Who Did the Cover Art for Hanna Who Fell From the Sky

I've got iv bite-sized reviews today. Three new(ish) releases and ane backlist volume. I hope these bite-sized reviews will be enough to feed your fiction addiction!

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Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds
Published by Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books on October 24th 2017
Genres: Young Adult, Poesy, Gimmicky, Magical Realism
Pages: 320
Source: ALA
My content rating: YA (Mature themes such as murder and some mature language)
My rating:

A cannon. A strap.
A piece. A biscuit.
A burner. A heater.
A chopper. A gat.
A hammer
A tool
for RULE

Or, you can call it a gun. That's what fifteen-twelvemonth-old Volition has shoved in the back waistband of his jeans. See, his blood brother Shawn was merely murdered. And Will knows the rules. No crying. No snitching. Revenge. That's where Will's now heading, with that gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, the gun that was his blood brother's gun. He gets on the elevator, 7th floor, stoked. He knows who he's after. Or does he? Every bit the elevator stops on the sixth floor, on comes Cadet. Buck, Volition finds out, is who gave Shawn the gun before Will took the gun. Buck tells Will to bank check that the gun is even loaded. And that'south when Will sees that one bullet is missing. And the only one who could have fired Shawn'south gun was Shawn. Huh. Will didn't know that Shawn had ever really USED his gun. Bigger huh. BUCK IS Expressionless. But Buck'southward in the elevator? Just equally Will'due south trying to call back this through, the door to the adjacent flooring opens. A teenage daughter gets on, waves abroad the smoke from Dead Buck's cigarette. Will doesn't know her, only she knew him. Knew. When they were eight. And stray bullets had cut through the playground, and Will had tried to encompass her, but she was striking anyhow, and and then what she wants to know, on that fifth flooring elevator stop, is, what if Will, Will with the gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, MISSES.

And and so it goes, the whole long way downward, equally the elevator stops on each floor, and at each terminate someone continued to his brother gets on to give Will a piece to a bigger story than the one he thinks he knows. A story that might never know an END…if WILL gets off that elevator.

I honestly don't fifty-fifty know how to describe in words how I felt about this volume. You well-nigh simply have to feel it for yourself to understand its brilliance.When I started the book, I was both delighted and scared to see that it was written in poesy (it's all free poesy, with ane concrete verse form thrown in there). How would Reynolds convey the story with so few words and still connect us to the characters? Would I know what the heck was going on? Turns out that Reynolds did indeed convince me to care about Will in a sparse number of bodily words—and fourth dimension, really. Virtually of the book takes identify during a sixty-second elevator ride (though it tells a story that actually spans generations). And, yeah, I knew what was happening. Free verse lends itself well to telling a story. Only since information technologyispoetry, at that place's some room for interpretation—especially with the ending. (If you've read the book, I'd Love to talk about that catastrophe! Oooh—maybe that should be a spoiler-filled discussion in and of itself. I have to go run into what Reynolds himself has said about it. I accept definite feelings near what's happening at the stop, just I can't be sure I'm right.)

This book gives lyrical resonance to the cyclical nature of violence in inner cities—a pattern that can be near incommunicable to pause out of. It asks questions about why (without actually asking the question). I loved it! You tin read this entire volume in an hour (but yous'll want to ponder it more than), so in that location's no excuse not to. Go choice it up now!

(By the mode, I hear the audiobook for this is read by Jason Reynolds himself, so now I need to listen to that too!)

***Disclosure: I received this volume from the publisher via ALA Annual in exchange for an honest review. No other bounty was given and all opinions are my own.***

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Nyxia by Scott Reintgen
Series: The Nyxia Triad #1
Too in this series: Nyxia Unleashed
Published by Listening Library, Crown Books for Young Readers on September twelfth 2017
Genres: Immature Adult, Science Fiction
Pages: 384
Narrator: Dominic Hoffman, Sullivan Jones
Length: ten hrs. and 6 min.
Source: NetGalley, Library
My content rating: YA (Some violence)
My rating:

Emmett Atwater isn't just leaving Detroit; he'south leaving World. Why the Boom-boom Corporation recruited him is a mystery, but the number of zeroes on their contract has him boarding their lightship and hoping to return to Earth with enough coin to have care of his family.

Forever.

Before long, Emmett discovers that he is one of 10 recruits, all of whom have troubled pasts and are a long way from home. Now each recruit must earn the right to travel downward to the planet of Eden—a planet that Babel has kept hidden—where they volition mine a substance called Nyxia that has quietly become the nigh valuable material in the universe.

But Babel's ship is full of secrets. And Emmett will confront the ultimate choice: win the fortune at whatever cost, or find a manner to fight that won't forever compromise what it ways to be human.

First off, I take to say that I listened to this audiobook along with my 15-twelvemonth-one-time son and he LOVED it. In fact, he got tired of waiting for me (since I was pretty much only listening in the car) and he took it upon himself to forge ahead of me.

I actually loved this book too, though I was a little disappointed to learn that in that location was a competition chemical element to the story. I would have loved to have focused more on their actual mission than on a battle to be ane of the ones chosen to become. The competition did lead to a lot of cutting-pharynx action, though! The best thing near this book, in my opinion, is the singled-out voice of the MC (which is perfectly portrayed in the audio past the narrator, Dominic Hoffman). I loved the sort of urban sci-fi vibe that the book exudes. And the rest of the cast of characters is incredibly various, and then we have that as a plus likewise.

There are some major twists that kept things interesting, and I'grand definitely eager to find out what will happen next.

Loved the narrators for this volume, past the manner!

***Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. No other bounty was given and all opinions are my own.***

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Hanna Who Fell from the Heaven by Christopher Meades
Published by Park Row Books on September 26th 2017
Genres: Immature Developed, Literary Fiction, Magical Realism
Pages: 342
Source: NetGalley
My content rating: YA? (The chief graphic symbol is 17 and the romance feels like YA; At that place are themes of abuse and some discussion of sex, but nothing graphic)
My rating:

From highly acclaimed, honor-winning author Christopher Meades comes a magical, provocative tale of forbidden love and 1 girl's struggle for liberation

Hanna has never been exterior her secluded community of Clearhaven. She has never questioned why her father has 4 wives or why she has 14 brothers and sisters. And in simply 1 week, on her eighteenth altogether, Hanna volition follow tradition and become the fifth married woman of a human being more than twice her historic period.

But just days before the wedding ceremony, Hanna meets Daniel, an enigmatic stranger who challenges her to question her fate and to follow her own will. Then her mother tells her a hole-and-corner--ane that could grant Hanna the freedom she's known only in her dreams. As her world unravels around her, Hanna must make up one's mind whether she was really meant for something greater than the claustrophobic world of Clearhaven. But can she abandon her honey younger sister and the merely home she's always known? Or is there another option--one as well fantastical to believe?

With lush, evocative prose, Christopher Meades takes readers on an emotional journey into a fascinating, unknown world--and, along the mode, brilliantly illuminates complexities of faith, identity and how our origins shape who we are.

I recollect I actually liked this book.Okay, and so that might audio a bit odd, but the book itself is a flake odd, and I wasn't ever sure what I was reading. The book chronicles a immature woman who is trapped in a polygamous cult community. She is supposed to go the 5th wife of a much older human being very shortly. She is torn between horror at this thought and duty toward her family (her calumniating father is depending on her to bring the family out of poverty). In the meantime, she starts to fall for the son of i of the other men in their community. Unfortunately, the romance was a chip besides close to instalove for me, so I wasn't particularly invested. And even though I understood that Hanna had loyalties to her family, especially her mother and slightly disabled sister, I all the same couldn't aid just just desire to scream for her to exit!

Just then, there's a bit of magical realism that's introduced, and the book got a whole lot more than interesting to me. I institute myself intrigued past this chemical element and trying to figure out if it was real or if there was some other explanation. I ended up liking the book a lot more during the 2nd half—both because I enjoyed the magical realism and because I started to develop a bit more sympathy for Hanna and her incommunicable situation.

***Disclosure: I received this volume from the publisher via NetGalley in commutation for an honest review. No other bounty was given and all opinions are my own.***

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My Heart and Other Black Holes by Jasmine Warga
Published by Harper Audio on February tenth 2015
Genres: Young Adult, Contemporary
Pages: 320
Narrator: Rebecca Lowman
Length: 8 hrs. 14 min.
Source: Library
My content rating: YA (Themes of suicide)
My rating:

Xvi-year-former physics nerd Aysel is obsessed with plotting her ain death. With a mother who can barely look at her without wincing, classmates who whisper behind her back, and a father whose trigger-happy crime rocked her pocket-size town, Aysel is ready to turn her potential energy into nothingness.

There's only one problem: She's not sure she has the courage to practice it alone. But once she discovers a website with a section called Suicide Partners, Aysel's convinced she's found her solution--a teen boy with the username FrozenRobot (aka Roman), who's haunted past a family unit tragedy, is looking for a partner.

Even though Aysel and Roman have nothing in common, they slowly first to fill in each other's broken lives. But as their suicide pact becomes more concrete, Aysel begins to question whether she really wants to get through with it. Ultimately,she must choose betwixt wanting to dice and trying to convince Roman to alive so they tin can notice the potential of their energy together.

This is a gorgeously written and compulsively listenable novel about the transformative power of honey, heralding the inflow of an extraordinary new voice in teen fiction, Jasmine Warga.

I'll admit that I was a bit concerned when I started this book. I was nervous that it was going to somehow romanticize suicide pacts, just thankfully, that wasn't the example. It starts out on quite a depressing notation, as you might imagine. Aysel is sure that information technology would be best for everyone if she merely disappears—she doesn't want to take the run a risk that she might be similar her father and someday crack under the pressures of life and hurt someone. Roman is living with the heavy brunt of guilt. They've both decided that life isn't worth living, and they're ready to end things. Aysel figures a partner volition assistance her get through with it, and Roman simply needs assist to set his suicide. But the more fourth dimension Aysel and Roman spend together, the more than Aysel realizes that she might non be seeing things conspicuously.

The book explores dark truths about how painful circumstances can atomic number 82 to feelings of helplessness and depression, but it also shines a spotlight on promise—and on the fact that those painful circumstances don't have to ascertain u.s.a. or overshadow the possibility for good in our lives. I was occasionally nervous about where the book was going, but I was very happy with the message in the end.

I should mention that there was a slight element of "love cures depression" to this story, but this was a case where the characters were sad because of horrible things that had happened in their lives notdue to an actual mental disease necessarily—and while it ends with promise, everything isn't "fixed" past the end. I wished we'd had a chip more closure with some elements of the story (subplots), but I concluded up really enjoying this i overall.

The narration for this volume was great, likewise!

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That's it for now! Take you lot read whatsoever of these? What did you recollect?

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