Lizzie Borden took an axe, and then she killed her father and stepmother, and then she used her inheritance to buy a big house called Maplecroft. Parts one and three of that sentence happened in Fall River, Massachusetts, in the 1890s. Part two is debatable. She was acquitted. In Cherie Priest’s world, there are strangeRead More
Audrey reviews My Real Children by Jo Walton
My Real Children is terrifically problematic in the best possible way. Patricia in 2015 is at the end of her life, relegated to a nursing home, left mostly alone by her family–but until she opens her eyes and sees the colors of the curtains and which side of the hallway the bathroom is on thatRead More
Audrey reviews Ash by Malinda Lo
Oh, wow! I’ve finally gotten to my first Malinda Lo book. It will not be the last. Ash is a retelling of Cinderella. It’s twisty, it has a fair amount of the fair folk, and it has some great love interests. It’s also one of those books I knew would already have been reviewed aRead More
Audrey reviews Desire Lines by Jack Gantos
Desire Lines is a slim little outlier volume from Jack Gantos. He’s known for his Joey Pigza middle-grade novels and his quasi-autobiographical middle-to-teen novels, and even for his early readers starring Rotten Ralph. Desire Lines falls into the Lesser-Known Gantos bucket, which also includes Love Curse of the Rumbaughs, which is to Jack Gantos asRead More
Audrey reviews The Story of Owen: Dragon Slayer of Trondheim by E.K. Johnston
“It’s literally about corporate dragon slaying.” The book was put into my hands. Because I have sent many, many books home with this young person, I took this one home and began reading it. This is a wonderful YA fantasy/alternate history title that had great reviews and for good reason. It has an awesome premise.Read More
Audrey reviews Teaching the Cat to Sit by Michelle Theall
Great title, right? It’s also literal. Poor Mittens. Michelle Theall’s memoir isn’t organized linearly, but intersperses chapters from childhood with chapters from adulthood. And as a child, she really did teach the family cat to sit. She writes poignantly of the deep loneliness that caused her to try to make the cat into something itRead More
Audrey reviews Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld
It clocks in at literally just under 600 pages. It’s two books in one. It’s a heck of a new young adult experiment for Scott Westerfeld, whose previous YA series have done well. And they’ve all been very different–steampunk (Leviathan), dystopian (Uglies), and apocalyptic (Peeps), to name a few. (Also, he is married to JustineRead More
Audrey reviews Get Me Through the Night by Emily Ryan
Joss, Caroline, and Izzy were best friends. At nine, Caroline was abducted. At 17, Izzy was murdered. At 31, Joss is a tough-as-nails waitress at a bar in Chewelah, Washington, and she lives across the trailer park from her mom. Joss is not given to introspection, and the joking banter she engages in at workRead More