Liberty Reads

Places to find me--

StoryGraph

GoodReads

Instagram

Pucks & Pages Stuff

Meet Me Under the Mistletoe by Jenny Bayliss. Rating: 2.25 stars.

Read from June 25th to 26th.

This is going to end up being the last read for the month of June and boy am I ready to move onto July after this one. Meet Me Under the Mistletoe was chosen for Christmas in July but coming out of the book I just have to ask, "Christmas? Where?" Literally, where in this book is there Christmas? The book takes place from the end of November until CHRISTMAS EVE, but we never actually see anything Christmassy. But that wasn't the only thing to disappoint me. The flowery language really put me off as I was reading. It was annoying to see the narration go off into tangents about things I didn't care about. I really disliked the way Nory felt stuck between her upper class friends and her more middle class family. She was a scholarship student at a private school, but was raised by a hardworking family. I could tell what the story was trying to say but it never actually came out and said it. It was all subtext which made it annoying as well. Maybe I just have a headache and am finding everything annoying.

I liked the romance well enough in this one. I think Isaac might have been too good for Nory since Nory was constantly being negatively influenced by her friends. But I thought they were cute together and it was nice to see her choosing someone from the more middle class side of town. I would have loved to see more angst with the couple but the angst we did get was done well.

Augusta Pine Does Not Exist by Emily Lloyd-Jones. Rating: 4.25 stars.

Read from June 21st to 24th.

Before I get into the review, a quick thank you to NetGalley and the publishers over at Macmillan Children's Publishing Group for allowing me access to this ARC in exchange for an honest review. Augusta Pine Does Not Exist follows a teenage hacker who has chosen to work for a shady government agency for ten years in order to avoid being charged for murder following a hack gone wrong. Three years later, she has become a skilled wraith with no home, no family, and only a handler and snarky AI spybot for company. When the apartment building she's in gets hacked by a cyberterrorist organization, Augusta must fight for her survival and race against time to stay one step ahead of the killers. Augusta Pine Does Not Exist comes out on July 7th and is available for preorder now.

I had to take a slight detour from my Christmas in July (which, like Hallmark's, starts in June) to read this ARC. My reading for the month has been really slow so I didn't manage to get this one read when I had planned to. It also took longer to read than expected. I need my real life to calm down and stop getting in the way of my reading life. The thing that really sold me on this one was the characters. We spend most of our time in this one setting, the apartment building, except for the few case-file excerpts interspersed throughout the novel. Which means what really needs to hook the reader is the characters. I felt so much for Augusta and her past, but I also loved her AI spybot, Edgar. It reminded me so much of the different AI I've read of in other SciFi sort of novels. I wouldn't exactly call this one a SciFi, but it does heavily lean in that direction based on the technology used in this somewhat distant future. A lot of smart tech and upgrades to what we sort of already use. (There was also some great messaging in there about our reliance on technology and how it makes us less safe. The fact that this division of the government needed to be set up in this story gave me a weird sort of look into our possible future and it was terrifying.) I also really enjoyed the plot. I will say that I saw a couple of twists coming, but they played out differently than I expected so they were still satisfying to see.

I struggled with the age range on this one. The main character is supposed to be 18 but she feels younger than that at times. As does one of the hostages that she works with throughout the novel. Some of the jokes were pretty low hanging fruit and the quips just got to be a bit much at times. I wish we had gotten a few more case-file excerpts that focused more on what being part of this government agency was like in the office setting. The one example we got was just not enough. It was a great moment of levity in the middle of a stress induced chapter and it could have added so much to the novel.