abbynlewis's reviews
387 reviews

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

adventurous emotional sad slow-paced

4.0

This book has often been compared to the Harry Potter series, if only for the presence of magical beings. Protagonist Linus Baker is a case worker for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth. It sounds like an interesting job, but in reality it is filled with stacks of paperwork and soul-sucking hours spent in a cramped office space with very specific rules and regulations. The highlight of Linus’s job is his trips to orphanages where he gets a chance to interview the children and inspect the facility for fitness. However, he soon learns that many children are afraid of case workers from the Department, with good reason. It is only when Linus is assigned to observe an orphanage located on a secluded island outside a small town that he begins to understand the long-term consequences of his job and his visits to orphanages.

The House in the Cerulean Sea can be compared to Harry Potter in that Mr. Parnassus reminds me of a young Dumbledore, but I would say the book is more akin to the movies for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. It’s got the heart of those movies, the loveable characters, and the unlikely romance of course. Oh, and plenty of magical creatures to go around.

Continue reading: https://freeairforfish.com/2021/10/14/book-review-the-house-in-the-cerulean-sea-t-j-klune/

House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland

dark mysterious sad tense fast-paced

4.0

House of Hollow is a gothic book, through and through. It’s not a mystery, though mysterious events occur. It’s a dark gothic novel with bits of horror mixed in. Think of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, the movie or the book, if it were written and directed by Hans Christian Andersen. Iris Hollow is 17. When she was young, she and her two sisters went missing around Christmas time. They were there one minute, then their mother looked away then back again and they were gone. No trace. When the sisters finally reappear near their house one day years later, no one can explain how they went missing or how they returned, not even the girls themselves. Such is the lore of the Hollow house. Now, Iris’s older sister Grey is missing again, and strange yet familiar things start happening. Iris knows Grey is hiding something, but first Iris has to find her.

This book was great because even though it had a fairy tale quality, it contained a lot of information and lore-building that was completely new to me. The story felt original, new, exciting. I kept thinking I had a handle on what was happening and then, bam!, Sutherland would hit me with another twist. This is a great book to read if you’re a fan of Holly Black, or if you read Stephen Graham Jones’s The Only Good Indians and were obsessed with Elk Head Woman. It’s got Native lore and Asian mythology elements that fuse into this world that’s reminiscent of a story you know but with an extra twist.

Continue reading: https://freeairforfish.com/2021/09/30/book-review-house-of-hollow-krystal-sutherland/

Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

5.0

Elatsoe is a magical realism YA novel where the world we are used to exits in tandem with many other creatures such as vampires and werewolves. The world of Elatsoe reminds me of the world in the Spiderwick chronicles (the book, obvi, not the deplorable movie). Elatsoe, who goes by Ellie, is a bright young woman whose cousin has just been murdered. Everyone is calling it an accident, a car wreck, but Ellie knows better. She has dreams about the dead, and her cousin visits her while she’s asleep shortly after he dies. Ellie, with the help of her ghost dog Kirby, as well as her wonderfully present and supportive parents and her hometown friends, begins to unravel the mystery of her cousin’s death. But communing with the dead is a serious feat, and if done wrong, things can quickly get out of hand. Is Ellie strong enough to handle the darkness around her family’s history?

I adored this book from start to finish. The opening chapter does drop you in the middle of the story, and it took a few pages for me to get my footing, but after the third chapter, I was hooked. Ellie’s parents are present from the start of the novel, which is an outlier in many YA novels, so it was so much fun to have Ellie not only actively communicating with her parents but to have her parents be a part of the investigation and look out for her as the trail of leads becomes more and more dangerous.

Continue reading: https://freeairforfish.com/2021/09/22/book-review-elatsoe-darcie-little-badger/

Punching the Air by Ibi Zoboi, Yusef Salaam

challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

3.5

I read every book written in verse that I can find because most of the time I adore them. They also aren’t really marketed as a genre; I’ve never seen a section in a bookstore dedicated to verse books, so whenever I stumble upon once I get excited.

Punching the Air tells the story of a boy who is wrongfully incarcerated. It’s a story about racism as well as finding your passion, that thing that gets you through each day, no matter how difficult the day. For Amal Shahid, that’s poetry and art.

The book is cowritten by contemporary author Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam, one of the Exonerated 5 who were wrongfully incarcerated for the rape of a white woman. Punching the Air does not tell the story of the Exonerated 5, but the central narrative seems to be inspired by and based on Salaam’s experience in prison.

Continue reading: https://freeairforfish.com/2021/09/12/book-review-punching-the-air-ibi-zoboi-yusef-salaam/

Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey

informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

4.0

Greenlights is unlike any celebrity memoir I’ve ever read. The comedian memoirs, such as Tina Fey’s Bossypants and Amy Poehler’s Yes Please are full of self-deprecating jokes and anecdotes about growing up a woman. Those are all good things. Anna Kendrick’s Scrappy Little Nobody basically tells how she went from rags to riches and how she’s still star-struck by it all and most likely suffering from an ongoing imposter syndrome, while Lauren Graham’s Talking as Fast as I Can details her career on Gilmore Girls and her experience writing the book in her trailer on a set. Essentially, all the books I’ve read cater to consumer curiosity about what it is to be a celebrity and how it all feels. McConaughey, on the other hand, doesn’t just write a memoir–he writes an autobiography, from childhood up to the present.

McConaughey’s Texas upbringing is full of shenanigans that make for entertaining stories, but aside from that, McConaughey connects the narratives with the consistent theme of his drive for purpose and meaning in life. The setup of the book is almost like a scrapbook that someone has kept for years. McConaughey is an avid collector of bumper stickers and quotes, so those are peppered throughout the narrative, as well as all the green-text “greenlights” in the book that signify important, career defining opportunities.

Continue reading: https://freeairforfish.com/2021/09/06/book-review-greenlights-matthew-mcconaughey/

World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

slow-paced

3.0

 Nezhukumatathil’s collection of short essays draws comparisons between her life and creatures of the natural world such as fireflies, axolotls, and octopuses. The illustrations in this small book are what drew me to it. I read a digital copy of this book, though, so I’m not sure if I got to appreciate the full extent of the illustrations.

World of Wonders is a great concept. Pairing informational facts about animals with personal anecdotes about one’s life is bound to be interesting to read about, and for the most part, I enjoyed this book. There were, however, some instances where the comparisons between Nezhukumatathil’s life and the wildlife seemed a little tenuous, and some of the entries seemed to lack direction while other entries vibrated with meaning, power, and true connection. Despite this collection being a little over 150 pages, it took me ten days to read. I found myself losing interest in the collection and my mind wandered to other books I wanted to read every time I sat down with this book. Perhaps I’m just not the right audience for short nonfiction essays. 

Continue reading: https://freeairforfish.com/2021/08/30/book-review-world-of-wonders-aimee-nezhukumatathil/

Permanent Record by Mary H.K. Choi

emotional tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

 Pablo has been struggling with finances, with finding a passion, with discovering what he wants to devote his life to. At the moment, he’s working the graveyard shift at a 24-hour bodega. He’s avoiding telling his parents how over his head he is from student loans and the credit card he opened when he first started college. Basically, his life is a mess. Then one night, famous pop star Leanna Smart wanders into the bodega and everything changes. There’s an instant connection, but Leanna is crazy busy all the time, zipping from one continent to another making albums and movies and business deals while Pablo spends his time working and avoiding taking responsibility for all his problems. Is there any way they can make their relationship work, or were they doomed from the start?

I’ve never read a book about encountering a celebrity. I’m sure there are plenty of books of that nature out there, but Mary H. K. Choi’s novel is the first encounter I have had with a narrative that revolves around a celebrity and a civilian dating. Because of this, I was really interested in the logistics of how jarring it is to have someone sweep into your life with a whirlwind entourage including a manager, body guards, publicist, and whoever else trailing paparazzi. And then having to treat all that as if it’s normal and seem unfazed by the complete disruption caused by just being around this person.

Pablo is a likeable guy, and I truly enjoyed this novel, but I never felt emotionally connected to Pablo or Leanna. If anything, I felt more for Pablo’s family and the married couple who run the bodega Pablo works at. Some of Pablo’s roommates even seemed more interesting. Essentially, all the secondary characters had more life and vibrancy to them than the main characters did. What kept me reading this novel was my curiosity as to whether Pablo and Leanna actually work things out. 

Continue reading: https://freeairforfish.com/2021/08/25/book-review-permanent-record-mary-h-k-choi/

The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet by John Green

hopeful informative reflective slow-paced

5.0

John Green deviates from his regular fiction writing to bring us a collection of essays on the current geological age. I knew that this would be a collection of essays, but I have not listed to Green’s podcast, from which these essays are adapted, so I didn’t have a clear idea of what to expect going in. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality. Green reviews everything from Super Mario Kart to Diet Dr Pepper to the world’s largest ball of paint. I expected many of the reviews to be informational content, yet Green infused each review with personal anecdotes and connections to his life and the larger world. The book, in many ways, reminds me of the YouTube vlogs he’s been doing with his brother Hank for many years. I used to watch every vlog, but their videos have since drifted out of my watch list, although not because they became less entertaining or diminished in quality. I simply got too busy to keep up with them.

Continue reading: https://freeairforfish.com/2021/08/10/book-review-the-anthropocene-reviewed-john-green/

Mercury Boys by Chandra Prasad

challenging dark emotional medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

Happy pub. date to Mercury Boys by Chandra Prasad! This book hits shelves today, August 3, 2021. I received an advanced egalley from Books Forward in exchange for an honest review.

Mercury Boys is a story of family, friendship, and love, but not a traditional story. Sixteen-year-old Saskia Brown has just moved to a new town with her dad after discovering her mother has been sleeping with a much younger teacher at her school. Saskia doesn’t expect to make many friends at her new school–at least not quickly. So she is surprised when she and Lila become fast friends. Lila works at the library in a nearby university, and when one of Saskia’s assignments leads her to research daguerreotypes, Lila offers to sneak her into the library’s closed collection room. After talking Lila into letting her borrow a daguerreotype of Robert Cornelius, the man she is researching, Saskia makes a startling discovery.

Continue reading: https://freeairforfish.com/2021/08/03/book-review-mercury-boys-chandra-prasad/

A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor by Hank Green

challenging emotional informative medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

5.0

A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor is the sequel to An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, which is the story of an “alien” visitation by a giant samurai robot referred to as Carl (the Carls when plural). It’s difficult to discuss the second book without inadvertently giving away the ending of the first, so be forewarned that this review contains a spoiler for the first book. I do not, however, include spoilers for the second book.

*SPOILER HERE* April May has died and the Carls have vanished. April’s friends Miranda, Andy, and Maya are all still struggling with the loss of April. Maya spends most of her time on the Som, which leads her to investigate a series of mysterious anomalies. Miranda decides to try for a potentially dangerous job on enemy territory, and Andy grapples with his continued celebrity status in April’s wake. Their separate adventures and day-to-day decisions lead the trio of friends to discover what actually happened to April and the Carls, as well as what’s about to happen next.

Continue reading: https://freeairforfish.com/2021/07/31/book-review-a-beautifully-foolish-endeavor-by-hank-green/