This book is one of my favorites of the year. It's not necessarily a holiday book, since it runs darker than a cheery Christmas tale, but it definitely has a winter-y vibe.

Winterwood is about Nora Walker, the youngest of the Walkers. Being a witch runs in her blood and all Walkers have a special relationship with the Wicker Woods. They know how to navigate it, but being a Walker does not guarantee safety. They know how to get past the woods in one piece. This book is a mystery tale, circulating around the death of a boy and the disappearance of a boy. And Nora is caught in the middle of it.

Ernshaw crafted a literary masterpiece with the plot, characterization, and setting. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know the characters and exploring the setting she created. The plot was well thought out and beautifully executed.

The only thing I didn't like, which is why I gave it four stars, is the repetition. Ernshaw repeated main plot points as the characters pondered and reflected upon past events, but it was a struggle not to skip over those paragraphs. It's like constant recaps.

In the same breath, I love the language and the way it was written. I love the dark atmosphere and the word choice Ernshaw used to craft it. I especially liked the entries from the book, detailing lives of past Walkers. It helped set the scene and make the story more believable.

Overall, I loved this book and I need to read her other novels.

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Meet Silverfish. She, along with the other Water Bugs, was sold to the Brackish to pay off debts their parents owe. Silverfish was worked to the bone, deprived of basic human rights, and treated like garbage by her captain for seven years. When she turned seventeen, she was freed from the grasp of the Brackish and Captain Zharo, renewed with a sense of urgency to right the wrongs done to her. She not only earned her true name back, free to shed the Water Bug title that was forced upon her, but she also ignited a thirst for revenge.

I’m so happy that this book is the first in a duology. Most of the books sent to me by OwlCrate are not ones that I would pick out for myself. I never would’ve picked out Scavenge the Stars because it’s not my cup of tea. Don’t get me wrong; I do love a good retelling, but this was based off of a story I was not familiar with. I’ve never read or watched The Count of Monte Cristo before, but I might now that I’ve read this book.

That being said, I do love this story. Silverfish became Amaya after she fled the Brackish, but then transformed into Countess Yamaa to get revenge on her captain. This turned into a huge, book-length heist that fostered her growth as a character. Her comrades throughout her journey were well developed characters. I could see their faces clearly in my mind’s eye and could pick out who they were just by their dialogue. I especially loved Cayo’s character. He is a witty gambler whom is forced to make some pretty dire decisions.

The novel is written in third person and alternates between Amaya’s and Cayo’s point of views. The way they view the world is very different and it adds depth to the plot. The story line in this novel is deep, dark, and twisted. Amaya never knows who to trust and the world spins out of control, right under her nose. She’s confused and frustrated; Tara Sim does an amazing job conveying that through Amaya’s characterization and makes us feel it, as a result.

There were several settings in Scavenge the Stars and each one of them were perfectly described. I could picture the obscenity the Brackish embodied, as well as the gloom under the glitter that claimed Moray. I felt like I was walking through the town with Amaya and sitting at the tables with Cayo.

I believe that one of the many themes that Tara Sim was trying to convey with Scavenge the Stars is be careful who you trust. I don’t want to spoil anything but knowing who to trust during your revenge schemes is very important! Another theme I think Tara Sim was trying to hit was woman power; she switched the genders for the retelling and made Amaya a complete badass. The quote that introduced chapter eighteen says it all: “Women with knives are sharper than any mind.”

The only reason I gave Scavenge the Stars four out of five stars was because the story didn’t wow me. It was unexpected, unpredictable, and page-turning at times, but there was something missing. I’m a tough grader when it comes to star ratings. My five stars are my favorite books of all time.

Overall, I definitely think Scavenge the Stars is worth a read. It’s a powerful blend of “high-stakes adventure, romance, dueling identifies, and breathtaking betrayals” (dust jacket description), tied together by unpredictable plot twists that’ll keep you up at night. Scavenge the Stars is a book hangover type of read. Be prepared.

For Teachers

I haven’t read The Count of Monte Cristo, but there’s an opportunity to do a compare and contrast with the original work it’s based off of. I’d talk to your class to figure out if Scavenge the Stars would be a good fit for the overall population of your room, but I don’t see a problem with teaching this novel. There are some light cursing, moderate violence, and hints at prostitution, which may not be acceptable for all classrooms. Definitely screen the novel before bringing into your classroom.

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First Impressions
I didn’t think I would get this one. This is my second ARC that I’ve ever read and I’m excited to share my opinion with you guys! I want to thank Netgalley, DC Entertainment, and of course Marieke Nimkamp for the opportunity to read and review this graphic novel ahead of time!

Frankly, I only started reading graphic novels to boost my Goodreads Reading Challenge count. *Add facial grimace here.* I know, it’s bad. I thought that if I were behind a few books, I could crank out a few graphic novels in a weekend and be back on track.

I had no idea that I would end up falling in love with them. I requested to read The Oracle Code because I am indeed behind on my Goodreads challenge, but it’s also by an author I love. Marieke Nijkamp wrote This is Where it Ends, which is an amazing book about a school shooting (highly recommend!).

When I saw this, I had to request it. I didn’t think I would get it, but I did! Once I received the file for it, I browsed through it. The description seemed interesting and the artwork by Manuel Preitano is incredible!

Main Elements
Plot. I honestly felt that the plot was a little predictable. We follow a girl who has suffered a gunshot wound and lost her ability to walk. She is admitted into a rehabilitation center and uncovers deep secrets about the facility. I don’t want to spoil what those secrets are, but they weren’t shocking. I called it from the second the plot started to thicken.

Characters. Despite the predictable plot, I loved Babs. She’s hard-headed, spunky, and persistent. I also love that she’s a hacker. She shows exponential character growth throughout the graphic novel, as well.

I cannot say the same for the other characters. They all seemed static and they fell flat for me. I wasn’t able to connect with any of them, except for maybe Jena.

Jena is referred to as the sleepwalker, since she has trouble sleeping at night. She wanders the halls to check on her twin brother before she can sleep. She meets Babs after a rough night and tells her stories to help Babs go back to sleep. I loved the stories Jena tells.

Setting. The setting is one of the reasons I love graphic novels. There is incredible opportunity to make the setting as descriptive as you’d like, without using words. The Oracle Code’s setting was no exception. The rehabilitation center was beautifully drawn and it sucked me into to the story.

Theme. The theme of The Oracle Code is to not let something you cannot control keep you down. Babs found her world turned upside down when she suffered that gunshot wound, confining her to a wheelchair. She suffered identity issues, but she found her path back to the hacking world and left us with a powerful message: it’s okay to feel lost, but you’ll find your way back.

Graphics. The artwork was beautiful throughout the novel. I especially loved the pages where Jena’s stories were being told. Each page was tailored to the story, making it seem magical and, frankly, creepy as hell. I also loved how puzzle pieces were embedded into the artwork throughout; it gives us an idea of what Bab’s sees of the world.

Reason for Rating
I rated The Oracle Code a 3/5 stars because I felt like the plot was lacking and many of the characters fell flat. I loved the artwork and a few of the characters. I enjoyed reading the graphic novel overall and devoured it within two hours. If you like stories about hackers and dark secrets, this book is definitely worth the read.

For Teachers
This is a great graphic novel to include in your classroom library. Since it’s a graphic novel, I feel that it will be popular among students. It has a great message at the end of the story and to younger audiences, the plot may be satisfactory. I can see The Oracle Code getting a reluctant reader to read.

Grades: 5-10

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First Impressions

I fell in love with the description at first. I was really in the mood for a sea adventure and the plot seemed super thick and juicy! I mean, you have everything in that description: dead gods, a teen with a catchy
name (Hark is an amazing name), smugglers, scientists, a cult, secrets, and a friend that’s been turned into a monster. I really wanted to read this book. I remember telling my boyfriend about it and he gives me this 'there she goes again’ look.

Sign Language Influences

My favorite aspect of this book by far is the integration of sign language. In Hark’s world, being sea-kissed means that a person’s hearing is gone because of their voyages under the sea. It’s an honor to be sea-kissed
and warrants great respect.

Hardinge creates her own culture with the sea-kissed characters she created, while staying true to deaf culture at the same time. I’m not fluent in ASL, but I’m close. I know the culture norms pretty well and I would say this book would raise awareness for the deaf.

One of the main characters, Selphin, is sea-kissed. She lip-reads well but expresses the difficulty behind it. She acknowledges the pain she feels when there are multiple people talking around her, but nobody is taking the time to sign to her. She talks about feeling the vibrations of sounds and interacting with sound-making objects as well as a hearing person could.

This integration was a selling point for me.

Characterization

"No stories were complete anyway; they were all really just parts of a bigger tale that could only be told by many different voices and seen through many different eyes. There was always more of the story to learn" (Deeplight, 418).

The characterization was the spotlight of the book, I think. Hark is our main character and we follow him throughout most of the story. Hark is obsessed with other people's stories and he hides in them for a while, before figuring out that he has a story to tell himself.

He definitely changes into a new person by the end of the book. All of the characters do.

Each character has their own distinct voice, which is really important in young adult literature. Many authors struggle with this part, I think. Hardinge has it down, though. I had no difficulty navigating dialogue.

Plot

The plot was weird. A combination of the plot, world building, and writing style factored into my low-ish rating for this book. The plot was hard to follow, especially at first. I didn’t feel prepared going into the novel. There was so much happening in a world that I didn't recognize, and I don’t think there was enough time dedicated to submerging readers into that world before the plot kicked in.

I didn’t understand where the story was going until about forty percent of the way through. When I did start to understand the trajectory of the plot line, I was a little disappointed. I thought the plot would be deeper than what it was.

Writing Style

She got me on the writing style, too. I loved the atmosphere that she was painting; it was very Lovecraftian, which I adored. However, the language was weird and difficult to adapt to. The point of view switches also confused me.

She writes Deeplight in third person omnipresent, which is fine. Although, I’ve never read a book that switches point of view in third person before. We see the world from three point of views in some chapters, switching with the use of paragraph breaks.

I get that those scenes needed to be seen from different perspectives to fully understand what’s happening, but the execution was weird. Not necessarily bad... just weird.

Recommendations & Reason for Rating

If you like darker young adult novels about sea monsters and secrecy, pick this one up. Deeplight has a little bit of everything, except for romance. There are splashes of deaf culture and sign language throughout the novel, as well as rich characterization. The only weak spots, in my opinion, were in the plot and the point of view switches.

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I have a love-hate relationship with this book. It took me a long time to get through it, compared to other books I've read (partially because of an out of state move). "Dark Shores" is a dense read. There's so much going on and the world we've been dropped into takes some getting used to. It's not a graceful drop. It feels like Jensen expected us to have some prior knowledge of the world, since many of the references didn't make sense at first. Context clues were enough in some cases, but I had to utilize the glossary in the back of the book often throughout the first fourth of it to understand what was going on.

While we're on the subject of additives, she could've used a map. Some authors do this and I find that I don't need access to maps in those stories. This one would've benefited from some point of spacial reference. I'm big on not treating the reader as if they're stupid, but when you're building a world, it's important to explain details to your readers. Despite the world-building confusion, the setting was still well developed. The individual settings were well described and I could picture them easily in my mind's eye. I think the setting issues stemmed from their connectivity. I had no idea where we were in some parts of the book because I didn't know how /this/ setting related to /that/ setting (if that makes sense).

However, the plot was fantastic. There were many manic page-turning scenes in there, as well as plot twists that literally had me gaping at my page. I loved the plot.

Until the end.

I'm not a fan of the ending. I'm not going to spoil anything for you, but it felt as though Jensen left the book unfinished. Not in the cliffhanger style, either. There were many lose ends that needed tying and if she was trying to set up for a sequel, she didn't do it right.

I loved the characters. I fell in love with both Terriana and Marcus, as well as various other characters that blessed these pages. Terriana is a spit-fire and she's super relatable. Marcus is a hard-ass and he's super relatable.

I really liked how Jensen let us see things from both of their perspectives (in third person, by the way!). I've never seen that before. In all my years of reading, I've never seen a book that switched point of viewpoints while remaining in third person. As a writer, I'm envious of this skill that Jensen has.

This book kind of reminded me of "Children of Blood and Bone" mixed with "The Last Voyage of Poe Blythe." If you liked either of those, you might want to give this one a read.

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Short & Sweet Summary

What Unbreakable Looks Like by Kate McLaughlin is a heartbreaking and raw telling of a teenager who was sex trafficked. Lex became Poppy the moment she met Mitch, an attractive young man who bought her gifts and made her feel special.

After she was convinced that they were in love, he conned her into have sex with a single man to help pay off a debt that he had racked up, making it seem like she was saving his life. Being in love with Mitch, of course Lex did it.

This happened a few times before he brought her to the apartment building where his business was run. She became Poppy that day. After the apartment manager figured out what was happening, the manager kicked them out.

Mitch took his flowers to the motel that would eventually be raided. Poppy was given her name back after experiencing the horrors of sex trafficking (and it gets detailed), but she’s not sure she wants to take it.

The trauma equipped her with loads of trust issues and an addiction to medication Mitch would give her to make her docile with his clients. Lex decides to accept her old name back and try to integrate back into society, but it proves much harder than it seems.

What Unbreakable Looks Like by Kate McLaughlin has many trigger warnings. This book contains graphic content about sexual trafficking, loads of foul language, sexual assault, violence, and trigger warnings for anyone who has experienced trauma.

First Impressions

I was scared to request this. This is one of the amazing ARCs that I received from NetGalley in return for an honest review, so I’d like to thank Kate McLaughlin, St. Martin’s Press, Wednesday Books, and NetGalley for allowing me to read this.

However, like I said, I was scared to request it. I knew from the description that this book would be deep and difficult to read. I don’t have sexual trafficking trauma, but I do have experience with trauma in general.

I knew that I needed to read this story for some reason, though. It seeped into my bones and kept whispering in my ear until I finally hit the ‘request’ button. I’m glad I did. It was a difficult read, I’m not going to lie.

What Unbreakable Looks Like was read in small chunks because this is not a binge-able book. It was too much for me to read in a short period of time. The writing is fantastic and pulls you in, but the content is dark and twisted enough to keep my mind from fully immersing me (coping mechanism for trauma, I’m sure).

I thought the cover was gorgeous and the topic was intriguing because I don’t know a ton about sex trafficking. This book taught me so much about the life... too much. There were parts of this that broke my heart. I want to do a book talk about this, but it’s not out yet, so I don’t want to release content that would spoil anything.

Emotional Connection & Character Arcs

I was on the verge of tears throughout this entire novel. Each time my eyes welled was for a different reason. That’s how good Lex’s character arc is. She starts off the story as Poppy, a teenager who is being sexually trafficked. It’s rough to read because of how raw this story is. McLaughlin doesn’t hold anything back and you feel each scene hit you in the face.

Then, she gets rescued by the police and there’s her knee-jerk reaction to run back to Mitch, her pimp. He brainwashed his “flowers” well enough to make them desperate to go back to the life, despite how they are treated. It’s heartbreaking.

Then, we see Lex start to emerge as a different person. She makes friends and even tries to be in a relationship. We see the heartbreak that happens when someone breaks her newfound trust and the legal battle that she takes when she decides that she wants to do something more for herself. It’s inspiring and left me weeping through the entire novel.

Because my eyes couldn’t stay dry, I had to read this one in chunks. It took me double the amount of time it normally does to read through a book because I couldn’t take too much of it in one sitting.

Writing Style

Like I mentioned before, What Unbreakable Looks Like is raw. There’s curse words, sexual abuse, violence, and much more that comes along with sex trafficking. This is a story that needed to be told, but it doesn’t make it any easier to read it.

The reason I gave it 4/5 stars instead of 5/5 is because of personal taste. I’m a stickler with pacing and I felt like there were some minor pacing issues in this one. There were quite a few scenes that I felt should’ve been fleshed out more. I made a note in the book, which I never really do, about how summer seemed to pass in the blink of an eye, even though there were noteworthy things happening. We are told a lot of the scenes happened without actually living through them with the characters.

I play a drinking game when I read young adult novels. Whenever I read a sentence that mentions someone releasing a breath that they didn’t know they were holding, I take a shot. It’s one of the most cliché lines in YA fiction, so I don’t see it much anymore. I haven’t had to take a shot in a long time.

I had to take two shots while reading this book.

Should You Read It?

Yes. Despite the pacing issues and some minor personal taste writing style problems, I thoroughly believe that every human should read this because of how raw the story is written. It’s an important story that is based off of real events that are happening right now. We need to become more aware of sexual trafficking and I applaud Kate McLaughlin for taking the time to do the painstaking research it took to write this novel.

#netgalley, #katemclaughlin, #stmartinspress #wednesdaybooks #tearjercker, #ARC

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Highlight of the Trip: I cooked alongside Emoni in Spain, learning how to infuse feeling into my meals.

Two Cent Summary

Emoni is an Afro-Puerto Rican from Philadelphia, trying to get through her senior year of high school as a teen mom and an aspiring chef. She has unmistakable talent, but she’s trying to figure out if following her dream is feasible.

First Impressions

I’ve heard a lot of amazing things about Elizabeth Acevedo, but I had yet to read anything by her. I saw that With the Fire on High was available through Libby and had to snag it. I love the cover. It’s absolutely gorgeous and the chapters are super short. Think like 3-5 pages each. I love books with short chapters because it makes you feel like you could read forever!

Elements of Literature

I loved this story. From start to almost-finish. The characterization was well done, and each character was relatable. Each one was human with flaws and strengths, even the characters I think we’re supposed to not like.

The settings were beautifully pictured. From Spain to the kitchens, everything was well described and I could clearly picture it in my head. My only beef with this book was the plotting. This book is very light and fluffy, while still talking about important life issues: a great contemporary. The plot, however, I felt was a little predictable.

The Food!

Grab some snacks when reading this book. Seriously. I was hungry throughout each reading session. Food plays a huge part in this novel, not only because Emoni wants to be a chef, but because she has culinary magic. She is able to pass down emotions through her dishes, causing the eater to feel something unexpected.

She doesn’t believe that she has this power, but everyone keeps telling her that she does. That she was born to cook. She has to make some rough decisions about her life and where she wants to go after high school, but her dream is to stay in the kitchen.

Teen Pregnancy and Motherhood

I absolutely loved how Elizabeth Acevedo talked about the after of having a baby in high school. It’s rarely talked about in young adult literature and I’m thrilled that I was able to stumble across it. Emoni has to deal with visitation from Emma’s (Emoni’s daughter) father, handle balancing a schedule, and organizing college plans... all while thinking about the best outcome for her daughter.

This element of the story was well written and extremely realistic of what a teen mother in high school would have to go through and the decisions that would have to be made.

Perseverance

One of the biggest themes of this novel is perseverance. You can get anything you want if you work hard enough for it and if you believe in yourself enough to put in the effort. Emoni is offered a spot in a culinary arts class at her high school, which has a trip associated with it to Spain to learn about Spanish cuisine. She wants to go, but she knows there will be a financial barrier. She has to persevere through many road blocks in order to see her goal at the end of the tunnel.

Reason for Rating ~ Should You Read It?

I loved this book, which his why I gave it four stars. It was a terrific story and well written with the short chapters I adore, but the plotting was a little predictable for my taste.