mysteries

Review: Liar’s Moon by Elizabeth C. Bunce

| Tasha

liars moon

Liar’s Moon by Elizabeth C. Bunce

When Digger is arrested and thrown in jail, she isn’t that surprised.  She is a pickpocket after all.  But it is interesting that the men who grabbed her knew that she was a girl though she was dressed in men’s clothing and that they were looking just for her.  When she is put into prison, she is surprised to find that she’s been put in Lord Durrel Decath’s cell.  He has been accused of poisoning his wife.  This is the man who once saved her life, and so she sets to work with her thieving skills to set him free.  As she searches for answers, she is drawn into the high society of their besieged city.  The clues seem to lead to only more questions and new theories rather than answers in this politically charged, masterful mystery.

This second book after Star Crossed is just as elegantly plotted as the first.  Bunce excels at creating a world that is familiar to readers but also unusual and unique.  Throughout the book, magic is a theme.  But in this world, it is reviled rather than embraced.  Magic users are persecuted, imprisoned and even slaughtered.  This forms the backbone of the story, the society itself, and our protagonist.

Digger is an amazing female protagonist.  She is gutsy, strong, intelligent, and loyal.  She never seems to be afraid of action or danger, making the entire story a delight to read since it is always moving quickly forward.  The other characters are equally complex.  There are women who appear to be flighty and dim, yet are something else entirely when their pretense is dropped.  There are suspects who seem obvious but then melt away to innocence and others who are just the opposite.

This is a complex and intricate mystery set in a world that is equally compelling.  Get this into the hands of fans of Tamora Pierce who will discover another amazing female protagonist to enjoy.  Appropriate for ages 14-16.

Reviewed from ARC received from Scholastic.

Also reviewed by:

Review: Pie by Sarah Weeks

| Tasha

pie

Pie by Sarah Weeks

When Alice’s Aunt Polly dies, the entire community of Ipswitch feels the loss.  Polly, the Pie Queen, left behind quite a void, one that had been filled by her pie shop and her incredible gift for baking pies.  Every resident had a favorite and with her death, they knew they would never taste them again.  But for Alice it is much worse, she has lost one of her dearest friends as well as the shop where she spent much of her time.  Her Aunt Polly left the recipe for her award-winning pie crust to Lardo, her ornery cat, and she left Lardo to Alice.  No one is really sure how someone can leave a recipe to a cat.  As the days pass, strange things start happening, but only Alice seems to notice.  She knows there is someone out there trying to get their hands on the recipe.  With her new friend, Charlie, Alice is determined to solve the mystery.

Weeks has written a book as light as meringue but that has plenty of depth as well.  The story is great fun to read.  It has the tang of a mystery combined with the sweetness of pie.   The pie recipes shared at the beginning of each chapter will have you drooling and determined to see if you could maybe be the next Blueberry Award winner.

Notice how that rhymes with Newbery Award winner?  Weeks has a lot of fun with her brief description of how the Blueberry Award is announced.  It closely resembles the Newbery Award process and had me giggling.  It’s a great insider joke to have in a children’s book.

Alice is a strong character, struggling with the loss of her aunt.  She is determined, creative and imaginative, singing little songs to herself all the time.   These are the things her aunt supported in her, but that her own mother doesn’t understand.  The family dynamic is an important piece of the entire book and is written with great honesty.

A delicious, fun read, this book of pie and mystery is a treat whether read with alamode or alone.  It’s an ideal book for classroom sharing as well, after all who doesn’t like pie?  Appropriate for ages 9-12.

Reviewed from ARC received from Scholastic Press.

Also reviewed by:

Blank Confession

| Tasha

blankconfession

Blank Confession by Pete Hautman

This book begins with Shayne Blank entering a police department to confess a murder.   The question for readers is how this kid who is new to school got into the situation.  Mikey is a kid whose mouth always gets him into trouble.  Though he thinks he wants to blend in and be invisible at times, he dresses in secondhand suits that make him stick out from the regular high school crowd.  When Shayne seems interested in being his friend, Mikey has just ticked off his sister’s boyfriend, drug dealer Jon by dumping a bag in order not to be caught in a sweep of the school.  Jon now says that Mikey owes him $500 and that he will pay it back.  As the tension grows throughout the novel and the damage done by Jon and others gets more intense, readers will be caught in flashbacks looking for the trigger to the murder.  A riveting and tense story about truth, friendship and what one is capable of, this slim novel will hook many readers.

Hautman has written a novel with a structure that creates tension all on its own.  Add in some evil drug dealing teens, a mouthy unusual teen who tells the bulk of the book in his voice, and the natural vibe of the police department, and this is one pulse-pounding book.  Additionally, Hautman puts the characters in situations where murder is not only possible but likely.  This adds to the taut nature of the book even further.  The characters are interesting, especially Shayne who is very bright, very tough and a complete mystery.  Mikey is a character who would be easily unlikeable but because much of the book is shown through his perspective becomes understood at least by the reader. 

That said, the book is not perfect.  The ending was brilliant, twisting away from the twist I had expected to my great delight.  But the book should have ended a chapter earlier than it does.  It should have left us hanging a bit, figuring it out for ourselves.  With the final chapter added in, the mystery of Shayne is revealed and it is all a bit too neatly resolved.  I’d have much preferred the mysteries and questions to remain.

A book that teens will relate to and be unable to put down, this is a tense and thrilling ride from confession to deed.  Appropriate for ages 16-18.

Reviewed from copy received from Simon & Schuster.

Lunch Lady and the Summer Camp Shakedown

| Tasha

Lunch Lady and the Summer Camp Shakedown by Jarrett J. Krosoczka

A fourth book in the spectacularly funny Lunch Lady series, this book returns with the same formula of humor and action.  In this book, Lunch Lady is working at a summer camp that the Breakfast Bunch kids just happen to be attending.  This is not going to be the relaxing summer they all expected!  A swamp monster is on the loose at camp, coming out only at night.  Now Lunch Lady and the kids have to once again join forces to find out who is behind the attacks.

The puns here are just as funny as in all of the previous books.  They are guaranteed to have readers groaning and then sharing them aloud with friends.  The art is just as simple and fun too, sticking to the limited color palette that marks this clearly as a Lunch Lady book. 

A winning addition to a very popular series, every library should have this series for young graphic novel fans.  Appropriate for ages 7-10.

Reviewed from copy received from Knopf.

Also reviewed by:

The River

| Tasha

The River by Mary Jane Beaufrand

Ronnie has moved from Portland to rural Oregon with her parents.  They now live at the end of a dead-end road and run an inn.  Ronnie is not happy at all to have moved to this very isolated area where she can hear the river running.  Ronnie has taken up running and people along her route time her run, including the local ranger and a family with lots of children.  Ronnie quickly learned to follow one of those children, because Karen was always up for an adventure.  But when she is on her run one day, Ronnie glimpses something along the river and discovers Karen’s body.  Now the sinister and gloomy feel of the area comes to fruition as Ronnie is obsessed with figuring out who would kill Karen and what Karen may have discovered in one of her adventures along the river.

Beautifully atmospheric, this novel excels at bringing the world of rural Oregon to life.  Filled with sensory information like the sounds of the river, the feel of the rain, and the small details of life at the inn, readers are surrounded by Ronnie’s world.  The book also does well in building tension through the slow storytelling in the beginning.  The details and the pace help build the eeriness of the novel.

However, the book does fall short despite the great writing.  Ronnie’s character is well-developed and interesting, but others around her are not as well defined.  Her foster brother Tomas is not even introduced in the first couple of chapters and suddenly appears.  When their relationship becomes more involved, it is done suddenly and with little build up which was jarring.  Additionally, the slow pace of the beginning of the novel turns into a rushing speed where the lovely details are forgotten and the mystery is solved far too quickly.

I would have loved this novel if the pacing was more consistent and the characters better defined.  But even with these shortcomings, the novel will be enjoyed by teen readers who will find a contemporary mystery set in an evocative place.  Appropriate for ages 14-16.

Reviewed from library copy.

Also reviewed by Words World and Wings, Katie’s Bookshelf, Sarah’s Random Musings, The Reading Zone, Wordbird, and Katie’s Book Blog.

The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity

| Tasha

The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Adam Rex

Steve was a great fan of the Bailey Brothers who star in a series of detective novels.  In fact, Steve considered their series and The Bailey Brothers’ Detective Handbook to be the best books ever.  But even though he had read their books through several times, Steve was very surprised when he went to the library to work on his report about early American needlework and was attacked!  Steve now had to recover a national treasure, evade secret-agent librarians, and clear his name of national treason.  Oh, and finish his report by Monday.

An amazing riff on and homage to classic detective series like the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, this book is hilarious, exciting and just pure fun.  Barnett’s tone dances between tongue-in-cheek and sincerity with great ease.  Steve is a great protagonist, eagerly following the advice of the Bailey Brothers throughout his own adventure even though things rarely go as planned. 

Rex’s illustrations are vintage Hardy Boys, done in black and white with gray washes of shadow.  Just as with the novel itself, Rex plays with the format, making it modern but vintage at the same time. 

Highly recommended for all libraries, this book begs to be shared with others.  It would make a super read aloud for elementary school classes, because of its episodic nature and cliffhanging chapters.  Appropriate for ages 9-13.

Reviewed from copy received from publisher.

Also reviewed by Book Trends, TheHappyNappyBookseller, and Fuse #8.

When You Reach Me

| Tasha

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

Twelve-year-old Miranda lives in New York City and is facing a strange situation.  First, her best friend of all time Sal has stopped wanting to spend any time at all with her after he gets punched in the stomach by another kid.  Second, she has found a note that says that she must write a letter about what is going to happen in order to save her best friend and the writer of the letter.  Third, the emergency key that is hidden outside their apartment door is stolen and more the notes continue to arrive.  Miranda is not just solving this mystery.  She has a new friend to spend time with and a lunch-time job where she and two of her friends are paid for their work in sandwiches and soda.  The book is wonderful juxtaposition of strange and normal, fiction and reality.

This is one of the best books I have read in a long time for children in late elementary school.  Its tone is just right, with good humor, mysterious happenings and friendship tensions.  One of those would draw young readers in, all three makes it impossible to put down.  Add to that the satisfaction of unraveling the questions in the novel and this one is a winner.

Each and every character is well-crafted.  Miranda is a fascinating mix of sleuth and denial as she navigates the tensions of the novel.  Her friends and the adults in the book have depth, humanness, and the ability to surprise while staying true to how they are depicted.

The pacing of the novel is deftly done.  Never slow or dragging, it changes with the pace of the story almost effortlessly.  Stead excels at letting the story tell itself.  Her hand is never obvious in the writing or the plotting.  Rather it is a book, a story that is so complete and nicely done that one can’t even imagine another way for it to have been told.

My only quibble is the cover.  This book is just so much better than the cover, more accessible, more fun.  So this wonderful novel may take some hand-selling to get it off of your shelves and into the hands of parents, teachers and kids.  It will make a wonderful read-aloud for classrooms, keeping everyone quiet and involved.  But it is also a great flashlight read, under the covers extending bedtime into the depths of the night.

Reviewed from library copy.