an observing shadow, but as she grows from child to teen, her immersion in the past becomes deeper, and the Vikings start to see her, and she steps into the role of Estrith, a girl her own age.  Her Viking family starts to matter more and more to her, though the past is sometimes disturbing.  

It is also disturbing that there have been quite a number of people before Betony who were found drowned in the Wasteland.  

So I should have loved this book to pieces, but once again Ruth M. Arthur failed to deliver that for me, and I ended up simply enjoying it quite a bit.   In this case, it is because Betony is narrating the story from a future point of view (for instance, she checks her journal to make sure she's remembering things the way they happened).  So it's clear that we, the reader, aren't living it with Betony; she's telling us a story that she already lived through, with lots of flashbacks.  And this lack of immediacy and lack of closeness made me not care as deeply about her and her world as I might otherwise.  

The other issue is that, except for the threat of drowning hanging over the time travel, the time travel doesn't do anything much to advance the story or Betony's character arc.  The only noticeable result is that she decides to be an archaeologist/early medieval historian.  I like a nice bit of "time travel as tourism" but to be really good time travel, it needs to accomplish something other than provide a bit of family time and some career counseling.  And when it is floaty magic sort of time travel like this, I really like it  to have some emotional hook to the present  that gives a reason for it be happening over and over again beyond "there were Vikings here once."  The only hook here was that Betony was a Suffolk native yearning for family connections, which doesn't much explain why it was Vikings and not 18th century farmers.  Oh well.

Like I said, though, I did enjoy it; it was a pleasant read.  And there was one part I found especially cool--I myself have family who came from Suffolk to Virginia in the 17th century; they were Knotts, and one of the characters in the book is surnamed Nott, and they talk about how that is one of the local Viking lineages.  However, I spent a summer in Suffolk (on an archaeological dig at Sutton Hoo), and didn't time travel one single bit, even when lying on top of a burial mound floating like an island in the night mist, so Betony wins, even though I am just as much Viking as her.

I stuck both middle grade and YA on it as lables for this post; it's suitable for both ages, although they'll get different things out of it--starry eyed wonder of time travel and romance vs. story of a lonely cranky teenager.

The cover at the top of the post is from the Goodreads edition it doesn't really fit the book much at all.  Why have Margery Gill as an illustrator if she doesn't do a cover with people? Having typed that, I checked the cover of my edition--rather unappealing 1970s teenage love--turns out to be in fact by M.G., which just goes to show.

The 48, by Donna Hosie

The 48, by Donna Hosie (Holiday House, October 2018) is a fun time-travel story that will especially appeal to fans of Tudor England!  I was pleased to see it nominated for the YA Speculative Fiction Cybils, for which I was a panelist, because I very much enjoyed her Devil's Intern series, and though I didn't like this quite as much, it was still a good read.

Some time in the future, twin brothers Charlie and Alex are young members of the 48, a secretive, almost paramilitary group that uses time travel to shape events in such a way that the influence of religion on the course of history is pruned back.  The twins are thrilled to get their first assignment--travelling back to the court of Henry VIII to make sure he doesn't marry Jane Seymour (I'm not exactly sure what difference this would have made, and Charlie and Alex don't seem to be sure either, not that they give it much thought.  But I was willing to play along).

The 48 (the organization, not the book) doesn't pull its punches--if the marriage can't be avoided by a deft social and political manipulation, they are expected to eliminate Jane directly.  But they aren't killers.  Nor are they well prepared for the cut-throat  machinations of Henry's court.  They scramble to find their feet, though their feet, once found, keep getting swept out from under them.  The court is not the only place where backstabbing and treachery is rampant.  Alice, a fellow trainee and ex of one of the twins has travelled back in time too, an event that makes no sense at first, but which is tied to a rebellion to the organization.

Charlie and Alex are pretty much failures at their mission. And since they finding themselves liking Jane lots, the thought of killing her doesn't appeal.  Will they survive threats against their lives from the Tudor court, and the anger of their superiors if they fail at their task? Are their careers as time-travelling manipulators over before they can complete even one mission?

The story is told from the alternating perspectives of Charlie, Alex, and young Lady Margaret, one of Queen Anne's ladies-in-waiting.  Margaret's is the first voice, and I was a little disappointed to see her fading to somewhat peripheral, one-note character, and I would have liked Alice's point of view too! She struck me as being much smarter than the boys! That being said, the boys were engaging narrators, and I found it interesting to watch them grow up and start thinking about what they were being asked to do (and there is a sweet gay romance for one of them, which was fun).

The details of the past are vivid, and lavishly applied, and in good time travel style, there's a lot of observation of all the things that are different, but there's not so much of this that it slows down the story.  The plot relies on social tensions (like treachery and attempted murder) more than on major events (until close to the end), so if you like sweeping Happenings, you might find it a bit slow (I don't have this problem).

If you like the Tudors, you'll probably enjoy this (unless you are a Tudor expert, which I am not, in which case you might disagree with the minutiae of the history...although Hosie seems to have done her research pretty thoroughly!)

disclaimer: review copy received for Cybils consideration.

Fire & Heist, by Sarah Beth Durst

Fire & Heist, by Sarah Beth Durst is a great book for the younger YA set that twists dragons, a dangerous heist, and a portal fantasy into a family/friendship/coming of age real-world framework.

Imagine that some people in today's world are actually fire breathing wyverns; not shapeshifting into dragon form like their ancestors, but still busily hoarding gold (and stealing it from each other) and being all wyverny in a somewhat snooty way (but with no scales...).  Sky is a wyvern, and her family used to be very close to the top of the draconic pecking order. But when a heist of her mother's went totally wrong, the family has been shunned by the other wyvern families.  And her mother never came home.

Sky's boyfriend Ryan, and all her high school wyvern pals, have cut her off.  She wants her mother back.  And she wants to know what secrets her father and her three older brothers are keeping from her.  So she sets off to find what her mother was trying to steal from Ryan's father, and steal it herself to redeem her family, and maybe find her mother too and bring her home.  A good heist, especially when there are both magical and technological obstacles in the way, needs a good team, and Sky assembles one--Ryan, who only shunned her to save her from his father (or so he says), a wyvern magician, and a human classmate, Gabrielle, who researches interesting things as a hobby, and who was there to befriend Sky when her wyvern cohort abandoned her (I love Gabrielle!).

But Sky's heist doesn't go as planned....(this is where the portal fantasy part comes in, but I don't want to be too spoilery….).  Dragons are involved, lots of them...

And then there's a happy ending!

Back when I was 13, YA fantasy wasn't really a thing; my local library had maybe 4 fantasy books on the three small shelves labeled "YA."  (The only one I remember being shelved there is The Blue Sword). One went straight from the magical stories in the kids' section to Dragonriders of Pern etc.   Today of course there's lots of YA speculative fiction....and I've read a lot of it, but many of the books don't seem written for readers like 13-year-old me; the concerns are mostly more realistically adult than I would have wanted, since I mostly wanted escapism.  I almost never say about a YA book that I want to give it to young teen Charlotte, but this one is just perfect for the sort of 13 year old I was--not ready to think about growing up, dreaming of dragons and unicorns and kissing cute boys (all equally fantastical).  And grown-up me enjoyed it just fine too!

So if you weren't or aren't that sort of reader, you might find this reads a bit young to you.  But Sarah Beth Durst's writing is lots of fun regardless, Sky is a snappy sort of heroine, and the premise is lovely, so give it a try!

disclaimer: review copy received from the author

Any Second, by Kevin Emerson

I was very impressed by Kevin Emerson's middle grade sci fi story, Last Day on Mars.  So when I saw he had a new book coming out this fall, my ears pricked up.  Any Second (Crown Books, November 2018) is neither middle grade nor speculative fiction, being instead realistic YA, but it's not like I only read mg spec fic, and so I approached it with eager interest, and was not disappointed.  (This one needs trigger warnings, for rape, physical abuse of a child, self-harm, and suicide).

This is the story of two teenagers who met at a mall during dire circumstances.  One, Eli, was there to blow the mall up after being made into the weapon of a crazed zealot after four years of being  brainwashed, tortured, and raped.  Maya was the girl who stood next to him and kept him from letting go of the release mechanism that would detonate the bomb.  Almost a year latter, both are traumatized.  Eli has been reunited with has family, and is trying not to drown in post-traumatic stress.  Maya is also trying to live in the present, and not let her obsessive hair pulling be her one release mechanism (she was dealing with mental health issues even before the mall, and now things are worse....).

And then fate rolls the dice, and they end up at the same high school.  None of the students are supposed to know who Eli is, but Maya recognizes him.  The two are drawn to each other--they were both at that same defining moment, and they are both trying to move away from it.  But will they help or hurt each other?

They aren't left to peacefully discover which it will be.  The evil zealot who kidnapped Eli is still on the loose, and Eli lives with police protection.  Maya is in a toxic relationship with another girl, that's holding her back on her road to recovery.  And Eli makes the worst possible friend at high school--a socially ostracized boy who became obsessed with Eli's story, and who fantasizes, like the kidnapper, of striking a blow against the "sheep." When he finds out who Eli really is, his obsession grows.

So not a comfort read.  But though what has happened, and what is happening, to these three teenagers is grim, it manages not to be a grim book.  It has more a feel of spring slowly coming after long winter.  Maya and Eli practice their coping strategy of living in the present, and really noticing things around them, and their growing friendship, so improbable, brings both comfort.  It is uplifting to see them getting stronger.  Things end for Maya and Eli on a hopeful, forward-looking note.

It is also a very gripping page turner with the reader terribly anxious about the kidnapper and the third kid who might or might not go off...So even if you mostly read MG spec fic, you'll find this a good read!

disclaimer: review copy received from the author

Honor Among Thieves, by Rachel Caine and Ann Aguirre

I have family coming to stay for Thanksgiving, and one of the most pressing things I need to do is to read all the books I have out from the library because my house looks like someone has vomited books all over it.  In this diligent spirit, I have spent the last four hours reading Honor Among Thieves, by Rachel Caine and Ann Aguirre (Katherine Tegan Books, YA, February 2018), in a single sitting, all 465 pages of it, so clearly I found it engrossing as all get out!

A ways in the future, humanity was on the verge of wiping itself out when the Leviathans appeared from out among the stars, saving us from ourselves.  All they wanted in exchange was to chose 100 young men and women each year  to voyage with them.  Most came home after one year.  Others journeyed on, and did not return.

Black teenager Zara Cole lives as a petty criminal in one of the few unrehabed parts of urban Earth, and so she never expected to be one of the chosen ones.  But she can't refuse the golden ticket.  So she finds herself, with another young woman, Beatriz, on board Nadim, sentient, living creature who flies through space.  It's a bit of an adjustment to be living inside Nadim, but Zara feels strangely at  home, and as her bond with Nadim deepens, she can't imagine being anywhere else.

But though the media have spun the arrival of the Leviathans into a glorious deliverance, Zara, suspicious by nature and nurture, has always wondered if there's a con at work.  And indeed, all is not well out in space...

Beatriz, Zara, and Nadim play of each other very well as they get to know each other, and I enjoyed watching them bond.  There's smart-alecky bantering to lighten the mood, some moments where I was deeply moved, and intellectual pleasure from guessing where the plot was going (which wasn't hard to do).   Nadim is a bit like a manic pixie dream girl in ungendered sentient ship form, and it's a bit of an insta love between Nadim and Zara, but I was able to take this in stride.  Zara and Beatriz both have considerable abilities, both intellectual and physical, that are almost a bit much, but since they were chosen out of all of humanity, I felt it was allowable for them to be exceptional.

All in all it was a package of things I enjoy, and it took no effort at all to sit and read it more or less straight through.

Shadow of the Fox, by Julie Kagawa

I have been busily reading YA speculative fiction for the past few weeks, in my role as a 1st round Cybils Awards panelist in that category, so busy reading I haven't given much attention to reviewing...which I find annoying.  Happily the book I just finished, Shadow of the Fox, by Julie Kagawa  (Harlequin Teen, Oct. 2018), is one I enjoyed, and I have no trouble figuring out why I enjoyed it, so it is easy to blog about!  

I was doubtful, at first.  I liked the first point of view character, young Suki, and she dies almost immediately, and I was all, uh, what? But nevertheless I persisted.  And yay!  none of the other pov characters die (at least, not in this first book of the series).  Which is good, because one of them I liked very much indeed, and the other I am keenly interested in.

The character I liked very much is Yumeko, a half human, half kitsune (fox shapeshifter) girl raised by monks in an isolated temple.  Though her childhood was lonely, the monks were not unkind, not even when the kitsune half of her rose to the surface to play tricks.   It's a horrible shock for her, as indeed it would be for anyone, when her temple home is attacked by demons.  They kill all the monks, but not before the master of the monastery entrusts her with a fragment of a magical scroll (the sort of magical scroll fragment that, if reunited with its fellow fragments, would bring disaster to the world if it fell into the wrong hands), and tells her to run to a second temple.

So Yumeko flees into the night, not sure how to find this other temple, just as POV Character 2 arrives.  Tatsumi is a young man of the Shadow Clan, who was made into their weapon (serving his clan masters with almost no free will left) during the course of a hellish childhood.  He wields a demonic sword, and must constantly keep all emotion in check lest the demon get free.  Like the monk-slaughtering demons, he's looking for the scroll.  Instead he finds the destroyed monastery and the demons, who he kills, and Yumeko, who his sword would like to kill if he let it, which he doesn't (it's not a nice sword).  Yumeko tells him the scroll was already sent away, but that she must warn the monastery where it was sent.  And he decides she might be a useful tool in getting the scroll, so he agrees to travel with her and help her on her journey.  Help is needed, because an evil witch of great power (the one who sent the demons) wants them to fail...

So that's the set up.  The journey is the bulk of the story, with various adventures and new companions along the way, and it's good reading.  What makes it especially interesting is that Yumeko is trusting, naïve, and good-hearted, and her warmth causes chinks to develop in Tatsumi's control of his emotions...very, very slowly.  She slows their journey down to help people, for instance, which is a novel idea for him, and she tries not to hurt him when she cleans his wounds (wounds happen) which blows his mind.  No one ever tried not to hurt him before.    

Here's what I especially like about the way their relationship is built--Yumeko gets to stay a young teen in her perceptions; she's not swooning into insta love, and she gets to start growing out of her naiveite gradually. She's not an adult in young teen clothing.  And Tatsumi  does not have an aha moment of love, which would have been annoying and out of character, though it's clear to the reader that that is where we are headed....he basically only gets to the point of "I don't want to be told to kill her" but that's huge for him....So lots to look forward to in the next book on that side of things!

Likewise, not a lot of progress is made on the whole quest they are on.  So if you set a high value on  briskness in plot, with the things that happen all push the main plot along, you might become restive at times.  I myself am happy for things to meander a bit if I'm enjoying the characters, and I don't mind descriptions of meals....and there were bits that were actually funny. There's not a lot of sarcasm in YA fantasy (Sarah Rees Brennan is the only author I can think of for sarcasm, recommendations for others welcomed), and I did very much appreciate the sprinkles of it here!  It is one of the most entertaining YA fantasies I've read for a while; dark things happen, but I was probably grinning quite a bit during the non-dark parts.

What I did not enjoy was the ending, which is basically the first book stopping.  If I had the next book on hand I'd keep reading, probably straight through till I finished it...but that not being possible, I will wait with anticipation.  

My Plain Jane, by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows

I never liked Jane Eyre, the character--I thought she was a bit of a drip.  I bravely re-read the book several times though as a teenager (at least it was better than Wuthering Heights....).  So the idea of a reinvention of Jane's story with ghosts and humor, both of which were lacking in the original, appealed.  My Plain Jane, by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows (Harper Teen, June 2018), improves on the original by adding those elements, and also by not making Jane the central heroine.  

Instead, the honor goes to a girl equally small, plain, and susceptible to romance--Charlotte Bronte, a school friend of Jane Eyre.  The destinies of the two school friends become entangled when Jane choose to become a governess in Mr. Rochester's household instead of a professional ghost hunter, and Charlotte, who'd love to hunt ghosts but can't see them, follows her there.  She's determined to persuade Jane to change her mind at the behest of the book's hero, the young and attractive (though neither tall, dark, or conventionally handsome) Mr. Blackwood.   Charlotte is busily writing Jane Eyre, the gothic romance, in scattered moments of peace between alarms and excursions, while Jane is falling hard for Mr. Rochester....and in the meantime there's a Sinister Plot afoot that involves the safety of the whole kingdom....

It is a lot more fun than the original, but fans of that book won't, I think, mind the gentle fun poked at it.  And it stands alone rather nicely as historical fiction with ghosts and authorial asides to liven things up.  Charlotte is a strong enough character that the book is able to power through its (slightly one note) premise, and this Jane is less of a drip than the original.  The ghosts are good plot elements, and the evil plan that must be foiled is a perfectly adequate plot point.

So basically, I didn't personally love it, but I did enjoy it lots; it diverted me very nicely!