The Elliott Bay Underground

What I Leave Behind

by Alison McGhee

At 199 pages (only half of which contain actual text), Alison McGhee’s newest creation, What I Leave Behind, is short and sweet and heavy all at the same time. Written as 100 different page-long excerpts, this story weaves through and around time in order to paint a poignant image of one troubled teenage boy wandering the LA streets.

Missing his father and his best friend, Will finds solace only at his job working at the local dollar store. Will’s open heart and incredible kindness eventually leads him back to the locales he’s been trying to avoid.

Though this book deals with intense topics such as suicide and rape, the overall tone is hopeful which makes What I Leave Behind a great gateway novel into heavier YA material for younger teens. I do feel as though the writer glosses over these mature themes and simplifies them beyond what is realistic, but it nonetheless creates another much needed space to discuss important issues.

The Dead Enders

by Erin Saldin

If you’re looking for a fast-paced novel to make you “feel all the feels”, this reviewer would highly recommend The Dead Enders for your next read. Centered around four rising seniors, one sleepy beach town, and three glorious months of summer filled with possibilities, Erin Saldin’s newest novel is filled with parties, adventure, weekenders*, and regret. 

Though I find the characters quite archetypal, their feelings of hopelessness and purposelessness is so intense that it floats off the page right into the readers’ subconscious, leaving me with an odd mixture of gratefulness, guilt, and yearning.  

While not Shakespearean-ly poetic, Saldin’s writing is able to evoke a great deal of emotion through witty closing lines and cryptic 3rd person passages. “Our only hope lies in knowing what can wound us.” 

One thing that made The Dead Enders difficult for me to read was that many of the main themes (arson, beach town, mystery, first romance) are similar to one of my all-time favorite YA novels, We Were Liars by E. Lockhart. As I was reading, I couldn’t stop myself from comparing the two and finding again and again that The Dead Enders lacked that little extra WOW! Factor that made me love We Were Liars.

* In case you’re unfamiliar with the term, ‘weekenders’ come down to their mansion-cabins on the lake every summer, throw ragers and spread gossip, only to go back to their penthouses in the city after Labor Day, leaving the locals to clean up the mess.

Genuine Fraud

by E. Lockhart

E. Lockhart’s previous novel, We Were Liars is one of my favorites, so I was overjoyed when I saw she had written a new psychological thriller! Genuine Fraud is a tone (or two or three) darker than the author’s previous work, which was exciting and refreshing. However, unlike We Were Liars, it lacked the sense of shock and overwhelmed-ness that made me want to go back and re-read the book again to try and further understand it. This is not to say that Genuine Fraud is a bad book; I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, and the creative premise of time moving backwards was highly engaging.

When I began reading Genuine Fraud I found the main character insanely relatable and badass. As I read on and the story became darker, I became less and less able to relate to her as her decisions became (in my mind) less rational. I found her too flawed to be able to empathize with. I don’t think that necessarily is a bad thing, but if you’re the kind of person who gets easily annoyed by book characters- this book is not for you.

Everless

by Sara Holland

Set in Sempera, this country is fueled by ‘blood irons’, which means the currency comes from binding people's blood to iron through alchemy. The story follows Jules Ember, a seventeen year old girl who used to live as a servant in Everless, the home to the aristocratic family known as the Gerlings. On the run because of a fateful accident, Jules and her Papa are barely hanging on. She returns to Everless to earn blood iron, and begins serving the Queen and her ward Ina Gold, who is set to marry Roan Gerling, Jules old companion. As she discovers secrets that threaten everything she thought she knew, Jules embarks on a search for the truth.

This book was surprisingly really good. I was a little off-put when the subject of Alchemy and Sorcery came up, but I think Sara Holland handled it in such a way that I wasn’t disinterested. The plot line took quite a while to develop, so for the first quarter of the book it seemed like I was just going through the motions with no real rising actions, just a lot of exposition. But that being said the character development was done really well, and so was the plot twists. I couldn’t stop reading because I was enamored with finding out the truth behind Jules lineage. Something I struggle with is book series, so just be warned that this ends on a cliff hanger.

Ash Princess

by Laura Sebastian

Set in a land called Astrea, Theodosia saw her mother, the Fire Queen, murdered when she was only seven. Her world shattered around her, as her beautiful land was overtaken by Kalovaxia, a country ran by the murderous conquering Kaiser. Set ten years after this fateful day, her identity has been stripped from her and she is only allowed to be known as Thora, the Ash princess, a symbol to show Astrea is gone, and the Kaiser’s trophy. The Kaiser has always given her little games, to show her devotion to the Kalovaxians and not the Astrean people. Even worse he has brain washed her to hate the Astreans , for every rebellion in the country her back is met with the whip. One day, he gives her the task to kill the last Guardian, a person with supernatural powers blessed by the Gods to protect Astrea, this man’s death at her hands affects her so deeply she can no longer stay as docile Thora. She must rise and be Theodosia, the next Fire Queen.

This book is probably one of the best well written pieces of literature I have read in a while. The way Laura Sebastian was able to flawlessly integrate the conflicting thoughts of Theo/Thora was amazing. I’ve never read a book where a character can be so dimensional and so life-like that they can possibly be two different people. The Kaiser manipulated Theodosia through fear until she succumbed to be this small, broken girl, and all the while she’s constantly internally struggling with her true identity.  It’s amazing how she made me feel the struggles and the triumphs just as much as Theo did.

On another note, the whole magic portion of the book was tastefully done. I, personally, do not enjoy overly done magic, and books based solely on magic. But this book did a terrific job of incorporating magical elements while still making it super relatable and realistic. The inclusion of Guardians and spiritgems (the stones their power derives from), could have easily swallowed the whole book and diluted its story line. But its inclusion as a device/tool for Theo and the gang made the use of it almost necessary for the intricate layers of the country/premise.

The Chaos of Standing Still

by Jessica Brody

Jessica Brody’s novel, The Chaos of Standing Still, is the perfect example of why not to judge a book by its cover. A light blue paperback with the title written in all caps sans-serif font gives the impression that what lies behind the cover is not a fiery romance adventure, but rather a collection of a lifetime of physics research by an esteemed (yet potentially insane) Ivy League professor. Thank goodness my motto is “judge a book by the synopsis on the back” or I never would have picked this page-turner off the shelf. 

The story jumps in and out of the present as it follows Ryn throughout the terminals of Denver International Airport on New Years Eve. Stuck in the airport due to a massive snowstorm on the (almost) 1-year anniversary of her best friend, Lottie’s, death, Ryn is desperate to get “home” to San Francisco ASAP when she runs into the tall, dark, and handsome stranger Xander. After they accidentally switch phones (what are the chances that two teenagers would both have the same Dr. Who phone case and happen to run into each other on a people mover? I’d say about 1/100000000000000.) they soon fall head-over-snowboots in love with one another. While this aspect of the story was rather cliché, their love story gets more interesting as Ryn keeps hearing Lottie’s voice in her head and it comes to light that Xander may not be the perfect guy Ryn originally thought he was. 

Throw in a precocious 14-year-old prodigy, flashbacks to Ryn’s crazy adventures with Lottie, two crazy airport co-workers, and an airport-hotel new years eve party and you have the plot to The Chaos of Standing Still. 

While I overall enjoyed reading this book, I was extremely disappointed by one aspect of it. On the back cover synopsis, I was promised “a possible Illuminati conspiracy hidden within the airport.” While the topic did arise, it was not a major plot point by far and this greatly disappointed my conspiracy-theory-loving soul. On that note, I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a fun, original read, but I wouldn’t go across the country scouring every airport Hudson Newsstand in the country for a copy. Maybe just the Denver airport one. ;)

It’s Not Me, It’s You  by Stephanie Kate Strohm

Jane, Unlimited

by Kristen Cashore

This book is definitely going on one of my "what the hell did I just read" shelves, although I haven't decided if it's going on the "in a good way" shelf or "in a bad way" shelf. Because I haven't actually decided if I liked it or not. So this review is going to go rating-less for now, because, like I said, I really have no idea how I feel about it.

The Good:

-This book is being described as choose your own adventure-esque, and I think that's pretty accurate, but throw in some major Clue vibes, minus all the bets with actual money on who the murderer is and the kicking people under the table to try and make them look guilty (although, that could just be how my family plays it). But that sounds like an awesome combination, right? (the choose your own adventure and Clue, not bets and kicking).

-I'm a sucker for books written kind of bizarrely, and this book is no exception. 

-The characters are freaking FANTASTIC. So well written and unique; their personalities don't start to blend into each other, and they stand out and are complex and realistic and just generally really great.

-I love books where you can watch all the tiny, seemingly unimportant threads slowly get tied together, and this book did that.

The Bad:

-It's just so WEIRD. And I'm not sure if I like this book's brand of weird.

-The cover is really, really awful. I'm sorry, but it is. I thought it was one of those simple covers that ARCs sometimes get before the actual book gets released, but nope, it's the actual cover, and I just...who thought this cover looked good? Like really. 

-The book did drag at times. Enough that I almost put it down, because while I do love watching threads come together, it can get a bit slow at times. And it did get slow.

So yeah. Not quite sure how I feel about this book. My main reaction to finishing it was "huh, that was...weird", so I'm not really sure if I liked it or if I disliked it or what. Maybe I need to give it a couple of weeks and try again.

The Disappearances

by Emily Bain Murphy

So, I went into this expecting some sort of modern ghost story (because apparently I only skim synopsises [synopsi?]), but it's actually A) set in the 1940s, and not a ghost story in the most traditional sense, but it still kind of is in the abstract.

Now, I'm not really the hugest fan of books like this; light paranormal, horror-ish (but more in a that's unsettling way and less in a true horror way) , because they honestly tend to bore me. But I actually really liked this book!

It was haunting and lovely and atmospheric, with a melancholy air hanging over all of it. This book is absolutely heartbreaking at points, but it's all written so wonderfully, everything smooth and flowing and exactly right for the characters. And oh, the characters. I love 'em. They are so fabulously written and complex and wonderful, and the side characters don't fall flat, don't just get shunted to the side, and are just generally fantastic.

The thing keeping me from giving this five stars is the excessive amount of subplots. THERE ARE SO MANY. I was having a hard time keeping track of what was going on with who and who was doing what and why were they doing that again?

But, other than that, I really liked this book, which was a nice surprise because like I said, it isn't really my kind of book! It's a very solid debut by an author who I'll watch out for in the future.

4/5 stars

Royal Bastards

by Andrew Shvarts

I've been looking forward to this book since it was pretty much announced, so the fact that my reaction to it was "ehhh", I'm kind of disappointed. (read: really disappointed)

Now, I loved the first 40ish percent of it! There's all the things you expect out of an entertaining fantasy novel: snark and food and magic and betrayal and blood and all of that fun stuff, and I liked the characters are first! I really did! (not Miles, though. Miles gave me a ~vibe, and it wasn't a good one), but then we hit a spot a little bit before the middle and I just...it lost what was making me enjoy it. 

The characters, which were great at the beginning, slowly started to wear on me as the story went on, because they literally NEVER CHANGED. They were the exact same characters as they were on the first page they were introduced. And supposedly this "let's hike across the country!" thing they were doing took months, so, uh...you'd be different people. Especially if you just watched your parents straight-up murder someone.

And, honestly? The plot was pretty predicable. I knew what would happen and who would do this to who and who would die, and I was hoping that the book would surprise me, it just...didn't.

I also have A LOT of problems with Miles. For one, the whole "unrequited crush since childhood" thing. Please stop writing characters like this. If he has had a crush on you since you two were seven and the boy still hasn't grown out of it at like seventeen, there's a problem there. IT'S REALLY CREEPY. And honestly? Totally unrealistic. And for him to be mad enough that you told him no, you don't want to date him, that he goes and does something that's pretty much a guarentee to you getting killed...NO. EW. 

So yeah. First half of this book: I really liked! The rest of it? Not really.

3/5 stars

Meet Cute

edited by Jennifer L. Armentrout

This book stands up to it's title, because it's really, really cute. REALLY CUTE. I can't get over how cute it is. 

Also, in the name of total honestly, I didn't actually know the term "meet cute" before I started this book, so I finished the first few stories and was like WHAT THE HECK, IT JUST STOPS? AS THEY MEET? and then I googled what a meet cute was...and yeah. Makes sense. (also, the name of the butcher in iZombie makes SO MUCH more sense now)

So, the basic gist of this book is that it's a whole bunch of teenagers, meeting their love interests; but only their first meeting. Their meet cutes. And they were CUTE. These are little tiny snippets of the beginnings of relationships, and they varied from romcom romantic to friends to lovers.

The stories were wonderfully inclusive, too, which is fantastic (not all white cishet stories!), and I don't think there was one story that I didn't enjoy. Some did fall a bit more flat than others, and of course I have my favorites, like the one about two girls meeting during a layover in an airport, but this is easily the best anthology I've read. Anthologies and I don't really get along because I tend to only like two or three out of a dozen or so stories, but this anthology is a solid, thoroughly enjoyable one.

4/5 stars

Forest of a Thousand Lanterns

by Julie C. Dao

Okay, so I went into this knowing that it seems like literally everyone who has read this book has adored it, and so I went into it thinking I'd probably adore it, too, because the last few super-super hyped books I've read (THUG, When Dimple Met Rishi, Geekerella,) I all really enjoyed. But apparently I'm in the minority on this one, because...uh...I really didn't like it. Here's the thing: yes, this book is beautifully written. I wouldn't be surprised if the author came from poetry origins. But, there's a point where everything gets too beautiful, and you're left just kind of blinking at the book, because what the hell does that even mean??? To put it shortly: Purple prose. Purple prose everywhere. But I'll get to that in a bit. Why I Did Not Like This Book: -There is such a emphasis on beauty! Pretty much every single time Xifeng is mentioned, something is said about her lotus lips or perfect skin or glowing eyes. And yes, I get that this is a Snow White retelling with Xifeng as the Evil Queen, but really, it started to drag. A lot. I get it. This girl is beautiful, almost inhumanly so, and that she causes heads to turn everywhere she goes, ect. ect. ect. -And that leads to the next thing: so much girl hate. The very first girl we're introduced to, the first time we meet her she's flirting with Xifeng's boyfriend/lover/courtship person, and Xifeng gets jealous at first, then thinks Wei would never fall for such a "plain, moon-faced girl" with Xifeng around. All the women Xifeng meet (with the exception of one) hate her on sight because of how beautiful she is, or are instantly jealous, again, because of how beautiful she is. And, really? That's not how most girls are. 

-The romance? Yep. Let me just say one thing about Wei: NOPE. That sums up my feels for him, and his relationship with Xifeng quite nicely. -Oh, and speaking of? YAY ANOTHER SEXIST FANTASY WORLD, WHAT WE ALL WANT. You are literally BUILDING a world. WHY does it have to be sexist? We get enough of that in the real world already. -The worldbuilding was seriously lacking. I mean, it's Chinese-inspired, with a couple of neighboring kingdoms that I think are Japan and Indonesia inspired, and that the kingdom/world/city/whatever is run by the Emperor and Empress, but other than that? No clue. I know they have a religion, but I have no idea what the religion is. I know they have social classes, but how those social classes interact? No idea. Money? What's money? Trade routes? Yeah, but going and coming from where? -There are weird time jumps all over the place. And I have no idea how the timeline works. At one point, it seems like Xifeng has only been somewhere for a few days, but then apparently she's been there a month? Then years have gone past suddenly? I spent the entire book super confused.

The ending felt very, very rushed. So rushed. And not in a good, exciting way, more in a "the author suddenly got really excited to finish this novel" and "Pacing? What pacing?" sort of way.

SPOILER IN BRACKETS

[[ so...Xifeng is apparently the daughter of the Serpent God, who is apparently evil, which means she is apparently evil, and now suddenly miss Empress Head-in-the-clouds knows she's evil, but then the Empress gives birth to a daughter (Snow White...or, excuse me, White Jade), and it seems like she's about to die, but nope, it says next paragraph she lives for another two years, and has never talked to Xifeng since giving birth to Jade, even though she somehow "knows" that Xifeng is Now Suddenly Evil?? And this all happens in probably less than three chapters. ]]

-Also, remember how I mentioned the purple prose? Sometimes I can ignore it, but this time...I would be reading, and then there would be a phrase just so odd and overly pretty that it would disrupt whatever small reading flow I had managed to get into to. I'm not talking Laini Taylor's truly beautiful walks-the-line-of-purple-prose here. I'm talking really, really odd. "Wei buried his face in her hair, a fish ensnared in a dark net." Okay, a little weird, but whatever. "The woman's essence filled her like air." Seems vaguely sexual, which gets even weirder considering it's sharing a paragraph with the phrase "her skin vomits a crimson river". "The demon queen turned her face upward, her eyes reflecting the dreams of the stars." I'm sorry, but what does that even mean??? -And, finally, my last, and biggest, problem. Guma. Oh, Guma. You don't need to get through one chapter to know that her relationship with Xifeng (her niece) is an abusive one; both physically and emotionally. And, at the beginning, Xifeng seems to realize this, and even shows the signs of being in an abusive relationship, and she gets out of it and starts realizing how toxic it really was, but then, much, much later in the novel, when she thinks of Guma she starts considering her the perfect, mothering caregiver who always loved Xifeng and did the best for her, always? The same woman who literally beat her with a cane? And I don't think that's something that the novel should be doing. Because that's NOT a good light to put an abusive relationship in, especially because of how hard they are to get out of. Guma should NOT be suddenly put in this glowing light because months have gone by and now, oh yeah, even though she was cruel she was actually amazing and loved me? No. NO. I somehow managed to finish this novel, despite it grating on my every nerve, so it gets two stars, not one. Still, though, I'm not recommending it. If you want a Chinese-inspired fairy-tale retelling/fantasy novel, read Ash by Malinda Lo. 2/5 stars

The Library of Fates

by Aditi Khorana

This book was a mess. And I say that as nicely as possible... I don't think I can even describe a synopsis of this book because it had a thousand different ideas going on. 

But here goes nothing:

This book centers around Amrita, who is the princess to this small country called Shangilar. And basically there is this guy, Sikander, who is kind of like a fictional version of Alexander the Great (he literally is called Sikander the Great). And so this guy has expanded his Macedonian Empire into all these other countries through force, and in an effort to avoid that the King (who was an old buddy of Sik), says he's gonna have his daughter marry him. Long story short, he captures the palace, but Amrita gets away with this oracle who used to be a slave. And somehow go on this really long mythical/magical journey.

Maybe I'm biased because I hate fantasy. But this book was not good. The summary on the back is about the more forced marriage aspect and the fugitive aspect. And then you're reading it and BAM! There's magic showing up everywhere, like what the heck?!? And it has some mythology in the beginning, but Amrita doesn't believe in any of it, and then one little thing happens and she is the poster child for magic? There is no development of characters, they miraculously change perspectives. 

And then it talks about historical stuff like the Silk Road, and Alexander the Great who isn't really Alexander. But there is really no way to tell when this story would fall. In some ways it's renaissance and others it's like dark ages... Pick a time and stick to it! 

The last 70 pages I was thinking to myself, "take it 10 pages at a time..." And FINALLY something interesting happened. It was going good there at the end... for about 3 pages. And then it became really terrible again. And I couldn't stand it again. But I persevered, and I finished the book. It was hard and difficult, but I got through this book. And it sucks that I didn't like it because I love reading, and the author looks so nice, and I wish I liked it, but it didn't do anything for me.