This review was originally posted on Rachel Reading. For more like this, check it out!

As you probably know by this blog, I love Sammy Keyes. I grew up with the books and I wanted to do a reread of the books because I wanted to see if they held up, and the good news is that they do. Also, the audiobooks are still just as phenomenal as they were when I was a kid. This story picks up around Christmas time, and Sammy has been dragged into helping out Meg and Vera with the Pup Parade, and while she's showing Marique, a prize-winning Pomeranian, she escapes, and goes missing. Sammy gets blackmailed by her owner who seems to have dirt on everyone to solve the crime. Although, in this book, the crime seems to take a backseat to some bigger issues.

One of the things that I love about how van Draanen writes is that she talks about big issues, like in this, we find a discussion of loss and death, and what that looks like for kids. She deals with something that is so hard, and so big, but does it in a way that is just phenomenally accessible it blows my mind. Sammy meets Elyssa, who continually runs away from where she's supposed to be. She's younger than Sammy, and Sammy decides to kind of take on a mentor role with her. It's revealed later in the book that

Elyssa's dad was a police officer who was killed, and Officer Borsch was there.

We get a beautiful scene in a graveyard with Elyssa and Sammy who are just two kids trying to make sense of what losing someone looks like. We also have Mrs. Graybill in this book with her final appearance, and we see Sammy experience the complexities of grief.

This book is so extremely well done, just like all of these books are. Sammy is so realistic, and I think we can all see some of ourselves in her. I can't recommend this series enough, and this book is a hidden gem in all of them.

Hannah and I went in depth on this book in Episode 2 of Checking Out. Find it here!

Mentioned on Episode 1 of Checking Out

Possible ReadHarder 2020 Prompts: Rural Setting
Possible Pop Sugar 2020 Prompts: Bildungsroman, by a woman of color, written more than 20 books, more than 20 letters in the title, 20th century publication date

I was so surprised I had never read this before and while it felt a little slow to start, it's a book I will NEVER forgot. Beautiful and done masterfully, I will never forget this book, and found it one that I know I will return to again and again.

This review was originally posted on Rachel's Reading. If you like this and want more like it, find me over there!

This is the next book in the Illuminae Files and I am so glad I didn't have to wait for it because I would have lost my mind. However, I will say that I think the amazingness of Illuminae, set up some REAL HIGH expectations for Gemina. 

Gemina follows Hanna and Nik, who are on the space station that they're racing towards on Illuminae, but due to a mishap involving space-age drugs, there are now aliens beings that are killing people on the space station. I feel like there's an added intensity since you know that the cast of Illuminae is racing towards them in need of help. 

I didn't love Gemina as much as I loved Illuminae, although it was also filled with awesome space stuff and theories and twists and such. I think, however, it would have been very hard for something to be as amazing as Illuminae simply because I had no idea what I was getting into, resulting in just an amazing overall experience. Here, I knew kind of what to expect, and I think that's why I rated it four stars. I'm still so very excited for Obsidio, and I really love the writing styles present in this book.