Brooke's Reviews and Sweeps

Once a King

By Brookelorren on April 4, 2020April 4, 2020Leave a Comment

One of the things I’ve been doing since this coronavirus threat started strangling the world is taking more walks. This means… more audiobooks! I just finished listening to Once a King, part of the Clash of Kingdoms series by Erin Summerill. While I enjoyed the book itself, I didn’t care for the audio narration.

The Story

Once a King is narrated by Aodren, king of Malam, and Lirra Barret, daughter of the Arch-Traitor of Malam, and a wind channeler. Many people in the kingdom are gathered at a summit of nations. King Aodren is concerned because his father murdered channelers; he’s trying to right the wrongs of the past, but a lot of people don’t want to put the past behind.

Lirra’s father sends her a letter and asks her to deliver it to the “Bloody King of Malam,” as she calls him. They don’t have any respect for each other at first, but as they work together to solve a problem that is threatening the citizens of Malam–and Lirra’s da–they begin to like each other.

My Thoughts

I enjoyed the story, but I don’t think I was as enthralled by Once a King as I was with Ever the Hunted and Ever the Brave. I think the character’s relationship in the first two books of this series was more engaging. However, part of this could be due to the fact that I listened to this via audiobook, which I’ll get to later.

I enjoyed the setting in this book, and the villain did surprise me. There were tense moments and how they got out of these situations surprised me as well.

The Audiobook

I really did not like the audiobook narration. Almost everybody’s accents were unnatural and got on my nerves. King Aodren narrated half the book and I especially didn’t like his voice. He spoke with drawn out words that made him seem like he was bored. The side characters often had nasally, drawling, or otherwise unnatural voices that were often more annoying than not.

Overall

If you enjoyed Ever the Hunted and Ever the Brave, you’ll probably like Once a King. This book can be enjoyed without reading the other two books; however, they do give the background information on the magic system that would make getting into this book easier. Britta and Cohen get the briefest of mentions in this book (they’re away on their honeymoon), so don’t bother looking for more on that couple. If you liked the world and the magic system and want a little more of the world, I recommend this book. I don’t recommend the audiobook though.

RIP Speck: ~October 2013-April 3, 2020

By Brookelorren on April 4, 2020April 4, 2020Leave a Comment

We lost our fish, Speck, a few hours ago. We held a short fish funeral in our backyard, where she was laid to rest near her former tankmates. I know it’s weird to write about a fish in a book blog, but she was a part of our life for the majority of my kids’ childhood. She was 6 1/2 years old, and 4 inches long.

We got her, along with three other fish, Billy, Josh, and Minnow, on October 31, 2013. My kids won them at a carnival. My boy was six years old (almost 7) and my daughter was 11. They’re 13 and 17 now.

Minnow didn’t last long, and when we moved from Arizona to Colorado, we packed the fish up in a cooler and drove them to their new home, setting up our old tank in the new state. We moved across town, and the fish moved in the same cooler to our new home.

My daughter probably is one of the few people in history who could honestly say “the fish ate her homework.” Once, our old fish tank started leaking–all over my daughter’s homework. That’s when we ended up buying the 36 gallon tank we have now.

Billy died (in our current home, before the fish ate my daughter’s homework) and then Josh. We went and got friends for Speck, because goldfish like to have friends. One of Speck’s friends, Dusk, is still with us, and seemed to comfort Speck in her last couple of days on earth, while she was struggling to swim. Dusk and Speck hung out together a lot.

We’ll miss Speck, along with the three other fish my kids picked up at the same carnival that left before her. We also have a cat, but we didn’t get her till our daughter was a teenager. The fish were with us through our kids’ childhoods, and they’ll always live in our hearts.

March 2020 Wrap-Up

By Brookelorren on April 1, 2020April 1, 202010 Comments

Hello! It’s the last day of March, and what a month it’s been! I bet for most of us, it’s the least typical month we’ve had for a very long time. I can’t wait to read everybody else’s wrap-ups this month, because they’re going to be so much different than normal.

Books Read:

I did a little better last month than in February, completing 10 books.

A Treason of Thorns – Laura E. Weymouth
Sparrow – Mary Cecilia Jackson
Light from Distant Stars – Shawn Smucker
11/22/63 – Stephen King
Night of the Dragon – Julie Kagawa
Stop Missing Your Life – Cory Muscara
Sky Without Stars – Jessica Brody and Joanne Rendell (reread)
Between Burning Worlds – Jessica Brody and Joanne Rendell
Today Tonight Tomorrow – Rachel Lynn Solomon
Japan: From Prehistory to Modern Times – John W. Hall

Several of these books were amazing!

Blog Stats:

Blog stats are fairly steady. I haven’t been finding as much time to write reviews, but at least I’ve been doing Top Ten Tuesdays.

I’m at 2191 followers on Twitter. Wow!

Writing:

I would say that I haven’t written much, but I have, it just hasn’t been fiction. I’ve been keeping a coronavirus journal every day. It’s part of a journal series I started in 2017, although I stopped updating it regularly until this month. Since the 12th I’ve been updating it daily. I write it for an audience that may read it at an unknown time in the future, so I end up explaining things that seem obvious to us sometimes.
I did write a short story called “Patient Zero” earlier in the month, and I put it on Wattpad. The inspiration from the story is in the next section.

Life:

So who hasn’t had a radically different month than normal here? The coronavirus has changed the way almost everybody on earth has done things.

So the highlight of this month was probably the Penguin Teen Book Tour, where I got to meet Astrid Scholte, Marie Lu, and Melissa de la Cruz (front row of this picture, in order). I took my boy to this event and we had a wonderful day. First we went to a bakery and had brownies, then we went to the Lego Store, then we had dinner at the mall, before coming to The Tattered Cover. You can see me and my boy in this picture in the first row of chairs in the center of the right aisle. The next day I was feeling a little queasy, and it was in the early days of coronavirus, before everything got shut down. I thought, Oh no! What if I made these authors sick?

So then, I started thinking, what if someone attended a book signing of their favorite author, found out the next day they were sick with a deadly virus, accidentally spread it to their favorite author, and she died? How horrible would that be? So of course, I had to write a story about it. I’m happy to report that I don’t have coronavirus and all three of the authors pictured are evidently healthy, so I didn’t accidentally get any of them sick. Since the event was on March 5th, we can be sure no ill effects came from my meeting them.

The library and the gym shut down after that, and like most people, I don’t leave the house much. I do go for a walk every day, listening to an audiobook or an audio class. The Sunday before last I walked over six miles, to a park that is farther away from my house and back. I haven’t gone to the store since Friday the 17th though. We have enough food to last a while, but the grocery stores are still open, so I’ll go shopping again this Friday.

My husband is still working, which is good. Although he can work from home, his boss is insisting he come in and sit in his office by himself all day. He hurt his foot, so the doctor is forcibly making him work from home today and tomorrow.

Almost everything I normally do has moved to Zoom though. Church? YouTube live. Homeschool coop? Zoom. Russian meetup group? Zoom. I even went to an author event on Zoom last Saturday. I had been planning on going to see Jessica Brody and Joanne Rendell on March 25th at The Tattered Cover, but of course, that event got cancelled. Fortunately, I found an event they were holding online and it was a lot of fun!

Well, let’s hope April is the worst of this coronavirus pandemic. I know most people (including myself) would love to see an improvement next month, but since I’ve been keeping a journal on this, I’m pretty sure the worst is still to come. Italy has already started to see fewer new cases and fewer new deaths per day, which is good. Some places in the US seem to be taking more days to double the number of cases and deaths, which is also good. Let’s hope that all of us staying at home (and I do hope you’re staying at home unless you have to go out or are exercising by yourself, away from people) are making a difference. I’ve read The Great Influenza by John M. Barry and it’s quite possible that we’re seeing a similar situation, but the US in 1918 had their maximum number of flu cases in October (after exponential growth) and then they started to taper off in the months after that).

Ten Signs You’re a Book Lover

By Brookelorren on March 31, 2020March 31, 202038 Comments

Hello! Can you believe it’s Tuesday again? I know I haven’t posted much, and I feel bad about that, but for some reason, I seem to be just as busy as before, even though I’m not going anywhere. I do go for a walk every day. Anyway, it’s time for another Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl). Today we’re going over Ten Signs You’re a Book Lover. Let’s start!

1. You take a book everywhere you go. I know this describes me. Okay, I don’t take a book with me on my daily coronavirus walk to the park, but most of the time I’m listening to an audiobook, so I guess that counts.

2. Your Amazon gift card balance is $42.09 – In case you need to buy an emergency book. I always maintain a gift card balance on my Amazon account. You never know when a book is going to go on sale and you need to have money right away for a book. Since I can’t count on always having money in my bank account, it’s good that I always have money lying around in Amazon gift cards.

3. Your Goodreads TBR is 317 books long. So many books, so little time, right?

4. Authors are like rock stars to you. Who’s the most famous person in America right now? I don’t know. But I do know some of the most popular books right now. To my credit, I did refrain from screaming or fainting when I met Marie Lu earlier this month.

5. Coronavirus? There’s a stay-at-home order right now? I have plenty of books to keep my company. I hardly even notice that I’m supposed to be staying at home, because this is where all my friends are anyway.

6. You count down the days to book releases like some people count down the days to movie releases. I know, as an example, that The Chosen Ones releases in 7 days (!!!). Or that the release date of Skyhunter was moved up from October 6th to September 29th. I’ve gone to sleep before on a Monday evening in order to set my alarm clock so I could download a Kindle book release at 12 AM EST and pull an all-nighter reading. The next Marvel or Star Wars movie? Pfft. I don’t even know what they are.

7. Your Best Friends are Fictional Characters. Sometimes fictional characters feel so real, they’re like people you know.

8. You Read the Book Instead of Watching the Movie. 99% of the time, the book is better than the movie anyway, right?

9. You Know a Bunch of Random Facts. I know, for example, that the Hancock building in Chicago has 100 floors. How do I know this? I read it in Divergent. And then I looked it up.

10. Your Web Browser Always Has Book-Related Tabs Up. Some of the tabs I always have open are Amazon.com, Goodreads, That Artsy Reader Girl’s web site, and my library’s web page.

So that’s 10! What did you say today? Next week, I’m going to talk about the books I bought because I saw them on sale!

Speculative Fiction with History

By Brookelorren on March 24, 2020March 23, 202022 Comments

Hello again! It’s Tuesday again, and I hope you’re doing okay. It’s Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl), which means it’s time to talk about books! Today is a genre freebie. Last time we did one, I talked about fantasy books, so today we’re going to talk about something slightly different: speculative fiction with history in them. There are a lot of books with a historical feel to them, but a lot less that you can pinpoint to a specific location and time (or era).

Yesterday I did a review of the final book in the Shadow of the Fox series, Night of the Dragon. This book, although set in a mythical world, has a lot of Japanese history integrated into it. I’m reading a 1970 edition of Japan: From Prehistory to Modern Times right now, and there’s a lot in that book that I recognized in this series. Plus, these books are a lot more fun.

I recently finished 11/22/63 on audiobook, and I loved it. One of the things I loved about the book was how the main character goes back in time and describes how things were back then. Now, I probably wouldn’t want to go back and live there, but it would be fun to visit for a while.

Feel like taking a trip back to merry old England around Victorian times instead? A Treason of Thorns also takes place in a fictional world, but it has the feel of going back a hundred years or so and stepping into a place that feels like England.

Maybe Edwardian England is more your speed. Chain of Gold takes place in London during this time. You can visit real places in this book, but you’ll also get to hang out with warlocks and other magical creatures.

Perhaps you prefer Paris during the world’s fair, strolling the streets and visiting the newly constructed Eiffel tower. You can visit there in Sensational, where there’s a murder mystery afoot and the main character uses her magical powers to help solve it. Be sure to read the first book in this duology, Spectacle, first. That takes place in Paris a couple years prior.

Austria is such a nice place to visit in the mid-1800s. I don’t think I’d want to live there, but you can safely visit by reading Marie Lu’s The Kingdom of Back. Bonus: you get to spend time with Nannerl and Wolfgang Mozart, peek into their lives as musical prodigies, and visit their magical kingdom.

Most Arthurian tales have a little bit of magic in them, and The Guinevere Deception is no exception. With this book, you can travel back in time to Medieval England and experience a little magic at the same time.

Did vampires inhabit New Orleans in the late 1800s? I don’t know, but if you’d like to take a trip there to find out, Renée Ahdieh’s The Beautiful can take you there. There aren’t too many vampires in this particular book, but it will give you the feeling of stepping off the boat in this unfamiliar land. Because face it, even if you live in New Orleans today, the past is like a foreign country.

We haven’t been to Medieval Russia yet. The Bear and the Nightingale takes you back to a time before the tsars. This story is full of creatures from Russian folklore. Brrrr! Russia is a cold place now, and during the Little Ice Age, it was a lot colder! You can take the journey here with this book.

Remember, remember, the 5th of November! If you’d like to read more about Guy Fawkes and his revolution (with magic!) you can check out Fawkes. In this alternate version of English history, people wear masks that help them conduct various kinds of magic.

So that’s 10! If you like virtually time-traveling (as I do) I hope you like these. Can’t wait to see what everybody else came up with this week. Next week, we’re going to talk about Ten Signs You’re a Book Lover. See you then!

Night of the Dragon

By Brookelorren on March 23, 2020March 22, 20202 Comments

Hello! I recently read Julie Kagawa’s Night of the Dragon. I really liked it (and look at that drool-worthy cover!). It is the third book in the Shadow of the Fox trilogy. If you haven’t read any of the other books, you might want to binge this series while you’re social distancing. Because this is the third book in the series, there may be spoilers for this review. You can read my reviews for Shadow of the Fox and Soul of the Sword, the two previous books, at the links above. A big thank you to Netgalley and Inkyard Press for providing me with Advanced Reader Copies!

Yumeko, Tatsumi/Hakaimono, and their companions must finish their quest to disrupt the Night of the Wish. Of course, as with any great adventure, their final leg of the journey is not without its perils. The final battle won’t be easy either. It left me in tears. But my tears of sadness turned into sweet tears of happiness at the end, so you’ll be okay reading this book.

Night of the Dragon has a massive plot twist. I won’t tell you what it is, but the book will answer questions you didn’t even know you had. There are villains in this book you weren’t even aware of. But I absolutely loved it.

The Setting

I loved Night of the Dragon. One of the things I enjoyed about the Shadow of the Fox trilogy is the medieval Japanese setting. In a really odd coincidence, I just happen to be reading an old book from 1970, Japan: From Prehistory to Modern Times by John Whitney Hall, right now. You don’t have to be reading a history book on medieval Japan to enjoy the setting (I loved the first two books last year) but it is making it more interesting for me. There are some terms that you might find unfamiliar, but there’s a glossary at the end and you can always google any unknown words. Even though there are things you might be unfamiliar with, to me, it makes the setting stand out even more.

The Characters

I love these characters! They all have come a long way since Shadow of the Fox, where Yumeko was a naïve half-kitsune and the rest of them all had something to learn. They are still the people they started this journey out as, only better. In this final segment of the story, they step up and fulfill their destinies. I can’t say much else because I don’t want to spoil the plot, but I did love how it all turned out. Even though it made me cry.

Conclusion

Night of the Dragon is definitely worth reading. A lot in this book’s plot depends on the other two books in the series, so you’ll definitely want to read those first. If you have read those (or if you haven’t, just binge all three books) then I definitely recommend this book. It will probably put you in tears (fair warning) but it was well worth reading.

11/22/63

By Brookelorren on March 17, 2020March 17, 20205 Comments

I recently finished reading 11/22/63 by Stephen King. I don’t read a lot of King’s books, as horror isn’t really my jam, but I wanted to read this book, because it deals with JFK’s assassination and time travel. It was really good. I listened to it on audiobook, so I will make comments on the narration as well.

Jake Epping is a school teacher. Once he reads an essay by the school janitor, who was viciously attacked by his family in 1958. Shortly afterwards, a local diner owner, Al Templeton, lets him in on a secret: in the diner’s pantry, there’s a portal that will take him back to a particular day in the fall of 1958. Al gets him to agree to a mission: go back in time and prevent the assassination of JFK.

Jake takes on the altar ego of George Amberson and heads back in time to complete this mission. Along the way, he tries to help out the janitor. I’ll leave the details of what happens for you to read, but the past tries to prevent him, he falls in love, and it’s not a particularly easy task. I’ll also leave the details about what happens when he returns to the present for you to find out.

One of the things I love about this book is King’s descriptions of the past. It was such a different time back then, without fears of coronavirus or people fighting on social media about petty crap. Jake Epping discovers that even the food tastes better back then. Of course, not everything was great, and King does delve lightly into that too. It was a time when wife beatings were common and black people were sent to substandard bathrooms and treated like crap, but for a white guy like Jake Epping, it wouldn’t have been such a bad time to visit. After reading 11/22/63, part of me wants to read more books from this era.

11/22/63 isn’t a horror story, but there is some violence. There’s also a fair amount of foul language, which is normal for King’s works. One of the things I did find interesting was that it referred to evens that happened in It. Although I’ve never read the book or have seen the movie, I looked up the details and I thought that was pretty cool that he tied the two books together like that.

The ending was really sweet. It had me in happy tears. It’s not a happily ever after (I’m not sure this kind of book could be), but the characters get closure that I would hope them to have.

The Audiobook

I listened to 11/22/63 on audiobook, so I’ll make a few comments about that. The narrator was great, and kept the voices separate. Towards the end, the narrator brought in a character from the beginning of the book, and I immediately knew who the character was, just from the voice. There is some Russian in this book, and a character with a German accent, and I thought he did a good job pronouncing the Russian and the accent. I was able to understand the Russian before King translated it, which is a point in his favor.

Final Thoughts

If you like history or are interested in the JFK assassination, I recommend 11/22/63. It was like Back to the Future in book form, with higher stakes. The descriptions of “the land of ago” were compelling. The main character’s story was interesting, the characters he ran into along the way were well-fleshed out, and it kept me hooked the whole time. I’ve been recommending it to my friends ever since I started reading it.

Spring 2020 TBR

By Brookelorren on March 17, 2020March 16, 202022 Comments

Hello! It’s Tuesday again, and time for another edition of Top Ten Tuesday! I hope everybody is staying safe with that nasty virus going around. Today we’re talking about our Spring TBRs. Too soon! I didn’t get the chance to finish a lot of my Winter TBR, so a lot of the books on my list this quarter will be books that were on my list last time. But not all! There are several new books coming out and those are taking up most of the space made available from the books I did read.

So how did I do on my Winter TBR?

The Kingdom of Back – Marie Lu: Read
A Treason of Thorns – Laura E. Weymouth: Read
Light From Distant Stars – Shawn Smucker: Read
Chain of Gold – Cassandra Clare: Read
Descendant of the Crane – Joan He: Unread
Keeper – Kim Chance: Unread
99 Percent Mine – Sally Thorne: Unread
Tell Me Everything – Sarah Enni: Unread
Disappearing Earth – Julia Phillips: Read
Broken Throne – Victoria Aveyard: Read

Even though I didn’t get all of these books read, I still read enough that I’ll be able to read the spring books I’m getting, so there’s that.

I’ll start by going over the new books I’m adding to my TBR for this quarter.

I’m so excited for Between Burning Worlds, which is coming out on March 24th! Jessica Brody was supposed to be at The Tattered Cover on the 25th, but the bookstore has been temporarily closed for the coronavirus, so I’ll be reading this book at home and I’ll have to meet her some other time. I’m rereading Sky Without Stars, the first book in this duology, right now to get ready.

Veronica Roth is one of my favorite authors, and I’m looking forward to her adult debut, Chosen Ones, which comes out on April 7th! I pre-ordered this book back in August and can’t wait.

My friend Katerina King wrote a book, Malediction, and I haven’t had the chance to read it yet. I meant to read it in December, before I started reading books for my winter TBR, but I didn’t get around to it. I definitely want to read it, so I’m adding it to my spring TBR.

Another friend of mine, Celeste Harte, has also written a book, Conquest. I bought the electronic copy, then I won a paperback copy, but I plan on reading it over the next few months.

I wasn’t initially going to pre-order The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, which is a Hunger Games prequel, because it was too expensive. I’m not interested enough in this book to pay $25 for it, but the price has gone down, and I’ve pre-ordered it. This book is supposed to come out on May 19th.

Because I didn’t finish all the books on my winter TBR, there’s only one new TBR lottery book this quarter: 1453 by Roger Crowley. It’s a nonfiction book about the fall of Constantinople.

Descendant of the Crane was on my Winter 2019/20 TBR, and since I didn’t get to it then, I’m going to try to get to it now. Hopefully I’ll have more reading time in this quarter. Perhaps I will with this coronavirus thing going on?

Keeper was another TBR lottery winner from the previous quarter that I didn’t read. I have this one on Kindle (like Descendant of the Crane) so hopefully I’ll get to this one.

Sally Thorne is a new-to-me author still, but I got 99 Percent Mine for $1.99 when it was on sale on Amazon.com. It was also a TBR lottery winner from the winter that I didn’t read. So onto the spring it goes.

I didn’t get the chance to read Tell Me Everything, and I requested this book from my library last week. The book was on the shelf in the library, but not one of the branches I normally go to. Well, the library is closed now, so I guess I have to wait for it to reopen again? Either that or buy a copy. I have other books on my shelf to read, so unless the coronavirus keeps things closed for months, I’ll probably just wait.

So what books are on your TBR for the spring? Were you able to read all your Winter TBR books? Are you staying inside and reading books? Next week is a genre freebie and I haven’t decided what to do with that yet.

Authors I Follow on Social Media

By Brookelorren on March 10, 2020March 2, 202020 Comments

Hello! It’s Tuesday again, and time for another edition of Top Ten Tuesday, where we talk about books. It’s hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. Today’s topic is authors with a fun social media presence, but I’m not really sure how to gauge that, so we’re just going to talk about some of the authors I follow on social media.

Today’s links will point to their Twitter accounts.

Susan Dennard – Last year, she had a Choose Your Own Adventure story running, which was a lot of fun, if you were able to get in on that. She has a newsletter that gives writing advice. Normally, I don’t subscribe to newsletters because that’s more clutter for the inbox, but I follow her both on Twitter and her newsletter.

Danika Stone – Ms. Stone is a ray of sunshine! She’s almost always smiling in the photos she posts. Follow her if you need some brightess in your day.

Kim Chance – Ms. Chance hosts Chance2Connect on the second Tuesday of every month. If you’re a writer, you might want to join her and meet other authors. It’s a lot of fun.

Sandhya Menon – She is such a sweetheart! I’m on her street team and I’ve met her a couple of times, so I might be a little biased, but one of the reasons why I signed up for her street team was because she was so nice when I met her at last year’s Colorado Teen Literature Conference.

Laura E. Weymouth – Laura and I have been mutuals on Twitter since before I even knew she had a book coming out. I thought she was just a really cool person who wrote. Sometimes she posts about her chickens, or her kids, or things like that.

Kiersten White – If you ever get the chance to go to one of her book signings, you should. She’s really funny. I followed her for a year before I ever read one of her books. I’ve still only read two of them, even though I own six.

Marie Lu – Ms. Lu is much more active on Instagram right now, but she’s worth following. In addition to talking about books, sometimes she posts about politics. As her books tend to have political undertones, that’s probably not a surprise.

Sabaa Tahir – She’s been working on Sky Beyond the Storm (AKA Ember 4) for years now, and it’s been interesting to see her journey. She even did a few word sprints with us peons a couple years ago. She can be pretty funny too.

Jodie Lynn Zdrock – Ms. Zdrock is always so nice. Sometimes she posts about her cats, or her running, or her books. You can’t help but to root for people that are nice like her.

V.E. Schwab – I started following her over a year before I read a book from her (I still have only read This Savage Song). She always seems so friendly.

So there you have it. Ten authors I follow on Twitter. I follow a lot more than that, but these are some whose social media presence stands out to me.

Next week, we’re posting our Spring 2020 TBRs! That’s when you can find out what a slacker I’ve been for the last few months. Who did you post about today?

Sparrow

By Brookelorren on March 9, 2020March 8, 2020Leave a Comment

I recently had the opportunity to read Sparrow by Mary Cecilia Jackson. Thank you to Bookish First and Tor Teen for providing me with an advanced reader copy! If you are interested in joining Bookish First, would you please use referral code 56cf541090ca608b4? Then we can both earn points for free books!

“Sparrow” is a ballerina, preparing to star in Swan Lake as the main character. The book starts towards the end of her junior year in high school and follows the characters through the end of high school. When one of the cutest guys in school, Tristan King, almost hits her with a car, he asks her out. She can’t believe her luck. They start going out, but unfortunately, it turns out to be an abusive relationship.

Lucas is Sparrow’s friend and dance partner. He knows that Tristan is trouble, and although he tries to warn her away from him, he feels responsible for what happens to her. He has to learn that you can’t fix everybody else’s problems.

Sparrow is told from two points of view: Sparrow’s and Lucas’s. There is a lot that isn’t revealed until the end of the book, which is why the synopsis is a little vague, and why I can’t reveal a lot about what happens. As the book unfolds, a few things happen that don’t seem to make sense until you read farther into the book.

While this is a book that deals with abuse (which could be a trigger for some people), this is also a book about healing from abuse, as well as the trauma of a person’s past. Sparrow dealing with her past is a huge part of the last part of this book.

One of the things that I liked about this book was its peek into the world of ballet. I’ve never taken a ballet class, but it was fun to see into the world of dance practices and rehearsals. I also thought the friendships in this book were well-done.

The ending of the book is satisfying and makes sense, although it probably wouldn’t be the ending I’d hope for.

Overall, I would recommend Sparrow if you enjoy ballet (or want to read about it) and are interested in a book about abuse or healing from abuse. It’s not my favorite book from this year so far, but I liked it enough. It doesn’t go on sale until March 17th, but you can pre-order it now.