Wide-Eyed Reader

Title:  Spin the Dawn Author:  Elizabeth Lim Category:  Free Choice Maia desperately wants to be a tailor like her father before her, and is acknowledged as the only one of her siblings to have inherited her father's sewing ability. After a war tears apart her country, killing two of her brothers and leave another with severe injuries, her father is summoned to the palace to compete for the position of Royal Tailor to the Emperor's soon-to-be wife, Lady Sarnai, who doesn't want to marry him at all. However, as Maia's father is older and her brother is injured, Maia is the only member of the family able to actually go. So, she disguises herself as a boy and journeys to the palace. With the help of magic scissors passed down from her grandmother, Maia wows the judges of the competition, but Lady Sarnai has one more surprise in store: she challenges Maia to make three dresses, made of the sun, moon, and stars. Taking the court enchanter, Edan, with her, Maia has to travel ...

Title:  A Curse So Dark and Lonely Author:  Brigid Kemmerer Category:  State Book Award Rhen, Prince of Emberfall, was cursed on his eighteenth birthday to become a monster at the end of the season if he cannot find a girl who loves him - over and over again. He and his captain of the guard, Gray, are trapped in a timeloop of the same fall season until the curse can be broken. However, the enchantress is getting bored, and wants to end this game once and for all. So it's up to Harper, a girl with cerebral palsy from Washington, D.C., to help Rhen break the curse before his country falls to ruin and invasion. The real question is: can Harper even begin to love him? I love fairytales, though Beauty & the Beast isn't a favorite of mine. However, I really enjoyed this retelling! Kemmerer's use of the timeloop, as well as introducing a main character with cerebral palsy, are so great to see and truly make this classic tale her own. I also liked watching the romance. For te...

  Title:  The Beast Player Author:  Nahoko Uehashi (translated by Cathy Hirano) Category:  Printz Award Title Elin is only a girl of ten when her mother is sentenced to death for failing in her sacred duty of caring for the Toda, water serpents used in battle by their military. Elin tries to rescue her mother from death, but at the last moment her mother saves her, using a strange ability to transport her far away. There, Elin is taken in by a elderly beekeeper, who quickly takes to the intelligent, curious girl as his own child. Elin is good with animals, and fascinated by the beautiful Royal Beasts that live in the wild - enough to journey to a special school to learn to care for them when she is of age. It is here that Elin discovers a secret, one that could change the world - she can communicate with the Royal Beasts, and form bonds with them that no one else has been able to. As Elin's own desire to let the animals be free wars with the desire of the royalty to ...

Fair warning before I begin: I'm trying out a new review style for this, so we'll see how it goes! I honestly did expect to like this book, if not love it! I'm not the biggest Alice in Wonderland  fan, but I do love retellings of all stripes, and this one seemed particularly unique, so I was looking forward to it. Sadly, I was disappointed. I did stop reading this book on page 194 of the paperback edition, so keep that in mind throughout this review! There are several things I took issue with, so let's jump in, shall we? First: the love triangle. Because this book is YA, so it has to have a love triangle, apparently. Now, I'm not a big fan of love triangles, but I don't mind them if they're handled well and the love interests are actually worth it. In this case, neither is true.  The triangle itself seems thrown in just for the fun of it, and because love triangles are popular. What I'm more concerned with is the love interests themselves. Firs...

First things first: I received a copy of this book through NetGalley in exchange for a review! I was pretty interested in this book, though I'll admit I didn't expect much. However, I'm a huge fan of fairytale retellings, and I've always loved Aladdin, so a gender-bent twist on the Aladdin story got my attention! And this book didn't disappoint! CHARACTERS Our main character in Thief of Cahraman  is Adelaide, a young orphan who just wants to live in peace with her best friend Bonnie and - maybe - discover where her mother came from. She's a former thief, and though she is trying to change her ways at the start of the book, she can't resist a shiny object or six. I found Ada to be a very interesting character - smart, resourceful, and not afraid to be both feminine (she wears stunning gowns through the ENTIRE book, and doesn't shy away from cooking!) and badass. She's a strong lead, for sure! However, I did think that sometimes Ada let her t...