sarah984's reviews
628 reviews

Song for a Whale by Lynne Kelly

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adventurous emotional hopeful medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

A sweet little middle grade novel about a Deaf girl and her grandmother on an adventure. I liked Iris's interest in radios and sound, and the way she learns a bit about the lives of the adults around her, but the stuff anthropomorphizing the whale comes across pretty maudlin and silly (not by the girl, there are a bunch of whale pov chapters and they felt unnecessary) and near the end she does an extremely dangerous thing
(jumping into freezing water)
I didn't really like. Overall fine but I wish it had had another round of editing. 
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Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park

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challenging informative slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

A darkly funny wild ride through the history (and future?) of Korea. You might want to keep a notebook on hand for this one, there are so many interconnected layers.
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Before We Say Goodbye by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

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emotional reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I liked this better than the previous book in the series, but not quite as much as the first two. There really are a limited number of types of stories that you can tell in this format and I think the series might be hitting a wall. The story about the dog was my favourite.
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Other Terrors: An Inclusive Anthology by Rena Mason, Vince A. Liaguno

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dark

2.5

Kind of an unfortunate anthology, most of the stories were just not that good: either kind of aimless, felt unfinished, or tone deaf in the way the "otherness" was handled. 

Favourites: Where The Lovelight Gleams by Michael Thomas Ford, Miss Infection USA by Shanna Heath and Mud Flappers by Usman T. Malik.
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Bloody Summer by Carmen Maria Machado

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challenging reflective medium-paced

5.0

I really liked the format of this, a researcher in the future writing about children's rhymes in relation to a strange event that had happened in a small American town years before. This is the first thing I've read by this author and it made my head spin.
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The Backbone of the World by Stephen Graham Jones

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mysterious reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I have no idea how all the disparate elements going into this story were possibly squeezed into under 60 pages, but Stephen Graham Jones never misses. What a wild story.
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What the Dead Know by Nghi Vo

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dark medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

An interesting little ghost story. It was a little jarring to see magic be "real" in a story so short - I wish this had been a full novella so we could see more of the characters and world.
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Persephone by Lev Grossman

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adventurous mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

This was more exciting than the first story in this collection that I read, but didn't really feel like a complete story.
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The Garden by Tomi Adeyemi

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emotional mysterious slow-paced
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.0

A character reciting bad poetry (which is in some cases listed as being "by" a character who can't possibly have written it) and being really rude to her tour guide.
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Disseverment by Z.C. Krol

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dark tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.0

Boring r/nosleep type story with a pointless ending.
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