I finished You Were Here by Cori McCarthy the other night and it was so satisfying! Told in alternating voices, this is a story of grief and stubbornness and the need to put the past to rest. Serious stuff! McCarthy's mix of characters, words and graphics spins this book right along.
I worried at first that this would just be another "dead family member" book. Then it morphed into a book about meeting unrealistic expectations and then it turned into a graphic novel and the whole time this group of five teens are fighting, musing, obsessing, and engaging in risky behavior - lots and lots of risky, perilous, dare-devil behavior. (Definitely Teen Readers!)
So read it. It is emotionally manipulating, but most good books are. And the resolution is realistic and, as I mentioned before, satisfying.
The Wrinkled Crown by Anne Nesbet is a wrinkled book. Linny lives in Lourka where no trail is a straight line - or even the same from trip to trip. Here stories can change reality. When Linny breaks the most sacred taboo in the hills, her best friend and tether-twin, Sayra, is the one who pays the price.
Linny takes her forbidden lourka - a stringed musical instrument - and runs away to the Plains to find a cure for Sayra's fading away illness.
Linny and her friend, Edmund, are caught up in a civil struggle between a faction that believes everything should be mapped, straight, smooth and mechanical - and a faction that honors magic and wrinkles of all sorts.
I ended up skimming and, alas, skipping. If I had more time I may have enjoyed the arguments and adventures and authoritarian quasi-villains. The book is as wrinkled as its title. But it is a solid beginning of a new magical trilogy(?) or series. (Grades 5 through 7, though younger readers with skills and stamina will enjoy this book.)
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