This is my favorite retelling I have read this year. It's a play on Jane Eyre , but in a desert somewhere that has limited colonization. There's complicated relationships and cool magic (amulet based) and a slow-burn romance of the bickering kind. There is an Evil Eye that manifests as a hyena (and other things) that are both fun and horrifying. My favorite manifestation is the Librarian.

I have a soft spot for Raul the Third, so I jumped at reading this one. It's a re-imagining of Frankenstein, as many have said. The monster is aware of her monstrous-ness, and there's a whole thing with the church and owl people and they all seem to be really not into the idea of Cristina, even before she became a monster. I like the plant magic and I still like Raul the Third's style.

Pen wants nothing more than to take over her father's restaurant, but he has other plans for her. He wants her to go to college, and her brother will take over the restaurant. The restaurant, Nacho's Tacos, has been a fixture of the community for years, often hiring and helping out undocumented people, or assisting them with getting out from under the evil loan shark. Xander is a new employee at the restaurant, and he takes a shine to Pen. Together they work through a lot of issues. I am not a huge prank/joke person, so some of the stuff at the restaurant was a little too much for me, but I could see that feeling like a family. This book feels bittersweet, just like the title.

I have not read any Green Lantern works before, so I'm not familiar with their mythology. It sounds like basically their rings can create anything they can imagine? And Jo (Sojourner Mullein) has a ring that can recharge (unlike others) but it's not quite as powerful. She's out in the Far Sector, dealing with the first murder they've had in forever in a society that has turned off their emotions. It's a twisty-turny look at society, including the fascinating @AT.

Jackie's parents have been deported to Mexico, and now she lives with her aunt, occasionally helping out at the senior center her aunt works at. She's always had a season pass to the local amusement park (sort of a Disney/medieval park mash-up), but this year they can't afford it. However, she has heard that if someone dies in your party while at the park, they will give you free lifetime passes to the park. She and her "friends" devise a plan to bring seniors to the park in hopes that they will die while there and they will all get lifetime passes. Jackie soon realizes that the seniors are cooler than she realized, and maybe this isn't the greatest plan. I liked most of the book, but do the people Jackie calls friends suck. Ugh.

Black mermaids introducing me to different types of African mythology? Yes please! Simidele is a Mami Wata, tasked with bringing souls that die in the ocean to Yemoja for a final blessing. When she saves one instead, she has to bring balance back. She and the boy she saved, Kola, go on a mission to save the Mami Wata and his family. It's so good.

I thought this was excellent. It didn't really go over anything I didn't already personally know, but I read a lot of this stuff. I think it works really well for people who DON'T necessarily think about this stuff all the time, or are interested but don't know where to start.

Fantastic fantasy about a family in Maine that is full of monsters. I really enjoyed it (even if I thought the mc was a little slow to figure things out--but hey, if you've been denied love and then suddenly have it then you might be the same!)

This book is so brutal, and yet there are beautiful moments. It's 1937, East Texas, in a town that's mostly divided between Black and White, and isn't entirely sure what to do with a Mexican. It's got toxic masculinity and racism (so much of both), and the New London school explosion, which is horrific. I'll be thinking about this one for a while, but I'm glad I spoiled the ending for myself, because I think I needed that time to mentally prepare. Which, granted, these characters did not have, but I am lucky enough to.

Captures the wonder of the original, and made me remember why I fell in love with Cashore all those years ago.