Reviews with content warning for Mental illness - Warrior Girl Unearthed

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

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valmai's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad 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

5.0

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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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nrogers_1030's review

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emotional funny hopeful mysterious sad fast-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? No

4.5

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laureliz's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring 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

5.0

I loved Firekeeper’s Daughter and was excited for this novel about Perry Firekeeper’s-Birch. I wasn’t disappointed. Boulley educates readers on NAGPRA and MMIW while weaving a mysterious and thrilling tale. I couldn’t put it down and found pieces of myself in most of the characters. It was a window and a mirror read.

*I received an ALC copy through Libro.fm’s educator program*

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franzis_buecher's review

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adventurous emotional informative mysterious medium-paced

4.5

I read this book in about four days and it was so good!

I do think I prefer the first installment, Firekeeper's Daughter, because the resolution made a bit more sense to me in that one and I didn't love the romance in this sequel as much, but I still enjoyed it immensely!

It also gave a very satisfying conclusion to some open questions from Firekeeper's Daughter, while of course Perry is the focus here and she has her own story going on.

I really loved Perry as a character and she is very different from Daunis and a force to be reckoned with!

It's also really interesting to see things and people from the first book from Perry's point of view. She was six years old in the first book and now ten years have passed and a lot has changed. Her parents also feel very different from her perspective compared to Aunt Teddie and Art from Daunis's POV. I always admire authors who can write this change of perspective well!

The side characters, especially Pauline and Team Misfit Toys, are a lot of fun as well. Cooper too, even though I didn't really get why he's described as "kooky", he seemed pretty normal to me.

I shouldn't have read the blurb on the back though, because I then expected the heist to center around the Warrior Girl in the university archives but it very much did not. She is just one starting point for Perry to think about repatriation and she wants to bring her home but the heist completely separate from that and unrelated to the university archives.

Nevertheless, it was a great story. It starts out slow as Perry learns more about repatriation and she gets more and more daring, and then picks up in the last third with the heist plan and everything.

Like in the first book, this one kept me guessing at who was behind several crimes and mysteries, and I had some suspicions but only one of them was right in the end. So the mystery part worked well for me.

There are some open questions at the end of this one too, however.

- Where did Stormy disappear to during the heist and why? And what happened to the box he took with him?
- Who hit Erik and who hit Tom and why? (Maybe I just didn't understand that part correctly because I read it at 1 am)
- Who killed Darby? (I'm guessing it was Grant, but it's never stated)
- Did Leroy get convicted? (I hope so!)
- Who is Waabun's father? (I reread the end of Firekeeper's Daughter today and am convinced that it's Jamie, but when/why/where did that happen?)
- Why is Daunis now together with TJ? (tbh I didn't even remember that he was her ex in the first one)
- Will Perry find a way to get Warrior Girl back? (I sure hope so, but it's probably gonna take a while ...)

I hope there will be a third book, maybe from Waabun's POV when he's older?
Definitely looking forward to any future installments, and I learned a lot reading this!

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