Amy’s Library Chicken: What I Read in May

May is a heavy grading month for me, so a lot of my reading was student writing! I’m also reading lots of books to prepare for classes next year, which I will only review if I think they’re worth reading as standalones in their own right. But I thought some of the books I read this past month were pretty great.

White Smoke may be the modern Gothic vibe I’ve been looking for — maybe the missing ingredient in modern Gothic is that sense of real-life evil permeating beneath the surface, and this book (by Tiffany D. Jackson, who also wrote the terrific Monday’s Not Coming, which isn’t Gothic, but which now that I am looking back it definitely has that air of foreboding so essential to The Gothic Experience) tangled its haunted house mystery up with racism and capitalism in ways that made it genuinely creepy. Marigold’s mom wins an art fellowship that comes with a lovingly restored house in a small town all the way across the country. It’s a fresh start: Mari’s mom has just married a widower with a tween daughter, and they’re trying to figure out what their new family looks like, especially since Mari, her mom, and brother are Black, and Alec and Piper are both white. Mari’s also got stuff of her own to navigate: After an unfortunate bedbug incident triggered her OCD (and a drug coping mechanism that ended up with her overdosing her bedroom), Mari’s just trying to figure out how to get through the day. This is hard because their new house is weird — doors open on their own, shadows flit by places where shadows shouldn’t be, the power cuts on and off at weird times, and Mari’s new sister warns her that “Aunt Suga” doesn’t want Mari in her house. Trigger warning for bedbugs (I cannot stress this enough!), but if you, too, have been looking for some modern Gothic that satisfies in the creepy department, you may want to try this one, too. (It also has some of the problems you can run into with Gothic stories, but I’ve been wanting something actually creepy so bad that I would forgive it a lot!)

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The follow-up to the amazing Raybearer (seriously, if you haven’t read this book yet and you like YA fantasy, you really should!), Redemptor does NOT suffer from second book letdown. At least it didn’t for me — it picks up right where Raybearer ends, with Tarisai the newly anointed Empress, charged with anointing her own council and traveling to the Underworld to fulfill her deal with the sinister spirits of the dead. Because this is the focus, the family building aspect of Raybearer is less present (though definitely still there!), and the relationships are less important than Tarisai’s own journey. This was OK with me because I felt like it made sense — I missed Kirah, but I liked that she was off having her own journey and that her story wasn’t just about being Tarisai’s friend. There are lots of fun twists, some great new characters, and an overall spirit of hope and possibility that frankly feels essential in the world today. I liked the first book better, probably, but I found its conclusion satisfying in pretty much every way.

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See You Yesterday is a light-and-fluffy YA comedy about two college first-years stuck in a time loop. It’s basically Groundhog Day on a college campus and just the thing for a heartwarming beach read.

I’m honestly not sure how I feel about This Appearing House. I think that’s because I have a kiddo with a chronic health condition, which may not seem relevant, but I think it definitely affected my feelings about this book, so I want to mention it. Jac is almost five years cancer-free, but the weight of her diagnosis is still hanging over her head — and she’s had a few moments recently that made her wonder if she’s experiencing symptoms again. When some classmates dare Jac and her new friend to go inside the mysterious house, she finds that her darkest fears are shaping what’s inside — and that she’s going to have to be very brave if she wants to find the way out. This book definitely falls into the spooky middle grades genre — it’s very atmospheric and full of deliciously creepy moments. It’s also clearly a metaphor for what it’s like to go through a serious illness. I think the central idea — that the way out is through — is important, and I know that kids going through health crises need to see themselves represented in literature. I really appreciate that this book didn’t shy away from that. Something about it didn’t quite sit right with me, though, and I can’t put my finger on what it was. That’s why I think it might be connected to my own experiences and not to the book.

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The Clockwork Queen is definitely going on my middle grades recommendations list. Sophie’s father gets hired to be the chess tutor to Catherine the Great’s son — but when lessons don’t go the way the empress wants them to, Sophie’s father is imprisoned, and Sophie and her mom are left to fend for themselves. Sophie relies on her father’s chess lessons to get by — and then her chess skills bring her an opportunity to rescue her father. I am very fond of stories about early robots, about Russian history, and about chess, so this book ticked a bunch of boxes for me.

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I always enjoy Sarah Waters, but Affinity isn’t my favorite. It’s about a young lady in Victorian England who takes up visiting women prisoners as a way to recalibrate her life after a suicide attempt. She’s captivated by one of the prisoners, a young medium imprisoned after the death of her benefactress during a seance. I’m fascinated by Victorian spiritualism, and I love the way Waters nails her endings — this was a solid book. I’ve just enjoyed other of her books more.

A Secret Princess is out later this month, and it’s a wild and wacky mash-up of three Frances Hodgson Burnett classics: A Little Princess, The Secret Garden, and Little Lord Fauntleroy. The Little Princess, Sara, is an heiress from the Philippines; Mary from The Secret Garden is a rebel with a lot of causes; and Cedric is the poor little rich boy whose chronic health condition constantly disappoints his aristocratic family. The three meet up at Miss Minchin’s repressive and prestigious British boarding school and become fast friends. When a series of unfortunate events upend their lives, the trio run away from school to start a new life together. You probably won’t be surprised that the three stories are virtually unrecognizable from their original forms, but as long as you don’t go in expecting that, this book feels like a fun, fan fiction romp through a literary landscape where you’ll occasional spot a familiar landmark. I had no expectations going in and thought it was a lot of fun.

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Wow, I loved Pretty as a Picture. I’m honestly surprised by how great I thought I was — I would read an entire mystery series with Marissa as the main character. She’s a film editor who is fantastic at her job turning pictures into stories and terrible at people-ing, so all she wants to do is hunker down in the editing room and get to work on her new true crime movie. The universe, however, has other plans, and Marissa ends up investigating the murder of the actress playing the murder victim with the enthusiastic assistance of two teenage girls and an ex-military security guy who might have motives of his own. It’s so much fun! I really loved how Marissa uses mental movie clips to identify or explain her feelings in a given moment — it reminds me of how I use bits from books the same way. This was one of those books that I discovered randomly, which somehow makes loving it even more delightful. I’m going to recommend this one if you like mysteries.

Survive the Night, on the other hand, was a random pick that did NOT delight me. Friends, if your best friend is murdered by a serial killer, please do not ride share with a random stranger you find on your college bulletin board. Maybe especially do not do this if you have a mental condition where you frequently aren’t sure what is real because your mind turns things into movie scenes. Consider taking a bus instead.

Did you read anything great in May?

I post my Library Chicken roundups on the HSL Patreon every month and on the blog here when I think about it! (We’re Amazon affiliates, so if you purchase something through an Amazon link, we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Obviously this doesn’t influence what we recommend, and we link to places other than Amazon.) 

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