This review is based on an advance copy provided free from the publisher.

Ok, I read this earlier in the summer, but the book I'm reading now is a bit long and I wanted to give you something while I'm still working on it. I'm also going to do exactly what everybody who reviewed this book before me did and give away something that's revealed about a third of the way in, because the cover text reveals it, too.

Rosemary starts this story as she is trying to navigate her college years, attempting to find her place in the world where she has never fit in outside her family, and dealing with the dysfunction of her family which has come apart since her sister, Fern, mysteriously went away when she and Rosemary were both five. What we find out as the book goes on is that Fern is a chimpanzee.

Although this book is not SF exactly, I think it is a wonderful book for fans of soft SF. Fundamentally it is a book that uses a non-human character to examine what it means to be human and what it means to be a family, which SF has been doing since Cyrano de Bergerac wrote a book about going to the moon centuries before anybody invented a name for the genre. (It's also the best new novel about a human family raising a chimp that I read this summer. Surprisingly, there is more than one entry in that category.) I think it would also do well among fans of "women's lives and relationships," as the book is focused not only on Rosemary's relationship with her sister but also her parents, her brother on the lam, and her troublemaking roommate Harlow.

I brought a couple of books back from the American Library Association this summer that belonged to series I already follow, but this was by far the best out of those I've gotten to at this point that was brand new to me.

Overall Grade: A+

This review is based on an advance copy provided by the publisher.

Although it isn't clear from this blog yet, I don't read a lot of thrillers. I have a rather low tolerance for "are you KIDDING me?" in books that claim to take place in our world. If I do read a thriller, odds are good that it's a legal thriller, because in those the protagonists are usually lawyers or reporters or people who have a reason to be investigating a crime, rather than just Joe Everyman who for some bizarre reason stumbles into the middle of a human trafficking ring.

So when I say that I liked Never Come Back  quite a lot, it's high praise. On to the plot. Elizabeth has enough to deal with in the wake of her mother's death, between trying not to fall hopelessly behind in grad. school and planning for the future of her brother with Downs Syndrome. Then the police tell her that her mother was murdered, and her brother is the prime suspect. Further complicating things, Elizabeth discovers that she, and not her uncle as she previously believed, has been named her brother's guardian in her mother's will, and a stranger is receiving a third of the estate.

This thriller works for me because the intrigue is built largely around family secrets, on a greater scale than most of us will ever encounter but still something that feels grounded and possible. There were only a few things that made me go "...what?" One is a rather big thing near the end, a development that felt tacked on in order to have an extra unsuspected twist rather than developing as part of the story. The others:

1. A woman described as a volunteer at the library who appears to have responsibilities and powers (such as the capability to create some unspecified kind of fund?) far beyond what volunteers would be able to do.
2. Elizabeth asking for favors from a student whose work she grades without any acknowledgement of the inappropriateness of that arrangement.
3. Apparently DNA tests are not a thing.

For a thriller, I consider that a fairly small number of failures of suspension of disbelief. If I'm this happy, then people who routinely have less trouble with the genre should be overjoyed.

Final Grade: A-

This review is based on an advance copy received from the publisher

Regina LeClaire was kidnapped at age twelve and held captive and abused for
four years. Six years later (and after having changed her name to Reeve) she is
still in therapy with a specialist in this kind of trauma, starting to put her
life back together but with work left to do. Then one of three missing girls in
cases believed to be related is rescued, and Reeve's therapist asks her to
accompany him to provide emotional support to the victim. But the man who was
arrested was acting under somebody else's direction, and the accomplice who was
the brains of the operation is still watching.


The Edge of Normal is an engrossing, tightly plotted thriller featuring a
heroine who, although damaged, is recovering and still stronger than she thinks
she is. Its appeal comes just as much from the chance to spend time with its
protagonist as from following the twists and turns of the plot and the sick
mastermind behind it.

Final Grade: A

This review is based on an advance copy received from the publisher.

 I wish that I could rate this book higher, I really do. The narrator, Alex, is a brilliant twelve year old with a brain tumor that is causing him to have seizures. His stream of consciousness narration is engrossing and hilarious,
with the contrast between his intellectual abilities and his emotional perception, and the occasional deliberate prank played on him when he asks his father what something means, or at least when he did before he started to keep his mental To Google list instead. (My favorite, "Francophile" defined as somebody who is "sexually attracted to fascist dictators.")

 However, it loses a star or so at the end because of my inability to reconcile the final part before the epilogue and the epilogue. I have read other reviews that suggest that the timeline is not necessarily linear, but if this is the case I'm unable to identify any other point where things are out of order before the very end, excluding when Alex is clearly remembering things, so it's a strange place to start jumping around. It's also possible it has something to do with Schrodinger's Cat. In either case, there's a significant gap in action between the last bit of the book that makes sense and the part where it
stops.

 The rest of the book is a wonderful ride; I wish I didn't feel so let down by the ending.

Final Grade: B-, but it was a solid A until almost the end.

This review is based on an ARC received from the publisher.


The year is 1747, and Katie O'Toole's family home is raided by Native
Americans. Two young men (whom she knows as Swaya and Hector) who accompany them
are from a different tribe, on a search for a Creature of Fire and Ice whom
Swaya has seen in a vision and who he says will save their people. Swaya
believes that Katie is the creature in his vision. With little to keep her with
her family, Katie agrees to go with them when the rest of the captives are
ransomed home.


This is a difficult book to review without spoiling. At times it was a
frustrating book, as the characters often didn't think or thought too much and
upset themselves more than necessary (and I am deliberately trying to avoid
specifics here). But I enjoyed the way that Katie's journey was not only about
her journey across the country and her discovering what her place in her new
life was to be, but about her overcoming the hardships of her past life in
Philadelphia. I did find the ending a touch unsatisfying and am unsure of
whether or not a sequel will be forthcoming. On one hand, the purpose for which
Syawa and Hector went to find the Creature of Fire and Ice remains unclear. On
the other hand, the growth of the characters appears to have been achieved, and
perhaps the original mission was a detail to set the journey in motion.


Although none of the places where I have seen this book promoted or reviewed
have considered it a YA book so far, I think that it would also have appeal to a
high school audience. Although Katie is old enough to live an adult life in her
time, she is only seventeen, and perhaps some of her angst makes more sense in
light of her age and will be less aggravating to people closer to it.

Final Grade: B