nadjatiktinsky's reviews
87 reviews

The Canyon's Edge by Dusti Bowling

A physical-survival-meets-emotional-survival story à la Gary Paulsen, set in Bowling's vividly detailed Southwest. Nora and her dad have been left reeling after Nora's mom was killed by a shooter in a restaurant. When they go to explore a slot canyon on the one-year anniversary of her death, a flash flood sweeps away all of their food, water, and supplies and separates them, leaving Nora alone to fight for survival and find her dad. This is just terrifically written. It begins as a novel, but breaks into novel-in-verse when things become too unbearable (and Nora too weak) to endure full sentences.

On the Horizon by Kenard Pak, Lois Lowry

An interesting mixed-memoir in vignettes. Lowry, who was a four-year-old military kid living in Hawaii at the time of the Pearl Harbor bombing, sifts through her own memories while detailing the lives of those lost in the bombings. She then does the same with the atomic bombing in Hiroshima, dipping into the lives lost and memories remaining there, before reverting back to memoir in order to examine her own experience of moving to Japan as an 11-year-old. Reading this book feels like visiting a memorial. Great for a history-lover who has read it all and is looking for something fresh and unique.

The River by Peter Heller

If you just finished Where the Crawdads Sing and are absolutely itching to find another author who will send you that deep into the natural world again, this is the one to read. Like Delia Owens, Heller is a nonfiction-nature-writer-turned-novelist. Like Crawdads, the description in this book is so good that you barely even care what the plot is. Dark, twisty, and very deeply rooted in place.

Flyaway by Kathleen Jennings

An Australian gothic that's just as wonderfully strange as you'd hope. You'll read it in an hour and it will show you a good creepy time. Jennings is a master of balance: the confusion that her characters wade through and the stickiness of her unreliable narrator slowly becoming aware of her own unreliability are kept from feeling too muddled by the razor-sharp imagery that jumps out from each page.

Afterlife by Julia Alvarez

Heartache in three directions. Antonia's husband dies, her sister goes missing, and an undocumented, pregnant teenager shows up on her doorstep to ask for help. Interestingly, the tension is rooted in Antonia's deep desire to be selfish and abandon those who need her. So good.

One Time by Sharon Creech

Is anyone else fascinated by watching super-popular white authors from the 90s and 2000s try to modernize themselves by infusing their new books with a diversity that was nonexistent in their career-defining works? It gives an interesting glimpse into what children's literature could have been then and defines what it must be now: world-conscious. One Time is full of Creech's classic overlapping dialogue, with a plot structure derivative of Jaqueline Woodson's Harbor Me.

Before the Ever After by Jacqueline Woodson

Next-level good. You will cry the whole way through this book, which is no surprise given that that's Jaqueline Woodson's specialty. This is a sports novel in verse, perfect for fans of Kwame Alexander's The Crossover, but it's technically post-sports: it follows ZJ, whose pro-football-player dad is starting to act strangely: forgetting things, having migraines, and getting so shaky he can no longer play. Set in the early 2000s, this book looks at the dark side of football, examining one man's battle with CTE and its effect on his tight-knit family.

The List of Things That Will Not Change by Rebecca Stead

Stead has always been a master of creating incredibly complex, ultra-realistic characters with layered stories, but she's outdone herself with this one. Bea simply leaps off the page. I adore her, and I adore this book! There's something so delightfully fun about the perspective of a "bad kid" protagonist. Do not read in public unless you want to embarrass yourself by laughing out loud every other page.

Letters from Cuba by Ruth Behar

Historical fiction set in late 1930s Cuba, where Esther and her father have immigrated to escape the growing prejudice against Jewish people in Poland. They're saving up money to bring over Esther's mother, Baba, and younger siblings by selling the dresses that Ruth designs and sews. Based on Behar's family history, this novel-in-letters takes a wide view of this time in Cuban history, examining the experiences of Chinese and Black Cubans in Esther's neighborhood as well as the growing population of Cuban Jews. Great if you are looking for a Jewish-perspective WWII story that is empowering rather than a (unfortunately much more commonplace) helpless Jewish victim narrative.

Northernmost by Peter Geye

A cross-generational, dual-POV novel. In 1897, a Norwegian man lost for weeks in the Arctic returns home on the day of his own funeral. In 2017, his great-great-granddaughter travels from Minnesota to Norway to cope with the dissolution of her marriage. This book intersects physical and emotional loss in a really interesting way.