I enjoyed The Afterlife of Holly Chase very much – but I didn’t love it until the very last page. The end is what earns it a spot on my keeper shelf, and I won’t reveal the end, no, not even in a spoiler tag. You just have to trust me that it’s lovely. Holly Chase is a rich teenager who is a simply horrible person. At the age of seventeen, she is visited by … Continue reading The Afterlife of Holly Chase by Cynthia Hand
It frustrates me that I didn’t like Pride more than I did, because the concept is awesome. In this modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice, teenager Zuri Benitez, who is Afro-Latino, lives in Bushwick, New York, with her family. They live next door to a run-down mansion that is purchased and remodeled by a Black family from Manhattan. Zuri can’t stand her new neighbors, especially Darius Darcy. With his rich ways, he doesn’t fit in … Continue reading Pride by Ibi Zoboi
Jennifer Prokop is back on SBTB with a guest squee! If you missed her previous review of What Does Consent Really Mean?, be sure to give it a read! Jennifer has been reading romance ever since she found a bag of remaindered paperbacks in her grandmother’s basement when she was a teenager. She writes romance reviews for The Book Queen and you can find her on Twitter @JenReadsRomance. She’s also created a website to help readers find … Continue reading Guest Squee: The Way You Make Me Feel by Maurene Goo
Sweet Black Waves by Kristina Perez is a YA retelling of Tristian and Isolde, and while it contains romantic elements, it is not a romance. If you know the story of Tristian and Isolde, then you know it’s not a happy story. I’m not sure what direction Perez is ultimately going to take the legend as this is the first book in a trilogy, but I walked into it knowing enough not to anticipate a HEA. … Continue reading Sweet Black Waves by Kristina Perez
Perfekt Order by ST Bende is the first book in the Ære Saga, and (in my opinion) it borrows pretty heavily from Marvel’s Thor movies. Not Thor: The Dark World though. We’ve all agreed that that movie doesn’t exist. This is a YA adventure / romance with plenty of sequel bait handy for future books. It’s pretty uneven in a lot of areas, but it made me really nostalgic for Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the sense that a teenage … Continue reading Perfekt Order by S.T. Bende
To Kill a Kingdom starts well but the pacing is awkward in the extreme. I wanted to love it. I tried to love it. It has tentacles on the cover and the heroine keeps the hearts of seventeen princes in jars in her room so loving it seemed inevitable. Alas, by the end of the book, I just did not care what happened. To Kill a Kingdom is a romance (marketed as general YA) between … Continue reading To Kill a Kingdom by Alexandra Christo
Tomi Adeyemi has been getting a lot of well-deserved buzz around her new book, Children of Blood and Bone. It’s the first book in a planned YA fantasy trilogy. It’s set in a fantasy version of West Africa, and all of the characters are people of color. I loved the setting and the use of fantasy and character to explore issues around racism and oppression. I was not as crazy about the graphic violence or … Continue reading Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
I loved this book but fair warning, I have never been so stressed out by reading a novel in my life. This book is written from the point of view of Lily, and is told in first-person, past tense. Lily is a teenager who has very severe ADHD. I have never been more worried about a character – maybe because I’m the mom of a teenage girl so I’m primed to worry, maybe because my … Continue reading The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily by Laura Creedle
The Last Namsara is a YA epic fantasy that I think will appeal to a lot of readers, including those who are a little leery of the genre. First of all, there’s no cliffhanger ending. We get full resolution, although I can certainly see the book being part of a larger series. There’s also a romance, but no love triangle. Add to that a completely badass warrior heroine, a forbidden love story, dragons, and storytelling … Continue reading The Last Namsara by Kristen Ciccarelli
This is a difficult book to grade. I finished it because I wanted to see what happened. At the same time, I was easily distracted while reading because I got bored being told everything. I was curious about the rules of the magic and the roles of difference characters, but I was also really uneasy and at times repulsed by the portrayal of those characters. Some existed without connection to context or larger meaning, even … Continue reading Deadly Sweet by Lola Dodge
Squee from the Keeper Shelf is a feature wherein we share why we love the books we love, specifically the stories which are permanent residents of our Keeper shelves. Despite flaws, despite changes in age and perspective, despite the passage of time, we love particular books beyond reason, and the only thing better than re-reading them is telling other people about them. At length. If you’d like to submit your reasons for loving and keeping … Continue reading Keeper Shelf: A Ring of Endless Light by Madeleine L’Engle
