West by Edith Pattou

West by Edith Pattou. October 23, 2018. HMH Books for Young Readers, 528 p. ISBN: 9781328773937.  Int Lvl: YA; Rdg Lvl: YA; Lexile: 840.

In the sequel to the beloved high fantasy East, Rose sets off on a perilous journey to find her true love when he goes missing in a thrilling tale of danger, magic, adventure, and revenge.

When Rose first met Charles, he was trapped in the form of a white bear. To rescue him, Rose traveled to the land that lay east of the sun and west of the moon to defeat the evil Troll Queen. Now Rose has found her happily-ever-after with Charles—until a sudden storm destroys his ship and he is presumed dead. But Rose doesn’t believe the shipwreck was an act of nature, nor does she believe Charles is truly dead. Something much more sinister is at work. With mysterious and unstoppable forces threatening the lives of the people she loves, Rose must once again set off on a perilous journey. And this time, the fate of the entire world is at stake.

Part of Series: East (Book #1)

Sequel to: East

 

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Reviews

Booklist (September 1, 2018 (Vol. 115, No. 1))
Grades 7-10. In this long-awaited sequel to East​ (2003), plucky, determined Rose once again finds herself on an arduous, life-or-death journey to rescue the man she loves. While East was a retelling of the Nordic fairy tale East of the Sun and West of the Moon, this is a wholly original adventure. After she rescued Charles, once trapped in the body of a white bear, from the evil Troll Queen, Rose settled down with Charles and their new son. But now Charles has been lost at sea, presumed dead. Rose, however, doesn’t believe he’s really gone, and terrible things are happening to her family and across the globe. Someone is pulling magical strings, and Rose will have both old and new enemies to face if she wants to protect what’s dear to her. Both East and its sequel stand alone, and this is an exciting, layered adventure that draws from various cultural mythologies. An epic drama featuring high romance and a resourceful heroine that will appeal to fans of Pattou and new readers alike.

Kirkus Reviews (August 15, 2018)
Once upon a time (East, 2003), a girl rescued an enchanted white bear from a wicked Troll Queen in a palace “east of the sun and west of the moon.” But what happened after “happily ever after”? Rose and Charles (or, as she still calls him, her “White Bear”) have been blissfully married for three years and have an adopted daughter and a baby boy. When word comes that Charles has been lost at sea, Rose is not convinced it was an accident, suspecting the Troll Queen has survived to seek vengeance. After leisurely reacquainting readers with the characters and backstory, the pace quickens and the stakes become both grander and more personal, as the Queen schemes to kidnap the “bairn” and eradicate every other “softskin” human. Pattou (Ghosting, 2014, etc.) builds a solid, convincing 16th-century Europe from minutely observed details. No longer tethered to a specific tale, this sequel brings in elements from legends across time and around Europe. Like the first entry, the narrative here unfolds in short vignettes from multiple perspectives (all apparently white). The secondary characters—even in brief appearances—make the most vivid impressions; Rose and Charles seem somewhat opaque. Still, she remains fearless, independent, clever, and determined (if headstrong and heedless); he is again the kindhearted, if bewildered, gentleman in distress. Necessary wherever the first is popular; a good addition to any collection where fairy-tale retellings circulate well. (glossary) (Fantasy. 12-18)

About the Author

Edith Pattou is the author of several fantasy novels, including East, an ALA Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults. She is a graduate of the Francis W. Parker School, Scripps College (B.A., English), Claremont Graduate School (M.A., English) and UCLA (M.L.I.S.). She is married to Charles Emery, a professor of psychology at The Ohio State University. They have one child, a daughter.

Her website is edithpattou.com

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The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert

The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert. January 30, 2018. Flatiron Books, 368 p. ISBN: 9781250147905.  Int Lvl: YA; Rdg Lvl: YA; Lexile: 760.

Seventeen-year-old Alice and her mother have spent most of Alice’s life on the road, always a step ahead of the uncanny bad luck biting at their heels. But when Alice’s grandmother, the reclusive author of a cult-classic book of pitch-dark fairy tales, dies alone on her estate, the Hazel Wood, Alice learns how bad her luck can really get: her mother is stolen away―by a figure who claims to come from the Hinterland, the cruel supernatural world where her grandmother’s stories are set. Alice’s only lead is the message her mother left behind: “Stay away from the Hazel Wood.”

Alice has long steered clear of her grandmother’s cultish fans. But now she has no choice but to ally with classmate Ellery Finch, a Hinterland superfan who may have his own reasons for wanting to help her. To retrieve her mother, Alice must venture first to the Hazel Wood, then into the world where her grandmother’s tales began―and where she might find out how her own story went so wrong.

Part of series: The Hazel Wood (Book 1)

Potentially Sensitive Areas: Strong language, Violence, Underage drinking, Smoking, Gore

 

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Reviews

Booklist starred (November 15, 2017 (Vol. 114, No. 6))
Grades 9-12. Some fairy tales ask to be lived in. They involve enchanted forests and handsome princes, talking animals, kind maidens, and wishes come true. Others are darker. Others have teeth. The Hinterland is one such savage place, not that Alice would know—she hasn’t read Tales from the Hinterland, the book penned by a grandmother she’s never met. They aren’t children’s stories, her mother, Ella, says, and besides, the book itself is infamously elusive. Alice, quick to anger with a heart of ice, has spent her 17 years in constant motion; trailed by bad luck, she and Ella move from place to place, never staying anywhere long enough to put down roots. But when Ella is taken suddenly, the lines between the real world and the Hinterland start to blur. Faced with the loss of the only person she’s ever loved, Alice must rely on Ellery Finch, the kind of Tales from the Hinterland superfan she’s always avoided, to help her track down the world she thought existed only in her grandmother’s imagination. In this unsettling debut, Albert takes familiar stories and carefully pulls them apart; the end result is a sort of deconstructed fairy tale that, despite its familiarity, gets under the skin. Highly literary, occasionally surreal, and grounded by Alice’s clipped, matter-of-fact voice, it’s a dark story that readers will have trouble leaving behind.

Kirkus Reviews starred (October 15, 2017)
A ferocious young woman is drawn into her grandmother’s sinister fairy-tale realm in this pitch-black fantasy debut.Once upon a time, Althea Proserpine achieved a cult celebrity with Tales from the Hinterland, a slim volume of dark, feminist fairy tales, but Alice has never met her reclusive grandmother nor visited her eponymous estate. Instead, she has spent her entire 17 years on the run from persistent bad luck, relying only on her mother, Ella. Now Althea is dead and Ella has been kidnapped, and the Hinterland seems determined to claim Alice as well. The Hinterland—and the Stories that animate it—appear as simultaneously wondrous and horrific, dreamlike and bloody, lyrical and creepy, exquisitely haunting and casually, brutally cruel. White, petite, and princess-pretty Alice is a difficult heroine to like in her stormy (and frequently profane) narration, larded with pop-culture and children’s-literature references and sprinkled with wry humor; her deceptive fragility conceals a scary toughness, icy hostility, and simmering rage. Despite her tentative friendship (and maybe more) with Ellery Finch, a wealthy biracial, brown-skinned geek for all things Althea Proserpine, any hints of romance are negligible compared to the powerful relationships among women: mothers and daughters, sisters and strangers, spinner and stories; ties of support and exploitation and love and liberation. Not everybody lives, and certainly not “happily ever after”—but within all the grisly darkness, Alice’s fierce integrity and hard-won self-knowledge shine unquenched. (Fantasy. 16-adult)

About the Author

Melissa Albert is the founding editor of the Barnes & Noble Teen Blog and the managing editor of BN.com. She has written for McSweeney’s, Time Out Chicago, MTV, and more. Melissa is from Illinois and lives in Brooklyn, New York. The Hazel Wood is her first novel.

 

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Because You Love to Hate Me edited by Ameriie

Because You Love to Hate Me: 13 Tales of Villainy edited by Ameriie. July 11, 2017. Bloomsbury USA Childrens, 368 p. ISBN: 9781681193649.  Int Lvl: YA; Rdg Lvl: YA; Lexile: 810.

Leave it to the heroes to save the world–villains just want to rule the world.

In this unique YA anthology, thirteen acclaimed, bestselling authors team up with thirteen influential BookTubers to reimagine fairy tales from the oft-misunderstood villains’ points of view.

These fractured, unconventional spins on classics like “Medusa,” Sherlock Holmes, and “Jack and the Beanstalk” provide a behind-the-curtain look at villains’ acts of vengeance, defiance, and rage–and the pain, heartbreak, and sorrow that spurned them on. No fairy tale will ever seem quite the same again!

Featuring writing from . . .

Authors: Renée Ahdieh, Ameriie, Soman Chainani, Susan Dennard, Sarah Enni, Marissa Meyer, Cindy Pon, Victoria Schwab, Samantha Shannon, Adam Silvera, Andrew Smith, April Genevieve Tucholke, and Nicola Yoon

BookTubers: Benjamin Alderson (Benjaminoftomes), Sasha Alsberg (abookutopia), Whitney Atkinson (WhittyNovels), Tina Burke (ChristinaReadsYA blog and TheLushables), Catriona Feeney (LittleBookOwl), Jesse George (JessetheReader), Zoë Herdt (readbyzoe), Samantha Lane (Thoughts on Tomes), Sophia Lee (thebookbasement), Raeleen Lemay (padfootandprongs07), Regan Perusse (PeruseProject), Christine Riccio (polandbananasBOOKS), and Steph Sinclair & Kat Kennedy (Cuddlebuggery blog and channel).

Potentially Sensitive Areas: Strong language, Violence, Strong sexual themes, Drugs, Underage drinking, Smoking, Criminal culture, Sexual assault, Murder

 

Reviews

Booklist (June 1, 2017 (Vol. 113, No. 19))
Grades 9-12. It’s true: everyone loves a character who’s a little bit bad. In the case of these 13 tales, that’s often a lot bad: collection editor and contributor Ameriie pairs 13 authors with 13 BookTubers tasked with creating stories that feature infamous villains from literature and fairy tales. The concept here is that the BookTuber provides the prompt, the author writes the story, and then the BookTuber provides commentary. Some prompts are more detailed than others, and inevitably, the best stories are often from the simplest plots: standouts include Susan Dennard’s “Shirly and Jim” (“a young Moriarty”), Cindy Pon’s “Beautiful Venom” (“Medusa. Go!”), Samantha Shannon’s “Marigold” (“Erl Queen retelling in nineteenth-century London”), and Andrew Smith’s “Julian Breaks Every Rule” (“A psychopath in a futuristic setting). A diverse array of high-profile authors are showcased (i.e., Renée Ahdieh, Adam Silvera, Victoria Schwab, Nicola Yoon), and the inclusion of the BookTubers is an interesting idea that allows for a range of perspectives. The concept alone is enough to draw readers, so stock up—it’s never been so fun to be bad..

Kirkus Reviews (May 15, 2017)
Are villains born evil, or do life circumstances force them to choose a dark path?Thirteen book bloggers challenge as many young-adult authors to write stories about the villains we love to hate. There are reimaginings of familiar fairy-tale and mythological villains alongside the nefarious adventures of the newly infamous. Benjamin Alderson’s challenge to Cindy Pon—“Medusa. Go!”—yields the origin story “Beautiful Venom,” which places the Greek myth in an Asian setting (the collection’s only sign of racial diversity). Samantha Shannon’s “Marigold” is an “Erl-Queen Retelling in Nineteenth-Century London” that grants the primary female character agency denied Victorian women in real life. “You, You, It’s All About You,” by Adam Silvera, introduces “A Female Teen Crime Lord Concealed by a Mask.” Slate, that story’s villain-protagonist, deals in mind-altering drugs in order to gain control of her life after an abusive childhood. Nicola Yoon’s chilling “Sera” is a “Gender-Flipped God of War” story about a young woman with terrifying powers who becomes deathly ill when she suppresses her true nature. Each story is followed by commentary from the blogger who set the challenge. Some react with thoughtful critical pieces, while others take a creative, metafictive approach to the fruits of their authors’ labors. Some stories don’t quite meet their challenges, but overall, this anthology is an explosively entertaining joy ride of villainous goodness. (Short stories/fantasy. 13-18)

About the Editor

Ameriie is a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, producer, and writer of fiction. She is the editor of the villains anthology Because You Love to Hate Me. The daughter of a Korean artist and an American military officer, she was born in Massachusetts, raised all over the world, and graduated from Georgetown University with a bachelor’s in English. She lives mostly in her imagination, but also on Earth with her husband, her parents and sister, and about seven billion other people.

Her website is www.Ameriie.com

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Hunted by Meagan Spooner

Hunted by Meagan Spooner. March 14, 2017. HarperTeen, 374 p. ISBN: 9780062422286.  Int Lvl: YA; Rdg Lvl: YA; Lexile: 1000.

Beauty knows the Beast’s forest in her bones—and in her blood. Though she grew up with the city’s highest aristocrats, far from her father’s old lodge, she knows that the forest holds secrets and that her father is the only hunter who’s ever come close to discovering them.

So when her father loses his fortune and moves Yeva and her sisters back to the outskirts of town, Yeva is secretly relieved. Out in the wilderness, there’s no pressure to make idle chatter with vapid baronessas…or to submit to marrying a wealthy gentleman. But Yeva’s father’s misfortune may have cost him his mind, and when he goes missing in the woods, Yeva sets her sights on one prey: the creature he’d been obsessively tracking just before his disappearance.

Deaf to her sisters’ protests, Yeva hunts this strange Beast back into his own territory—a cursed valley, a ruined castle, and a world of creatures that Yeva’s only heard about in fairy tales. A world that can bring her ruin or salvation. Who will survive: the Beauty, or the Beast?

Potentially Sensitive Areas: Violence, Mild sexual themes

 

About the Author

Reviews

Booklist (January 1, 2017 (Vol. 113, No. 9))
Grades 7-12. The story of Beauty and the Beast is intriguingly reimagined in this offering from the author of the Skylark trilogy. Yeva, known as Beauty to her beloved family, enjoys the pleasures of her aristocratic life, but is not satisfied by it. Her father loses his fortune in a failed business venture, forcing Yeva and her sisters to move to his remote lodge in the forest. When her father goes missing in the woods, Beauty, an accomplished hunter, goes after him. She soon finds herself the prisoner of a cursed beast who needs Beauty’s skills for his own purposes. Interestingly, there is no real villain; Yeva’s sisters love her, and her fiance is not a cad. The story does not rest so much on Beauty finding the man beneath the beastly exterior as it does recognizing the shared longing that imprisons them both, and how she is eventually able to save him. Alternately delicate and brutal, this is an evocative retelling that grounds itself within the universal magic of storytelling.

Kirkus Reviews starred (December 1, 2016)
A rich, Russian-influenced retelling of “Beauty and the Beast.”Bored by her comfortable life in town, Yeva (Beauty) longs for the woods. But when her merchant father loses their fortune and retreats to the wilderness with Yeva and her older sisters, Lena (Light) and Asenka (Grace), Yeva must remember her woodcraft in order to protect her family. Preferring solitude to her persistent suitor, Solmir, and a brewing love triangle—Asenka is drawn to Solmir—Yeva hunts, first for game, then for the Beast. Blaming the Beast for her father’s absence, Yeva becomes his captive, then his would-be assassin—trained to kill for him but also hoping to kill him—yet struggles to reconcile his violence and humanity. Building upon a familiar tale, Spooner creates a detailed world populated by complex characters, with medieval household mundanities and retellings of Russian folk tales anchoring the later fantastic elements. No Disney heroine, white, red-haired Yeva is also—appreciably—not an instantly lethal, superpowered heroine, although she is single-mindedly bent first on survival, then on revenge. Love blooms slowly, but this is an old-fashioned romance reminiscent of Robin McKinley’s and Patricia McKillip’s novels, concerned with the power of stories. An elegant, classic, and vivid fairy tale. (Fantasy. 12 & up)

About the Author

New York Times bestselling author Meagan Spooner grew up reading and writing every spare moment of the day, while dreaming about life as an archaeologist, a marine biologist, an astronaut. She graduated from Hamilton College in New York with a degree in playwriting, and has spent several years since then living in Australia. She’s traveled with her family all over the world to places like Egypt, South Africa, the Arctic, Greece, Antarctica, and the Galapagos, and there’s a bit of every trip in every story she writes.

She currently lives and writes in Asheville, North Carolina, but the siren call of travel is hard to resist, and there’s no telling how long she’ll stay there. She’s the author of the award-winning Starbound trilogy (These Broken Stars, This Shattered World, Their Fractured Light) and the Skylark Trilogy (Skylark, Shadowlark, Lark Ascending) as well as the Beauty and the Beast retelling Hunted.

In her spare time she plays guitar, plays video games, plays with her cat, and reads.

Her website is www.meaganspooner.com

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Frogkisser! by Garth Nix

Frogkisser! by Garth Nix. February 28, 2017. Scholastic Press, 384 p. ISBN: 9781338052084.  Int Lvl: YA; Rdg Lvl: YA; Lexile: 840.

The Last Thing She Needs Is a Prince.

The First Thing She Needs Is Some Magic.

Poor Princess Anya. Forced to live with her evil stepmother’s new husband, her evil stepstepfather. Plagued with an unfortunate ability to break curses with a magic-assisted kiss. And forced to go on the run when her stepstepfather decides to make the kingdom entirely his own.

Aided by a loyal talking dog, a boy thief trapped in the body of a newt, and some extraordinarily mischievous wizards, Anya sets off on a Quest that, if she plays it right, will ultimately free her land-and teach her a thing or two about the use of power, the effectiveness of a well-placed pucker, and the finding of friends in places both high and low.

Potentially Sensitive Areas: Violence

 

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Booklist (December 1, 2016 (Vol. 113, No. 7))
Grades 6-10. Princess Anya is in a bind. Her stepstepfather Duke Rikard (who happens to be an evil sorcerer) is plotting to steal the crown, her older sister’s suitor has been transformed into a frog, and Anya has promised to help turn him back into a prince—but she’s fresh out of the transmogrification-reversal lip balm she needs for the job. There’s nothing for it but to embark on a quest to gather the hard-to-come-by lip balm ingredients and hopefully devise a way to stop the duke while she’s at it. Anya is accompanied by Ardent, an eager (talking) royal dog, and it isn’t long before their journey takes on a more significant purpose. Playing on fairy tale tropes and conventions, Nix (Newt’s Emerald, 2015) delivers a delightful adventure stuffed with absurdity, magic, and a spirited young heroine. Beneath these entertaining trappings lies a heartfelt message of justice and fair treatment for all. As for Anya, there’s always room for leading ladies like her: “I don’t expect to need rescuing. I’m not that kind of princess.”

Kirkus Reviews starred (November 15, 2016)
Princess Anya goes questing to fulfill a promise to her sister.When Princess Anya’s stepstepfather, evil Duke Rikard, transforms her older sister’s latest love into a frog, the self-possessed white royal promises to transform him back. Alas, the Transmorgification Reversal Lip Balm is depleted in kissing the wrong frog, and Anya is forced on a dual quest to escape death by Duke Rikard and gather supplies for more balm. The third-person narration chronicles the high jinks that ensue as Anya sets off with her faithful talking canine companion, Ardent, and the transformed prince. Anya and company fall in with various intriguing characters: Bert (short for Roberta), the strong, capable, dark-skinned leader of the Association of Responsible Robbers (think Robin Hood), who challenges Anya to examine her princess privilege; the powerful and also dark-skinned and female Good Wizard; and the Wizard’s teacher, who’s both Merlin and Snow White (just one way Nix cleverly and hilariously turns fairy-tale tropes upside-down); as well as the Seven Dwarves. The characters are so enjoyable readers are sure to miss them when the quest (and book) ends. Refreshingly, there’s no romance plot here, and just as refreshingly, the two dark-skinned women are both beautiful and benevolent. Nix takes inspiration from classics and improves on them: he doesn’t fall into negative tropes and masterfully infuses the weight of first recognizing one’s privilege with humor. Great fun with heart. (Fantasy. 10 & up)

About the Author

Garth Nix was born in 1963 in Melbourne, Australia, to the sound of the Salvation Army band outside playing ‘Hail the Conquering Hero Comes’ or possibly ‘Roll Out the Barrel’. Garth left Melbourne at an early age for Canberra (the federal capital) and stayed there till he was nineteen, when he left to drive around the UK in a beat-up Austin with a boot full of books and a Silver-Reed typewriter.

Despite a wheel literally falling off the Austin, Garth survived to return to Australia and study at the University of Canberra. After finishing his degree in 1986 he worked in a bookshop, then as a book publicist, a publisher’s sales representative, and editor. Along the way he was also a part-time soldier in the Australian Army Reserve, serving in an Assault Pioneer platoon for four years. Garth left publishing to work as a public relations and marketing consultant from 1994-1997, till he became a full-time writer in 1998. He did that for a year before joining Curtis Brown Australia as a part-time literary agent in 1999. In January 2002 Garth went back to dedicated writer again, despite his belief that full-time writing explains the strange behaviour of many authors.

He now lives in Sydney with his wife, two sons and lots of books.  His website is www.garthnix.com.

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