sarahm's Reviews (69)

I am holding myself back from giving this book 4 stars... I really really wanted it to be good!! The concept is great, and there's so much potential in the worldbuilding and the characters, but the book all together just didn't stick the landing for me.

I absolutely love the magic/fantasy of this book. Seriously, the concept is great, and I thought the worldbuilding was really well written and well-incorporated into the story. I'm obsessed with this idea of shadows as dark matter or energy and the relations between humans and their shadows. I love all the little details about how the modern world has developed within this concept. This feels like a book created from a great worldbuilding idea, but then the story was just slapped on top. The plot points themselves were fine enough, but the story just didn't carry itself well. The suspense wasn't there for me, the character motivations didn't feel super believable, and the ending was rather disappointing.

I have super high hopes for the sequel. With the world building and character introductions out of the way, a sequel might have the space it needs for a more developed story and plot. ...Hopefully.

Thanks to NetGalley and Tor Books for the eARC!

I absolutely loved this book from start to finish! The pacing is a bit slow, but in a good way. It gives the characters and budding romance time to develop, and it really lets us get to know the characters and understand them better. The romance is soft and fuzzy, the characters are lovely (especially all the siblings, they are delightful), and the challenges Raff and Penn face are well written and come to a satisfying conclusion. Nothing is hasty or half-done in this book. It's a charming book all around (and I'm so glad my copy made it to the U.S. before we moved and changed addresses!!) Look for the U.S. release November 2023.

This book was wild! What an exciting concept, with a well-created setting and such interesting characters. It has been a very long time since I last read Frankenstein, so my thoughts are a bit removed from the retelling perspective, but I can confirm it does very well as a standalone!

This reads more like an adventure book than a thriller or mystery, where the main plot and pacing surrounds what is essentially the main characters chasing a target while being chased themselves. Sometimes I think chase stories get a bit repetitive after a time, but this one kept it interesting with each new place they go and each new character they meet. Each new encounter unravels more of the story. The characters are all very distinctive and I feel like you get to know each of them well. When a character does something, there's existing precedent for that behavior, which I really like. I would have enjoyed a bit more evidence of character development throughout, as the characters seem fairly static until their final interactions at the end, where they suddenly show they've learned something from it all.

Overall, a really exciting new middle grade book that I'll be recommending to all the kids asking for something dark, spooky, thrilling.

Thanks to HarperCollins Children's Books and NetGalley for the eARC! 

Cannot wait for a sequel! Everything was done so well here. Fantastic characters, fantastic themes, fantastic story. I like the message that not everything is black and white, right and wrong, and that there's complexities to every problem and to every person. I'm also so so happy to be seeing more and more LGBTQ+ characters in middle grade fiction, and especially genderqueer characters. 

Thanks to NetGalley and Labyrinth Road (Random House Children's) for the e-ARC! 

I really enjoyed this book! What an exciting concept - a mysterious map and an unraveling secret history tied to it. I would call this book fiction, as does my library and the description from the publisher, but it does have fantasy and magical realism elements to it. The synopsis doesn't hint at this, and anyway I had read the synopsis ages before I actually started reading. I didn't realize this until about a third of the way through the book when I had to stop and check what genres Goodreads uses to see if it was actually going in the direction I thought it was going!

The concept is so interesting and completely believable for magical realism or urban fantasy - it's not too outlandish. I won't spoil much about the fantasy elements, because they really don't start happening until about 40% of the way into the book, but just know I really loved them. 40% in does feel a bit long to me, but I guess it's supposed to reflect the main character learning and discovering that what she thought was an ordinary world isn't. It gives time to introduce the characters and the setting.

I'll also note that this is definitely a plot-driven book rather than character-driven. There is some emphasis on characters - the main character is often described as stubborn and "just like her father" in order to justify choices she makes, and there's a web of characters from the aforementioned secret history that share stories with the main character. Even so, the characters just share clues to further the plot, the romance isn't a priority, and there isn't much (if any) character development.

That being said, there's nothing wrong with a plot-driven story and there's definitely nothing wrong with this one! The plot here is fantastic and I loved the way everything unfolded. I really liked the format of the other characters sharing their stories in a first person POV chapter as though they're telling it to the main character, while the rest of the story is told in third person.

Overall, I really liked this one. I would have liked a bit more fantasy in the beginning, but overall I thought this book was great and I would recommend it.

Thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for the eARC! 

I love heist stories, I love art history, I love the idea of stealing back looted art, I love character-driven stories, I love stories about making connections and forming relationships and having hope in the face of uncertain odds… Yeah, no, this book had it all and I loved it and I’m putting it on my to buy list because I want to own it and bookmark the heck out of it.

On that note, my e-book download has literally so many highlights and notes. It’s rare if I make more than a small handful, if any, notes in a book, because I tend to get so immersed I just don’t even think about it. If I mark up a book, it’s either really bad and I’m just writing “what” and “???” everywhere, OR it’s really good and I keep reading these lines that just strike me and I absolutely need to save them. This one is the latter. It’s written so beautifully. I know the definition of “prose” is basically just text without meter, but for whatever reason the word gives me the connotation of text written in an artful and beautiful way, where it feels every word is intentional and careful and has so much impact. Anyway, this book is that. It’s written so artfully, and with this aching, longing, hopeful tone that makes it feel like a love letter or like a dead of night, sitting on the roof in the dark kind of whispered conversation, where you feel too vulnerable and raw. 

The storyline is great. The planning scenes are great, the way the heist gets put together is great, the action scenes are great. It definitely scratches my itch for typical montage-y heist stories (my not-at-all-guilty pleasure). This group of college kids, planning an impossible crime by watching heist movies, sharing notes over Zoom and Google Docs (because how else are college kids going to do a group project?), and trying to figure out how to fit into their assigned typical heist roles, was perfect for this story. The exploration into each of them and their reasons for doing this, along with their connections within the group, felt really well done and thoroughly explained. At some points the descriptions for characterization felt a touch repetitive and redundant, but I think it was necessary in order for the reader to recontextualize certain characters after reading from the perspective of other characters. After all, one of my favorite things about this book (second to the writing style) is how the characters interact and how they see each other, how they both pull towards and push away from each other. “Portrait” in the title made me hopeful for some great characterization, and I wasn’t disappointed.

While I think the resolution came up maybe a bit too quickly, it was still a satisfying ending. You might need to suspend your disbelief a little bit for certain events throughout, but I think that’s the case for pretty much any heist story I’ve ever consumed, so. And anyway, I didn’t feel distracted by anything while reading. Overall, I’m simply in awe of Li for how she wrote this book, for evoking this tone and for putting words together the way she did. For telling this story in this way, for crafting a fun heist story along with a serious reflection on colonialism and art looting and the excuses from museums. For making it all fit together seamlessly, and for the truly beautiful way this book felt to read.

Thank you to Penguin Group and NetGalley for the ARC!