For some reason, I’ve had a significant slow down with YA novels this year. I’ve just not been able to settle down and focus on reading, no matter how intriguing various books sound. Most of the time I’ve resorted to audiobooks for which I tend to pick non-fiction books. Thanks to a long haul flight though, I had no distractions to keep me from Mirage. I was happily entertained.
NOT THE GIRLS YOU’RE LOOKING FOR by Aminah Mae Safi
Not the Girls You’re Looking For is way more hard hitting than I had expected. Based on the synopsis I thought it’d be a fun, fluffy high school read with a dash of drama. Sure, there’s drama and the prose is typical of that sort of book but it is a whole lot more intense.
LEGENDARY by Stephanie Garber
In 2017, I counted Caraval to my favourites of the year. It’s no wonder that I was super excited for the sequel. Thus, it’s with a heavy heart that I’m rating it 3 out of 5 stars. The problem for me was that Legendary was more of the same. Now, more of the same should be a great thing if you loved the original. So what went wrong?
SUICIDE CLUB by Rachel Heng
If you could live for hundreds of years, if not, forever, would you want to? In Suicide Club, those who deserve it are given immortality. In exchange, they have to take good care of their health — eat well, exercise and all that jazz. What I liked about this premise was that it plays on our contemporary obsession with health and wellness. Food diet movements abound from “clean eating” to keto to paleo, claiming to detox, strengthen the immune system, etc. Rachel Heng pushed these ideal to the extreme in her futuristic science fiction novel set in New York City.
PONTI by Sharlene Teo
Sharlene Teo writes well and chooses her words very precisely. Her prose is at once cutting, yet atmospheric, which fit Ponti well. Teo’s very talented and the years of hard work she put into honing her craft are evident in her debut novel.
