It has arrived, my first YA compilation of 2025. If you
read YA, what’s already caught your interest this year? What new releases are
you anticipating?
Beastly Beauty (May 7, 2024) by Jennifer
Donnelly.
<This is
a standalone novel.>
What makes a girl “beastly?” Is it being too stubborn?
Being fiery and strong instead of sweet and compliant? Wanting to study
architecture instead of attending balls? Is it simply wanting too much?
In the
band of thieves, Beau is the handsome one and is always tasked with being the
charming seducer, stealing hearts along with jewels, gold and silver. When the
bridge crumbles behind his thieving comrades, Beau is left to face the monster
that roams the castle at night. He knows the monster is real, but no one seems
to believe him. Certainly not Valmont, who doesn’t hide his utter disdain for
the thief. And who are the children who claim they aren’t children? There’s a
strange, sizable clockwork, and then there’s the beautiful and cold Lady
Arabella with her contingent of vicious ladies-in-waiting with names like Lady
Espidra, Lady Rega, Lady Hesma and Lady Iglut. Once bold and independent, much
to the chagrin and disapproval of her titled parents (she’s the only child of a
duke and duchess), she’s turned inward, crumbling like a ruin once full of
hope, faith and love, now weighed down by despair, rage, shame, guilt and more.
Arabella’s understanding is that, to break the curse, a boy must love her for
her true self, which is a cruel assignment for someone who appears “beastly” on
the inside and out. After all, who could ever love ... a beast?
While I
can understand Beau’s desperation to reunite with his brother, I did not like
him for most of the story. It’s not only the thieving that turned me off from
the character, but his greasy charm and cocksure personality. He is redeemable
in the last chapters, but it’s too little too late, and I couldn’t fully
appreciate the story. Fortunately, Donnelly is a skilled storyteller and
invites readers into a gender-swapped retelling of “Beauty and the Beast” that
manages complicated characters in daunting circumstances surrounded by a
historically rich backdrop and emotional turbulence. There are glimmers of
humor amidst the hopelessness and the mucky, macabre moat monsters. It’s a
story of family dynamics and their complications, personal truths and battling
to accept oneself, “beastly” aspects and all.
The Encanto’s Daughter (Mar. 5, 2024) by
Melissa de la Cruz.
<This is
the first novel in a duology.>
Command attention. Project authority. That is what Maria
Josephina “MJ” Robertson-Rodriguez must do to stand her ground against the
courts that oppose her ascension to the throne. MJ is a princess of the Sirena
Court, which is the most powerful and thus is the overall ruler of Biringan,
but she’s spent much of her life hiding in the human world, switching towns and
schools at the earliest sign of danger. MJ is hapcanto: half-human,
half-encanto. (Encantos or engkantos in her father’s language, but they’re also
called fairies.) With her father’s sudden death, MJ must go to Biringan to
claim her place as the rightful heir. She must win over a council who
disapproves of her hapcanto status and that she’s a she, and don’t even get her
started on those of the other courts who disapprove of her half-human side.
Yep, bigotry is alive and well in Biringan, too. She doesn’t know what her
magic is, which she’ll need to showcase at her coronation in less than a month,
and she won’t even admit it to her first real friend Phoenix “Nix” Xing, a
runaway from Jade Mountain. When she hears that her father’s death was from
unnatural causes, she adds investigating his death to her already busy agenda.
Nix is there to help, and MJ forges an unlikely alliance with the irritatingly
handsome Sir Lucas Invierno. Where his dad once worked for the Court of Sirena,
Sir Lucas now resides in the Court of Sigbin and is the realm’s highest-ranking
knight. Don Elias, MJ’s godfather and the late King Vivencio Basilio Rodriguez’s
most trusted advisor, suspects Sigbin Court of harboring a mambabarang,
witches that practice black magic. So. Find the nasty sorceress, discover her
father’s murderer, figure out her magical ability and learn all there is to
know about Biringan and being royal. If MJ can do all that in less than a month’s
time, she can bear the weight of the crown. Right?
This
fantasy duology opener steeped in Filipino mythology makes for a culturally
rich tale of magic, family betrayal, court politics and investigation. The
downside is that I usually didn’t like MJ’s character. Yes, her life has been
upended, and I know she’s trying to assert herself, but she oftentimes comes
across as petulant, downright annoying and, well, entitled. She redeems herself
with her release of an innocent person, someone she knew had to be innocent
from the get-go. Being accepted as the one true heir in only a month’s time –
when she’s been gone since toddlerhood – seems far-fetched, but the stakes are
high, the plot is action-driven and there’s adventure to be had. Although so-so
for me, it may just be what a YA fantasy lover is looking for.
P.S.
Surprise! Maria Josephina isn’t actually her given name. What is it?
Icon and Inferno (June 11, 2024) by Marie Lu.
<This is
the second novel in a duology.>
The world’s favorite pop superstar and one of the world’s
elite spies are back. Winter Young has thought of Sydney Cossette every day,
hoping she’ll randomly show up. She never does, until the day she shows up in
his private practice room. Sydney is there to convince him to take another
mission with Panacea Group, the secret operation located within Claremont
Hotel, a [fictional] luxury resort hotel in St. Paul, MN, featuring a
Michelin-starred restaurant called Food for the Gods. They need to make contact
with an agent who’s gone dark. It’s the Arsonist, code name for Tems Bourton,
and he’s, loosely, Sydney’s ex. Panacea is tracking a plot to assassinate U.S.
President Rosen, and Tems is supposed to be their eyes-on-the-ground. Winter
and Sydney head to Singapore for the Warcross Championships, Winter getting in
with his celebrity status and Sydney joining in once again as his bodyguard. On
Winter’s arm is Gavi Ginsburg, his on-again-off-again, no-strings-attached,
globe-trotting socialite girlfriend/fling. The intense chemistry between Winter
and Sydney remains, but it is tempered with the exes in the mix. Not that they
have time to hash out feelings. They have a suspect responsible for plotting
the president’s assassination, but there are definitely more people involved.
Who are the rogue operatives?
Sydney
doesn’t want to admit it, but she’s struggling. It’s her last mission with
Niall O’Sullivan and Sauda Nazari as the head agents/operatives, because it’s
Niall’s last mission. He’s retiring! He plans to visit his daughter, Quinn, for
the first time in a decade. Niall is the closest to a father figure that she’s
ever had. She’s already missing him and is a little jealous of his actual
daughter (not that she’ll admit it).
The Stars
and Smoke duology closer is a dramatic, YA spy fiction sequel to its
predecessor. It’s action-packed and sometimes violent, occasionally spitting
and a little steamy (the scene does leave much of it up to the reader’s
imagination). The sexy, romantic tone that Lu incorporated didn’t impress me,
but the emotive characters with their abusive, psychologically pain-filled
pasts and Lu’s enigmatic writing make this caper dynamic and propulsive.
Undoubtedly, there is beauty and ferocity where there is international intrigue
surrounding attractive people. But don’t forget that these characters are handy
with weapons while playing with fire. Beware getting in the crosshairs.
Favorite
line: “How strange an emotion love was, how powerful it must be to fuel
kindness and hatred and empathy and revenge and grief, all at once.” --Sydney,
p. 282
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