I found this book an absolutely adorable delight. Podesta weaves in Christmas magic a la “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Clause” to tell this story of recovering through grief and Christmas magic. The book is already on my classroom shelves.
Kagawa did an excellent job bringing this story to a believable conclusion. I really appreciate the way she transformed both of the primary characters while also not necessarily safeguarding their lives – and the lives of important secondary characters. This YA fantasy series has held up since publication unlike many others.
The third installment of this series brings the narrative back to the school setting in the new “normal” of the events following the first book. I must admit that the time between reading these two installments stretched longer than benefited my memory of some of the details. Even with that, I enjoyed this quest type story to keep a new – and quite nonsensical – character form never having existed. These novellas from McGuire work
for me in a way that few other short fantastical works have. Good thing that I have – at minimum – 8 more books to read in the series.
I loved the return to Misewa in this second installment and how Robertson continues to explore finding and owning one’s indigenous identity through these character’s real world struggles and their journeys into Misewa. That cliffhanger though! I will definitely return to the series much more quickly next time.
This book fascinated me in a way I did not expect. Instead of defaulting to romance between the two primary characters (realistically, the main character and the most important secondary character) O’Neill used the unexpected intrusion to Jenny’s life – the witch drowning – to set the characters on a quest involving fae in a unique way as well as significant relationship – friendship, familial, political – exploration as well as character growth for Jenny. I really enjoyed this unexpected surprise.
I love the cover of this book. The rest of it? Not so much. This could have been a cool concept but too much about the technical parts of the book just did not work. The author fails to clearly establish the setting. He retcons several aspects throughout the narrative while also leaving conflicting aspects of the world building wide open, confusing the reader. If significant aspects like that confuse or don’t make sense to an adult reader, good luck engaging a middle schooler.
