Reviews in a Minute: April 11th Releases

Hi friends, say Happy Book Birthday to these April 11th Releases! Also, I am sure many of you heard the news that Book Depository is closing. I am sad. I also wanted to find a place for international folks to buy from, so I am now linking to (and an affiliate with!) Blackwell’s Books! They deliver to a ton of countries, so hopefully yours is among them! I already pre-ordered a few UK books coming out soon!

Throwback by Maureen Goo
The Sharp Edge of Silence by Cameron Kelly Rosenblum
The Recall Paradox by Julian R. Vaca

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh
Promises Stronger Than Darkness by Charlie Jane Anders


Reviews in a Minute: April 11th Releases Throwback by Maurene Goo
Published by Zando Young Readers on April 11, 2023
Pages: 368
Format:ARC
Source:Copy provided by publisher for review

Back to the Future meets The Joy Luck Club in this YA contemporary romance about a Korean American girl sent back to the ’90s to (reluctantly) help her teenage mom win Homecoming Queen.

Being a first-generation Asian American immigrant is hard. You know what’s harder? Being the daughter of one. Samantha Kang has never gotten along with her mother, Priscilla—and has never understood her bougie-nightmare, John Hughes high school expectations. After a huge fight between them, Sam is desperate to move forward—but instead, finds herself thrown back. Way back.

To her shock, Sam finds herself back in high school . . . in the ’90s . . . with a 17-year-old Priscilla. Now this Gen Z girl must try to fit into an analog world. She’s got the fashion down, but everything else is baffling. What is “microfiche”? What’s with the casual racism and misogyny? And why does it feel like Priscilla is someone she could actually be . . . friends with?

Sam's blast to the past has her finding the right romance in the wrong time while questioning everything she thought she knew about her mom . . . and herself. Will Sam figure out what she needs to do to fix things for her mom so that she can go back to a time she understands? Brimming with heart and humor, Maurene Goo’s time-travel romance asks big questions about what exactly one inherits and loses in the immigrant experience.

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Well, I loved this book so much I hardly have the words. I’m going to try to find a few though, yeah?

  • I am a huge fan of books that delve into mother-daughter relationships, and this one does it even better by adding in a third generation! Oh, how I loved this! It’s so amazing for Samantha to be able to see both her mother and her grandmother as just… women, doing their best, you know? Samantha has this gorgeous relationship with Halmoni, her mom’s mom, which on a personal level reminded me so much of my relationships with my grandmothers. But Sam also knows that her mom and Halmoni haven’t always seen eye to eye, and Sam mostly blames her mom. But when she’s able to go back in time, she sees the nuances of their relationship up close and personal. She also gets to deep dive into what made her mother who she is today.
  • A ton of focus on the experience of being the child of Korean immigrants in America. So, one thing that vastly differs between Sam’s experience and Priscilla’s is that Priscilla’s mom was an immigrant. Halmoni did her very best to provide for Priscilla and her sister, but after the death of their father, things were extra difficult. Sam had never known such difficulty and struggling, and I was really glad that she was able to experience what her family had gone through. Even more, I loved that it showed how much our experiences can really shape us going forward, and it gave Sam a huge level of insight into Priscilla’s actions.
  • Times, they have changed! I mean. I know from a logical perspective that 1995 was nearly thirty years ago, and yet… It didn’t seem as far until we see how different things are for Sam. How different her daily life is, and how freaking messy we were in the ’90s! Also very interesting to see how hugely phones have changed our daily lives, that was quite eye opening for me, and super accurate once I actually thought about it!
  • Time travel is just so funAnd I loved the way the author handled it here- via a rideshare? Cracked me up! But it is always so interesting to me to read the nuances of time travel in different books. I won’t tell you too much about how this one went down, because it is fun to find out for yourself, but know that I adored it!
  • The whole book is just heartwarming and full of emotion. Seriously, I laughed, I cried, I felt all the warm fuzzies inside. And that is kind of the best.

Bottom Line: Loved this gem of a book about mother-daughter relationships, growing up, and learning to try to understand the whole picture of who someone is.



Reviews in a Minute: April 11th Releases The Sharp Edge of Silence by Cameron Kelly Rosenblum
Published by Quill Tree Books on April 11, 2023
Pages: 496
Format:eARC
Source:Copy provided by publisher for review, via Netgalley

Tradition meets Pretty Little Liars in this timely and haunting YA contemporary standalone that tackles the contagious nature of toxic masculinity at an elite boarding school clinging to its past, and the sexual assault that changes everything.

WHO WILL YOU BE AT LYCROFT PHELPS?

This is the question all Lycroft applicants want to be asked. It means they’ve been accepted to one of the most elite private high schools in the nation. Over 150 years is plenty of time for traditions to bake into the campus’s bricks and ivy. Ceremonies. Athletic rivalries. Secret societies. Pranks taken too far. But navigating it all will make Charlotte (perfect, straight-A student), Max (scholarship kid and STEM whiz), and Quinn (artist, dreamer, Lycroft legacy) question all they thought they knew about themselves…and the school.

Especially when Quinn’s sexual assault becomes public and implicates one of the top-tier athletes on campus.

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First, please note that I could not find an official Trigger Warning, this book contains a lot of discussion of rape, rape culture, misogyny, toxic masculinity, and the like.

This story follows three very different characters through their daily lives at boarding school. We have Q, who is for me the most compelling character. She is trying to cope with the aftermath of a horrific sexual assault, and wants nothing but revenge, full stop. And who could blame her? She hates that she has to see her rapist on campus every day, strolling around without a care in the world, while she attempts to deal with the aftermath of his vile crime. Charlotte has found herself in the thick of social life at Lycroft, basically watching all her assumed dreams come true. She’s killing it in her dance classes, school is going great, and her boyfriend is the gorgeous, popular guy who everyone adores. But Charlotte is not exactly seeing the whole picture. Then, we have Max. He’s basically a… not exactly an outcast, but he’s a nobody in the grand scheme of the school. That is, until he finds himself saving the day for the champion rowing team, and therefore becoming one of the “cool guys” overnight. But what is the cost of fitting in? That is kind of the big question for all the characters in this story, even the side characters.

It’s clear from the start that the social hierarchy at this place is messy at best, toxic at worst. The further on you read, the angrier you’ll be that this school is allowed to continue as it is, and has been for so damn long. And your heart will break for Q over and over again as she tries to survive. The messages in this book are fabulous, and they deal a lot with mental health and taking back your power and all that good stuff. In the middle, I felt there was a bit of dragging? But it wasn’t overwhelming. I think that each of the characters was very well developed, and the author did a great job of making it clear just how easy it can be for people to get caught up in misogynistic group dynamics.  It’s incredibly emotional, and handled these very difficult topics fabulously

Bottom Line: It’s a gut punch, but an important one. Very emotional, very relevant, and definitely worth reading.


Reviews in a Minute: April 11th Releases The Recall Paradox by Julian R. Vaca
Series: The Memory Index #2
Published by Thomas Nelson on April 11, 2023
Pages: 416
Format:eARC
Source:Copy provided by publisher for review, via Netgalley

In this war, memories are weapons. The exciting conclusion to The Memory Index duology will leave readers breathless.

After successfully completing—and surviving—the memory knife mission that required them to hack into a dangerous criminal’s memories, Freya Izquierdo and her friends, including Fletcher Cohen,return to Foxtail Academy determined to focus on school and hope for normality. But graduation and college applications become the least of their worries when Fletcher’s high-profile father is linked to the enigmatic Memory Ghosts, a group of rogue activists assumed responsible for random acts of violence. Determined to prove his innocence, Freya and Fletcher set out to learn the truth about the Ghosts, but their plans are soon thwarted when they’re pulled into another, more complex knifing mission that will test them—and their friendships—in unforgettable ways and challenge everything they thought was true.

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I quite enjoyed the first book in this series, The Memory Index. It wasn’t perfect, but it was entertaining and I was excited to read the conclusion, since I do love a duology. That said, this one just didn’t hit the same for me. I felt like the problems I had with the first book were exacerbated in the second, and it just didn’t have the same excitement level as the first. I liked the main characters, though it didn’t feel to me that there was a ton of development from the first book, frankly. Plus, this is probably more of a “me” issue, but since they were all coupled off it just felt… I don’t know, but you know how when in a show, the main characters get together early and then the show kind of jumps the shark? Sort of like that.

Anyway, even though I liked the main characters, I could not keep track of all the secondary ones. I couldn’t recall (heh) their particular roles from the first book in many cases, and there wasn’t much in the way of explanation to help me decipher. Sorry fam, my memory is just not that good. Honestly, my biggest qualm with this one was that I was just bored. I would find myself reading, but not actually retaining anything because my mind had been somewhere else. So then I started… well I won’t lie, I started skimming around the halfway mark, which is something I almost never do. (I feel like it is sort of cheating? But I was already so deep into the series I needed to know how it ended, so.)

And the end was fine. It still felt like plot points were resolved sort of easy along the way, and I just kind of… shrugged and moved along. Other readers seem to have enjoyed it more though, so if you liked the first one, don’t let this deter you!

Bottom Line: It just didn’t hit for me. I felt kind of “meh” and bored, but I still did like the characters, and the concept.


Reviews in a Minute: April 11th Releases Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh
Published by Tordotcom on April 11, 2023
Pages: 448
Format:eARC
Source:Copy provided by publisher for review, via Netgalley

While we live, the enemy shall fear us.

All her life Kyr has trained for the day she can avenge the murder of planet Earth. Raised in the bowels of Gaea Station alongside the last scraps of humanity, she readies herself to face the Wisdom, the all-powerful, reality-shaping weapon that gave the Majoda their victory over humanity.

They are what’s left. They are what must survive. Kyr is one of the best warriors of her generation, the sword of a dead planet. But when Command assigns her brother to certain death and relegates her to the nursery to bear sons until she dies trying, she knows she must take humanity’s revenge into her own hands.

Alongside her brother’s brilliant but seditious friend and a lonely, captive alien, she escapes from everything she’s ever known into a universe far more complicated than she was taught and far more wondrous than she could have imagined.

A thrillingly told queer space opera about the wreckage of war, the family you find, and who you must become when every choice is stripped from you, Some Desperate Glory is award-winning author Emily Tesh’s highly anticipated debut novel.

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TW at start of book: “Some Desperate Glory contains sexist, homophobic, transphobic, racist and ableist attitudes, sexual assault, violence, child abuse, radicalization as child abuse, genocide, suicidal ideation, and suicide.”

When this book starts, you are not going to love Kyr. You just will not. She is cold, and even the other girls she grew up with can’t wait to be rid of her. And take the trigger warnings seriously- Kyr’s people (initially, anyway) really are sexist, homophobic, racist asshats. Full stop, I kind of wanted the whole society to explode. Is that wrong? Well, anyway, it is what it is.

But eventually, Kyr starts to come around, and understand that maybe her people aren’t who she thought they were. Maybe they have been feeding her false information, messing with her minds. You know, as cults do. And make no mistake- this society is very culty. Idk what even the name of the Overlord is (that is not actually his title, just what I am calling him). In my head, he was absolutely giving me Jim Jones vibes, frankly. She’s not exactly tickled when they send her, a lifelong trained fighter, to be an incubator. But the last straw for her is when her brother is basically ordered to go to his death. Kyr can’t take that, on top of the whole “being a human incubator” bit, and she takes off to find him.

From there… well look, things get bananas. I don’t know if I could fully explain it to you if I tried, but I don’t want to try because that would ruin the plot. Let’s just say that as the story goes on, with some help from some new (and old) friends, Kyr starts to figure out what is real and what is at stake- and it is a lot. So with the help of these friends, she sets out to right some of the gross wrongs. And it gets really intense along the way.

The character growth throughout the story is impressive, not just for Kyr, but for the side characters too. Speaking of, I loved so many of the side characters, and they injected some humor and levity into an otherwise tense story. I found the world incredibly fascinating, and the stakes super high. I also loved that Kyr had lots of moments of doubt- it made her progress seem that much more realistic, since she had spent her whole life being indoctrinated into these lies. There were tons of twists and exciting turns, and basically, I could not stop reading!

Bottom Line: Full of adventure and tons of character growth, I definitely did not want to put this one down!

 


Reviews in a Minute: April 11th Releases Promises Stronger Than Darkness by Charlie Jane Anders
Series: Unstoppable #3
Published by Tor Teen on April 11, 2023
Pages: 368
Format:eARC
Source:Copy provided by publisher for review, via Netgalley

Promises Stronger Than Darkness marks the final installment of the international bestselling author Charlie Jane Anders's absolutely heart-stopping YA series, Unstoppable.

They're the galaxy's most wanted—and our only hope.

When Elza became a space princess, she thought she'd be spending her time at the palace, wearing gorgeous couture and soaking up everything there is to know—but instead, she's on the run, with everyone hunting for her and her friends.

Rachael followed her best friend Tina on the adventure of a lifetime—but now Tina's gone, and Rachael's the only one keeping her friends together, as they go on a desperate quest to save everyone from an ancient curse.

Rachael, Elza and their friends have found one clue, one shining mysterious chance to stop the end of the world. And that takes them back to the second-to-last place they'd want to be: enlisting the aid of Captain Thaoh Argentian, the woman who stole Tina's body (and who now seems to be relishing a second chance at teenage chaos and drama, instead of living up to her legacy of an intrepid heroic commander).

With only a ragtag band of misfits, crewmates, earthlings, friends, lovers (and one annoying frenemy), the Unstoppable Crew are up against the universe--and they soon find that in order to survive, they may have to cross a line they vowed never to cross.

Also by Charlie Jane Anders

Unstoppable
Victories Greater Than DeathDreams Bigger Than Heartbreak
Promises Stronger than Darkness

Other Books
The City in the Middle of the Night
Never Say You Can't Survive
All the Birds in the Sky

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This was a very strong conclusion to a lovely, creative series. Just as with book 2, it did take me a minute to remember what happened and who was who in the secondary cast of characters. But that is probably more my fault than the book’s fault. Regardless, as soon as I was caught up, I was right back into this incredibly inventive world full of amazingly well developed characters.

The stakes are astronomically high- as in, all life in the universe high- and Rachel and Elza, along with their friends, are on a mission to save everyone. But, they’re also grappling with the loss of bestie/girlfriend Tina, so things are extra rough. This installment, just like its predecessors, is full of action and excitement, as well as humor and heart. The characters are so very well thought out, and it is kind of impossible for the reader not to fall in love with them. There was a twist that I absolutely saw coming, but for the most part, the tension was high throughout. The ending wraps up the series wonderfully and satisfactorily, even if a couple of the things were a wee bit hokey. I can live with it, if it means I feel closure at the end of a story!

Overall, I will absolutely miss this incredible cast of characters galivanting through space, but I feel so grateful to be able to have gone on this adventure. There were so many wonderfully imaginative species, all sorts of diversity, and a lot of really great commentary along the way.

Bottom Line: If you haven’t read this series, you need to. Especially since you know now that the ending will be on point!

Have you read any of these books? Plan to? Let us chat about them!  

Posted April 11, 2023 by Shannon @ It Starts at Midnight in In a Minute, Review / 10 Comments

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10 responses to “Reviews in a Minute: April 11th Releases

  1. Throwback sounds super interesting. The mother-daughter dynamic, the time travel (!!) aspect… I’m definitely intrigued. But yeah, thinking of the mid-90’s as almost 30 years ago – sorry, I just can’t. Mind. Blown.

  2. I haven’t even heard of Throwback! But wow, you’ve sold it. It sounds amazing, plus I love the speculative element. And I’m behind, but I need to read Some Desperate Glory, I’m so glad to see that 4 1/2 star rating😁

  3. What does it say about me that I’m kinda relieved that you finally had a ‘meh’ book in the batch? 😀 I’m sad about Book Depository closing, though…I hadn’t heard about that.

    Throwback sounds up my alley (having attended middle and high school in the 90s), so I’ll definitely be checking that out. Thanks as always for the thorough reviews!

  4. I’m glad to hear a Book Depository alternative exists. I was wondering about all those INT giveaway…

    It doesn’t seem like a “you” problem when your memory is fuzzy about certain characters. With the amount of books you read, it should be fuzzy about “all” the characters LOL But usually, when we don’t recall much about a book’s cast, either there were too many unnecessary deuteragonists or they weren’t that interesting…

  5. I’m pretty salty about Book Depository too. It was my go- to for UK editions or whatever. Not that I used it much, but it was nice tohave it. Amaxon screwed over ComiXology too, seems like a pattern. Is Musk running Amazon now?

    The first one sounds fabulous. 1995 was 30 years ago? NO. But… clearly it was, sadly. Yes it is wild looking back. I’m with Tanya on that one. Imagine going back and NOT having our phones. What would we do???

    Bummer about The Recall PAradox. I like the premise.

    Charlie Jane Anders always has amazing covers.

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