Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

Title: Me Before You (Me Before You #1)
Author: Jojo Moyes
Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books/Viking
Publication date: December 31, 2012
Rating: ★★★★★

Summary (via Goodreads):

Lou Clark knows lots of things. She knows how many footsteps there are between the bus stop and home. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop and she knows she might not love her boyfriend Patrick.

What Lou doesn't know is she's about to lose her job or that knowing what's coming is what keeps her sane.

Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live. He knows everything feels very small and rather joyless now and he knows exactly how he's going to put a stop to that.

What Will doesn't know is that Lou is about to burst into his world in a riot of colour. And neither of them knows they're going to change the other for all time.

This was a great book. It was touching, poignant, funny, sad – all of that stuff you might expect from a book that brands itself as a "heartbreakingly romantic novel.” And maybe if I had read this at some other point in my life, I’d have more to say along those lines – but the fact of the matter, and what I’ve found to be true time and time again, is that what you get out of a book depends entirely on where you are in your life.

There are some moments in your life that you recognize as turning points. Whether it’s in your professional development, in your relationships, whether it’s emotionally. My work friend Anita lent me her copy of Me Before You just as I was standing on the cusp of the most devastating moments in my life so far… so it wasn’t hard to identify with this story. The love. The loss. Both of which can be seen on so many levels.

In some ways it is soothing to read all the things you’re feeling: this weird hysteria and the irrational urge to laugh. The inexplicable need to stop time. The feeling of not being able to. Wanting to disconnect and, at the same time, to wrap every fiber of your being around a moment, to keep it from escaping, to keep the memory from fading away. All of the things I felt while reading this book mirrored all of the things I felt while living my real life, and it was horrible, wretched, devastating, completely soul-shattering. And it was also somehow a salve… like a gentle touch on the back of your neck to remind you that it’s okay to feel the things you’re feeling. And that you’re not the only person who’s bathed in this ocean of grief before.

I’m keeping this book for myself and buying Anita a new copy because this copy that she’s lent me now has creases in the pages, drag marks, smudges and spots, that are important to me. They are physical reminders of things that happened that I want to keep close to me forever.

I really have nothing else to say so I'm going to leave you with a song that I listened to on my way home from the airport that I think fits the tone of the book. It also just resonates so deeply with me on a very personal level. I don't even know what the lyrics are, but it feels like a blanket and I had to try really hard to keep from bawling my eyes out right there on the bus.

All the Light We Cannot See

Title: All the Light We Cannot See
Author: Anthony Doerr
Publisher: Scribner
Publication date: May 6, 2014
Rating: ★★★★★

Summary (via Goodreads):

Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge.

After I finished reading the most magnificent, beautiful, thrilling, dazzling, wonderful Pulitzer Prize-winning book called All the Light We Cannot See, it got me wondering about a lot of things that I can't seem to shake...

1. The way we pass judgment on people.

The way we decide if someone is "good" or "bad," and whether or not they are redeemable. The way we hold people accountable. How do we decide who the Von Rumpels and Claude Levittes of the world are? And the Werner Pfennigs and the Frank Volkheimers? How do we decide whose decisions are justified, whose motivations are strong enough to counterbalance all the bad that they create, whose backstories rationalize their actions & where they end up?

Anthony Doerr, the author of the book, paints Werner and Volkheimer in the most fascinating light. Werner, the small boy, instrumental to the German war effort, but still just a boy, one who buttons his coat all the way to the top and pulls his sleeves down over his fingers when it's cold. Volkheimer, the giant, the one all the boys look up to – who will shoot a man in the back of his head but whose entire expression changes when he listens to classical music.

Every so often there's something in the news about former Nazi supporters being found out and tried as war criminals. I bury myself in the comments as the debate rages on: Does justice even matter at this point? Should people be held accountable for what they did 60 years ago when they were young, impressionable teenagers? Can war crimes ever be forgiven? For some people, it's black and white. And for others, it's more complicated. I'm not sure what I believe, but I do know that within a single human being, there is the capacity to be both very good and very bad. And maybe certain things in our lives push us toward a proclivity for one or the other.

2. The reality of war & the impossibility of happy endings.

When people get taken to labor camps and prison camps, they probably won't come back. And yet, one still hopes... (Maybe I am an optimist after all.) I spend so much of my life hoping for miracles, for impossibilities, for torn apart families to find each other again, for there to be a switch that makes everything better. I'm not prepared for books that mix magical realism with reality, it messes with my brain.

3. The way we trivialize the past.

We're so careless with history, the people who have lived and died. Like they're just facts in a textbook, even though they changed lives. The self-immolating monk. Emmett Till. The Vietnam War. All of these things I learned in school, reduced to grainy pictures in a history book that I never read, that was filled with doodles from all the students of years past. Historic sites are filled with tourists who say cheese as they snap their selfies. Candy wrappers strewn about military forts where men and boys gave their lives. A Buddhist saying: Nothing is sacred.

4. Courage, manifested by everyday heroes.

"When I lost my sight, Werner, people said I was brave. When my father left, people said I was brave. But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don't you do the same?"

I don't know, I don't know. I just want to leave these few lines here and let them germinate because it seems so natural, live your life, do what must be done, but it's still so easy to bury your head in the sand and pretend like nothing's the matter. Marie-Laure kept her head up, but it took Werner longer, and maybe it takes other people such a long time as well – so how do we learn to live our lives like we have no choice, to do what must be done, even when we're scared? What are the stakes and how do we make them matter so that we don't let our days fall away?

5. The world, which spins on and on and on.

The Sea of Flames is a blue diamond that took eons to form and has existed for eons after. It has lived through dynasties, the rise and fall of empires, endless numbers of births, deaths, and continues to live through all of these things, even as people's entire worlds come to an end.

Bombings, a new state of emergency, viruses spread. Pop culture icons die, one right after another, in the span of seven days, and the world keeps spinning on. Just headlines on the news' front page. Tomorrow the headlines will change. Maybe there will be more bombings, maybe the viruses will continue to spread, but the tides still rise and fall, Earth still spins on its axis, stars explode and die out and it takes a thousand light-years for us to even notice.

I love these books that make me question my life and my world and my society and the way we move forward in time. It's like staring up into the sky at night, away from all the lights, and you're swallowed by the vast expanse of space and you feel both big and small, important and alive but just the owner of a life that will be lived and gone in the blink of an eye.

Illuminae: A Short Debriefing (Am I Not Merciful?)

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Title: Illuminae (The Illuminae Files #1)
Author: Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff
Publisher: Knopf/Random House Children's Books
Publication date: October 20, 2015
Rating: ★★★★★

Summary (via Goodreads):

This morning, Kady thought breaking up with Ezra was the hardest thing she’d have to do.

This afternoon, her planet was invaded.

The year is 2575, and two rival megacorporations are at war over a planet that’s little more than an ice-covered speck at the edge of the universe. Too bad nobody thought to warn the people living on it. With enemy fire raining down on them, Kady and Ezra—who are barely even talking to each other—are forced to fight their way onto an evacuating fleet, with an enemy warship in hot pursuit.

But their problems are just getting started. A deadly plague has broken out and is mutating, with terrifying results; the fleet's AI, which should be protecting them, may actually be their enemy; and nobody in charge will say what’s really going on. As Kady hacks into a tangled web of data to find the truth, it's clear only one person can help her bring it all to light: the ex-boyfriend she swore she'd never speak to again.

Told through a fascinating dossier of hacked documents—including emails, schematics, military files, IMs, medical reports, interviews, and more—Illuminae is the first book in a heart-stopping, high-octane trilogy about lives interrupted, the price of truth, and the courage of everyday heroes.

I have a poor grasp on science fiction.

In the landscape of my mind, SF stands for San Francisco (or Saving Francesca, heyo!), a space opera is basically a musical that takes place in outer space, and a hyperspace jump drive is just another word for a USB stick.

See? Science fiction. Not really my thing. But Illuminae? It           blew me away.

A day may come when I am able to speak intelligently about this book. But it is not this day. This day, I can only describe my thoughts on Illuminae in computer-generated graphical representations.

So. That's what I'm doing. DON'T LOOK AT ME.

Review: Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

Title: Everything I Never Told You
Author: Celeste Ng
Publisher: Penguin Press
Publication date: June 16, 2014
Rating: ★★★★★

Summary (via Goodreads):

Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet… So begins this debut novel about a mixed-race family living in 1970s Ohio and the tragedy that will either be their undoing or their salvation. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee; their middle daughter, a girl who inherited her mother’s bright blue eyes and her father’s jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue – in Marilyn’s case that her daughter become a doctor rather than a homemaker, in James’s case that Lydia be popular at school, a girl with a busy social life and the center of every party.

When Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together tumbles into chaos, forcing them to confront the long-kept secrets that have been slowly pulling them apart.

Holy shit. No words. One of the best ever.

I'm just going to make a list of things I love about this book, and maybe when I have my life together I'll post a fully formed review:

The writing is spot-on. It's heavy, it flows, it's sharp and clever where it needs to be ("acerbic" is the best way to describe it), it's wistful and regretful where it makes sense. (This must have gone through fifty thousand rounds of edits because I swear to God, it's flawless.) I borrowed this book from the library, and as soon as I finished it, I knew I had to have my own copy. There were pages and pages and moments upon moments that I wanted to underline and highlight and brand into my memory because they were powerful, or they represented the universal human experience, or they just felt like a claw poking into my skin and it was painful but there was a beauty in it, too.

The representation of the Asian (Chinese, specifically) experience in the 1970s. A lot of this is accurate even now, and definitely when I was growing up in the 90s and 2000s: not wanting to bring home-cooked meals to school for lunch because the other kids thought my food smelled weird or just because it was different; always cataloguing one's "otherness"; wondering why eyeshadow didn't look the same way on my eyes as it did on all my friends'... I didn't have to deal with all the same struggles that James went through because (1) I was fortunate enough to grow up, at least partially, in a Chinese community, so there was at least one place where my "Asian-ness" was a normal thing, but also (2) I was a really Americanized kid. Did I have to sometimes choose between being American and being Chinese? Sure. I still do. But it was easier for me to negotiate that world on my own – my parents weren't nearly as involved in that part of my life as Lydia's are, because my parents had their own supportive community to fall back on, and there was less of this pressure to conform. Celeste Ng does an incredible job exploring the casual racism of Western society (e.g. her use of the word "Oriental"), as well as James' internalized racism (e.g. James' own use of the word "Oriental"). I'm just going to throw in a little dig here because that's the kind of person I am: Rainbow Rowell needs to read this book because this is what being Asian in America really looked (and looks) like.

So many diverse characters. Divorced women; interracial relationships (more than one!); unfaithful relationships; boys struggling with their sexuality; intelligent, ambitious boys; smothered children; children who get lost in the shuffle; second generation Asians who are less concerned with assimilation but still deal with micro aggressions on a daily basis (hey y'all FYI this is still a problem today). I loved the huge diversity of backgrounds and lived experiences that were represented in this book, and every character in this story is multi-dimensional and has a history, their own fears and desires and hopes and dreams and experiences that make them who they are today.

The beautiful, complex themes in this story. I touched on this a little bit above, but Celeste Ng explores so many universal human experiences in Everything I Never Told You: the loss of your future due to unforeseen events; all the possibilities you have as a child; the very human desire to start over; the repercussions of living in the shadow of your parents – whether in rebellion or dutiful obedience; the repercussions of living in the shadow of your siblings; the complexity of family; the complexity of identity; the power of choice – to stay, to go, to love, to leave behind. All of the characters are tangled up with each other – the result of life, sloppy and messy as it is – and it's a constant reminder that people are fragile and breakable, that our actions can hurt other people, that our words (or the secrets we keep) can weigh people down – but they can also set people free.

I loved this book so much... so much, in fact, that even as I meant to jot down a quick list of what made this book so great, it still ended up as a complete review. What a wonderful debut from Celeste Ng. (I mean, seriously, though? This is a debut novel. What.)

Review: The Wrath and the Dawn by Renée Ahdieh

Title: The Wrath & the Dawn (The Wrath & the Dawn #1)
Author: Renée Ahdieh
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers
Publication date: May 12, 2015
Rating: ★★★★★

Summary (via Goodreads):

Every dawn brings horror to a different family in a land ruled by a killer. Khalid, the eighteen-year-old Caliph of Khorasan, takes a new bride each night only to have her executed at sunrise. So it is a suspicious surprise when sixteen-year-old Shahrzad volunteers to marry Khalid. But she does so with a clever plan to stay alive and exact revenge on the Caliph for the murder of her best friend and countless other girls. Shazi's wit and will, indeed, get her through to the dawn that no others have seen, but with a catch... she’s falling in love with the very boy who killed her dearest friend.

She discovers that the murderous boy-king is not all that he seems and neither are the deaths of so many girls. Shazi is determined to uncover the reason for the murders and to break the cycle once and for all.

The Wrath & the Dawn is one of those 2015 releases that deserves all the hype it's been getting. Inspired by A Thousand and One Nights, it's set apart from the start – a fantasy novel that takes place in a culture typically underrepresented in young adult literature. My thoughts are a little scattered, so once again I will review this in list form – these are the things I loved about this book:

1. The different story lines happening in parallel. All the weirdness going on with Shahrzad's father, Jahandar. (You read his side of the events and you're just like "oh god please don't.") The face-palming that happens when you experience events from Tariq's perspective (well-intentioned but painfully obnoxious in his ignorance). The self-exploration of Shahrzad and how she slowly comes to terms with her heart (the best and most essential and most rewarding part of the book). I almost wanted there to be less of Jahandar and Tariq and Rahim because they only got in the way of my time spent with Shahrzad and Khalid – but I guess this is how plot development works, so, you know, fine.

2. Shahrzad. Just an amazing character. So fierce and brave and sharp-tongued and funny. (Tiny cucumbers!!!) She knows how to dish it out and she's just fun to read. But I love the softer side of her too – the side that mourns her best friend, the side that hates Khalid for what he's done, the side that desires friendship from Despina, the side that wants to be deeply loved. Shahrzad is unabashedly herself and she is human and she is someone we can all see ourselves in, even if she is royalty and wears diamonds and sapphires and emeralds and pulls them off and throws them on the floor like a baller.

3. The careful development of Shahrzad and Khalid's relationship. This is no insta-love, and it's not a case of opposites attract either. It's about timing and circumstance – and miraculously, the inevitability of love in spite of all reason. Renée Ahdieh's pacing is on point. Truly. It's a slow burn and you want to savor every moment as Shahrzad struggles with whether to give in or stand firm.

4. Khalid, my complex baby king. Patient and gentle, but rough and brutal and unforgiving at the flip of a switch. He is a boy who has been through trauma, who is a victim of his upbringing, but he is shrewd and observant and capable and has worked for everything he's accomplished. I am most impressed by his devotion to Shahrzad. (And the fact that he asks for consent! This is so heartwarming to me.)

5. The writing is so lovely. From the palace to the gardens to the sky... Everything seems utterly resplendent. So many gems – I wanted to underline entire pages and write about countless moments but I was too captivated to stop reading. Renée Ahdieh seems a master at the art of storytelling – the writing shifts from lighthearted to heavy and back again at exactly the right time, and she knows how to pull at exactly the right heartstrings.

6. The food. This needs to be noted separately because Renée Ahdieh's food descriptions are next level. A thousand thank-you's to her mother-in-law for bringing such deliciousness into the world and into her awareness. I generally don't care for lamb or goat cheese but her writing is making me reconsider. She should write a food blog. I mean, after all the books are done, obviously. I would buy her cookbook. I would pin all her recipes to Pinterest. I would watch her Food Network show. Gimme dat lavash and buttery saffron rice and tureens of soup and marinated chicken and red radishes splashing brilliant colors across the table. I'm talking about her food descriptions way more than I initially planned, and I'm hungry again, so I'll just stop here now. (Let's all just take a quick snack break and reconvene here in five.)

7. Subtlety and wit. This book does not hit you over the head. I love when authors respect and trust their readers enough to draw connections on their own. It makes the reading experience so much better – for me, at least – when you're expected to understand what's happening without being spoonfed the plot. You can immerse yourself in the story and draw out certain characters and exercise your imagination and make everything real inside your head, and honestly I think that's one of the best things about reading, which is why I'm so in love with what Renée Ahdieh has done here.

Closing thoughts: This was a book I did not want to put down. I read it at a measured pace, trying to soak in every little bit of it. It's a beautiful book, both on the inside and out, and I'm eagerly and impatiently awaiting the next book in the series, The Rose & the Dagger. (Is it here yet? How about now? What about now?) MY BODY IS READY.

Review: This Raging Light by Estelle Laure

Title: This Raging Light
Author: Estelle Laure
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Children's Book Group
Publication date: December 22, 2015
Rating: ★★★★★

Summary (via Goodreads):

Can the best thing happen at the worst time?

Her dad went crazy. Her mom left town. She has bills to pay and a little sister to look after. Now is not the time for level-headed seventeen-year-old Lucille to fall in love. But love – messy, inconvenient love – is what she's about to experience when she falls for Digby Jones, her best friend's brother. With blazing longing that builds to a fever pitch, Estelle Laure's soulful debut will keep readers hooked and hoping until the very last page.

Many thanks to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for sending me this electronic copy via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

How do you talk about a book that strikes you like lightning? It takes away all of your words and you're just left with marks across your skin. But they stay there on you, and maybe eventually you stop noticing them – maybe they become par for the course – but still you know that something about you has changed forever.

That's what this book felt like to me. A story filled with heart and attitude and sass. One minute, the writing is wild and heavy enough to smother you – the next, we're slinging yo mama jokes and mooning over gangly boys with sharp green eyes.

This Raging Light is a story that reminds us that the secrets we carry are sometimes better off shared; that relationships are only as broken as you allow them to be; that we are far less alone than we think, and stronger than we give ourselves credit for. It's about learning to let go, to trust. It's realizing that family comes in all shapes and sizes, and it's not limited to whose blood runs through your veins. It's about people who are flawed, who are doing the best they can, and sometimes they mess up and they hurt you without even trying – but it's about understanding that life is messy and thrilling and always filled with hope, or at least the vaguely bright possibility of tomorrow.

Oh, this book is not perfect by any means. It leaves a lot of questions unanswered (what about Lucille's mom!) and could stand to be fifty pages longer (tell me more about Eden!, tell me more about Fred's!). But I loved this book in a way I haven't loved a book in a long, long time, and I will sing praises of it – and Estelle Laure – to anyone who asks (and also to anyone who doesn't). I will show them all my underlined passages on every other page. I will tell them about this girl, Lucille, and her crazybrains voice and how she is realer than most people are, and how her sister Wren is what all adults should aspire to be, and I will even point to Digby as a shining – or at least semi-luminous – beacon of boyhood.

I will shout from the rooftops:

"This is what all books should be!"

"I can't believe this is a debut novel!"

"What hope do the rest of us have!"

This is a story I want to read again and again. Loud and quiet, intricate and simple, big enough to swallow you whole.

Mini-Review: Siege and Storm by Leigh Bardugo

Title: Siege and Storm (The Grisha #2)
Author: Leigh Bardugo
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Publication date: June 4, 2013
Rating: ★★★★★

Summary (via Goodreads):

Hunted across the True Sea, haunted by the lives she took on the Fold, Alina must try to make a life with Mal in an unfamiliar land. She finds starting new is not easy while keeping her identity as the Sun Summoner a secret. She can’t outrun her past or her destiny for long.

The Darkling has emerged from the Shadow Fold with a terrifying new power and a dangerous plan that will test the very boundaries of the natural world. With the help of a notorious privateer, Alina returns to the country she abandoned, determined to fight the forces gathering against Ravka. But as her power grows, Alina slips deeper into the Darkling’s game of forbidden magic, and farther away from Mal. Somehow, she will have to choose between her country, her power, and the love she always thought would guide her – or risk losing everything to the oncoming storm.

Hi. It's me again, here to continue talking about my newly realized obsession with the Grishaverse.

Siege and Storm is the perfect sequel in Leigh Bardugo's Grisha series.

(I could end this review right there.)

Really though, this is what I think all sequels should be. Some characters' stories end; new character arcs begin. There's a mix of sadness in letting go of characters we've admired and respected, but there's also a joy in saying hello to new faces and personalities.

Relationships are less cut and dry. People are less cut and dry. The heroes turn out to be less noble than we once thought, and the villains are laid bare – certainly still dark and evil, but now even more intricate and baffling and somewhat enigmatic, and you can't help but commiserate with them in spite of their horrifying deeds.

This book is better than the first. It's more complex, it's a deeper dive, it's stark and it's gripping and it's suspenseful and lively and heartrending (did you see what I did there?) and no one – not even you, lovely reader – will get out unscathed. Read Shadow and Bone, and then read Siege and Storm, and make sure you have Ruin and Rising on hand while you're at it – otherwise you'll make yourself sick with anticipation if it's not within reach by the time you turn the last page.

I just finished reading Siege & Storm by @LBardugo and I think I'm like... shaking? Is this what withdrawal feels like?

— TIFFANY (@codenametiffany) July 13, 2015

Review: Uprooted by Naomi Novik

Title: Uprooted
Author: Naomi Novik
Publisher: Del Rey Books
Publication date: May 19, 2015
Rating: ★★★★★

Summary (via Goodreads):

Agnieszka loves her valley home, her quiet village, the forests and the bright shining river. But the corrupted Wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power, and its shadow lies over her life.

Her people rely on the cold, driven wizard known only as the Dragon to keep its powers at bay. But he demands a terrible price for his help: one young woman handed over to serve him for ten years, a fate almost as terrible as falling to the Wood.

The next choosing is fast approaching, and Agnieszka is afraid. She knows – everyone knows – that the Dragon will take Kasia: beautiful, graceful, brave Kasia, all the things Agnieszka isn’t, and her dearest friend in the world. And there is no way to save her.

But Agnieszka fears the wrong things. For when the Dragon comes, it is not Kasia he will choose. 

I'm so glad I bought into the hype. In Uprooted, Naomi Novik creates characters who are compelling on their own but become even more fascinating when they start to bump up against each other.

From the start, we learn that the narrator, Agnieszka, is a hot mess. I mean this in the most loving way possible. She's not a secret beauty. She's not graceful. She's not particularly brilliant. She can't walk down the street without ripping or getting mud on her dress. She is utterly imperfect and she knows it, and what's even better is that she's comfortable in her skin.

For the majority of her life, Agnieszka has lived in the shadow of her best and dearest friend Kasia. Because of it, there's a complexity to how she looks at and relates to Kasia – and amazingly that's something we get to unpack in one of the most powerful moments in the book, when both girls' most hidden thoughts are revealed to each other in the midst of a maelstrom of magic. It really makes you think about relationships – how they're not easy, how there are insecurities and jealousies, how different people experience the world in such different ways but can still always come back together. It's moments like these that make Agnieszka and Kasia's friendship such a force to behold.

And it's not just their friendship that is extraordinary. I spent a lot of time with Uprooted on my subway commute to work, and reading about Agnieszka and the Dragon was a constant exercise in reigning in the compulsion to shriek. The Dragon is a perfect example of someone who stays true to his character but evolves with Agnieszka's influence. He's a grouchy, cranky old man – that's just who he is. But as he comes to know and understand Agnieszka, he becomes a softer version of himself. A couple years ago, an engineer friend told me something I haven't been able to forget: "Hard, brittle objects shatter. Malleable ones bend gracefully." I feel like that describes the Dragon (and his dynamic with Agenieszka) well. At first glance, they are opposites – he believes in order and method; she is a free-spirited wild child – but you come to see that they complement each other in the best way possible, her softness balancing out his hard edges. They each bend a little bit, and they both become better versions of themselves because of it.

Each of the characters in Uprooted have their own lives and their own compelling character arcs. They're not just a means to an end – they have their motivations and their histories and their flaws and their own redeeming qualities. It's that richness in characters that makes Uprooted resonate so deeply with me. And that's without even touching on the plot, the stark setting, the sinister trees, graphic battle scenes, or the terrifying deaths that feel almost psychopathic. This book is Creeptown, USA, and it's deliciously eerie.

I can't believe I'm saying it but I kind of wish this book was part of a series. I know. I know. As if there aren't enough series in the world of YA. As if I don't have a laundry list of books that I still have yet to read. But I loved these characters so much and I feel like they have more stories that are just waiting to be unraveled. I couldn't put it down and I want to read it again and soak in all the little moments that really do feel like magic.

Saint Anything: A Few(-ish) of My Favorite Things

Title: Saint Anything
Author: Sarah Dessen
Publisher: Viking Juvenile
Publication date: May 5, 2015
Rating: ★★★★★

Summary (via Goodreads):

Peyton, Sydney's charismatic older brother, has always been the star of the family, receiving the lion's share of their parents' attention and—lately—concern. When Peyton's increasingly reckless behavior culminates in an accident, a drunk driving conviction, and a jail sentence, Sydney is cast adrift, searching for her place in the family and the world. When everyone else is so worried about Peyton, is she the only one concerned about the victim of the accident?

Enter the Chathams, a warm, chaotic family who run a pizza parlor, play bluegrass on weekends, and pitch in to care for their mother, who has multiple sclerosis. Here Sydney experiences unquestioning acceptance. And here she meets Mac, gentle, watchful, and protective, who makes Sydney feel seen, really seen, for the first time.

Normally I'd write this big long review about how much I liked Saint Anything, with what worked, what didn't, and some literary analysis mixed in – because that's just who I am and that's just what I do – but Saint Anything feels a lot like This Lullaby, my actual absolute favorite book from Sarah Dessen, and I've still never written or thought about writing a review for that. Some books just cannot be sufficiently described in six to eight paragraphs on a blog post. So instead of doing that, I'll just give you a list of some of my favorite things from this book:

1. Sarah Dessen's dedication: For all the invisible girls and for my readers, for seeing me. HI EXCUSE ME JUST GONNA GO CRY IN MY ROOM THANKS.

2. The way Sydney hears Mac say her name – "so familiar, the sentiment confident and reassuring, that was more touching, actually, than anything else he'd done so far."

3. Eric's artist statement (if that's what we're going to call it) about the band's ironic pop covers being more than just ironic covers. "It's about the universal experience of mass consumption of music. How a song can remind you of something specific in your own life, like it belongs to you. But how personal can it really be if a million other people feel the same way about it?" His friends all make fun of him for talking nonsense, but I GET IT, ERIC. Don't listen to the haters. I GET YOU.

4. Irv! What a guy! He reminds me of my high school friends and it warms my heart. "Can't get drunk, have to push the merry-go-round. Don't know why I even hang out with you guys." YOU GUYS. This book is really funny.

5. How Sydney savors moments that feel like magic. The writing slows down, the details feel richer somehow – even if it's just about eating frosting on top of Pop-Tarts.

6. Sydney eating Mac's Kwackers. And choking on them. But eating them anyway.

7. Layla. Layla, Layla, Layla. How she loves her family so much. How she wants to have more responsibility at the pizza shop so Mac can go to college and she masks it by highlighting how sexist it is to assume a girl can't be a leader. I LOVE IT. I LOVE HER.

8. Layla's obsession with fries. It's given me a whole new appreciation for them. I will never settle again. (Well, that's probably not true. But at least I'll be much more aware of when I am settling for subpar fries.)

9. Can I just reiterate how much I love Layla? She's not perfect by any means, but she is a good friend, fiercely loyal and protective from the very beginning. I mean, can we just remember how Layla sleeps over at Sydney's house for the first time and, in the middle of the night, moves her mattress to block the unlocked door to keep her safe from a certain creepy predator?

10. When Mac revisits the first time Sydney came into Seaside Pizza. OMFG. I DIED. STRAIGHT UP. RIP ME. I'm not even going to include the quote here because I want you all to have the same reading experience as I did.

11. Mac and Sydney's pizza deliveries, and how she is the pizza order whisperer. I love that she takes social analysis to the next level and that she wants to know what's behind each door. I RELATE TO THIS ON SO MANY LEVELS, and I love that he comes up with a system for efficiently delivering pizzas with her, but we all know that it's just a cover-up because he is a sweet precious baby.

12. Mac delivering pizzas to the middle school gymnasium and TRIGGERING THE HORMONE RUSH.

13. "Hate Spinnerbait." I die every time this comes up in any of Sarah Dessen's books.

14. The evolution of Sydney's relationship with Peyton. So much of her life and her self-perception are a side-effect of his actions. She says everything is always about Peyton, but it's a weird juxtaposition because Peyton's not here now. He's legendary in his own way, but here in Saint Anything, he's small – boxed up in prison, interacting with Sydney only in occasional, brief phone calls and in her memories. I love the way both of these things shift over time.

15. "I'm so sorry." There are a lot of sorry's in this book, but this one is different. Those three words represented so much to Sydney and they were unexpected, both to her and to me, but somehow a relief.

16. Sydney's dad at the very end of the book. My reaction (seriously though): HALLELUJAH, SYDNEY'S DAD.

While I was reading Saint Anything, I found myself loving all of the other characters (Layla, Mac, Eric, Irv, Layla's mom) but not really being able to identify with Sydney herself. But in retrospect, I do understand her – a girl who feels like a ghost, a little bit pushed around by the current, who wants to be seen and recognized for her own person and not live in the shadow of someone else, burdened by what they've done, or resigned to a certain outcome. I see myself in Sydney a little bit – in the ways that really matter – and I think that's a really special thing.

Review: Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper

Title: Etta and Otto and Russell and James
Author: Emma Hooper
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publication date: January 20, 2015
Rating: ★★★★★

Summary (via Goodreads):

Eighty-two-year-old Etta has never seen the ocean. So early one morning she takes a rifle, some chocolate, and her best boots, and begins walking the 3,232 kilometers from rural Canada eastward to the coast.

As Etta walks further toward the ocean, accompanied by a coyote named James, the lines among memory, illusion, and reality blur. Rocking back and forth with the pull of the waves, Etta and Otto and Russell and James moves from the hot and dry present of a quiet Canadian farm to a dusty burnt past of hunger, war, passion, and hope; from trying to remember to trying to forget; and inspires each of its characters to visit the sites they’ve longed to see and say the things they’ve longed to say. This is dazzling literary fiction about the rediscovery and care of the soul, and the idea it’s never too late for a great adventure.

I'm in the progress of finishing up a bunch of very belated book reviews, but this is the one I'm going to start with, because it's the best book I've read in 2015 so far.

I received an ARC copy of Etta and Otto and Russell and James back in September 2014 and made it to page 3 before putting it aside until April 2015 (I KNOW). Frankly, this book is slow, but it is slow in a measured way. It feels like you're taking a deep breath and holding it.

As its title might suggest, E&O&R&J is filled with compelling characters and fascinatingly complex relationships that span generations. There’s Etta and Otto, who’ve known each other since they were kids, who weren’t really supposed to fall in love but did. There’s Otto and Russell, friends since boyhood, nearly brothers, with their own secrets that are impossible to share. There’s Etta and Russell, whose entire relationship feels a lot like a What if? or a Maybe or If only... (There’s also Etta and Alma, and Etta and Bryony, and Bryony and her brother, among others.)

And of course, there’s Etta and James, the coyote who Etta encounters along her journey. My favorite chapters in the book involve Etta and James. Yes, it’s magical realism, and sure, maybe it does feel a little bit out of place relative to the rest of the story, but it adds a certain richness, a sparkle, to Etta’s journey. It makes it easier to step aside, away from the doubts and criticisms (“An eighty-two-year-old woman trekking across Canada?”), and towards acceptance of her purpose and what she wants to accomplish.

And that’s a big part of this book, too: finding yourself, finding what drives you when the status quo is gone. Otto has an incredible path of self-discovery in particular. From collecting all the newspapers that mention Etta, to turning all of that paper into art – it blows my mind to think about how Emma Hooper tied it all together.

Perhaps my biggest qualm with E&O&R&J is that Russell’s presence seems the least important relative to the others. His story plays a significant role in the flashbacks that somehow still merge seamlessly with the present, but at times, he feels like little more than a plot device made to create tension between Etta and Otto. I would have liked a closer look at him and at what makes him tick, since Emma Hooper has done that so well for the other characters in this story.

This book is about journeys – journeys across land, journeys through life, journeys to find, remember, and reveal oneself. Some of these journeys are stark and upsetting; some are vague and dreamy and surreal. Etta and Otto and Russell and James is filled with fascinating characters and an ambiguous ending, and it ends in a good place – it ends in the only place that could ever make sense – but still I can't help but wish there were more.

Review: Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt

Title: Tell the Wolves I'm Home
Author: Carol Rifka Brunt
Publisher: Random House
Publication date: June 19, 2012
Rating: ★★★★★

Summary (via Goodreads):

1987. There's only one person who has ever truly understood fourteen-year-old June Elbus, and that's her uncle, the renowned painter Finn Weiss. Shy at school and distant from her older sister, June can only be herself in Finn's company; he is her godfather, confidant, and best friend. So when he dies, far too young, of a mysterious illness her mother can barely speak about, June's world is turned upside down. But Finn's death brings a surprise acquaintance into June's life – someone who will help her to heal, and to question what she thinks she knows about Finn, her family, and even her own heart.

Tell the Wolves I'm Home was one of the best books I read this summer. As soon as I got to the last page, I took a deep breath to process and then immediately added it to my list of books to buy because it's something I want to come back to, again and again in the years to come. The characters in this story are well-written, but it's their interactions that really steal the show.

At its core, Tell the Wolves I'm Home explores family relationships and the way those relationships shift in complex circumstances. We delve into the love between two sisters, fraught as it may be with jealousy and rivalry and, beneath it all, a yearning for recognition and acceptance. We look at different kinds of romantic love, each taboo in its own way but no less profound – after all, the heart loves what it loves.

Toby was right. Finn was my first love. But Toby, he was my second. And the sadness in that stretched like a thin cold river down the length of my whole life.

Carol Rifka Brunt has an effortless way of writing that tethers your soul to her words but still leaves you floating through the pages. In her novel she explores so many aspects of humanity and makes you feel each emotion acutely. There are moments of loss, regret, joy, disappointment, wonder, fear, shame, frustration, fondness, hope.

Set in the 1980s, the story may at times feel distant – younger readers may not truly register the significance of being gay in the 80s or the impact of AIDS at the time. However, the author recreates a world that remains completely accessible, despite having occurred some 30 years ago. It's not a world of niche 80s cliches or trendy pop culture references. Without overshadowing, the setting provides a necessary and meaningful context for the events that happen.

"What’s the one superpower of June Elbus?"

I thought about myself from head to toe. It was like being forced to read the most boring part of the Sears catalog. Like leafing through the bathroom accessories pages. Boring brain. Boring face. No sex appeal. Clumsy hands.

"Heart. Hard heart," I said, not sure where it came from. "The hardest heart in the world."

"Hmmm," Toby said, tapping a finger in the air. "That’s a useful one, you know. Very handy. The question is..." Toby paused like he was considering this all very seriously.

"What’s the question?"

"The question is, stone or ice? Crack or melt?"

Tell the Wolves I'm Home is a poignant and profound story. Because it is based on sad truths and the disappointing reality of ignorance in the 1980s, it transforms into a tale that moves you without ever making you feel manipulated. It has a strength of its own. It's a story in which the good and the bad merge and become the same. One can't exist without the other, and you have to wonder if maybe it's better to take the bad-awful-terrible-tragic things in life, if they lead to something that is beautiful in the end.

Mini-Review: Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

Title: Burial Rites
Author: Hannah Kent
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Publication date: September 10, 2013
Rating: ★★★★★

Summary (via Goodreads):

Set against Iceland's stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution.

Horrified at the prospect of housing a convicted murderer, the family at first avoids Agnes. Only Tóti, a priest Agnes has mysteriously chosen to be her spiritual guardian, seeks to understand her. But as Agnes's death looms, the farmer's wife and their daughters learn there is another side to the sensational story they've heard.

Burial Rites is best read at a slow pace, where you can linger over the evocative descriptions and the heavy events in Agnes Magnúsdóttir's life (as well as those surrounding her). Hannah Kent describes this book as a dark love letter to Iceland, which sounds about right to me. Everything feels painstakingly researched and written, and although much of it is speculative, it remains plausible enough that you convince yourself all of those things form the hidden truth.

Memories shift like loose snow in a wind, or are a chorale of ghosts all talking over one another. There is only ever a sense that what is real to me is not real to others, and to share a memory with someone is to risk sullying my belief in what has truly happened.

The ending of this novel is inevitable yet shocking. The writing is lush and captivating and the stories that are revealed will haunt you for days and days on end. But it's a beautiful work that has managed to bring Agnes back to life so that we can hear her side of things and remember her differently. In some ways, it's given Agnes a new legacy, where she is more than a murderess, more than an example to would-be criminals. She is a woman whose fate rested in the hands of those who were predisposed to punish. It is a true testament to Hannah Kent's storytelling ability that we walk away seeing her in a more ambiguous light.

Those who are not being dragged to their deaths cannot understand how the heart grows hard and sharp, until it is a nest of rocks with only an empty egg in it. I am barren; nothing will grow from me anymore. I am the dead fish drying in the cold air. I am the dead bird on the shore. I am dry, I am not certain I will bleed when they drag me out to meet the axe. No, I am still warm, my blood still howls in my veins like the wind itself, and it shakes the empty nest and asks where all the birds have gone, where have they gone?

Review: Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill

Title: Dept. of Speculation
Author: Jenny Offill
Publisher: Knopf
Publication date: January 28, 2014
Rating: ★★★★★

Summary (via Goodreads):

Jenny Offill’s heroine, referred to in these pages as simply “the wife,” once exchanged love letters with her husband, postmarked Dept. of Speculation, their code name for all the uncertainty that inheres in life and in the strangely fluid confines of a long relationship. As they confront an array of common catastrophes – a colicky baby, bedbugs, a faltering marriage, stalled ambitions – the wife analyzes her predicament, invoking everything from Keats and Kafka to the thought experiments of the Stoics to the lessons of doomed Russian cosmonauts. She muses on the consuming, capacious experience of maternal love, and the near total destruction of the self that ensues from it, as she confronts the friction between domestic life and the seductions and demands of art.

I've been sitting here, staring at this blank screen, trying to figure out what it is I could possibly say about Jenny Offill's Dept. of Speculation. I think it's perhaps one of the best books I've read this year and definitely one of the most well-written. (Between the stories and quotes and trivia, it feels a bit like a Jeanette Winterson project, or Nicole Krauss' The History of Love, or Siobhan from the no-longer-maintained serialcomma.net.) (I started transcribing my favorite passages but thought I might be better off just investing in my own copy of the book because there were too many to list.)

Dept. of Speculation is about a lot of things. The slow descent into love. The process of finding someone you want to keep and who wants to stay with you too. How it sometimes feels like wading through water. It's about the gradual formation of a family and the life that comes with it and all the lives we give up. It's about the way our brains are wired, the way we make associations, the way we move from one thought to the next. It's about writing – the art and the science and the self-awareness, and how we sometimes have to trade our sanity and our happiness to create a thing of mad beauty.

This book is about the human condition. As you acquaint yourself with Jenny Offill's narrator, you think, "Christ, she is terrible, self-absorbed, judgmental, just awful," but meanwhile you're nodding in agreement. "I can't say I blame her. I would probably feel the same." It's the painful brutality of truth. She writes with such precision that if we were to say half the things she thinks, I think maybe we would all break into a million pieces, like sticking a pin into a fracture point.

And, anyway, maybe that's why you change your mind about her – you think, well, she's not so bad, because everything she says is spot-on. And suddenly it feels like we are justified in all our despicable, weak, human ways. Because she's insightful and she makes observations about the things we want, the things we need as human beings. Not just to survive – no, more than that. The things we need in order to feel fulfilled. To feel safe, intact, protected. The things that make us want to stay. She shows us all of these things in short, pithy statements, and you can't help but think to yourself, Yes, yes, that's right. And soon enough it doesn't matter so much that you did a horrible thing, or that he did things that left scars, because you realize we're all just struggling, trying to figure out how to exist in this fragile human state. (The book jacket is so very accurate. This universal shipwreck that unites us all, indeed.)

It's a terrible book to read if you're even a little bit cynical about love. Or if you're scared to fall in love. Or if you think love conquers all. It's terrible and frightening and exactly right, and it will make you rethink everything you know. Life is a series of gray lines that get grayer and grayer as time goes on.

There's an old expression: Things always look better in the morning. That's what this book feels like – like nothing is ever set in stone, like maybe life looks better once you've lived through it.