The premise of this novel is certainly unique. Being a Little Women reimagining, When Jasmine Blooms centers Marmee through the character of Celine Lakad-Frasier, a mother on a journey through suffering and denial after the death of her third daughter Libby. How, the author wonders, would Marmee have coped after the loss of her child? While this novel isn't a traditional retelling—the setting veers far from Little Women's own, and even the characters are their own people, despite the few aspects of their personalities Marcelo chose to retain from the original—it explores motherhood and grief in a way that constantly reminds the reader to look at the world, both within and outside the book, from different perspectives.

Though it may work well as the abovementioned exploration of certain themes, the novel falls flat in several other areas. None of the characters are very compelling, with me rooting for Celine to move past her grief only to see the stagnancy of the narrative end at last. The rut that the plot seemed to have fallen into may have accurately reflected the rut Celine had been in for years because of Libby's loss, but it made for a difficult read to get through. There was rather more telling than showing, with repetitive writing attempting to hammer in details that readers could have understood naturally, without the reinforcement. I like the idea behind this novel a lot, but its execution did not move me as much as I had hoped.

Thank you to NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing for providing me with an eARC of this novel. All opinions expressed above are my own.

Blood Moon Prophecy by Dilani Kahawala

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adventurous medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

2.0

Thank you to Cedar Street Press in association with NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this book. All opinions expressed below are my own.

I did not enjoy this book at all, and I don't really think its target audience of YA readers would, either. A unique blend of Harry Potter and Pokemon, Blood Moon Prophecy is the story of an orphan child named Tilly who, upon the death of her mother, was sent to live with indifferent-at-best relatives. After years of suffering their disdain, Tilly's past comes back to haunt her, and she's forced to escape into a world of magic and mayhem, prophecies and ancient feuds. A significant portion of the book is set on the sea, and while usually that's one of my favorite settings, so many other aspects of the story fell short of my expectations that I was unable to appreciate this as fully as I otherwise might have.

One of the major issues was the fact that Tilly and her classmates, despite being around sixteen years old, all acted and sounded like eleven-year-olds. If this book were marketed towards middle-grade readers, it would make far more sense: Tilly's personality and the lessons she learns based on her actions are all very childlike, suited more to younger readers than the older YA community. These lessons only show up during the latter half of the novel, though. For the first several chapters, Tilly is nothing more than a vessel through which the reader is introduced to the world and its characters. Very rarely do we get to hear her thoughts; for the most part, she's just a reference point from which we get to view everyone else and the conversations they have. There is little substance to her during the first half of the novel beyond this function.

There are also far too many characters. I understand the purpose of Tilly's friend group and quite a few of the adults surrounding her—each had their own place in her life—but a lot of others were superfluous. We don't need seven different characters playing the role of bully, for example. People kept getting introduced and only playing very minor roles in the narrative, and I believe keeping track of character names would be much easier if there were less of them to keep track of in the first place.

Though on the whole the plot was interesting, there were moments within it that I found to be inconsistent with earlier scenes. James is one example. He acts like he's dying to return to his old team aboard a different ship, only for the reader to be told much later that he actually hates everyone on that team and used to be constantly bullied by them. He holds a "my father will hear about this" attitude for so long that discovering his father essentially disowned him is less of a plot twist and more a point of immediate confusion. Tilly is told not to cast fire sprites since they're all living on a ship, but the ship has fireplaces. The whole book is written from the perspective of Tilly, but we sometimes get sentences like "Tilly sounded hurt." Sounded... to whom? There's a distinct lack of cohesion to the plot which adds to the overall effect that the novel is packed with much more—information, characters, backstories, plot twists (without any form of foreshadowing whatsoever)—than it actually needed.

With some editing and a change in direction from young adults to middle-grade readers, I believe this could be a good book. As it stands right now, I'm not willing to recommend it to others, whether within the age range of its current target audience or outside of it.

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

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adventurous emotional inspiring

4.0

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

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adventurous

4.0

A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan

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adventurous informative medium-paced