Young Adult Fiction Favourites
This book begins with the sentence “For eighteen years, my unibrow has saved me from being sold into a painful, terrifying death,” and only gets better from there.
With a futuristic medieval Chinese aesthetic Iron Widow is a retelling of the historical fable of Wu Zetian a woman who climbed her way from lowly concubine to empress of China.
A particularly poignant one star review of this book was that “every single woman in this book is a villain. Every. Single. One.” Which is the thing that elevates this book from good to GREAT.
Xiran Jay Zhao is hateful, angry and motivated by revenge to the point where it eclipses everything in her life, honestly, what a Queen.
It’s like the movie Pacific Rim had a baby with the Hunger Games! Iron Widow is a meditation on female rage wrapped up in a pretty polyamorous sci-fi bow.
When Yadriel is denied his Quinceañero that would make him a brujo, a rite of passage his family has partaken in for centuries because he is trans, he enlists the help of his other queer cousin to summon Sante Muegal (the Holy Lady of Death) the deity to do it anyway.
And it works!
Yadriel is able to summon spirits like his father and all the other men in in his family. However, the spirit refuses to pass on until you complete its unfinished business. The ghost is also your very attractive classmate, AND your cousin Miguel is missing, but that’s unrelated…. right, RIGHT?
The lore of Yadriel’s people and the magical aspect to it are crafted very well. I just wanted to read about these characters and their interpersonal relationships which speaks volumes for the way author Aiden Thomas has crafted their characters.
Yadriel finds himself in the position where he must be more emotionally mature and forgiving to his peers and family. He has to endure the indignity of his father saying things like “stay [there] with the rest of the women” or his grandmother telling him he’ll always be “[her] little girl”. But this is better than the inconsolable grief of losing connection to his family and community.
Cemetery Boys is one of those stories that feel so impossibly familiar, a thing already part of yourself, and I hope many readers find their way to it.
The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud
Book 1 in the incredibly popular Lockwood & Co. series, the Screaming Staircase is set in an alternate London after the world has been struck by something called ‘the problem’. Basically, the dead come back in the form of ghosts and only children can defeat them as they are the only ones who can see and hear them). This results in ghost agencies which train and house would-be ghost seeing young people. This is where we meet Lucy Carlyle, applying for a job at the agency Lockwood & Co.
A whimsical fun romp, the Screaming Staircase brings a surprising amount of realism to what is essentially training child soldiers to deal with your ghost problem. Though the reality is depressing, the relationship Lucy forges with fellow Lockwood & Co. members, Anthony Lockwood and George Cubbins, provides levity and humour in the most delicious of ways.
Johnathan Stroud is a true titan and readers are safe in his hands, wherever he chooses to take you.