I Read 59 Books in November

1. Cemetery Boys

Review: I am a mess. Aiden Thomas has turned me into an absolute mess. Cemetery Boys sneaks up on you with its brilliance. For the first 80 or so pages, I remember finding the book good, but nowhere near the extraordinary I was expecting and then somehow devoured the last 200 pages and sobbed through the entire epilogue (and I do mean sobbing. None of that mentally-stable teary eyed stuff).

Following Yadriel after an attempt to prove to his family that him being a trans man does not make him any less of a boy by performing a ritual only men in their bloodline are able to perform accidentally leads to the summoning of the wrong spirit, Cemetery Boys tackles family (both born and chosen), identity, grief, love, and sacrifice. It is stunning and wonderful in absolutely every way possible and is hands down one of the best books I've read this year (and I'm almost at 600 right now, so that's the highest of compliments).

2. The Giver

Review: One of my biggest bookish secrets has always been that I was apparently the only middle school who didn't read this in school then become obsessed with it. I've avoided reading it ever since out of fear that it won't live up to the hype but oh my god, it does.

I don't entirely know how to describe this, but it's definitely everything you've heard about it and more.

3. Skyhunter

Review: Marie Lu is so incredibly good at developing character voice that I'm half convinced she also has some kind of mental link like Talin & Red to explain how seamlessly she can inhabit someone else's mind. All of her work is always so unique and while that's inevitably lead to me enjoying some of it far more than others, it'd be impossible to claim on even her worst work that she doesn't write unique, believable protagonists.

Talin is a Striker, defending Mara from monsters known as Ghosts sent from a waring nation even though her status as a refuge and mute means that a lot of that nation doesn't appreciate or want her. Her narration is moving and intimate and I was in love with her long before she sticks out her neck for a mysterious prisoner. The entire supporting cast was also really wonderful (also! Queer rep! We love to see it!) and though a tad generic, the plot was gripping enough to keep me hooked from beginning to end. This is definitely one of my favourites by Marie Lu.

4. The Cost of Knowing

Review: Thanks to the publisher for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

First off, let's get this out of the way. Slay was incredible. I genuinely couldn't believe it was Morris's debut when I read it.

The Cost of Knowing is so good that it managed to remind me that Slay was a debut.

16-year-old Alex is trying to navigate having a girlfriend, part-time job, his relationship with his aunt and brother, and the expectations of his dead parents. That's all a lot even for kids without magical curses.

Alex sees the future of everything he touches and as a result, does everything he can to keep from touching anything and anyone. it's lead to conflict with his girlfriend and job but luckily he doesn't have to do much to avoid touching his 12-year-old brother Isaiah since he stays in his room most days anyway. When Alex accidentally touches an object that shows him his brothers incoming and unavoidable death, he decide to do everything in his power to do everything in his power to keep his brother as safe and happy as possible for as long as possible. And maybe he'll break a curse around the way.

The way Morris interweaves racial tensions and issues with this book's curse elements and Alex's relationship with all the other characters is stunning. Knowing that Isaiah's probably going to die never once takes away from the growing dread of knowing we must be getting closer and closer to his death, and I loved how everything plays out.

Whether or not you were obsessed with Slay, you need to read this.

5. Wings of Ebony

Review: Thanks to the publisher for providing an eARC of Wings of Ebony in exchange for an honest review.

Wings of Ebony is absolutely stunning. J. Elle combines social and historical commentary, magic, and reality into a coming of age story for one kick-ass Black woman. After the death of her mother, Rue is taken away from her half-sister Tasha by the father she's never met only to learn that she's not entirely human. When Rue returns to give Tasha a present on the anniversary of their mother's death, she accidentally turns the entire magical realm against the two of them and has to fight to keep herself and her sister safe while also uncovering sinister forces working against Black people in both her magical and human lives.

I don't want to spoil anything, but I will say the way the magic system mirrors colonization is hauntingly well done. I also really liked the way Elle sets up the reaction from one of the white characters on Rue's side to demonstrate that even non-malicious people can unknowingly be racist/exploitative and that ignorance is not a choice.

Rue is also such a powerful character to follow. She's strong and confident, but also has so many little flaws that make her feel like a real person. Her narration was entirely her own and it made her a really easy character to connect to.

6. Dear Martin

7. Not My Ruckus

8. Heartstopper Vol 1

9. Eve of Anarchy

10. Ms. Marvel

11. Angry Girls

12. The Gaps

13. Everyone Dies Famous in a Small Town

14. Catching Lili Too

15. Ramona Blue

16. Lumberjanes Vol 4

17. Bruised

18. Fired Up About Consent

19. The Curie Society

20. To All the Boys I Loved Before

21. The Adoption

22. Lumberjanes Vol 5

23. Dearest Josephine

24. Lumberjanes Vol 7

25. Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls 3

26. The Disability Experience

27. Clover

28. Nimona (audiobook)

29. Never Kiss Your Roommate

30. Coming Out: Insights and Tips for Teenagers

31. Those Who Prey

32. Sasha Masha

33. Homewrecker

34. Slippers and Thieves

35. Lies the Guardians Tell

36. Between the Bliss and Me

37. Pixels of You

38. The Immortal Boy

39. Lumberjanes Vol 6

40. Finding My Voice

41. Recommended for You

42. Tornado

43. Not Our Summer

44. When We Were Infinite

45. The Left-Handed Booksellers of London

46. Heartless

47. The Midnight Bargain

48. You Were Made for Me

49. Link by Link

50. Lost in Nowhere

51. Break Your Glass Slippers

52. One Stupid Thing

53. The Dubious Gift of Dragon Blood

54. Looking for Alaska

55. Blood & Honey

Review: I remember finishing Serpent & Dove and being surprised it didn't end there. When your book's entire appeal is centered around "enemies to lovers where one has a deep dark secret" and you've established them as lovers and revealed the secret, where can you possibly go next?

The answer is, too many directions at once. This book tries so hard to give us a plot, but it's a lot of having our romantic leads argue over nothing because that's every 2nd book's obligation in the character arc, trying to make us love side characters while also not letting any of their stories grow past their book 1 characterization, and so, so, many black-out transitions. If this were a movie, it'd need a seizure warning because of how frequently the chapters end with "and then everything faded to black" instead of figuring out a way to authentically get to the next chapter.

It's not first book ruiningly awful, but it definitely doesn't hold a candle to it.

56. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

Review: I know so many people who loved this so I had high hopes (and I mean, Hunger Games is one of the most well written YA dystopian staples so I figured even though we all hate snow, at least I'd get more of Suzanne Collins' stunning writing), but I was just so, so, bored. The only thing that kept me going was the hope that at some point Lucy Gray would be like "of course I never actually liked you you idiot! I was trying not to die!" to explain away her dramatic flower petal eating and falling for a man with absolutely no redeeming personality traits but alas, it never came.

The pacing also was really, really, off. While The Hunger Games also starts before the actual games, there we're being introduced to the world and characters so it felt like it went by quickly but here we have Snow worrying about paying his taxes while children are murdering each other and it seemed to drag on. Even the games seemed both slow and fast at the same time. Afterward, the narrative again stays slow right up until 1 particular hanging when everything shifts to breakneck speeds and I just... maybe something crazy intelligent was going on that I couldn't pick up on but this book felt like Collins wanting to share some of the Hunger Games lore that didn't end up in the first 3 novel and for some reason deciding to stretch that out into a whole separate novel.

57. The Ickabog

Review: Literally all the top reviews on this have nothing to do with the book and only talk about the reviewers opinions on JKR so to get that out of the way, no I do not like her (I got this from the library out of morbid curiosity) but I'm going to try and approach this as if I know nothing about the author.

That being said, I have no idea who decided that this was a children's book because oh my god, it shouldn't have been. I get that it's supposed to be a fairytale and that a lot of the original fairytales were slightly horrifying, but those were written with the intent of scaring children into following their morals which tends not to be the way we approach children's lit modernly. I've seen this classified as children's lit, not middle grade, meaning the target audience is supposedly somewhere under 9ish which means that the use of complex words means this is likely meant to be read aloud to a child. I don't know about you, but I can't see myself as a parent wanted to sit there and explain what "disembowel" and "treason" mean to my kid. This gave me such heavy animal farm vibes that I genuinely don't understand why it was targeted at children instead of being written for an older audience. Most 7 year olds do not want to be reading animal farm.

As a moral story, I was also a bit put off. It's your run of the mill "tolerance is good" with a lot of "government & lies are bad" but the last scene is there to give a character who buys into and directly enable the mob mentality and actual murder a redemption and happy ending as if he's not guilty because he was too stupid to understand what was going on? I get it's a book for kids so you want a happy ending, but let me remind you that A LOT OF PEOPLE DIE! It was really weird to abruptly go "who needs accountability" after all that.

58. I Can See Clearly Now

Review: Thanks to the publisher for providing an eARC of I Can See Clearly Now in exchange for an honest review.

While interesting and fairly unique in its premise of teens waking up from near-death experiences with superhuman powers and then having to fight government programs like the CIA who want to control them, I Can See Clearly Now has such an uncanny valley style of narration that it was impossible for me to get into.

Every character talked the same and their lingo and speech styles seemed to span eras as a result, but they also all spoke like they didn't quite belong to any era. A lot of conversations are structured as if characters who have known each other their whole lives are meeting for the first time and relaying all the information the reader needs in such an unnaturally robotic way that I couldn't imagine anyone in this as a real person. It was a lot of "don't you remember that [established thing that both characters should know and don't need voicing]" and "let me repeat back what you said point by point, incorporating the phrasing used in all of your questions into my answers" and while it sounds like a small nit-picky thing, it was so discerning that I felt uncomfortable anytime anyone talked.

59. To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

Review: I've never read Eragon and although this book is part of a separate series and targeted a completely separate audience, that's definitely why I didn't like it.

An almost 900 page book should be almost 900 pages of story. Even the people I know who loved this will admit that the first 100-200 pages are really, really boring but its normally brushed aside since "there's enough plot and character development in the last 600ish pages!" A book being long does not give it a bunch of extra pages to waves on mediocre, boring storying because if that happens like it does here, it shouldn't be that long.

That's most of my problem here. This book's opening is boring and slow and so, so long that by the time the plot caught up, I already hated our main character. I don't even get what the first few hundred pages are even meant to set up because the plot threads that impact the rest of the plot are weak and underdeveloped. A Paolini superfan may have sat through that knowing something good was coming, but I don't think you should need to have read an others unrelated previous works to enjoy something they put out later in their career.

This might seem like a nitpicky thing to have been let down by, but Paolini has a really blunt, bland writing style and while that wasn't necessarily a bad thing, when paired with the title I was let down. "To Sleep in a Sea of Stars" sounds lyrical and moving and its minimalistic yet epic cover matches that expectation so when you open it and find that the only lyrical sentence is the title drop, it's kind of a let down.