Monday Minis – June 7th

It’s been a while since I’ve shared some of these mini reviews! Okay fine, it’s been a while since I shared any reviews in general. I thought this would be a great way to start doing it again. These aren’t all of my most recent reads. But! They are ones that I wanted to highlight and ones that stuck out to me. Also I just realized that each one is a different genre!! We’ve got contemporary, horror, fantasy, and science fiction. I guess I read across quite a few genres, not just sci-fi and fantasy!

---

---

Perfect on Paper by Sophie Gonzales
Published by Wednesday Books on March 9, 2021
Genres: Contemporary, Young Adult
Pages: 352
Format: eBook
Goodreads

"Perfectly wonderful.” —Becky Albertalli
In Sophie Gonzales' Perfect on Paper, Leah on the Offbeat meets To All the Boys I've Loved Before: a bisexual girl who gives anonymous love advice to her classmates is hired by the hot guy to help him get his ex back.
Her advice, spot on. Her love life, way off.
Darcy Phillips:
• Can give you the solution to any of your relationship woes—for a fee.
• Uses her power for good. Most of the time.
• Really cannot stand Alexander Brougham.
• Has maybe not the best judgement when it comes to her best friend, Brooke…who is in love with someone else.
• Does not appreciate being blackmailed.
However, when Brougham catches her in the act of collecting letters from locker 89—out of which she’s been running her questionably legal, anonymous relationship advice service—that’s exactly what happens. In exchange for keeping her secret, Darcy begrudgingly agrees to become his personal dating coach—at a generous hourly rate, at least. The goal? To help him win his ex-girlfriend back.
Darcy has a good reason to keep her identity secret. If word gets out that she’s behind the locker, some things she's not proud of will come to light, and there’s a good chance Brooke will never speak to her again.
Okay, so all she has to do is help an entitled, bratty, (annoyingly hot) guy win over a girl who’s already fallen for him once? What could go wrong?

Do you have a favorite book with a bisexual main character? After reading this book, this is now one of mine. This was a really fun high school contemporary romance! And wow there were so many great things about it. For example, the discussion about bi erasure and biphobia!!! So well done, and so great to see it discussed on page. I think that’s something really important for teens/young adults to be able to see. Also there is so much diversity in the characters in terms of sexuality and race and etc and it’s just. So nice to read something that has that and feels so real. All of the characters are imperfect and messy, and that is exactly what makes it so great to read. It’s just teens being teens!! No one is perfect and I love that this book reflects that.

---

---

On This Unworthy Scaffold (Shadow Players, #3) by Heidi Heilig
Published by Greenwillow Books on April 27, 2021
Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult
Pages: 368
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 0062652001
Goodreads

Jetta’s home is spiraling into civil war.
Le Trépas—the deadly necromancer—has used his blood magic to wrest control of the country, and Jetta has been without treatment for her malheur for weeks. Meanwhile, Jetta’s love interest, brother, and friend are intent on infiltrating the palace to stop the Boy King and find Le Trépas to put an end to the unleashed chaos.
The sweeping conclusion to Heidi Heilig’s ambitious trilogy takes us to new continents, introduces us to new gods, flings us into the middle of palace riots and political intrigue, and asks searching questions about power and corruption. As in the first two books, the story is partly told in ephemera, including original songs, myths, play scripts, and various forms of communication.

This is the third book of the Shadow Players trilogy. I actually did a full series review for the trilogy when this book came out. Well, I just had to highlight it again here, because I want Heidi Heilig to get the love and readers she deserves!! I really like that Heidi deals with a lot of things in her books. Depression, bipolar disorder, colonialism, mixed race identity, etc. All of the characters in this series are compelling, both the main and side characters. There is a lovely found family aspect, and you know I’m a sucker for that. Heidi also does a wonderful job portraying different familial relationships, which I love seeing in books. Go check out this series, and her other duology as well!!

---

---

Horrid by Katrina Leno
on September 15, 2020
Genres: Horror, Young Adult
Pages: 322
Format: Hardcover
Goodreads

Following her father's death, Jane North-Robinson and her mom move from sunny California to the dreary, dilapidated old house in Maine where her mother grew up. All they want is a fresh start, but behind North Manor's doors lurks a history that leaves them feeling more alone...and more tormented.
As the cold New England autumn arrives, and Jane settles in to her new home, she finds solace in old books and memories of her dad. She steadily begins making new friends, but also faces bullying from the resident "bad seed," struggling to tamp down her own worst nature in response. Jane's mom also seems to be spiraling with the return of her childhood home, but she won't reveal why. Then Jane discovers that the "storage room" her mom has kept locked isn't for storage at all -- it's a little girl's bedroom, left untouched for years and not quite as empty of inhabitants as it appears....
Is it grief? Mental illness? Or something more... horrid?

So, I’ve mentioned briefly in a few posts that I’m kind of a big scaredy cat haha. I don’t watch scary movies, I don’t play scary games, and I don’t read horror books. Well, I used to never read horror books, but this year I have read TWO whole horror books. Ok fine, one was a novella. And yes, both of them are by two of my favorite authors, and also yes, they are both more fantasy horror. BUT STILL. This book (Horrid) was so well written!! I was on the edge of my seat the whole time and read it in a single sitting haha. The atmosphere that Katrina Leno creates in the book is wonderfully creepy. I would absolutely read more horror from her!! And if you are a big baby like me, don’t worry – it’s not actually all that scary! It’s more of a tense/creepy atmosphere.

---

---

The Ones We're Meant to Find by Joan He
Published by Roaring Brook Press on May 4, 2021
Genres: Science Fiction, Young Adult
Pages: 384
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 1250258561
Goodreads

Cee has been trapped on an abandoned island for three years without any recollection of how she arrived, or memories from her life prior. All she knows is that somewhere out there, beyond the horizon, she has a sister named Kay, and it’s up to Cee to cross the ocean and find her.
In a world apart, 16-year-old STEM prodigy Kasey Mizuhara lives in an eco-city built for people who protected the planet―and now need protecting from it. With natural disasters on the rise due to climate change, eco-cities provide clean air, water, and shelter. Their residents, in exchange, must spend at least a third of their time in stasis pods, conducting business virtually whenever possible to reduce their environmental footprint. While Kasey, an introvert and loner, doesn’t mind the lifestyle, her sister Celia hated it. Popular and lovable, Celia much preferred the outside world. But no one could have predicted that Celia would take a boat out to sea, never to return.
Now it’s been three months since Celia’s disappearance, and Kasey has given up hope. Logic says that her sister must be dead. But nevertheless, she decides to retrace Celia’s last steps. Where they’ll lead her, she does not know. Her sister was full of secrets. But Kasey has a secret of her own.
One of the most twisty, surprising, engaging page-turner YAs you’ll read this year—We Were Liars meets Black Mirror, with a dash of Studio Ghibli.

So I just mentioned that I love reading about familial relationships right? In particular, I love sibling relationships. Maybe that comes from me having a brother and being very close to him. But yeah, siblings in books!!! It always gets me. So when I heard that this book was a sci-fi following two sisters?? I mean obviously it went straight on my TBR. I didn’t know much beyond that going into the book, and to be honest I think that’s for the best. The mysteries and reveals that happen through the course of the book had me like DAMN. And even though the main plot and action centers around climate disasters and other sci-fi aspects, I really feel like the true heart of this book is the exploration of the sisters’ relationship.

I loved that we got to experience the relationship from both, not just one sister. It made everything so much richer!! I also want to say that the combined use of first person for one sister and third person for the other was soooo well done. It added really well to the tension and slow reveals, since we got a more fleshed out view of what was going on, but not a complete view. I could go on and on about this book to be honest but this is meant to be a mini review haha. So I’ll just stop here, and tell you to GO READ IT.