Damsel Under Stress

Damsel Under Stress Shanna Swendson

This is the 3rd book in the Katie Chandler series. Obviously, there are some spoilers for earlier books

Wahoo! Katie and Owen finally got their act (and themselves) together. But, of course, in the world of corporate magic, it all goes to hell in a handbasket immediately.

Ari’s escaped from MSI’s holding cells and it quickly becomes apparent that Irdis is a puppet in a larger plot to bring down Merlin and the MSI team.

Plus, every time Katie and Owen do get a moment together, Katie’s fairy grandmother tries to “help” with disastrous consequences.

Poor Katie and Owen! Owen just gets more and more adorable and Katie’s determination to keep her magical and non-magical lives separate gets harder and harder. I also love how the Irdis plot continues to deepen and thicken, giving it more teeth. Owen also takes Katie home for Christmas, and finally meeting his foster parents explains a lot.

Not my favorite book in the series, but a good bridge novel for the later part of the series.

Book Provided by... my local library

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Crowd-Sourced Sequel-- YES PLEASE

Ok Guys, I loved loved loved loved loved Sucks to Be Me: The All-True Confessions of Mina Hamilton, Teen Vampire (maybe) and Still Sucks to Be Me: The All-true Confessions of Mina Smith, Teen Vampire.

Kimberly Pauley is writing a 3rd book in the series, but only if you read it. See here for details.

Basically, sign up for the newsletter, she'll email you out the book so far, and then you vote on what should happen next! When she gets enough votes, she'll write the next chapter. And then you vote again, etc.

The thing is-- she needs enough voters/readers to make it worth her while (apparently she has a life outside of writing books that make me happy.) SO! Go sign up! Read! Vote!

It's fun and awesome. (And a really fun book so far.)

She even has a Pinterest board!

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Nonfiction Monday: Their Skeletons Speak

Their Skeletons Speak: Kennewick Man and the Paleoamerican World Sally M. Walker

We're almost done looking at the long list for YALSA's Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults. Sally Walker had two books on the list this year-- big congratulations to her!

Like her Written in Bone: Buried Lives of Jamestown and Colonial Maryland, Walker looks at the history and science and significance of several sets of remains. This time, she focuses on the oldest skeletons found in the Americas.

The book mostly focuses on 9,000 years-old Kennewick Man, how we was discovered on a riverbank in 1996 and how much we have discovered about where we came from.

I'm a huge fan of Bones and so I love of Walker shows us how the reconstruction and renderings work in real life. I find such things fascinating. I also like how Walker looks at a range of finds and how they all relate to each other in forming a unified theory of early human life in the Americas. I hope Walker continues to write books on using forensic science and history-- wonderful stuff.

Today's Nonfiction Monday round up is over at Stacking Books. Be sure to check it out!

Book Provided by... the publisher for awards consideration.

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

White Bicycle

The White Bicycle by Beverley Brenna

Taylor Jane is living in the south of France for the summer, with her mother, her mother’s boyfriend, and his two sons. The youngest son has cerebral palsy and Taylor is employed as his personal care assistant (that sounds better than babysitter.) She hopes that her mother and Alan Phoenix don’t get married this summer, because then they’d be family, and it wouldn’t be a real job she can put on her resume.

Taylor wants a professional resume so she can lead her own lie, without her mother’s constant watching. She yearns for the independence and freedom that most girls her age have, but Taylor doesn’t. Yet.

Taylor is autistic but by this point in her life she has learned many ways to cope with her anger and frustration. She uses a lot of these ways very consciously and walks us through such things as sending her anger through her feet. She also looks back on her early childhood to see if there are connections that can be made between then and now, but it gives the reader great insight into her mindset, but also her growth as a person.

This is the third book in a series and while it completely stands alone and you don’t need to read the other books, I fell so in love with Taylor that I can’t wait to read the other two to see where she was before France.

I love this book because while Taylor has autism and that causes some of the obstacles to her independance, it’s not really the focus of the story. Trying to break away from home while still loving your parents is a fairly universal story and delicate line to walk for every young adult. Taylor’s mom uses the autism both as part justification, part excuse for holding Taylor too close. (But not in an overbearing way-- Taylor’s mom is also trying to find that balance of wanting your children near you forever and letting them go. The autism is an added complication, but, once again, universal story.)

I'm so glad this was a Printz honor. It's such an amazing book and if it hadn't won, I would have never known about it, let alone read it.

Book Provided by... my local library

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Quintana of Charyn

Quintana of Charyn by Melina Marchetta

After everything Lumatere has been through, it looks like it's on the brink of another war. Tensions have been rough with the Charynites in the valley ever since Phaedra's death.

Isaboe and Finnikin hear that Froi might have turned against Lumatere.

And Quintana is still on the run, trying to find safety, and everyone's after her, some who wish her to find safety, and many who do not.

When Quintana ends up in the valley, she's in the safest and most dangerous spot she can be. Everything depends on Isaboe's capacity for forgiveness, and to trust.

But everything's falling apart. Friends and families are fighting, and bickering. No one dares trust, and this is a plan that depends on trust, and faith.

Oh my. So many threads to follow as this trillogy comes to it's most perfect (oh, so perfect) conclusion. I like how we get little bits from Quintana's voice, in first person narration (although she's always talking to Froi during these parts.)

It's hard and it's messy, and it's utterly perfect. Because it's Marchetta, and it's a messy, brutal land that she's created. So, so heartbreaking. And perfectly wonderful

I don't want to say too much, I don't want to give it away. I couldn't even try to do it justice. If you've read the other two, don't worry-- this is an ending that's worthy in every way. If you haven't read them, go. Go now. Lumatere grows on you and sticks to the corners of your brain. I've read and reread these books, looking the devastation and beauty.


Australian copy of the book provided by... a super awesome friend

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Nonfiction Monday: Blizzard of Glass

Blizzard of Glass: The Halifax Explosion of 1917 Sally M. Walker

As regular readers may remember, last year I was on the committee for the Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults. In addition to our winners and finalists, the committee also publishes a list of vetted nominations (what I like to call the "long list.") I'm in the process of highlighting these titles during Nonfiction Monday.

In December 1917, war was raging in Europe. In Halifax Harbor, two ships were on their way to the action, one on it's way to pick up relief supplies, the other full of munitions. The two ships collided, causing a fire. As the munitions ship drifted, fire on its deck, it crashed into the pier and exploded, leveling most of of the harbor area and creating a shockwave that blew out almost every window in Halifax proper. 2000 people died, 9000 more were injured. Rescue and relief efforts were further dampened when a blizzard blew in the next day and dumped over a foot of snow on the area.

Until the advent of nuclear weapons, the Halifax explosion was the largest man-made explosion ever.

Walker tells this story (one that's very well known in Canada, but not so much in the US) through the eyes of children who lived around the harbor at the time. Children getting ready for school, running errands, and going about their day. She weaves these daily accounts in with the context of shipping lanes and traffic, and what was happening in the Harbor. Walker also covers the communities on the other side of the Harbor who were affected by the explosion, resulting shock wave, and tsunami. The book is also very good at detailing what happened after the explosion to everyone.

Fun fact: The Halifax coroner's office had a tested system in place to deal with a mass casualty event like this. It had been developed 2 years earlier, when they brought in the bodies from the Titanic.

Today's Nonfiction Monday roundup is over at a wrung sponge. Check it out.

Also check out today's YA Reading List post, in honor of Yom HaShoah.

Book Provided by... the publisher, for award consideration

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Jepp, Who Defied the Stars

Jepp, Who Defied the Stars by Katherine Marsh.

This is a story that starts in the middle. Jepp is a dwarf in a cage, with a bruised and bloodied face, on a journey to a foreign land. He starts by telling us how he got there, how he left his mother’s safe and loving home on the border between Spanish Netherlands and the Protestant North, how he became a court dwarf for the Infanta in Brussels.

When he arrives at his destination, the story continues on, this time as a dwarf jester for the astronomer and astrologer Tycho Brahe. He is determined to be his own man, to break free of the destiny the stars have set for him. When the truth about his past comes to light, he is even more determined to live his own life on his terms.

Oh, Jepp. Such a wonderful guy trying to figure out who he is and his place in the world, trying to save his friends and family, with people not telling him the truth about everything (in that way that people don’t tell teenagers the truth about everything.) Plus, court intrigue and politics that he doesn’t fully grasp or understand, too wrapped up in his own issues and problems to see the bigger pictures at play until it’s too late.

It’s a beautiful book, and such a wonderful look at destiny and fate versus free will without it getting in the way of the plot. (in fact, most of the plot is Jepp proving to himself and the world that his life can be what he wants, not what his star chart, or anyone else, tells him it should be.)

I think it’s one that resonates to this day, and will appeal to teens who aren’t big historical fiction fans.

LOVE.

Also, it’s printed in blue ink. I love small touches like that in book design.

Book Provided by... my local library

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Popularity Papers: Awesomely Awful Melodies of Lydia Goldblatt and Julie Graham-Chang

The Popularity Papers: The Awesomely Awful Melodies of Lydia Goldblatt and Julie Graham-Chang Amy Ignatow

Lydia and Julie are back! This time, Lydia convinces Julie that they need to start a rock band. Julie makes Lydia sign a contract saying that this is not one of Lydia’s popularity schemes. First, they have to learn how to play some instruments (hilarity ensues) Roland’s in the band. Jane manages to worm her way in, too (drama ensues) and then… they have to play some shows. Even though they’re not that good. In fact, they’re horrible (more hilarity ensues.)

Things I loved about this book: Jane and Chuck break up, and Chuck’s like “Hey Lydia” and Lydia doesn’t fall for it. She’s pretty firm in that she doesn’t want to be friends with him after what happened in the last book and how he just ditched her for Jane. Lydia knows she’s worth more than that, and she’s not taking any less.

Also, their lyrics are hysterically awful.

AND OMG MELODY! Lydia’s older sister has always been an odd voice of reason, coming from an angry goth girl. At the end of the last book, we are told that something MAJOR happened and we finally get to see it. I love the new Melody. I like the glimpses we get of who she is based on what *hasn’t* changed.

Things I love about this series that haven’t changed: Lydia and Julie are still awesome. I love the full color comic/word novel hybrid. I love their friends, especially Roland and Jen.

But most of all, I love Julie’s dads. They’re so perfectly wonderful parents while being horribly embarrassing at the same time.

Book Provided by... my local library

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Nonfiction Monday: Impossible Rescue

Before we get to the reviewing, just a reminder about my other project, YA Reading List, where I post a themed reading list EVERY SINGLE DAY.

The Impossible Rescue: The True Story of an Amazing Arctic Adventure Martin W. Sandler

I'm covering the books that were on the 2013 long-list for the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction. For those who don't know, I was on this committee and I really want to highlight these other titles that we loved.

Off the coast of Alaska, the winter of 1897 came early, trapping eight whaling ships in the ice. There was a small settlement on shore, but between the ships and the settlement, there were not enough provisions to get through the winter, and no way to get more. (One ship managed to not be trapped, and was able to let people know what was going on, but there wasn't enough time to get back via ship for a rescue effort before winter hit full force.) President McKinley had a plan and sent three men to get them food-- they'd travel through the state and buy reindeer herds along the way, and herd the reindeer to where the men were stranded. Meanwhile, at the ships, morale and discipline were running just as low as the food.

Sandler does an excellent job of describing the conditions and tensions that run through this story. From a modern vantage point, the situation is hard to wrap your head around, but Sandler explains it really well and will have you on the edge of your seat, shivering through the Arctic reader with the whalers and their rescuers. There are several photographs and primary sources illustrating the text. It also gets high marks for some truly excellent maps and excellent back matter-- including a comprehensive "what happened next" for the people involved.

Today's Nonfiction Monday is over at Wendie's Wanderings. Be sure to check it out!

Book Provided by... the publisher, for award consideration

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.