August Review

Samantha Gross
Aug 30, 2019
10 min read

The end of August might mean the end of summer for some places, but here in SoCal, I still have plenty of sunny afternoons to spend reading until fall really hits.

This past month was busy in that wonderful summer way, and I spent a lot of it dedicated to a particular series. Let's dive in before this starts to feel like the beginning of a recipe page.

Lunar Chronicles Series by Marissa Meyer

I decided at the beginning of this month, while looking around at the entire series I had collected, that I would do one big series review rather than one book at a time. Because I'm a busy person and I don't hate myself. So welcome to the collective Lunar Chronicles review (excluding the first book, Cinder, which I reviewed last month). This won't be a super spoiler free zone, as is the nature of series, but stay with my friends, this series was worth the read.

I was dragged into this series right from the get go. The characters are all fabulous in individual ways, all with just enough of a revolutionary do-good spark to carry them through a series that has increasingly higher risks as the books progress.

Scarlet is a re-telling of Little Red Riding Hood, where we meet out-spoken Scarlett, who reluctantly enlists the help of a street fighter named Wolf to help her find her missing grandmother. Meanwhile, Cinder has teamed with with roguish Captain Thorne to break out of prison, still working hard to free Emperor Kai from his engagement to Queen Levana and take her rightful place on Luna's throne.

This book was definitely when things really kicked further into action. Maybe it was the acknowledgment of the greater Lunar threat, Levana's horrible actions unleashed on a greater scale. Maybe it was the introduction of more characters to care about, more people to get hurt. Either way, Scarlet is more violent, twisting with terrors only hinted at in the first book.

I probably watched too much Teen Wolf in high school, but I'm a sucker for Little Red Riding Hood stories where the wolf isn't the bad guy (or at least not the worst bad guy). I was rooting for Wolf and Scarlet, and you know how picky I am about romance.

This book continued with the fantastic world building, expanding it beyond Cinder's neighborhood in New Beijing and taking the reader across Europe. The rest of the series is like that, branching out to Africa, France, and onto the moon as our heroes try to fight tyranny.

Cress tackles the story of Rapunzel, introducing us to hacker Cress, trapped on her satellite orbiting Earth, spying on people for the queen. Naive and fearful, Cress is sent hurtling--quite literally--to Earth and has to find her way back to her new friends and purpose. Keeping company with the somewhat dashing rascal, Captain Thorne, teaches both of them a few things about what it means to be a hero.

Winter was the longest of the books and probably the hardest to get through, just because I knew we were coming to the end, an end I knew would be bloody. And it was. No revolution ever happens without a little bit of death, and while this book did us a kind service by not lingering on it, there was a lot of death. Meyer doesn't shy away from recognizing the damage disease and war do to ordinary people.

The final novel in the series introduced Princess Winter, Levana's step-daughter, who is slowly going insane because she refuses to control people with her Lunar gift. Scarred by her jealous step-mother but still beautiful and kind, Winter's life is threatened when her best friend, guard Jacin, is sent to murder her. Instead, he sneaks her away, sending her to his ally Cinder in the hopes that the two princesses can find a way to stay alive long enough to remove Levana from the throne.

I was impressed with Meyer's ability to continue her retellings already so entrenched in this world, fitting familiar pieces into place while still keeping the story her own. Winter was sweet and losing her mind, and it made reading from her perspective both jarring and so, so interesting. Her rationality and thought-process was clearly different than the other characters, but she still fit into their group, still helped them raise an army, protect the people. And she loved Jacin so much. That was an absolutely delicious case of mutual pining with both parties thinking it was unrequited love. *chef kiss* Now that's a fantastic romance trope.

The ending to the whole series was climactic and satisfying, giving the audience enough last minute pitfalls to really truly wonder if the characters were going to be able to pull this off. Luckily, this is a series that doesn't let the bad guy win all the battles, and when I flipped the last page of the book, everyone who needed one had gotten their hopeful ending.

The only book I didn't really enjoy was the bonus book, Fairest, which tells Levana's story. I'm all for a villain origin story, all for seeing when a person stops being sympathetic and starts being malevolent, but this book just made me frustrated. I had some pity for Levana, her sister was cruel to her, her situational upbringing sucked, but when she was shown the slightest bit of kindness she abused it. Using her Lunar gift to control someone she thought she loved, forcing him to be with her against his will, it felt too gross. She spent years sexually assaulting a man after he lost his wife, and then had him killed in the end to further her own political agenda. I couldn't sympathize with Levana because she knew what it felt like to be controlled and sneered at and yet she treated others with that same cruelty. This origin story just made me hate Levana more, which maybe was the point? I was already rooting for Cinder to kill her, so I guess this just boosted that a bit.

And speaking of murder, spoiler alert, this is one of those revolutionary dystopian young adult novels that digs right into the violence with both hands and continues to hold on, even when it comes time to destroy the villain. Queen Levana dies and it's sudden but satisfying, because if she'd had fanfare it would've given her more attention than she deserved.

Getting to see how everyone deals with the fallout of the storyline and the end of the villain is one of my favorite parts of stories. It's when lovers get together, morals are challenged, reconstruction can begin. It's a new chapter all on it's own, one that builds a path toward hope. And that's what this book did. It tried to answer the questions it could, set up these characters we love for a future where they can be happy, and then let them go. We lingered long enough to know that things were going to be okay, and then closed the book and sighed with relief. Because good can win.

My favorite thing about fantasy books is that almost no matter what, some form of goodness reigns. The evil is defeated, the heroes save the day. Goodness always wins. It's a brighter way of looking at life, a nicer way of trying to process the world around us when it's so dark, when we aren't sure if we'll make it through the night.

And I'm not saying that the Lunar Chronicles are going to save the world. But they gave me a little bit of time to escape a slightly scary reality in favor of a trip to the stars. Cinder and Kai and Scarlet and Wolf and Cress and Thorne and Winter and Jacin all got their happy endings. They came through sacrifice and bloodshed and a lot of hard work, but they still got a happily ever after. And maybe those of us in the real world, frightened by violence, threatened by a tyrant we fear, will get ours too.

37 Things I Love (In No Particular Order) by Kekla Magoon

There was a bit of an emotional disconnect when I read this book, and maybe it was coming off the 800 page Winter that did it. Every so often I'll get...book hungover isn't the right word, but I'll consume so many books in too short of a time and kind of short-circuit my brain for a bit. It makes it harder to pick up another book and usually means I need a break from reading. Not great for reviews, but in my defense, I read over 2,000 pages in like two weeks. So. I'm allowed to feel a little burnt out.

Unfortunately, it meant that reading 37 Things wasn't as enjoyable as it probably should have been. The main character, Ellis, felt so young, and it was like she and her friend Abby were playing grown ups. I mean, maybe I feel fifteen is super young now because I work with children that age, but even then they seemed so young. The trauma piled inside Ellis from her father's accident felt like it was trying to age her but couldn't, which let a big of a weird emotional detachment, like reading Ellis' feelings through a fog.

Her relationship with her mother was complex, and while I enjoyed delving into their little coping family of two, it was strange at times to read through their emotional whiplash. They'd be sobbing and raging at one another one minute and then joking in the kitchen the next, which was jarring to say the least. I know that dealing with Big Emotional Problems can be expressed in many ways, but this felt a little disjointed, even with my weird book hangover fog.

The queer aspect of it kind of came out of nowhere, which was Absolutely Wild, because I have a better grasp on reading lgbt relationships that straight ones in a lot of books, but this one just. Appeared suddenly. And, I mean, I'm here for it as long as Ellis was okay, but it was a surprise.

I disliked Abby, I'll just go ahead and say that. She was manipulative and controlling, and it was nice to see Ellis outgrow her just enough to recognize and put a stop to the unhealthy habits she was developing with her. I liked Cara a lot more, although the book left off a little unclear about what was going on between her and Ellis. But, like I said, they're so young, they've got time to figure it out.

The formatting of the book was probably my favorite thing about it. I love lists, I Live for lists, and books written as lists are probably secretly my favorite thing. It brought together some of the disjointed aspects of the story while also giving great insight into who Ellis was.

The main plot of the story focuses around Ellis learning how to let go of her father, who's been comatose for three years, following an accident at a construction site. In looking at the things she loves (and, consequently, the things she doesn't) Ellis finds clarity in what it means to move on. The most obvious part of the book is how much Ellis loved her father, and the 37 things she chose were reflective of life after him and her choosing to let herself love after losing him. It makes a powerful statement about how we view love and the people around us, even if I wasn't totally into the whole narrative.

This is Where it Ends by Marieke Nijkamp

This was a book I had sitting on my shelf for several months but could never quite find the courage to read. It hits a little close to home, especially with the current climate and recent violent events across the nation. I work with a lot of high school students, and we talk a lot in our office about what we would do in the case of an active shooter. I think everyone does, these days, no matter where you work.

This Is Where It Ends takes place over the harrowing 54 minutes an active gunman—a student—holds his classmates hostage in the school gym. Told from multiple perspectives and including a variety of social media style excerpts, this book tackles fear and violence in an event we see far too often in real life.

The main thing I appreciated about this book was that it didn't tell the story from the shooter, Tyler’s, perspective. It didn't give rationale or reasons or try to get in the mindset of someone like that. There were no justifications, because how could there be? Instead, we get questions from the people at risk; the gunman’s sister, Autumn, and her girlfriend, Slyv, Slyv’s twin brother, Tomas, and Tyler's ex-girlfriend, Claire. Trapped in the auditorium, breaking in to rescue students, and runners stuck outside the school, hoping against hope that their loved ones survive. There are deaths, of course there are, because this is a story about violence and fear. It doesn't tell us why, but it depicts the capability of people coming together to face tragedy. It faces the blame we place on ourselves, even when there's nothing we could have done.

I cried at the end of this book, thinking of younger siblings and parents and people we lose, people we keep. Once the shooting is over, where do we go from here? And while the author doesn't give a sermon or try to preach about how to move on, she does address the way community makes moving on look like a viable option, once the grief and anger have passed.

Filled in along the way are pieces from different characters’ stories, how they got to where they are, how Tyler fit into their story even before he brought a gun to school. It was tragic and small town, and the trauma in Autumn and Sylv’s histories especially makes the helplessness of the situation even more frightening.

There were a lot of different traumas in this book: rape, abuse, homophobia, the loss of a sibling, and of course, the shooting itself. All of them are handled with a young helplessness, a situational trap the students and many other young adults find themselves stuck in. It was difficult to read, the secrets these kids keep to survive, but it was also real. I think that was the hardest part about the book—how real it all felt. That kind of terror is hard to face in any form.

The book’s formatting helped ramp up the tension even further. Every chapter was about a 5-10 minute span of time, with each student’s perspective over those few minutes. To live in terror for that time with all those characters made the whole thing even more horrifying. It didn't shy away from violence. People die, and while it's not explicit, there is A Lot of violence. It seems a little bit desensitizing after awhile, at least until someone else is plucked from life, then the whole thing comes rushing back. It is never not horrifying to witness death.

In the end, I would recommend this book. However, I would be cautious with going about reading it, especially since there are a lot of triggering circumstances within it.