Reviews with content warning for Confinement - Warrior Girl Unearthed

Fans of Angeline Boulley’s Firekeeper’s Daughter will love her newest book, Warrior Girl Unearthed, which features the same characters. While it is not necessary to read Firekeeper’s Daughter first, I would encourage everyone to read it first as it introduces the characters and if you read Warrior Girl Unearthed first, parts of FD will be spoiled.

Warrior Girl Unearthed is narrated from the perspective of Perry, one of Daunis’s (FD) twin nieces/cousins. After crashing the Jeep her aunt had gifted to Perry and Pauline, Perry is told she will be interning at the museum to pay back the repair costs. At first Perry is not keen on working for the quirky Cooper Turtle but he quickly shows himself as a respectful mentor who teaches Perry about the repatriation, or lack thereof, of indigenous remains and artifacts. Along with a group of other interns who come together once a week to share their experiences, Perry becomes the de facto leader of the group who call themselves The Misfit Toys after the island of misfit toys in the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer story. Soon a heist plan is hatched to return remains and items associated with those remains back to the land.

Boulley has written a great YA story here with several interesting characters and many opportunities for the reader to research the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA).

The author shares in her notes at the end of the book that a tweet someone made about recreating Lara Croft but with an indigenous story planted the seed for Boulley to begin thinking about how she could turn her latest ideas into the next book.

I love that Warrior Girl Unearthed makes for both great story-telling and also an opportunity for learning and reconciliation and would love to see this book make its way into the hands of middle schoolers and beyond. It would also make a great pairing with educational projects.

My copy included an additional chapter featuring Pauline’s point of view for a portion of the story.

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cookiecat73's review

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dark emotional informative reflective sad 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? It's complicated

4.5

wow. this book was really good.
I loved the characters and the themes, thought they were very well handled. The prose was easy to read, flowed well, the sort I'm able to fly through and read lots at once. The only thing stopping me from doing that was how heavy the book was, and even despite that I read it in 2 and a half days.

Some books like this have some sort of emotional climax that I have to pause the book at to cry. That didn't really happen to me with this book. Instead I found myself tearing up at what felt like every other chapter.

I read the blurb for this book when I was around the half-way mark, thinking that it was unlikely to spoil anything that far in. It absolutely did. I guess I'm more spoiler-sensitive than most people, but wow, did they really need to tell you that in the blurb? the thing you're meant to read before trying the book? oh well.

Some thoughts about something that is kind of spoilery:

The whole thing with Cooper Turtle felt exactly like it was setting up to be the trope of the quirky old guy who no one really likes and everyone judges and the teen mc hates at first but grows to love and maybe he says something she doesn't like but turns out he was right all along! So I kept that trope in mind while reading. But then the story progressed and I though maybe I was wrong and that although Perry has grown to respect him much more than initially, Cooper Turtle isn't going to be proven right all along, and the message would be that you do sometimes have to go outside the rules to things that are important if going inside the rules won't work. But then later Perry seems to "learn her lesson" that Cooper was right. So it does fit into that trope I thought it would? I'm a little confused at what the message around that is. The main growth of Perry is to be a little less impulsive, as she doesn't always know the full effects of her words and actions - which I generally like as a message, although it skirts the edge of feeling as though it's critising her bluntness at the start, and since being blunt is often an autistic trait, feels a little ehhhh... (btw Perry does feel kind of Autistic coded to me, though I don't know if it was intentional) it only skirts the edge though, I hope that's not the intention. [back to my main point] but it also doesn't seem to condemn Perry breaking the rules at some points, which could make it feel like a good nuanced take, but in my opinon it comes out as just being a bit confusing, I'm not really sure of the intention of the message.

There isn't really anything in this book that I feel able to critisize. There's nothing I want to take out or completely do over. But there are a lot of moments where I think something could be added. In general I just wanted more from the book. I loved following these characters and their lives, and there are so many times when the narrative skips a few days and all we hear about them is a quick summarry from a character. I would have loved some of those days to have been included in the book. It feels like a lot happens off-page, and I know the book is fairly long already, but personally, I would have loved it longer, to have it include those days and moments it skims over. I think seeing some of that would have made the story feel more real and whole to me. (not that it felt not real or not whole! I loved the book, I mean just as an improvement.)
The other main thing I would add is more time for the emotions. Again, there are no descriptions of emotions that I would do differently or take out, but I want more. So many traumatising things happen, there are so many moments when our characters are clearly very shaken up and struggling, and personally, I think the narrative could have done with giving the emotional impact more time and space. Sometimes giving only the bare minimum in describing the characters reactions and feelings feels like a great intentional choice, but I think here we needed a bit more. We are told our main character cries a lot (which is good!) but I would have liked more descriptions of her feelings in those moments. And again it's where we skip over hours or days and processing happens off-page. I think that can work great if it's because the character barely remembers it because of how traumatising it was, but again, I think too much was left out and skimmed over in this case.
The ending and resolution too, feel a bit too fast and rushed for my taste. And I'm left a little confused over some of the things that happened, though I'm not sure if that's something the book did wrong or if not understanding was on me here.
[the "critism" about emotions is the one I stand by here the most, the others I think are very much personal taste, as it's something I've noticed happen quite a bit with books I read. my reviews are always about my personal enjoyment of books though, so I'm still mentioning them!]

Overall though, I loved this. I will absolutely be reading FIrekeeper's Daughter and probably any more books that the author writes if they look like the sort of book I like

Content Warnings

lokes's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative mysterious tense fast-paced

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

3.75

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cassielaj's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional informative mysterious tense 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

4.25

I really enjoyed reading this book and learned a lot! Boulley brings the issue of repatriation to light in a way that is accessible for readers who are unfamiliar with the concept, and she contextualizes it beautifully with Perry’s story. There were elements of the plot/mystery that were a bit predictable and a few things that felt unresolved, but I think this is a really important story.

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brokenbodybitch's review against another edition

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5.0

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rorikae's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious reflective tense 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

4.75

'Warrior Girl Unearthed' by Angeline Boulley is a great companion to 'Firekeeper's Daughter,' taking place in the same community but a few years later.
Forced to join summer internships to pay back her aunt Daunis after wrecking her car, Perry Firekeeper-Birch's summer is not what she planned for. Pleasantly surprised by her internship at the museum and learning more about repatriation, Perry becomes fascinated by an ancestor named "Warrior Girl" whose remains are stored at a local college. She becomes determined to bring home all of the tribal items housed at the college, in the process learning more about how institutions find ways to deny tribal requests. At the same time, Indigenous girls are going missing around the community and an unexpected decision puts a wrench in Perry's repatriation goals. She'll have to bring together all of her new friends made through her internship to help return the ancestors to their rightful place on Sugar Island.
Boulley, once again, creates an incredible YA story with rich characters and a tense plot. 'Warrior Girl Unearthed' has aspects of a heist story, a murder mystery story, coming of age, and light romance. Boulley balances all of these different aspects with expert skill that hinges on how quickly and easily it is to care for her characters. Just as in 'Firekeeper's Daughter, there is a large cast in 'Warrior Girl Unearthed' that are each wholly unique people who feel like you could meet them in real life. On top of the great character work, Boulley also delves into tribal items held in museums and archives and the broken systems that make it extremely difficult for these pieces to be returned to their homes. She also discusses the epidemic of Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women. Despite covering so much, each topic is given nuance and lots of consideration. Boulley is quick becoming a favorite author and I cannot wait to see what stories she tells next.

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readingwithkaitlyn's review

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challenging informative mysterious sad 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? It's complicated

4.25

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