YA

Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones

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Rating: 5 out of 5 wine coolers

“Everything makes sense if you look at it long enough.”

Wow. I’m really glad I did not read any of the reviews on this book. Like The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, it took me a bit to get into it because of SGJ’s writing style. But once I was hooked, it was over. I simply devoured this book (no pun intended). The story of the unnamed narrator as he navigated growing up as, essentially, a nomad with his aunt and uncle, was made more exciting by the twist of them being werewolves. There then became this underlying tension of will he or won’t he also come into his wolfness. Darren and Libby, his uncle and aunt, are not married, they are twins, and our narrator’s mother died in childbirth, and was their sister. Grandpa was their father, and most of what we know about werewolves come from stories told by him and Darren. Like most stories, these were embellished but held some truth to them. And thus, this is how our narrator saw the world. The family moves frequently because once you cause havoc, you can’t stay in one place. Too many animals dying can make people suspicious, as can human body counts. When you are the outcasts, the first fingers pointed are pointed at you. Libby and Darren take on jobs when they can, and they are pretty good about trying to be good citizens too, paying taxes (even if it’s with falsified identification) and sending the narrator to school. I think what I loved best was the chapters calling him a name based on what he was in that moment (mechanic, reporter, biologist, etc.). The narration of the book is very disjointed, but at the same time, makes so much sense, because you can tell it is coming from the voice of someone who is trying to remember events as they happened but also will remember when something happened at a different time of life. So the age jumps around, sometimes we are reading when he was 8 and sometimes 12, then sometimes 16, then 8 again. It is not a linear story, but we get all the necessary parts to capture the whole of his life with his family and his feelings about becoming a werewolf. There is high school romance, cut short, but there nonetheless, and even some growing pains of boyhood.

All in all, this wouldn’t be one of my favorites of his, I’m not a HUGE coming of age book reader, but it was still very good and I did enjoy it a lot. I am really enjoying going through SGJ’s body of work, as this is my 3rd by him, and I have more to go.

See my reviews of The Buffalo Hunter Hunter and I Was a Teenage Slasher on Goodreads.

“That’s how it is with werewolves. You have something, then you just have the story of it.”

ARC: The Framing Game by Jessica K. Foster

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5 out of 5 paint cans

Look, I’m already obsessed with Jessica K. Foster. So I had a feeling that I was going to enjoy this latest by her. BOY WAS I RIGHT! This had me in a chokehold from page 1! I was angry, and frustrated, I laughed out loud…just had about every feeling I could until the very end. Xander and Virginia were the perfect mix of chemistry…and it’s hilarious how they come off to each other too. You can tell so much by how Virginia is around him and even how Xander is around her. What I really enjoyed was how nuanced each of the secondary characters were too. This was just such a great coming of age with some romance novel. Foster knocked it out of the park again with this one.

I want to write more, but this JUST came out and I don’t want to give out any spoilers. Suffice it to say, once I am able to get my hands on a paper copy, it’s being added to my library expeditiously!

*I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.*

They Bloom at Night by Trang Thanh Tran

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4 red algae blooms

Ok. So I’m giving this 4 stars ONLY BECAUSE at some point near the end…I got completely confused as to what Nhung was supposed to look like? And it totally skewed how I was perceiving everything happening. That said. HOLY SMOKES. The lyrical prose of the novel, the descriptions of everything, from the desolation of Mercy to the vagueness (yet unmistakable chill) of Nhung’s assault, everything built up to this astonishing yet fitting end. I had some serious misgivings about Covey but oh my, she was everything and then some. I was so glad for the others who were found, and I loved that the adults were portrayed as the flawed people they are. Jimmy, who is cruel and callous but thinks he’s doing it all for his daughter, who he clearly doesn’t understand resents him, to Nhung’s mother, who because of her lack of communication, almost utterly destroys any relationship with her daughter, under the guise of the ultimate protection. I really did enjoy this. I will absolutely be reading more by this author.

*To see this and other reviews, please visit my Goodreads page here.

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

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I can’t even begin to tell you how many tabs I have on this book. SO MANY AREAS I left for notes and coming back to! I actually left little tabs to go back to my favorite passages. I haven’t done that since needing to annotate in college! There are quite a few 2 and 3 star reviews but I have to say, as someone who also reads fanfiction and can sometimes feel like a complete nerd, I LOVED this book. I was thinking about it for days, just trying to come up with a good review. I’ve had to read other books since then just to be able to come back now and write one, almost 9 months later!

Cather is a very introverted girl, a freshman in college. Her twin sister, Wren, is far more outgoing. They had, until now, done pretty much everything together, but Wren is going off and using college as her way to find out who she is (as one does). Cather wants everything to stay the same. Her roommate Reagan, is a couple years older than her and on her first day, she meets Levi…who is just in the room, because he is best friends with Reagan. Thus begins Cather’s college career. Her father is kind of a mess and her mother has never been in the picture so Cather was counting on having Wren by her side. Good thing she has Simon and Baz…well, if they were real anyways. Cather is a super popular fanfiction writer of a popular wizard series Simon Snow. But between classes, a crush and her dad’s spiral without the girls being home, will Cather even make it through her freshman year?

Seriously, I cannot even begin to describe how much I adored this book. I can still remember parts (which is saying a lot since I tend to forget books almost as soon as I’ve read them) and remember how I felt when Cather had her first college kiss and the butterflies she must have felt…it was like reliving my own college days too!

Some favorite quotes:

“He nudged his nose against hers, and their mouths fell sleepily together, already soft and open.”
“Kisses aren’t…just with me.”
“That it wasn’t JUST a kiss, Cather. There was no JUST.”
“I want that kiss to have been the start of something. Not the end.”
“I mean, I spent four months trying to kiss you and the last six weeks trying to figure out how I managed to fuck everything up. And I just want to know-are you rooting for me? Are you hoping I pull this off?”
“You know that I’m falling in love with you, right?”

I even ended up reading the manga series that was written too, as if I didn’t already know how the book ends, and now I’m not-so-patiently waiting for volume 4 to drop! If you like coming of age stories with a little dash of fanfiction, then this is truly the book for you!