Books 87-90
The Diabolical Miss Hyde by Viola Carr
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I wanted to love this one but didn't quite go all in on it. I think part of it was it wanted to be too many things at once: claims it's a Dr Jekyll/Mr. Hyde retelling but it's far more a sequel featuring his daughter, but it's also a mystery, a romance, steampunk, fantasy and it felt a bit muddled. It also didn't help I wasn't overly fond of the protagonist some of the time. For an intelligent woman she made some odd choices.
Eliza is the daughter of Jekyll and is part of an English empire I'd want no part of because they're out there burning 'heretics' at the stake in the 1800s. Wrong kind of science? Stake time. Not so sure being of faerie blood was a good thing either. She's also a doctor working with the police, well with one police in particular who is pro-women, when she's not helping out at a lunatic asylum. Also for reasons that were never clear, she's also taking the serum that ended up costing her dad his life.
So enter Lizzie Hyde who dresses like a tart and spends most of her time drinking and causing trouble. She is also, of course, Eliza's strength.
This plays out against a series of murders with someone taking body parts. Eliza is working to solve the case as she cautiously moves around Captain Lafayette of the Royal Society who could have her burned as a witch if she's not careful. He's also very captivating.
Honestly if it spent more time on the mystery and less on the romance I might have enjoyed it more. I liked Lafayette after all and Eliza most of the time (and Lizzie rarely) . I wanted a little more of a side character the elfin Wild Johnny. And it wasn't that the romance was awful but it was awfully repetitive with the usual waffling about will she/won't she, oh he's so handsome, he's so dangerous. etc. I got bored with that part.
I think we needed a bit more world building as well since it has some seriously divergent history to incorporate the steampunk and magical elements. Would I read the next one? Probably if the library had it.
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Vampires on the Run by C.M. Surrisi
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This was a 3 star until the ending which wow, just bad. Quinnie's age comes across inconsistently in this thing as well. Granted if I were a middle grade reader (the target audience) I might have enjoyed it more but this read less Nancy Drew and more....you know I'm not sure what? It skewed young, real young.
Quinnie lives in a picturesque coastal Maine town and is the local Nancy Drew. Her mom is insanely busy being the post master, sheriff, real estate agent and one more thing that I've actually forgotten because I don't usually see someone holding down four jobs (that'll keep her out of Quinnie's business). Dad runs a restaurant. Quinnie and her two besties Ella and Ben are looking forward to summer vacation when they meet Dominic, a newcomer roughly their age whatever that is (because Ben and Dominic are nearly old enough to drive and Ben drives a boat) but I think it's stated Quinnie is 13. Dominic is here with his marine biologist parents. Also in town are two tourists who are LL Bean victims trying to fit in and two weird NYC people Ella's 'Aunt' Ceil and 'Uncle' Edgar who are her dad's friends and like him bestselling author's.
In fact Ceil and Edgar have a shared pen name they write the stories of a vampire Count Le Plasma (no seriously) and in theory he tells them the stories as he's 'real' (obvious marketing scheme) but when some animals show up dead, including the cat rescue running Nuns favorite cat, Quinnie starts thinking Ceil and Edgar might have brought in real vampires or are vampires themselves especially after she and Ben see what she thinks is a wolf near the beach at 3:00 Am.
And naturally she seriously thinks Ella's dad's friends are behind it all and is trying (and succeeding) in getting the others to think vampires are real. Sorry, but they seem awfully old to make this leap based on next to nothing (other than Ceil and Edgar don't want to leave the house). The mystery here is what are those two hiding.
And it wouldn't be half bad for what it is, a middle school mystery but the ending absolutely sinks this thing. Here's a mild spoiler, no big reveals or anything, about what bothered me.
Ceil and Edgar are in some mild trouble but refuse to go to the cops. So I'm like what illegal thing did they do (spoiler, none which makes it worse) They are so adamant anti-cop that they are willing to risk FOUR young teens knowing there are two dangerous men after them so they could get out of town without the cops (i.e. Quinnie's mom) helping.
Let that sink in. Two grown adults are willing to risk the lives of four 13 year olds rather than call a cop when they, themselves, have do nothing to fear a cop. Surely there was a better way to have ended this. She thanks her beta team. Honestly if this had come through my beta group I would have straight up asked that. If you wanted the Hollywood ending on the water there had to be another way to do this. It was unbelievable and even more unbelievable was Quinnie's mom really didn't do much about it. ugh.
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Harvest House by Cynthia Leitich Smith
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I wanted to rate this one higher as I liked Hughie, Sam, Rain, Marie and Cricket but 3.5 stars was about as high as I could go. I think for me it was how the focus of the book was done. Very obviously Smith wanted to shine a light on two interrelated things, the insanely high rate of missing/murdered Indigenous women and racial bias/racism. Unfortunately it leaned harder into the latter which I think might be because of the intended audience. Don't get me wrong, it's a needed thing but it split the focus of the book.
For me if it had focused on both more evenly the book would have been more successful in its message. Hughie and Rain are Indigenous (Sam and Marie are Latinx and Cricket is White). Hughie is a gifted actor at a Kansas h.s. that just slashed drama so his new friend Sam gets him into Harvest House, a haunted house for one of his mom's friend's crowdfunding attempt to pay off serious medical bills.
Harvest House is set in an old abandoned home next to a failed chicken restaurant (also abandoned) and the Grub and Pub where the girls work. At this crossroads where there's a legend of a Crossroads Ghost featuring (uncomfortably for Hughie) the ghost of an "Indian Maiden" (What no one knows at first that Celeste was a real Indigenous woman who went missing in the 80s which killed my heart a little since the kids were that is SO long ago and that's when I was there age...)
So naturally the lady running the attraction (white) and the owner of the Grub & Pub (also white) decide to capitalize on that legend. Just one of them would have been enough to show a YA audience how cultural appropriation hurts but it gets double hammered here and much more so with Ms Fisher running the attraction because she has an Indian graveyard complete with Indian braves (she wanted Hughie and Sam to play a role in that but didn't think they were dark enough, yikes) and the Maidens ghost. She doesn't see this as racist and kids are too sensitive these days (cringe, especially since she'd be my age and yes I've heard that said a lot). Not even when the two bully characters write offensive "Indian" names on the tombstones.
Eventually she and Hughie have it out and mild spoiler here, she comes to an understanding how hurtful this is. I only wish it didn't take a month to get to this because it ended up short shirting the rest of the novel which I think is just as important (But honestly less likely to be something teens can help with. They can modify their behavior but they can't take on a multi jurisidictional nightmare)
Because the other main theme here is Celeste's story. Cricket (school journalist) and Hughie and Rain (motivated Indigenous teens) want to know the real story of what happened, especially when they learn yes someone really did go missing here. In the US and Canada the rates of Indigenous women going missing or being murdered is 6 times the national rate. In less than a decade nearly 6000 Indigenous women have gone missing. The hashtag MMIW is used in social media for this and I truly did want more out of the novel in this respect. It's obvious it wanted to shine a light on this but it didn't do it fully, a bit more concerned with appropriating cultural and colonialism (again maybe because it's seeking to make changes where it's easiest?)
I did like the story. I just wanted more out of it.
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