Friday, October 11, 2024

The Maid and the Crocodile by Jordan Ifueko

Title: The Maid and the Crocodile 
Series: Raybearer
Author: Jordan Ifueko
Source/Format: Publisher; Paperback ARC
More Details: Fantasy; Young Adult; Romance
Publisher/Publication Date: Harry N. Abrams; August 13, 2024

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Synopsis from Goodreads...
The smallest spark can bind two hearts . . . or start a revolution.

In the magic-soaked capital city of Oluwan, country bumpkin Small Sade needs a job—preferably as a maid, with employers who don’t mind her unique appearance and unlucky foot. But before she can be hired, she accidentally binds herself to a powerful god known only as the Crocodile, who is rumored to devour pretty girls. Small Sade entrances the Crocodile with her secret: she is a Curse Eater, gifted with the ability to alter people’s fates by cleaning their houses. The handsome god warns that their fates are bound, but Small Sade evades him, launching herself into a new career as the Curse Eater of a swanky inn. She is determined to impress the wealthy inhabitants and earn her place in Oluwan City . . . assuming her secret-filled past—and the revolutionary ambitions of the Crocodile God—don’t catch up with her. But maybe there is more to Small Sade. And maybe everyone in Oluwan City deserves more, too, from the maids all the way to the Anointed Ones.


I rarely pick up young adult romances these days, except for on rare occasions like this, when a synopsis is enough to garner my attention. The Maid and the Crocodile is Jordan Ifueko’s standalone romance set in the same world as the Raybearer series, and while I still want to check out those books eventually, that didn’t curb my enthusiasm for this story.

Small Sade was a very personable character. Life hadn’t been kind to her and, now that she aged out of the orphanage, she needed a job more than ever, and her ability as a Curse-Eater might just be the thing to do it. Enter a plucky, lovable gecko and the Crocodile, a supposed god with a questionable reputation. When Small Sade and the Crocodile’s paths cross, they end up with an unexpected bond, and embark on a journey of self-discovery in a story set to challenge everything they thought true about themselves.

The Maid and the Crocodile is a slow burn romance through and through. The story spent a good chunk of its page space developing the characters, and bringing them to a place of equal footing. The relationship wasn’t without its troubles and was even tumultuous at certain points. However, that being said, I liked that Ifueko gave the relationship enough time to breathe and develop into something not only believable but also heartwarming and something to really root for.

The relationship wasn’t the only point of the book, though. There was the storyline set at the Balogun Inn. I also enjoyed this look into the Raybearer world, and it is something to keep in mind when approaching The Maid and the Crocodile. If you’re like me and don’t mind spoilers for the other books, then it won’t be an issue. But, as this takes place after Raybearer and Redemptor, there were passages related to events that took place in those books.

That aside, with a cast full of colorful and endearing characters, cute and romantic moments, and even aspects of a race against time, The Maid and the Crocodile was a delightful, heartfelt story. And I can’t recommend it enough.
About the author....
Jordan Ifueko is the NYT Bestselling Author of the RAYBEARER series & the Disney-Marvel comics MOON GIRL & DEVIL DINOSAUR. She’s a Nebula Award, Ignyte Award, Audie Award, and Hugo Lodestar finalist, and she's been featured in People Magazine, NPR Best Books, NPR Pop Culture Hour, & ALA Top Ten. She writes about magic Black girls who aren’t magic all the time, because honestly, they deserve a vacation.

Disclaimer: this copy of the book was provided by the publisher (Harry N. Abrams) in exchange for an honest review, thank you! 

Wednesday, October 9, 2024

Spooky Books to Read This October (2024)

I don’t often do a recommendation list for books but, each year, if there’s a month I’ll put one together, it’ll be for October. So, welcome! Here’s a short list of spooky books.

Middle Grade & Young Adult

It Came From the Trees by Ally Russell is one of my favorite middle grade horror novels to-date. It has plenty to offer: outdoorsy main character, an eerie atmosphere, and a creative (and terrifying) twist on Bigfoot.

Give Me Something Good to Eat by D.W. Gillespie is aptly compared to Hocus Pocus and Stranger Things. The MC, Mason Miller, is in a race against time to save his sister from the macabre tradition hosted by a witch each Halloween.

The last middle grade novel on this list is Amalie Howard’s Bumps in the Night. Darika Lovelace confronts family secrets and ends up on a supernatural adventure through a dangerous, otherworldly maze.

Up next is Holly Horror: The Longest Night by Michelle Jabès Corpora. One of my most anticipated sequels of 2024 and an atmospheric ghost story that finally answers the big mystery of the series, which began in Holly Horror.

General Fiction


The Brides of High Hill by Nghi Vo, the fifth novella in The Singing Hills Cycle. Cleric Chih is accompanying a bride, and the story that unfolds is a haunting, gothic mystery set in a crumbling, isolated estate.

The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden is set during the “Great War,” and follows a combat nurse who’s looking for her brother, who may (against all odds) be still alive, despite being presumed dead. It’s a bittersweet yet hopeful story as well as one full of ghosts and the visceral horrors of war.

Haunt Sweet Home by Sarah Pinsker is a slightly lighter story than The Warm Hands of Ghosts. But it was, at its core, still a ghost story, which took place on the sets of a niche TV show—a cross between ghost hunting and home renovation.

Classic

Sabriel is Garth Nix’s 1995 fantasy novel, the first of The Old Kingdom series: Necromancy, a crumbling kingdom succumbing to the dead, and a heroine reluctant to pick up the mantle of Abhorsen. There is a sense of dread that permeates across the entire story.

So, that’s every spooky book I’m recommending this October. Happy reading!



Monday, October 7, 2024

Music Monday (301): Angie Stone, Over The Garden Wall

Rules:

  • Music Monday is a weekly meme hosted by Lauren Stoolfire at Always Me that asks you to share one or two songs that you've recently enjoyed. For the rules, visit the page HERE 
Breana: Over The Garden Wall is one of my all-time favorite cartoons. The animation is wonderful, the story is A+, and it's vibe and atmosphere is perfect for October/Fall. It's definitely time for a rewatch! Anyway, my pick this week is the soundtrack from Over The Garden Wall.


Andrea: Hi all! This week I'm listening to No More Rain (In This Cloud) by Angie Stone. Have an amazing week!



What are you listening to this week?

Friday, October 4, 2024

Wednesday, October 2, 2024

The City in Glass by Nghi Vo

Title: The City in Glass
Series: n/a
Author: Nghi Vo
Source/Format: NetGalley; eARC
More Details: Fantasy
Publisher/Publication Date: TorDotCom; October 1, 2024

Goodreads     Amazon     Barnes & Noble

Synopsis from Goodreads...
In this new standalone, Hugo Award-winning author Nghi Vo introduces a beguiling fantasy city in the tradition of Calvino, Mieville, and Le Guin.

A demon. An angel. A city that burns at the heart of the world.


The demon Vitrine—immortal, powerful, and capricious—loves the dazzling city of Azril. She has mothered, married, and maddened the city and its people for generations, and built it into a place of joy and desire, revelry and riot. And then the angels come, and the city falls. Vitrine is left with nothing but memories and a book containing the names of those she has lost—and an angel, now bound by her mad, grief-stricken curse to haunt the city he burned. She mourns her dead and rages against the angel she longs to destroy. Made to be each other’s devastation, angel and demon are destined for eternal battle. Instead, they find themselves locked in a devouring fascination that will change them both forever. Together, they unearth the past of the lost city and begin to shape its future. But when war threatens Azril and everything they have built, Vitrine and her angel must decide whether they will let the city fall again.

The City in Glass is both a brilliantly constructed history and an epic love story, of death and resurrection, memory and transformation, redemption and desire strong enough to burn a world to ashes and build it anew.


Nghi Vo’s, The Singing Hills Cycle, is one of my favorite series, so I was interested in checking out her latest story, The City in Glass. Essentially, this is a tale about a ruined city that might rise again from its ashes, a demon, an angel, and the strange tumultuous sort-of fascination/love story between the two.

The City in Glass was engaging from the very first page. It begins with a revelry, the fall of the city, and the demon, Vitrine’s effort to rebuild what she lost. Despite the book’s short length, the actual timespan of the story was hundreds of years with sporadic time skips, which sometimes spanned as long as decades. The book was written incredibly well and with enough detail to give the characters—particularly Vitrine—and Azril a rich history.

A large part of the book was dedicated to—and lingered on—Vitrine’s grief as well as her memories of the people and the place she’d lost. During these flashbacks, it was clear how much she’d loved the city of Azril, following generations of families, shaping the place into what it was before everything ended, like a gardener. Her grief was, for lack of better terms, consuming, and The City in Glass allowed Vitrine to go through these stages. It was messy—she was prone to giving into her rage, lashed out, and wanted to be left alone with memories and ghosts—but it drove home the devastation. The way she wanted to linger in the past reminded me of a short story I read earlier this year (Something Small Enough to Ask For by Anamaria Curtis), and the lesson for that main character was ultimately a similar one. Stay in the past or finally move forward? As character arcs go, Vitrine’s was a good one.

One avenue that I was pretty undecided on (and still am), was how the relationship landed, whether it worked as well as some of the other aspects of The City in Glass or not—especially with the way the story ended. On one hand, I understand Vitrine had to work through her grief and come to terms with the angel’s role in it. While on the other hand, some of the angel and Vitrine’s best moments were when they communicated, when there was this push-and-pull albeit with a sense of burgeoning closeness and understanding (even frustration and anger) with each other. However, I wish there had been more of it, or at least a little more of the angel’s perspective on the situation, particularly before the end.

Despite how conflicted I was about the aforementioned, it wasn’t bad actually. In fact, The City in Glass was thoroughly engaging and enjoyable, and I know I’ll be thinking about it for a long time.
 
About the author....
Nghi Vo is the author of the novels Siren Queen and The Chosen and the Beautiful, as well as the acclaimed novellas of the Singing Hills Cycle, which began withThe Empress of Salt and Fortune. The series entries have been finalists for the Locus Award and the Lambda Literary Award, and have won the Crawford Award, the Ignyte Award, and the Hugo Award. Born in Illinois, she now lives on the shores of Lake Michigan. She believes in the ritual of lipstick, the power of stories, and the right to change your mind.

Disclaimer: this copy of the book was provided by the publisher (TorDotCom) via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, thank you! 
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