1) The Grimm Legacy" by Polly Shulman
Fairy-tale and romance devotees, museum aficionados and budding librarians will pine for Elizabeth’s afterschool job. Lonely in New York City, her family straight out of Grimm (dead mom, inattentive dad, cold stepfamily), Elizabeth agrees to work at the New-York Circulating Material Repository. She passes the button-sorting interview and begins work in the stacks, where call slips arrive via pneumatic tubes. The Repository houses historical articles (textiles, wigs, tea sets), including the Grimm Collection, all circulating. Shulman’s prose sparkles describing the Grimm objects’ magic powers (recognizable from tales) and the profound deposits required to borrow them (a “long, translucent, sweater-shaped thing” is “somebody’s sense of privacy”; a future firstborn looks “infinitely vulnerable and undefined, like a thought before you put it into words”). The pages are a multiracial group, but the white librarians unfortunately romanticize the Akan peoples, constantly spouting proverbs from those “great men and women. Chiefs in Africa.” Some structural implausibility pales before vivid sensory descriptions (hexed gingerbread tastes “[s]weet and dark, like roast duck or cedar pencils”) and delightful magical happenings both thrilling and nefarious. (Fantasy. 12 & up)
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2) "Num8ers" by Rachel Ward
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3) "Incarnate" by Jodi Meadows
For thousands of years in Range, the same one million souls have been born, lived, died and been reborn. But when Ciana died, she wasn't reborn: Ana was born, for the first time.
Now 18, Ana is leaving the mother who hated her behind. When an encounter with the terrifying sylph drives her to leap off a cliff into a lake, she is certain that her new, young soul will soon be an expired one. Kindly Sam rescues her and takes her to the city of Heart, where she hopes to find answers to the questions of her origin. There, she must battle both the ingrained sense of low worth instilled by her hostile mother and the suspicions of the oldsouls. Never fear: Debut novelist Meadows gives musical prodigy Ana a mentor that is the society's most noted musician, the preternaturally wise, good and—oh yes, sexy—Sam. The basic concept is a fascinating one, but it gets muddled in delivery. Worldbuilding is particularly weak: Range is populated by both creatures of European mythology and regular North American animals, but the former seem to have been thrown in largely to be set dressing and a convenient threat. Perhaps all will be explained in subsequent volumes, to which this effectively serves as a 374-page prologue. Moreover, Ana's characterization is notably uneven (the emotional scars from her upbringing emerge when the plot needs them), and 21st-century colloquialisms sound sour notes against the trying-to-be-otherworldly setting.
Overall, a promising book that would have benefited from another draft or two. (Fantasy/romance. 13 & up)
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4) "Crown Duel" by Sherwood Smith
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5) "Forgotten" by Cat Patrick
Imagine forgetting yesterday but remembering tomorrow.
Patrick’s high-concept debut falls flat. Each morning at 4:33, London Lane’s mind resets, blanking out the past—but she “remembers” her future. Doctors have been unable to solve her condition, so London stumbles through life faking normal, aided by notes and her mother and best friend (both of whom she “knows,” thanks to future memories). Every morning she must study her own life. Enter hot boy, but despite the growing relationship, London can’t remember him from her future. Luke’s inexplicable presence and a resurfaced actual memory set London on the trail of her own past, in which she discovers a tragic mystery. She conveniently remembers just enough to solve it, and it turns out there are happy endings all around, although only a weak “explanation” for London’s ability to effectively see the future. The flat main character and awkward necessities of writing to accommodate future memories hinder the promising premise. Present-tense narration in an adult voice (perhaps because London remembers forward?) and a personality is based only on who she will be make empathy difficult. This is compounded by the discomfiting circular logic throughout (she is friends with Jamie because she will be friends with Jamie; readers will still wonder why).
Ultimately, it’s a mess, but intense romance means some appeal. (Pseudo-paranormal romance/mystery. 12-16)
6) "Brightly Woven" by Alexandra Bracken
Conventional teen tropes translate surprisingly well to fantasy romance in an uneven debut. Sixteen-year-old weaver Sydelle is presented to North, a wizard scarcely older, as an unwilling payment for ending her village’s devastating drought. North has the information to stop an imminent war, and he needs Sydelle to guide him to the capital. Sydelle slowly overcomes her resentment of her mysterious, arrogant captor as she learns about the ways of magic and her own unexpected place within it. Sydelle’s narration portrays her as the stereotypical feisty-yet-commonsensical redhead, entirely unaware of her hidden powers and irresistible attractiveness, while North is the bad-boy hero with the angsty-secret back story. Everyone else is a stock character, especially the Crazy McEvilpants villain. But archetypes exist because they work, and, despite cursory world-building and awkward prose, the romance is chastely sweet while the plot trots along at a ripping pace, culminating in a (literally) earthshaking climax, with just enough unresolved questions to make a sequel welcome. A guilty pleasure, perhaps, but a pleasure nonetheless. (Fantasy. 12 & up)
7) "Audrey, Wait!" by Robin Benway
8) "Hawksong" by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
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