UHHH god I really wanted to like this more than I did?? There is a lot to like--the art is gorgeous, I'm all about a Batwoman/Wonder Woman team up, I loved Kate ~coming out~ to Maggie as Batwoman... all of that was great. The plot arc itself seems... confusing and convoluted even for superhero comics? I mean, cool mythology stuff, but maybe a bit rushed? Or maybe just too long since I read volume 2 of this? IDK.

Loved it! Super fun adventure story with a kick-ass lady adventurer and a bookish tea-drinking dude of color who gets his own heroic moments. Also, it's hilarious.

I waffled a bit between 3 and 4 stars on this and I ultimately went with 4, and here's why: yesterday my library holds on the 3rd and 4th Fast & the Furious movies came in, and I opted to finish this before watching Vin Diesel & exploding cars. That's solid, dudes.

It's not a perfect book, and there are definitely some plot holes, but it's overall so engaging that I, for one, was willing to overlook a lot just to find out what would happen next. I thought Oliver did a great job setting up the parameters of this small, boring town such that their dedication to Panic would make sense.

I'll prob write a longer review of this later, but most importantly I think a lot of teens will LOVE this book. It is, essentially, a "real life Hunger Games," with a solid core of relatable, interesting characters. And a lot of dramz! SUCH DRAMZ

I'm not saying this is a perfect book, and I don't think it's for everybody, but I LOOOOVVVVVEEED it.

One of the reasons I picked it up was that Daniel Handler wrote a rave review of it, and that makes sense to me because I think Michelle Tea and Danielle Handler have somewhat similar styles, in that they are a bit wordy and pretentious but beautiful. I love them both for it, but I can theoretically understand where some readers would find it to be a drawback.

I loved how organically diverse Mermaid in Chelsea Creek is, with Polish and Puerto Rican folklore blending together. I love that one of the protagonist Sophie's mentors is a kind, compassionate, and apparently trans woman.

Also this is the 3rd YA book I've read recently with a character with OCD? Is OCD in now? (All three have been what I believe to be realistic portrayals of actual OCD, not just like, "oh haha I keep my room tidy, I'm soo OCD").

A few quotes:

"I don't think I'm crazy. I think I was just hanging out underwater with this totally busted, sort of mean mermaid."

"Andrea worked to harden herself to the onslaught of feelings. The problem with feelings was, first you had one, which was generally bad enough. But then you had a feeling about your feeling, and then a feeling about how you were feeling about your feeling, and then another feeling would pop up at the sight of it all, this teetering pyramid of emotion, and all of it would look wrong to Andrea, all her feeling somehow incorrect, too much or too little, too soft or too hard, and another feeling would emerge at the thought of that. It was endless, having feelings. And god forbid someone noticed you having them, as Sophie just had. Then you had feelings about that, about having been seen, and more feelings still about the other person's feelings. Oh, it was awful."

by the way there is a lot of talk of feelings in this book, so don't read it if you're not into that. at one point Sophie literally says, "I'm having so many feelings!"

I am FLOORED by how much I enjoyed reading this! I have an embarrassingly minimal grasp on basic economics. Like one time I confessed to a friend that I didn't really understand what a stock was, and he very patiently explained it to me, and I said, that sounds like it should be illegal?? So that's like, where I was starting from.

This is SUCH an impressive feat of writing. Goodwin is so, so good at breaking things down and explaining them, and ALSO it's funny?? I know. I know. I don't even understand how he did it.

I appreciated that it was narrated by a cartoon Goodwin who spoke openly about where things he was saying might be perceived to have a political bias. (Though it must be stated that politically speaking, Goodwin and I seem to be pretty much on the same page.)

It's also very centralized on the US economy (that's the "our" in the title; sorry, other countries) but he does spend more time on the IMF and developing nations than I might have expected.

I'd recommend this to curious teens or adults. And to anyone who doesn't understand why the stock market is legal.

This is something I probably wouldn't have ever picked up if it hadn't won the Printz. I'd heard good reviews of it but to be totally honest, from the title and cover I assumed it was some kind of horror thing, maybe vampires, and I just don't tend to go in for that? So... FYI, it's not that.

It IS a cool, spooky story of past lives & sacrifice & emotional connections. I dug it.

As you may know, fantasy/royalty books are not really my jam, so the fact that I've stuck with this through the whole trilogy definitely speaks to the quality of these books. I love Jaron! I love a sassy, more-capable-than-he-seems teenage boy king, it turns out. I didn't remember all of the details of the last 2, but enough to know that this resolves a lot of balls that were thrown in the air in the last 2 books.

I also normally hate meditations on ~the meaning of being royalty~ but Jaron makes it kind of tolerable.

I also really liked how Jaron resolved things with Amarinda and Tobias.

Spoiler

I was kind of disappointed about Imogen, I guess? This WHOLE TIME I've been assuming that she would turn out to be some kind of, IDK, secret princess or something? But I guess she's just legit a ~beautiful servant~? I guess that's fine? I don't know. I feel like her love story with Jaron was never as developed as Jaron's love story with Carthya. Oh well.

Hmm. I liked this book well enough--probably more than any other vampire series book? (Granted, I'm not a big vampire fan in general--I just try be more familiar with the genre for RA.) I picked this one up because the movie trailer actually looked pretty funny?

The book was not that funny. But it was... I don't know, it felt fresher to me than most of the other vampire series out there. The writing is fine. I like that the emphasis is on Rose and Lissa's friendship rather than the romance (although there's definitely romance involved, and brooding boys aplenty). Rose and Lissa's friendship felt very romantic to me actually and I wish this were actually a teen lesbian vampire romance book? There's some (straight) fairly sexy parts.

The worldbuilding felt a little bananas to me but I guess a lot of people are pretty into all the different sub-categories of vampires or whatever. Also there's magic? Also there's vampire royalty? Also there's a lot of in depth descriptions of dresses? If those things are appeal factors for you, you might like this book. At my library, this hasn't been as popular with the teens as other series, and I'm not sure why. Maybe the movie will boost its popularity? IDK. I'll definitely put this on my list of things to suggest to moms looking for Twilight readalikes.

If you were misled into believing that this was like Mean Girls, well, it's not really :(

I probably won't continue on with this series. I still might see the movie though.

I'm giving this 5 stars not because it's a perfect book, but because every book has its reader, and in this case, I am that reader. This book is like... improbably perfectly attuned to my own personal sense of humor.

I'm honestly not sure how many other people would like this book? A lot of the "tween" references are clearly aimed at twenty-somethings who were once tween girls--scrunchies, Lisa Frank, etc--but it's clearly set now-ish, with Justin Bieber and emoji references aplenty. I suspect the target audience woudl be a twenty-something person who is also attuned to today's tween pop culture but also love hobo code. So... again, I am the target audience for this book.

It's ostensibly YA but I don't know how many actual tweens/teens would think it's funny? The plot is a loosely structured cross-country adventure on rails, interspersed with a lot of tweets from the @tweenhobo account.

It was a fun, fast read that I personally thought was 100% hilarious, but I acknowledge that it is likely a book with limited appeal.

Ahh, this was exactly the kind of fun, escapist YA book I was hoping for.

It's not high art, but it's cute and fun and has a moderately feminist perspective on fashion. And who doesn't love a Titanic time travel story??

Anyway in short I would only recommend this to you if you think the title "the Time-Traveling Fashionista" sounds AWESOME. If you think it's dumb, you will also think this book is dumb. (And you won't be wrong, per se.)

I definitely liked it enough to seek out the [b:The Time-Traveling Fashionista at the Palace of Marie Antoinette|13455459| The Time-Traveling Fashionista at the Palace of Marie Antoinette |Bianca Turetsky|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1333552286s/13455459.jpg|18983765] the next time I want a totally fluffy, escapist read.