Review: BABY TEETH by Meg Grehan

 

Baby Teeth by Meg Grehan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A unique verse novel of queer love, lust, and vampires. From the award-winning author of The Deepest Breath and The Space Between.

The blood
Feeds the hunger
That threatens everything

It starts when Claudia offers her a yellow rose.
Immy has been in love before – many times, across many lifetimes. But never as deeply, as intensely as this.
Claudia has never been in love this before either. But then, this is her first time with a vampire.
The forbidden thirst for blood runs deep in Immy. And within her mind clamour the voices, of all the others she has been, their desires, and their wrongs.


“A fresh, dark take on the vampire myth and desire, Baby Teeth shows vampires haunted by their pasts and memories, where immortality is not one long life but a broken patchwork of different experiences. It will twine around your heart and bite, ever so gently. I adored it.” – Helen Corcoran

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I picked up BABY TEETH at Waterstones just before my husband and I went on honeymoon. I then read almost all the book in one day but took it with me to finish on the train, only to them not be able to find the book. And then today, about four months later, I found it! No idea where it had been hiding all that time because weirdly it was just on my bookcase now, but I finally finished it. And that ending was perfect.

BABY TEETH is this beautiful sapphic story of vampires and lust and desire. It’s about memories and identity and found family, and I actually loved every single character. I also loved the take on vampires that Meg Grehan gives us: vampires living multiple lives, becoming different people, rather than living one life forever. It was so refreshing and a great way to explore the characters and their relationships.

And this is a novel in verse too! The writing is gorgeous, with some truly beautiful lines and imagery.

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Review: HER MAJESTY'S ROYAL COVEN by Juno Dawson

 

Her Majesty's Royal Coven by Juno Dawson

A Discovery of Witches meets The Craft in this the first installment of this epic fantasy trilogy about a group of childhood friends who are also witches.

If you look hard enough at old photographs, we're there in the background: healers in the trenches; Suffragettes; Bletchley Park oracles; land girls and resistance fighters. Why is it we help in times of crisis? We have a gift. We are stronger than Mundanes, plain and simple.

At the dawn of their adolescence, on the eve of the summer solstice, four young girls--Helena, Leonie, Niamh and Elle--took the oath to join Her Majesty's Royal Coven, established by Queen Elizabeth I as a covert government department. Now, decades later, the witch community is still reeling from a civil war and Helena is now the reigning High Priestess of the organization. Yet Helena is the only one of her friend group still enmeshed in the stale bureaucracy of HMRC. Elle is trying to pretend she's a normal housewife, and Niamh has become a country vet, using her powers to heal sick animals. In what Helena perceives as the deepest betrayal, Leonie has defected to start her own more inclusive and intersectional coven, Diaspora. And now Helena has a bigger problem. A young warlock of extraordinary capabilities has been captured by authorities and seems to threaten the very existence of HMRC. With conflicting beliefs over the best course of action, the four friends must decide where their loyalties lie: with preserving tradition, or doing what is right.

Juno Dawson explores gender and the corrupting nature of power in a delightful and provocative story of magic and matriarchy, friendship and feminism. Dealing with all the aspects of contemporary womanhood, as well as being phenomenally powerful witches, Niamh, Helena, Leonie and Elle may have grown apart but they will always be bound by the sisterhood of the coven.

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At the moment, this is a DNF for me. I really wanted to love this book, and don't get me wrong, for the right reader, this would be a great book. I adore all of Juno's other books, but this is more of a personal issue taste for me, because I've found I just don't really like adult stories about witches covens and the politics among them. I couldn't get through A Discovery of Witches for the same reason, but I read more of this one than that. And yes, I knew going into this book that this was going to be about covens. I felt compelled to try it because of loving the author's other books, but I just couldn't get on with it. Having said that, this book is very well written and I was impressed with how modern it felt, blending traditional coven life with modern life/technology. This worldbuilding was phenomenal, and when I next update my class reading list when I'm teaching worldbuilding, I will be including this.

The characterisation was also fantastic and I loved that it was multiple POV third-person. Normally, if I get a book where I'm not sure I'll like it because it's about covens, I only manage to read a chapter or so, but I read about six of this one, which is testament to how strong it is.

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Review: I'M GLAD MY MOM DIED by Jennette McCurdy

 

I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A heartbreaking and hilarious memoir by iCarly and Sam & Cat star Jennette McCurdy about her struggles as a former child actor—including eating disorders, addiction, and a complicated relationship with her overbearing mother—and how she retook control of her life.

Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called “calorie restriction,” eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, “Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn’t tint hers?” She was even showered by Mom until age sixteen while sharing her diaries, email, and all her income.

In I’m Glad My Mom Died , Jennette recounts all this in unflinching detail—just as she chronicles what happens when the dream finally comes true. Cast in a new Nickelodeon series called iCarly , she is thrust into fame. Though Mom is ecstatic, emailing fan club moderators and getting on a first-name basis with the paparazzi (“Hi Gale!”), Jennette is riddled with anxiety, shame, and self-loathing, which manifest into eating disorders, addiction, and a series of unhealthy relationships. These issues only get worse when, soon after taking the lead in the iCarly spinoff Sam & Cat alongside Ariana Grande, her mother dies of cancer. Finally, after discovering therapy and quitting acting, Jennette embarks on recovery and decides for the first time in her life what she really wants.

Told with refreshing candor and dark humor, I’m Glad My Mom Died is an inspiring story of resilience, independence, and the joy of shampooing your own hair.

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So, I was kind of reluctant to read this memoir when I first heard about it (though knowing nothing about the book) as I didn't like the title. It felt clickbait-y to me, and I just didn't like that at all. But then I got it from the library, and wow. Jennette McCurdy had such a difficult childhood as a child actress. She was forced into this work by her mum and abused for years by her. Reading this was difficult. McCurdy's story is traumatic and complicated. I really do applaud her for writing this.

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Review: BUNNY by Mona Awad

 

Bunny by Mona Awad
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Vegetarian meets Heathers in this darkly funny, seductively strange novel about a lonely graduate student drawn into a clique of rich girls who seem to move and speak as one

"We were just these innocent girls in the night trying to make something beautiful. We nearly died. We very nearly did, didn't we?"

Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort--a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other "Bunny," and are often found entangled in a group hug so tight they become one.

But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies' fabled "Smut Salon," and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door--ditching her only friend, Ava, a caustic art school dropout, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the sinister yet saccharine world of the Bunny cult and starts to take part in their ritualistic off-campus "Workshop" where they magically conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur, and her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies are brought into deadly collision.

A spellbinding, down-the-rabbit-hole tale of loneliness and belonging, creativity and agency, and friendship and desire, Bunny is a dazzlingly original second book.

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Oh, wow. This book. THIS BOOK!

Joining a cult while studying your MFA in creative writing? A cult where you summon monsters? This was the perfect book for me to read while finishing my MFA in creative writing.

The writing is just so trippy, so psychedelic, and it's the exact kind of horror I love. And I don't even want to say any more than that, because I think going into this book with no idea or expectations about it meant I had the best reading experience possible.

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Review: CLARA POOLE AND THE LONG WAY ROUND by Taylor Tyng

 

Clara Poole and the Long Way Round by Taylor Tyng
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Mr. Lemoncello meets the Amazing Race in this quirky high-octane balloon-racing middle grade around-the-world adventure.

When an unintended flight over Michigan in her class science project—a lawn chair held aloft by balloons—brings her instant celebrity, Clara Poole is invited to be the spokesperson for a round-the-world hot air balloon race. But when her overprotective father, still mourning the death of his wife, refuses, in a moment of brash defiance, Clara forges his signature and runs away to Paris to take her place in the skies. If only she’d read the fine print first.
 
Partnered with a veteran aeronaut who wants nothing to do with her, Clara faces down ten treacherous stages in a race around the world—capturing flags in the perilous mountains of Nepal; being a guest of honor at a maybe-wedding in the Saharan desert; flying through rings of fire in Hong Kong—all while learning the ropes alongside a colorful cast of international competitors.
 
But there are more dangers than those planned as part of the contest. Someone is trying to sabotage the competition. And surviving this race means Clara must come to terms with the tragedy that set her rashly escaping to the skies in the first place, and accepting that forgiving herself isn’t a process she has to undertake alone.
 
Gorgeous prose and winning characters combine in this quirky, often-hilarious, sometimes heart-breaking, and thoroughly captivating middle grade adventure series starter from an incredible new talent.

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I've been looking forward to reading this book for, like, forever, and it did not disappoint at all! CLARA POOLE AND THE LONG WAY ROUND is a zany balloon adventure following an impulsive and fun (but traumatised) twelve-year-old as she sets off on the adventure of a lifetime around the world. And not only that, but this book is filled with a dynamic cast and beautiful prose.

Seriously, the writing in this is sooooo good. Not only is the imagery beautiful, but the writing itself is rhythmic and I found myself marvelling over the sounds of many of the sentences as I was reading--and I can immediately see why this book would be a great choice to read aloud to kids.

The characterisation is so stunning too. Every character was authentic and believable, and motivations and backgrounds were shown perfectly. I also loved how there were so many characters of different ages here--and Gildersleeve and Clara's father were two of my favourite characters. But of course I loved Clara best of all. She was imperfect and reckless at times, but we could see exactly why she was like that. Her emotions guided her and often led her into danger, and I loved how we could also see how quickly her emotions and reactions changed. This felt very authentic for a child.

One of my favourite things about this book though was the setting, and simply the way the world is described. It's fantastical and vibrant and exuberant and out-there and I LOVED it. This is the perfect middle grade novel, and I cannot wait for the sequel.

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