December 2021 Wrap Up Pt. 2

I am suddenly very grateful to past Adrienne for doing the part 1 wrap up way back in the middle of December. If I hadn't, we'd be here for quite awhile today. Which is good news, don't get me wrong, but I'm glad I cut my posting time in half with that move. Anyway, here's what I've read since that last wrap up.

Dustborn by Erin Bowman - This dystopian novel takes place on a far future planet that has dried out to only the barest water patches. Delta leaves her pack to take her sister to the healer and when she comes back, the settlement has been raided. One old man is still alive to tell her what happened before he dies. The raiders took half the pack and killed the rest. Delta sets out to find them. She is certain the pack is looking for her and the map branded on her back. It is a map to The Verdant, but no one has been able to read for centuries, so no one can read the map. What follows is an epic tale of Delta finding her people enslaved to a tyrant through a drug and the way to free them all. The pace barely slows down through the entire thing. Don't take a breath, you'll get sidelined by the next twist. 8 bookmarks

My Name Is Jason. Mine too. by Jason Reynolds and Jason Griffin - I will read anything with Jason Reynolds' name on it. This book is 13 years old and the Jasons are quite a bit younger than today. The book contains poems and artwork about the friendship between these two men who have been friends since boyhood. One is a poet, the other an artist. I am not a brilliant art appreciator, so some of the art was not for me. The poetry I could get. It was a very short book I read in just a few minutes. 9 bookmarks

Ace of Spades by Faridah Abike-Iyimide - Wow. I'm struggling to find words. This book is so much. There is so much going on. Ok. Start at the beginning. The only two black kids at this tony private high school are being targeted by an anonymous texter. The texts go out to the whole school except the person the text is about. Devon's sex life is shared with everyone, but he wasn't out to anyone yet. And Chiamaka is the queen of the school's social world, but she holds a secret memory of her best friend hitting and killing a girl with blond hair and driving away. That girl haunts her dreams at night. Somehow the texter knows all about that. Devon and Chiamaka team up to find out what is going on. And then it gets really out of hand. The last sentence really blew the whole thing up. I gasped out loud. 10 bookmarks

Squad by Maggie Tokuda Hall - I read this at work one night. It's a graphic novel so it's quick. Becca is a regular girl who is facing being the new girl in school. In a bout of unbelievable luck, she gets picked up by the popular girls and swept into their squad. When they are at a party thrown by students from a different school, she finds out the real secret. They are actually werewolves and they have to eat a human on the full moon. They are picky though, they only eat gross rapey boys. Until one day, they don't. They eat a boy who was perfectly nice, and some of the girls have a problem with that. Then Becca accidentally kills the head werewolf's boyfriend and instead of eating him, they dump him in the river. Evidence. The end is something else. I don't know how it could have ended differently, but I enjoyed it. 9 bookmarks

The Prison Healer by Lynette Noni - At first I was impatient with this book. I'm not a huge fan books where the character has to go through a set of Trials. And we know about it in advance. It kind of sets up the frame of the book and I already know what's going to happen. The thing that saved this book was the main character. There were a couple of side characters that were pretty great too. The Trials were even okay. The pace was sufficiently quick to keep my attention. 7 bookmarks.

Honestly, it was a pretty good reading month! I cannot complain.