I’m back on this colder Wednesday morning, writing out my next review and getting ready for a day of presentations and video games, which don’t sound too bad for a job. There are times when I wonder if this is a dream, or if I just got really lucky. And I choose to think lucky, the other option is just a bit too depressing! Anyway, onto the review!
Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
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Of the three Silvia Moreno-Garcia books I’ve read, I’ve enjoyed two of them. This being one of them, the other is The Gods of Jade and Shadow, definitely a favourite of mine from her. But what I really like about her books, as demonstrated in this book is how much Silvia Moreno-Garcia pulls from Aztec and Mexican mythology and folklore to fill out her stories in ways that are both familiar and not. In Certain Dark Things, we have vampires, descendants of Aztec blood drinkers. And we have neo-noir story taking place in Mexico City.
Alt, our vampire, is trying to run from those that killed the rest of her family, when she runs into Domingo, a street child who gets swept up in Atl in ways that are both expected and unexpected. Atl wants nothing to do with him, once she has her fill of him, but once he proves that he knows just a bit more about navigating Mexico City than she does, she allows him in and they both strive to get Atl out of Mexico City before the other clan catches up to them.
I quite love how differently these vampires operate due to the difference of lore as well as just coming to life on a different continent all together. That includes the different magics and tricks and abilities that all vampires seem to have throughout fiction and history. I also like how Silvia Moreno-Garcia writes both characters, one cold and seemingly unwilling to accept help from “food,” and one who is warm and admiring, and just wanting to help in any way that objectively can. This does prompt me that I probably need to reread the book at some point, seeing as it’s been a while, but still a really good book. If you like vampires, and are looking for something a bit new in that realm of the supernatural, then I highly recommend Certain Dark Things as your next read.
I’m trying to get different culture and history inspired books in my TBR and just into my reading in general, so when I heard that this was inspired by West-African stories, I was hooked!
The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna
Sixteen-year-old Deka lives in fear and anticipation of the blood ceremony that will determine whether she will become a member of her village. Already different from everyone else because of her unnatural intuition, Deka prays for red blood so she can finally feel like she belongs.
But on the day of the ceremony, her blood runs gold, the color of impurity–and Deka knows she will face a consequence worse than death.
Then a mysterious woman comes to her with a choice: stay in the village and submit to her fate, or leave to fight for the emperor in an army of girls just like her. They are called alaki–near-immortals with rare gifts. And they are the only ones who can stop the empire’s greatest threat.
Knowing the dangers that lie ahead yet yearning for acceptance, Deka decides to leave the only life she’s ever known. But as she journeys to the capital to train for the biggest battle of her life, she will discover that the great walled city holds many surprises. Nothing and no one are quite what they seem to be–not even Deka herself.
The start of a bold and immersive West African-inspired, feminist fantasy series for fans of Children of Blood and Bone and Black Panther. In this world, girls are outcasts by blood and warriors by choice.
A story of girls who are cast out or accepted by their blood. A story where your family can turn on you the instant they feel you become someone you’re not. A story about standing up against those that state because you look one way, you must act that one way or be shunned. A story of girls who become so much more than the monsters they were deemed to be.
For Deka, who is already different because of her mother, who is already partially shunned due to her unnatural intuition, she prays for the one thing that could make her a true part of this village, someone who truly belongs. But when deathshrieks attack her village during the ceremony that would prove her blood purity, not only does she find a power that drives the deathshrieks away when nothing else could, but her blood is found to run gold: the color of demons. Everyone turns against at that point, even with the village elders try to find her “true death,” they greedily catch all of her golden blood to sell away from their village, turning a profit on one they deem impure.
When Deka is given the chance to leave and fight with other girls like her, other girls that bleed gold, she grabs it and runs, if only to get away from those that will have nothing to do with her but bleed her till she dies. It’s when she gets to Warthu Bera, that she starts to figure out that while she, and all the other girls there, are extremely different from everyone else in this world, Deka herself exceptional beyond the norm.
Throughout the book, we see things through Deka’s eyes, so we know what she knows, we feel what she feels, and we think what she thinks. So we know just about as much as she does, though the YA fantasy tropes that are recognizable do give us as the reader an advantage to what’s going to happen next. And that’s something that I will say about this book, is while the ideas are original and inspired by that isn’t seen in YA fantasy, or fantasy much in general, the tropes are well-used and well-versed in this world, so we as the read know what’s going to happen next before Deka does. While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I feel it does hold the book back just a little bit. Not enough to damage its progression in anyway, but I was pulled from this fantastical world just a little more than I wanted to be.
Overall, this is a great book and one that I would recommend you read if you’re looking for new and interesting ideas in fantasy. The message is also good, that everyone is worth more than what their looks, or their blood, says about them. We are worth everything in this world, and no one else can tell you otherwise. Have you read The Gilded Ones yet? What did you think of it? Comment below and let me know!
TW: RAPE, GASLIGHTING, MANIPULATION, EATING DISORDER, DEATH, DRUG ABUSE/ADDICTION
Oh boy…this was a hard book to read, not because of the writing, which was beautiful and made sense for this type of novel, but for the subject matter at hand…
Muted by Tami Charles
A ripped-from-the-headlines novel of ambition, music, and innocence lost, perfect for fans of Elizabeth Acevedo and Jason Reynolds!
Be bold. Get seen. Be Heard.
For seventeen-year-old Denver, music is everything. Writing, performing, and her ultimate goal: escaping her very small, very white hometown.
So Denver is more than ready on the day she and her best friends Dali and Shak sing their way into the orbit of the biggest R&B star in the world, Sean “Mercury” Ellis. Merc gives them everything: parties, perks, wild nights — plus hours and hours in the recording studio. Even the painful sacrifices and the lies the girls have to tell are all worth it.
Until they’re not.
Denver begins to realize that she’s trapped in Merc’s world, struggling to hold on to her own voice. As the dream turns into a nightmare, she must make a choice: lose her big break, or get broken.
Inspired by true events, Muted is a fearless exploration of the dark side of the music industry, the business of exploitation, how a girl’s dreams can be used against her — and what it takes to fight back.
This is probably one of the hardest books I’ve read this year. Hard because of the subject matter, hard because this shit still happens in our day and age, hard because there will always be predators out there willing to take advantage of those who just want their shot. Hard, because there are girls like Denver and Dali who are muted and gagged, their voices lost in the chaos of the world.
The more I read this book, the more horrified and terrified I became. Which is probably the point of this particular book. I love Denver, Dali, and Shak and all that they do to try and make it big in the music world. I love that they race after their dreams. What I do not love is that Merc, their idol, their discover-er (words >.<), the one who reaches out to lift them up, is only doing so because it benefits him, and not them. He takes from them not only their words, but their voices, their bodily autonomy.
I love that while Denver and Dali are just trying to reach their dreams, to provide for their families and to find a reason why they are talented in a particular way, they are blinded by their needs and wants to see what is truly going on. Which is the way, when you’re working to get what you want, what you believe to be yours, you will fight to blind yourself to the harm it is causing you and others around you.
All Denver and Dali wish to do is to be their superstar selves, they want the world to hear their music, their words, their loves of the world and touch others who may be feeling the same way.
Muted is about how teenage girls allow themselves to be muted for the chance to make it big in a world larger than their own. It’s about learning to listen to yourself and knowing when something isn’t right. It’s about taking back your voice when once you thought you had lost it. It’s about taking back what is yours, all yours. The price for fame is much to high and, eventually, you can no longer pay it. So, what do you do after that?
This sounded like it would be an interesting read and one thing that I am trying to do this year with a lot of other things reading wise, is to diversify my reading. Not only the others but the types of experiences as well, and this one is definitely a different experience than I have ever had.
One of the Good Ones by Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite
The Hate U Give meets Get Out in this honest and powerful exploration of prejudice in the stunning novel from sister-writer duo Maika and Maritza Moulite, authors of Dear Haiti, Love Alaine.
ISN’T BEING HUMAN ENOUGH?
When teen social activist and history buff Kezi Smith is killed under mysterious circumstances after attending a social justice rally, her devastated sister Happi and their family are left reeling in the aftermath. As Kezi becomes another immortalized victim in the fight against police brutality, Happi begins to question the idealized way her sister is remembered. Perfect. Angelic.
One of the good ones.
Even as the phrase rings wrong in her mind—why are only certain people deemed worthy to be missed?—Happi and her sister Genny embark on a journey to honor Kezi in their own way, using an heirloom copy of The Negro Motorist Green Book as their guide. But there’s a twist to Kezi’s story that no one could’ve ever expected—one that will change everything all over again.
This story had a horrifying twist in it that I never expected. I probably should have, as the blurb states it’s a mix between The Hate U Give and Get Out, the latter being a HORROR film! Good lord, how dense am I? Quite dense apparently…
Anyway, in this story, we have Kezi, a social media activist; Happi, her younger sister who wishes to just be left alone to be herself and to hopefully become an actor; and Genny, her older sister, who is just trying to do what her parents wish of her. When Kezi is arrested while at a protest for the killing of an innocent African American man, and while she is arrested, it is stated that she died in a fire that broke out at the police station she was being held at. That day was the last day any of her family got to speak to her, and for Happi, her memories of that day are some of the worst that she holds.
Two months after Kezi’s death, Genny suggests that she and Happi, along with Kezi’s friends (and secret girlfriend), take the road trip that Kezi had already set up, following the route of safety for African Americans in The Negro Motorist Green Book. In doing so, they not only celebrate Kezi’s life, but the life of all African Americans as they strived for safety and peace in a country that refuses to see them as equal to this day.
This was a hard book to read in parts, if because of how real the circumstances in this book are. The protests and the police brutality at those protests, nobody caring about African American men, women, and children, having to be constantly on guard against randoms stops, the casual racism that comes from living in a country that held Africans as property and not as people. Because of that though, this makes this book all the more real to me. It tells you what is going on in this world and that there is so much wrong in this world.
What’s amazing about this book though is that it shows that someone’s life is their own life. What they do behind closed doors is for them and them alone. And yes, sometimes this means that there are secrets that you have no idea about. It also means that you may not have tried that hard to get to know someone you thought you knew well to begin with. It means that what you learn about a person always comes at a price and sometimes that price is too high to pay. But once you learn that thing about that person, you love that person just a tiny bit more.
What little things that you’ve learned about person have made you love them more? What do you still learn about yourself as you continue to grow and change? Comment below and let me know!
A look into the lives of of Starr’s parents before we knew them in The Hate U Give and how they much the choices they made influenced the choices Starr and her friends/family made in their book.
International phenomenon Angie Thomas revisits Garden Heights seventeen years before the events of The Hate U Give in this searing and poignant exploration of Black boyhood and manhood.
If there’s one thing seventeen-year-old Maverick Carter knows, it’s that a real man takes care of his family. As the son of a former gang legend, Mav does that the only way he knows how: dealing for the King Lords. With this money he can help his mom, who works two jobs while his dad’s in prison.
Life’s not perfect, but with a fly girlfriend and a cousin who always has his back, Mav’s got everything under control.
Until, that is, Maverick finds out he’s a father.
Suddenly he has a baby, Seven, who depends on him for everything. But it’s not so easy to sling dope, finish school, and raise a child. So when he’s offered the chance to go straight, he takes it. In a world where he’s expected to amount to nothing, maybe Mav can prove he’s different.
When King Lord blood runs through your veins, though, you can’t just walk away. Loyalty, revenge, and responsibility threaten to tear Mav apart, especially after the brutal murder of a loved one. He’ll have to figure out for himself what it really means to be a man.
What stuck out to me most when I started reading this book was how unprepared Maverick was to become a parent. How much it took out of him to start looking after a person that he brought into this world. Not on purpose, mind you, he was being safe, but that doesn’t always count for much. I could feel his terror at having to raise a little human being as well as his want to be a good parent, even if it means that things that he had planned for his life didn’t turn out the way he initially planned them to do.
We see how much this unexpected part of life caught up to him and how much this requires him to change his outlook on life and his ability to work to provide for his son, whom he has named Seven, and to help out his mother as much as possible. We see Mav start to try to change, to get out of King Lord life and to live cleanly in order to be there for his children. Yes, children, as this is when he and Lisa (Starr’s mother) get pregnant. This time they were not smart. This time, Maverick did not think. This time, it isn’t thought through and it gets both of them. And now with two kids to provide for, because Maverick will provide for his kids, he starts to make dumb decisions, decisions that could end him up in the exact same place his own father is, prison.
This story is all about learning how to make choices that will make your life better. Not your friends’ lives, not your parents’ lives, but your life. It means making hard choices in order to make sure that you are there for those you love and are able to support them in ways that will make them proud of you. It’s about choosing to become a better version of yourself and learning from your mistakes. And Maverick makes a lot of mistakes in this novel, you can see it and I can see it. I could see where his thoughts were going and I just wanted to reach through the novel and just shake him, saying “Don’t do it!!!” But it’s not my life, it is Maverick’s, and those were his choices to make.
Along with those choices though, you have to be willing to follow through with the consequences. You can choose your choices, but you cannot choose your consequences. Those you are stuck with and how you respond to the consequences of your choices will show you what kind of person you are. Maverick starts to learn this and starts to learn that if he wants to be a better parent than his father, to be there for his kids as they actually grow up, then he needs to make the choices that will keep him there. And he has the support system to do so. I loved seeing how much support and love Mav has, not only with his family, but his extended family, his mother, the couple next door that own the small grocery in their neighborhood, everyone who is willing to stand up and give Mav a chance to learn and give him the support he needs in order to learn.
This book has a lot of good things going for it. It shows a look into the lives of teenagers who are still trying to be kids and have fun, but need to grow up quick in order to become parents. It shows that there is love and support everywhere you need it, and it shows that you can choose to do better and be better. It’s all up to you what you decide to do in your own life.
This was a good look into what life was like for WLW in the 1950s.
Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo
Acclaimed author of Ash Malinda Lo returns with her most personal and ambitious novel yet, a gripping story of love and duty set in San Francisco’s Chinatown during the Red Scare.
“That book. It was about two women, and they fell in love with each other.” And then Lily asked the question that had taken root in her, that was even now unfurling its leaves and demanding to be shown the sun: “Have you ever heard of such a thing?”
Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can’t remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club.
America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father—despite his hard-won citizenship—Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day.
To learn to love in a time of unrest for you and your family is always hard. It’s even harder to do when you learn that who you love is considered perverted/strange/not real and your family is in danger of being deported for political affiliations that are considered dangerous. For Lilly though, this is exactly what is happening as she comes of age in San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1954. You can feel the tension and unrest that comes from living in a time where gay/lesbian bars were raided and the Red Scare was in full effect.
As Lilly learns to navigate these new waters, not only of exploring and finding her sexual identity and awareness are shared by others, that she is not strange, but belief in herself as a Chinese American young woman is a strong flame burning inside of her, Lilly also learns that sometimes family and friends will say things that are hurtful and harmful, even if they’re said with the best of intentions.
Learning about yourself is always scary, especially when you’re learning that you’re something that has been deemed wrong, or inappropriate by society. Yet Lilly is still willing to learn about this part of herself, and learn more about those women who love other women, that women can dress masculine, and many other things. And she learns that there are many other women out there like her, and they meet in clubs like the Telegraph Club. There is space carved out for people like her, by people like her; all she needs to do is find those spaces and learn how to fill in those spaces.
For a lot of us, and Lilly also learns this, we need to learn to take control of our lives and live them the way we want to live them. We cannot live for other people, we can only live for ourselves and we can only do that when we are true to ourselves. We cannot be scared to be ourselves, else we will never learn what the world has in store for us. It is terrifying and we may lose some people along the way, but if we do, then we don’t need those people in our lives. How have you learned to let yourself live as yourself? What have you learned about yourself in this way? Comment below and let me know! I’m still learning how to live for myself, but I’m getting closer and closer each day!
*Published February 9, 2021 by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers*
This was such a sweet book! And I love pho, so a love story about two warring pho families with their kids having no idea why they’re fighting, a savory Romeo and Juliet! Only no one dies at the end!
A Pho Love Story by Loan Lee
When Dimple Met Rishi meets Ugly Delicious in this funny, smart romantic comedy, in which two Vietnamese-American teens fall in love and must navigate their newfound relationship amid their families’ age-old feud about their competing, neighboring restaurants.
If Bao Nguyen had to describe himself, he’d say he was a rock. Steady and strong, but not particularly interesting. His grades are average, his social status unremarkable. He works at his parents’ pho restaurant, and even there, he is his parents’ fifth favorite employee. Not ideal.
If Linh Mai had to describe herself, she’d say she was a firecracker. Stable when unlit, but full of potential for joy and spark and fire. She loves art and dreams pursuing a career in it. The only problem? Her parents rely on her in ways they’re not willing to admit, including working practically full-time at her family’s pho restaurant.
For years, the Mais and the Nguyens have been at odds, having owned competing, neighboring phở restaurants. Bao and Linh, who’ve avoided each other for most of their lives, both suspect that the feud stems from feelings much deeper than friendly competition.
But then a chance encounter brings Linh and Bao together despite their best efforts and sparks fly, leading them both to wonder what took so long for them to connect. But then, of course, they immediately remember.
Can Linh and Bao find love in the midst of feuding families and complicated histories?
This is probably one of the sweetest books I’ve read in a long time. I read it all in one day in fact, that can tell you how much I enjoyed this book. It has food, it has gentle romance, it has an age old family feud, it has FLUFF!!! And sometimes, you just need to enjoy the fluff of a good book. There is a lot more to this book than fluff though! Underneath all the fluff is all the hard stuff about being the sons and daughters of immigrant families that just want the best for you.
For Bao and Linh, living up to their parents expectations is one of the hardest things for them to do. Bao, as he’s not sure what he wants to do after high school, and his family just kind of wants him to pick something so that he’ll be taken care of. Linh, she loves art, the drawing, the painting, the creation of it all, but her parents don’t see that as a viable option for a career. It’s a “good hobby,” but it won’t keep her secure after graduation.
As they both struggle to figure out how to navigate their families’ feud, as well as figure out their own lives, Bao and Linh start to realize that they may have found what they’re looking for in each other. Not the career paths or anything, but just getting to know each other as friends and knowing that each has a similar childhood having grown up with parents building up their restaurants and they can empathize with each other as well.
When Linh’s friend and Bao’s classmate (same person) assign them a new beat for the school newspaper, they both discover what they truly love doing; Bao sees that he has an ability and love for writing, while Linh further sets her heart on pursuing art anyway possible after high school. But as Linh struggles to figure out how to get her parents to listen to her and believe she wants and needs to pursue art, Bao has a slightly easier time telling his mother that while he has made a choice for his future, it may not be the one his parents like, but they understand that it’s his choice.
And all of this is happening while their families are basically gunning to put the other out of business for a reason neither Bao nor Linh really know, and when they try to find out, their parents state it’s not for them to know, only grown-ups should worry about it. Which is a frustrating thing to hear when you’re treated as an adult in other aspects of your life. It’s when Bao and Linh start to dig into their families’ pasts a bit more that they realize there is a LOT more going on than either set of parents let on, and it goes back a long ways.
Parental expectations and trying to find your own path battle inside Linh and Bao and how they deal with it is different for both. As they continue to figure out their lives and their families live, they start to struggle to see how they can be together, even just as friends. So, when the past comes back to bite, it takes more than it probably should have, and Bao and Linh need to figure out how to process everything.
I won’t tell you the ending, as it’s interesting to the story and to them. But it does go to show that you don’t always know what’s going on with your family, even if you have grown up with them. And what is buried in the past will eventually come to light and it may not be the best things you have ever heard about your family. Either way, everyone will need to deal with it eventually.
I really loved this book and while I may make it sound like a downer here, it is a really nice book, with parts that made me laugh and parts that made me feel for both Bao and Linh as they try to figure out their own ways to live their lives, and how to tell their parents no. I highly recommend you read this book if just to get some perspective that what we see is not always what we get.
*Published January 26, 2021 by Denene Millner Books
This book has an interesting fantasy aspect and it parallels modern societal injustices and I found it a good way to talk about racism in a fantasy and contemporary way.
Wings of Ebony by J. Elle
“Make a way out of no way” is just the way of life for Rue. But when her mother is shot dead on her doorstep, life for her and her younger sister changes forever. Rue’s taken from her neighborhood by the father she never knew, forced to leave her little sister behind, and whisked away to Ghizon—a hidden island of magic wielders.
Rue is the only half-god, half-human there, where leaders protect their magical powers at all costs and thrive on human suffering. Miserable and desperate to see her sister on the anniversary of their mother’s death, Rue breaks Ghizon’s sacred Do Not Leave Law and returns to Houston, only to discover that Black kids are being forced into crime and violence. And her sister, Tasha, is in danger of falling sway to the very forces that claimed their mother’s life.
Worse still, evidence mounts that the evil plaguing East Row is the same one that lurks in Ghizon—an evil that will stop at nothing until it has stolen everything from her and everyone she loves. Rue must embrace her true identity and wield the full magnitude of her ancestors’ power to save her neighborhood before the gods burn it to the ground.
I will say that this book was a good book. It just took me a while to actually get into the book and enjoy what I was reading. Once I did get into it, I enjoyed the story and where it was going. While the main bulk of the story took place over about a week’s worth of time, we do get some flashbacks to what happened to Rue a year ago, when her mother was shot and her absent father came to take her away to live in Ghizoni.
For the most part, we see that Rue doesn’t really know where she belongs anymore. She stands out in Ghizoni as being the only person of colour, other than her father. She doesn’t know the history of the country she has been brought into, she doesn’t know the culture or customs, and she is struggling to make sense of what she is doing. Yet when she hears that there is someone out there who is trying to destroy her neighborhood, to destroy East Row, to make it a world where no one can live their lives normally, then Rue decides to do what she can to not only save her sister, but to save all of her family that is East Row. But in order to do so, she has to let her hurt and anger out just a little bit in order to listen to what her father has to tell her about his heritage and what it means not only for her, but for ALL of East Row and Ghizoni.
What I enjoyed most about this book was the emphasis on relationships and connections. You are who you are based on all of your connections, both blood and chosen. You can choose who your family is, you can choose who your family isn’t, you can choose who to trust, and you can change your choices over time. Rue chooses at first to ignore her biological father, as he left her and her mother on their own. He never came, never showed up, never even let Rue know who he was until her mother died. But as Rue and her father try to talk throughout the book, you can see that he regrets not being with them, but Rue also acts like you’d expect a girl without a father to react when he suddenly shows up out of the blue; not wanting anything to do with him or what he has to say.
As we continue to follow Rue though, and how she has to interact with her father, we start to see how she starts to choose to listen to him, just a little. We see her choose to start to love him, we see Rue choose to turn to him, when she doesn’t know where else to go. Life is all about choices, and what we make of them. We can learn from our mistakes, and the mistakes of others and makes choices that can be better than we make before. It’s the choices we make in life that make us who we are, and we can always learn to make better choices. It’s never too late to start.
I love Nnedi Okorafor’s writing and I really enjoyed this one! It was beautiful and distant and otherworldly. Simply wonderful!
Remote Control by Nnedi Okorafor
An alien artifact turns a young girl into Death’s adopted daughter in Remote Control, a thrilling sci-fi tale of community and female empowerment from Nebula and Hugo Award-winner Nnedi Okorafor.
“She’s the adopted daughter of the Angel of Death. Beware of her. Mind her. Death guards her like one of its own.”
The day Fatima forgot her name, Death paid a visit. From hereon in she would be known as Sankofa—-a name that meant nothing to anyone but her, the only tie to her family and her past.
Her touch is death, and with a glance a town can fall. And she walks–alone, except for her fox companion–searching for the object that came from the sky and gave itself to her when the meteors fell and when she was yet unchanged; searching for answers.
But is there a greater purpose for Sankofa, now that Death is her constant companion?
This wonderfully weird, beautiful, fantastical book about a young girl touched by Death and adopted by Death. She wanders Ghana seeking, seeking, ever seeking out a small seed/stone that calls out to her, having been stolen from her before she forgot her name. Once the stone is stolen from her and Death touches her, her own touch becomes death. She walks and walks and walks, and never is closer to the stone than she was when it was stolen from her.
Sankofa has a power that none have seen before, she is able to pulse with a green light and all those in the vicinity die when the light touches them. She can control it some, has gotten better at controlling it all the years that she walks, following the stone. But it’s not until she learns to fully embrace herself and her power as Death’s Adopted Daughter that she learns that she is so much more than anything thought she was. And it’s fantastic!
I love that Sankofa is the one with the power, the Adopted Daughter of Death. It very easily could have gone to her older brother, but the best thing about Nnedi Okorafor’s writing is that the women and girls of these worlds are the ones that have the power and the ability to change the world for the better. Sankofa is one of those girls and she is still allowed to act like a teenage girl. She is emotional, she misses her family even if she doesn’t remember their names, she wants to be able to settle and live a normal life, she wants to be left alone, and she wants to be included. She is all of these things and many more. And I truly love that once she embraces the full range of her powers, she fully becomes more herself. She settles into who she is supposed to be, who she sees herself being and I love all of this. I highly recommend you try out Remote Control or any other of Nnedi Okorafor’s books!
*Published January 12, 2021 by Crown Books for Young Readers*
I enjoyed this book and I loved the voice of the character in it more than I thought I would.
Chlorine Sky by Mahogany L. Browne
A novel-in-verse about a young girl coming-of-age and stepping out of the shadow of her former best friend. Perfect for readers of Elizabeth Acevedo and Nikki Grimes.
She looks me hard in my eyes
& my knees lock into tree trunks
My eyes don’t dance like my heartbeat racing
They stare straight back hot daggers.
I remember things will never be the same.
I remember things.
With gritty and heartbreaking honesty, Mahogany L. Browne delivers a novel-in-verse about broken promises, fast rumors, and when growing up means growing apart from your best friend.
This book in verse was real. It felt real, it talked real, the characters were real. It felt almost like I was reading a diary of our main character. A young black girl trying to figure out where her place in the world in, who her friends are, how to shine enough and be her true self. As we travel with Sky throughout her story, we find that the people we thought to be our friends aren’t always our friends; our family will tear us down at any chance they get, and family will also teach you how to hold your head high; those who say they like you and want to go out with you aren’t always infatuated with you, though it is nice when they are; that you have to be yourself in order to shine.
I love how real this book is, that you can see and hear her speaking to you. There is a rhythm to the way that Sky writes and speaks and I can hear everything! It’s like she’s sitting right next to me and talking to me, telling me about her friends and her family and her life. I really want to get to know Sky more. I think that’s what I love about novels in verse, they sound more real, they have more emotion in their writing and telling of their story. This is probably my second or third book that was written in verse and probably my favourite one. What books in verse have you read? What did you enjoy about them? Comment below and let me know!
Tiny Navajo Reads 