In a distant future, the US has fallen after a devastating sequence of wars, and in its place rises a new nation by the name of Illéa. The country is led by a traditional monarchy, and society is divided into castes, with Ones (royals, elites) lying at the top of the pyramid and the lowly Eights (handicaps, homeless people, orphans etc.) at the bottom, ostracized and left to suffer at the hands of society. As a form of entertainment or tradition, when the King and Queen's male progeny comes of age, the government televises a show known as the Selection, which centers around thirty-five young girls of all different castes compete on national TV for the hand in marriage of the prince.

America Singer is a Five; she's an artist, a singer, like her last name suggests. For her, the prospect of entering in the Selection is nothing but a nightmare, as it threatens her budding relationship with Aspen, who is a caste below her. But after continuous persuasion and bribes from her mother, she decides to compete anyway and finds herself in the presence of Maxon, the young prince of the realm that thirty-four other girls are desperate to win the favor of. Slowly, America begins to fall for him, questioning her own desires.

I had first decided to pick up this book as I thought the concept of a futuristic caste system and a monarchy was very interesting. These types of books were also not ones that I would usually read, so I thought it would be nice to try something different for once. The Selection, for all of its simple and predictable plot structure, is a fairly easy and somewhat entertaining read; I finished the first book in two days! However, that's where the compliments stop. The book overuses too many common YA book tropes (enemies to lovers, love triangles) as well as basic, shallow character archetypes (feisty female main character, dreamy and sweet main love interest, bubbly best friend, superficial mean girls, etc). As mentioned before, the plot has barely any depth, and the mentions of rebel attacks on the royal family and the corrupted caste system seem like a low-quality effort to retain the dystopian aspect of the novel at best. Romance plays itself as the main focus of the novel, and while that is not necessarily bad, it does tend get extremely repetitive as much of the novel and even the whole series centers around America deciding whether or not she really loves Maxon (as well as vice versa). And as for the characters themselves, I found both America and Maxon insufferable and one-dimensional. The book lacks tension and is overall very plain.

I did manage to get through the entirety of the series; however, I do not recommend this book to anyone interested in novels with a blend of romance and dystopian/fantasy elements. There are books out there that execute these genres better than the Selection in my opinion.

Two queer Asian girls, on different sides of the war. When their paths collide, at first, they are each other's enemy until they both realize they're fighting for the same purpose, and with a tyrannical rule spreading they have to work together to rebel.

This book was amazing, definitely worth reading. This book was full of action, sci fi and romance. This is one of the most underrated books and deserves more recognition.

The Thunderhead, an all-knowing artificial intelligence was able to solve all of the world's problems, it could even bring back the newly deceased from the dead. Religion, creativity, hard work, and passion are obsolete, and jobs only exist to give people something to do. Everything is perfect, every accommodation is met, anyone can speak to the Thunderhead, and the Thunderhead can solve anyone's problems. However, because the Thunderhead’s purpose is to help humanity it vowed to have nothing to do with the problem of overpopulation and the humans would have to create that system.
The Scythedom is an organization of people whose job is to glean (or cause the permanent death of an individual). Scythes are treated with the highest honor and have to pay for nothing and wait for no lines, but they carry the tough burden of ending other people’s lives. Every scythe must meet a quota and must follow a list of rules. However, even with great respect no man-made thing is perfect and the drive for power may corrupt the Scythedom.
Citra and Rowan end up as apprentices for a scythe and they will soon learn the guilt and hardship of the job. Only one of them will become a scythe, they must learn and train constantly leaving their old lives behind. Through many plot twists the pair must do what they can to navigate their new environment. How will the other scythes react to a scythe having two apprentices? How will Citra and Rowan change?
Neal Shusterman’s Scythe is an amazing book. It portrays the mental toll and thoughts of the protagonists perfectly and demonstrates their character development amazingly. The world-building is immaculate, and the vocabulary and characters get you immersed in the book quickly. Every detail is looked over and every character is thought out thoroughly, all having unique backstories and different approaches and thoughts to the world around them.
Scythe is also a philosophical masterpiece and touches on subjects like the drive for power and corruption in society. Throughout the book I was thinking constantly and wondering about how the society works. I recommend this book to everybody for its thorough story and how it brings up many deep questions in a unique, subtle, and phenomenal way.

As a reader, do you gravitate towards relate-able, conventional, sweet narrators and stories that follow a comforting and predictable arc, ending in the literary version of “All is well”? If so, then read no further. Christopher Bollen’s page-turning, stomach-churning, prediction-spurning Havoc is not the novel for you.
Bollen’s sole narrator is octogenarian Maggie Burkhardt, a Wisconsin expatriate in Egypt during the pandemic, and Bollen’s use of the first person pays satisfying homage to its origin as an “unreliable narrator.” The book’s synopsis gives us a strong nudge in the “be wary of this narrator” direction, but it also complicates matters by adding an 8-year-old boy, arriving at the shabby-chic hotel on the edge of the Nile in the Sahara Desert with his harried mother, who quickly morphs into an unsettling and eerie nemesis for Maggie.
The peripatetic, well-heeled guests, Ben and Zachary, an American gay couple whom Maggie has befriended and feels comfortable with, as well as Ahmed, the local hotel manager with the proverbial heart of gold, who has warmly welcomed Maggie since her arrival from a mysteriously swift departure from Switzerland, provide rich and believable layers of characterization and sub-plots that robustly deliver from start to finish. But there’s never a doubt that Maggie is the axis around which this beguilingly straightforward yet actually quite twisty plot revolves.
While busying herself with ruminations about which guests might need her special “help” in overturning their lives for the good (ahem)—something Bollen makes sure that readers know is not a newly developed habit--Maggie tries and, to her astonishment, spectacularly fails to befriend young Otto. Subsequently, she becomes convinced that the precocious and troubled 8-year-old, who has quickly inserted himself into the homey interpersonal fabric of the sprawling and laid-back hotel, is on to her. As it happens, she may be right.
Bollen skillfully lays a crumb trail for readers—though never too many crumbs at once!—to suss out and/or add puzzlement to Maggie’s history and motives. Was Maggie’s long-time marriage to Peter who predeceased her as perfect as she recounts? And what’s going on with their daughter who appears in brief, hazy recollections as both a child and an adult when “she died”? The uneasy pleasure of this novel rests in the interwoven nature of Maggie’s unreliable memory and self-talk with the disturbing and escalating aspect of her and Otto’s game of one-up-man-ship. Is Maggie right about her suspicions of this child? Is the kid, in this case, “all right” or….decidedly not? And when friendly Ahmed finally cools towards Maggie because he’s heard just one too many contradictions in her back-story, should we feel pity for someone whose sanity is unraveling or a fervent hope that she be caught out before something worse happens?
The answers to these questions may possibly differ for every reader. But the staggering conclusion, rendered with an admirable combination of nail-shredding suspense and gut-punching abruptness, seemed worthy of Poe to this reader. Kudos to Bollen on his rendition of a “tale of mystery and imagination!”

Christian is living in terrible conditions inside of communist Romania, and as the citizens of surrounding countries revolt for a change of government Christian might house the power to alert everyone not directly involved. Every day he is starving, tired, and paranoid, every Romanian is being watched, and any secrets will be uncovered. Soon his whole world is forced to change when he is pulled out of school and has to make a deal to preserve his family's lives. I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys Is a beautifully crafted story with an eye-opening plot. It has unique insights and a variety of interesting characters. Every chapter is equally as impressive with a storyline that keeps you reading. I Must Betray You is an amazing historical fiction book that I recommend to everyone.

After getting a taste of the raw thrills provided by Drew Karpyshyn’s first novel, Darth Bane: Rule of Two was a must-have! Now having destroyed the Brotherhood of Darkness, Bane must find a suitable apprentice to carry on the power of the Dark Side; His choice: a little girl called Rain who, despite her size, is immensely powerful in the dark side. Bane must struggle to trust his choice of an apprentice, for the future of the Sith relies on it, while Rain must prove that she is worthy of the title of a master. With a similar mix of action as the previous book, this novel also incorporates an integral struggle, making it even more interesting. Darth Bane: Rule of Two will certainly have your hyperdrive engines ready to boost to the third and final book of the series!

When smoke emerges from the house of the wealthy Samuel W. Westing and he is found dead, his sixteen heirs are invited to the reading of his will. Soon they will find themselves involved in a game to win his fortune, divided into pairs they must use nonsensical clues to win the game. No one is able to trust any of the other heirs, so when a huge snowstorm traps some of them together tensions are high. With unexpected twists in every corner of the book Ellen Raskin’s The Westing Game is a must read for any mystery lover. Every character is crafted brilliantly, with unique backstories and great character development. This book keeps you on your toes the whole time, with great vocabulary and a unique plot it is a one-of-a-kind masterpiece. The Westing Game is a perfect mystery novel for people of many ages and keeps you wanting more.

Divine Rivals is an enchanting novel that surpassed my expectations. The writing is magical and quickly captured my attention. It’s about Roman and Iris who work together as journalists in the fantasy town of Oath competing with each other for a promotion. A war between gods rages on in the distance—a war that Iris’s brother left to fight in. Because of a magical connection, the letters which Iris writes to her brother have made their way to Roman who one day decides to write her back, but she doesn’t know that the boy she connects with over those letters is actually her rival.

In Divine Rivals, you’ll hear the clicking of a typewriter. You’ll feel the slight bumps of the train you’re on. You’ll see the perilous front lines of a dangerous war. You’ll taste the warm tea the characters are sipping. You’ll smell the ink still fresh on the paper of a newly delivered love letter. The book is a special mix of happy, cozy moments as well as terrifying, heart-racing ones.

I absolutely loved the relationships between Iris and Roman. Their banter is so fun to watch, and every moment between them was electric. I never wanted them to be apart because the book was so much better when they were together. The other characters were interesting enough, but none of them really caught my attention.

The beginning of the book didn’t feel much like a fantasy, it was more like a made up town in the past. While I loved that setting in Oath, it did make some of the fantasy aspects kind of strange because I would forget that I was reading a fantasy. As well as that, the myths and lore of the war tended to bore me because I didn’t care about that as much as I did the two main characters. However, as the book progressed, it dove into the fantasy much more, and I really enjoyed it. I thought the pacing was pretty good and even in the moments where not as much was happening, I was still very invested.

Overall, the book is not without its flaws, but it’s still an excellent read. I loved the settings, the writing, and the main characters a lot!

Reviewer Grade: 10

One of my first experiences with the writing of Naomi Novik was with Spinning Silver . This Rumpelstiltskin retelling was quite interesting and complex compared to the original fairy tale it was based on. Realizing this was the second in a “series” (of which I’m using this term loosely), I eventually sought this book’s predecessor. Uprooted seems to be an adaptation of eastern European folktales, but with more of the romance aspect that I expect from these kinds of fantasy books.

As with other fairy tale retellings, Uprooted starts off with plenty of tropes from the Grimm fairy tales. Dragons stealing maidens from their families, peasant farmers in poverty, things like that. It continues into the predictable tropes of the Dragon being misunderstood and the fair maiden resisting his cold personality long enough to have him warm up to her. Fortunately, this book is deeper than the tropes it was based on. The depth of the story is partly why it's much longer than the common folktales it might be based on.

I appreciated the magic system and the descriptions of how it felt to use this magic. I thought the cursed woods trope was developed in a much more interesting way than you usually see in these kinds of stories. The eventual romance between the two characters was telegraphed for a while, leading to a slow burn that was fairly erotic. About my only qualm with this book was the audiobook narration. The narrator had an authentic sounding eastern European accent, which fit the story's potential origins, but at the cost of being unable to understand what she was saying sometimes.

A deeply rich fairy tale with both old and new tropes, I give Uprooted 4.0 stars out of 5.

Matilda was one of those books I didn't grow up with. I have no nostalgia for this story, so when I finally got around to listening to the audiobook version, it disappointed me. I know I'm not the intended audience, but what exactly was the lesson being taught here? The main villain was so over the top with her cruelty that I legitimately wondered what Roald Dahl's home life was like when he was growing up. Sure, sticking up for yourself is a great moral, but come on.

I think the biggest issue I had with this book comes down to how they narrated the audiobook. There's the way normal people narrate audiobooks, then there's how people narrate audiobooks for children. The overacting made it difficult to listen to, but not for the reason you'd think. Matilda was such a soft-spoken character that all her lines were whispered. In contrast, all the villainous adults were voiced with shouting. This gave the volume dial on my car whiplash as I kept turning it up to hear what was being said, only to have the narration turn around and blow out my speakers.

As for the plot itself, only one character was likeable. Since everything was from Matilda's point of view, all adults were bumbling buffoons, and all her peers were slobbering idiots. The kind teacher was the only one who gave the precocious child a chance to prove how extremely intelligent she was, but her backstory was so eye-rollingly tragic as to be laughable. Honestly, most of this book felt like I was a witness to child abuse, and that's with its somewhat happy ending.

A too quiet and too loud audiobook about an annoyingly precocious child, I give Matilda 2.0 stars out of 5.