wrote_and_writ

Here is a synopsis from the publisher's website:

1426, Joseon, Korea. Hwani's family has never been the same since she and her younger sister went missing and were later found unconscious in the forest, near a gruesome crime scene. Years later, Detective Min - Hwani's father - learns that 13 girls have recently disappeared under similar circumstances, and so he returns to their hometown to investigate . . . only to vanish as well.

Determined to find her father, Hwani travels home to pick up the trail. As she digs into the secrets of the small village - and reconnects with her now-estranged sister - Hwani comes to realize that the answer lies within her own buried memories of what happened in the forest all those years ago.

Suspenseful and richly atmospheric, June Hur's The Forest of Stolen Girls is a haunting historical mystery sure to keep readers guessing.

I listened to the audiobook version of this, and I generally liked it. If I giving it a star rating, I'd give it 3 stars. The plot was really interesting. I was invested in the mystery and wated to know what happened to Hwani's father. As I listened, I found myself getting annoyed with Hwani. She is super impulsive and ... immature isn't quite the right word, especially given her relatively sheltered upbringing. Hwani says several times how her father or other men in her world said that she's smart and good at puzzles. However in the pursuit of her father's case, she ignores safety and established police protocol and plunges headlong into danger in ways that annoyed me.

Pardalita by Joana Estrela, translated by Lyn Miller-Lachmann:

16-year-old Raquel lives in a small town in Portugal, the kind of place where everyone knows everyone else’s business. Her parents are divorced and she’s just been suspended for cursing out a school aide asking about her father’s new marriage. She has two best friends, Luísa and Fred, but wants something more. Then, from afar, she sees Pardalita, a senior and a gifted artist who’s moving to Lisbon to study in the fall. The two girls get to know each other while working on a play. And Raquel falls in love.


Using a gorgeous blend of prose poems, illustrations, and graphic novel format, author and artist Joana Estrela captures the feeling of being a teenager in a way that feels gentle, joyful, and real.

Brooms by Jasmine Walls and Teo DuVall:

It’s 1930s Mississippi. Magic is permitted only in certain circumstances, and by certain people. Unsanctioned broom racing is banned. But for those who need the money, or the thrills...it's there to be found.


Meet Billie Mae, captain of the Night Storms racing team, and Loretta, her best friend and second-in-command. They’re determined to make enough money to move out west to a state that allows Black folks to legally use magic and take part in national races.


Cheng-Kwan – doing her best to handle the delicate and dangerous double act of being the perfect “son” to her parents, and being true to herself while racing.


Mattie and Emma – Choctaw and Black – the youngest of the group and trying to dodge government officials who want to send them and their newly-surfaced powers away to boarding school.


And Luella, in love with Billie Mae. Her powers were sealed away years ago after she fought back against the government. She’ll do anything to prevent the same fate for her cousins.


Brooms is a queer, witchy Fast and the Furious that shines light on history not often told – it’s everything you’d ever want to read in a graphic novel.

49 Days by Agnes Lee:

Day 1


Gotta get up. Gotta keep moving. This map – it says I have to cross over here. Wait, what’s that…?


And so begins a graphic novel story unlike any other: 49 Days. In Buddhist tradition, a person must travel for forty-nine days after they die, before they can fully cross over. Here in this book, readers travel with one Korean American girl, Kit, on her journey, while also spending time with her family and friends left behind.


Agnes Lee has captivated readers across the world for years with her illustrations for the New York Times Metropolitan Diary. Her debut graphic novel is an unforgettable story of death, grief, love, and how we keep moving forward.

The Boy From Clearwater, Books 1 and 2 by Yu Pei-Yun, illustrated by Zhou Jian-Xin, translated by Lin King:

Book 1

Taiwan, 1930s.


Tsai Kun-lin, an ordinary boy, was born in Qingshui. He grew up happily sneaking into the sugar cane fields reciting nursery rhymes he couldn’t understand, despite Japanese occupation looming over him. As war emerges, Tsai’s memories shift to military parades, air raids, and watching others face conscription into the army. After the war comes a new era under the rule of the Chinese National Party, and the book-loving teenager tries hard to learn Mandarin and be a good son. He believes he is finally stepping towards a comfortable future, but little does he know, a dark cloud awaits him ahead.


Taiwan, 1950s.


In his second year at Taichung First Senior High School, Tsai had attended a book club hosted by his teacher. This comes back to haunt him when he is consequently arrested on a charge of taking part in an “illegal” assembly. After being tortured into a false confession, he is sentenced to ten years in prison and eventually sent to Green Island for “reformation.” Lasting until his release in September 1960, Tsai, a victim of the White Terror era, spent ten years of his youth in prison, experiencing unspeakable horrors as well as unimaginable kindnesses. But he is now ready to embrace freedom.


For fans of Persepolis and March comes an incredible true story that lays bare the tortured and triumphant history of Taiwan, an island claimed and fought over by many countries, through the life story of a man who lived through its most turbulent times.

Book 2

After his imprisonment in Green Island, Kun-lin struggles to pick up where he left off ten years earlier. He reconnects with his childhood crush Kimiko and finds work as an editor, jumping from publisher to publisher until finally settling at an advertising company. But when manhua publishing becomes victim to censorship, and many of his friends lose their jobs, Kun-lin takes matters into his own hands. He starts a children’s magazine, Prince, for a group of unemployed artists and his old inmates who cannot find work anywhere else. Kun-lin’s life finally seems to be looking up... but how long will this last?


Forty years later, Kun-lin serves as a volunteer at the White Terror Memorial Park, promoting human rights education. There, he meets Yu Pei-Yun, a young college professor who provides him with an opportunity to reminisce on his past and how he picked himself up after grappling with bankruptcy and depression. With the end of martial law, Kun-lin and other former New-Lifers felt compelled to mobilize to rehabilitate fellow White Terror victims, forcing him to face his past head-on. While navigating his changing homeland, he must conciliate all parts of himself – the victim and the savior, the patriot and the rebel, a father to the future generation and a son to the old Taiwan – before he can bury the ghosts of his past.

Holds

• The Boy From Clearwater, vol 1/2 by You Peiyun (graphic novels about a boy growing up in Taiwan in the 1930's-1940's)


• 49 Days by Agnes Lee (a graphic novel about a Korean American girl who must travel for 49 days after her death until she can cross over)


• Brooms by Jasmine Walls (graphic novel set in a 1930's Mississippi where magic is controlled and only allowed to be used by certain people)


• The Queer Girl is Going to be Okay by Dale Walls (contemporary YA fiction)


• Pardalita by Joana Estrela, translated by Lyn Miller-Lachmann (contemporary YA fiction set in Portugal)


• Alebrijes by Donna Barba Higuera (middle grade speculative fiction)

Here is a synopsis from the author's website:

It is the eve of Earth’s environmental collapse. A single ship carries humanity’s last hope: eighty elite graduates of a competitive program, who will give birth to a generation of children in deep space. But halfway to a distant but livable planet, a lethal bomb kills three of the crew and knocks The Phoenix off course. Asuka, the only surviving witness, is an immediate suspect.

Asuka already felt like an impostor before the explosion. She was the last picked for the mission, she struggled during training back on Earth, and she was chosen to represent Japan, a country she only partly knows as a half-Japanese girl raised in America. But estranged from her mother back home, The Phoenix is all she has left.

With the crew turning on each other, Asuka is determined to find the culprit before they all lose faith in the mission—or worse, the bomber strikes again.

It probably wasn't the best idea to read this book as I prepare for another move, or as the world is Like This because this book made me so anxious! Not just because I was caught up in the mystery and wondering if the crew of the Phoenix would survive, but because the "dystopian" aspects really aren't that fictional -- environmental collapse? China-US war? 😬

While I'm glad that I read this book, I don't necessarily recommend it because I know who reads this blog -- y'all are way to anxious about the world in general, and this will only add to your fears. And those anxieties are totally justified, both for us and within the story! Kudos to Kitasei for really nailing the vibe because I definitely think the anxiety is crucial to the story. And without spoiling things, I felt that the story ended on something of a hopeful note for a story about a group of people who are on a one-way ticket away from home. If this sort of story is your jam, then I felt it was well-written and interesting, and I'd be happy to hear what you think about it. You can read the first two chapters here. For myself, I'm going to read a cozy mystery next!

Here is a synopsis from the publisher's website:

“Mothers fly away like migrating birds. This is why farmers have daughters.”

A fifteen-year-old teenager is the backbone of her small Midwestern family, budgeting the household finances and raising her younger brother while her mom, a talented artist, weaves beautiful tapestries. For six years, it’s been just the three of them—her mom has brought home guests at times, but none have ever stayed.

Yet when her mom brings home a six-foot tall crane with a menacing air, the girl is powerless to prevent her mom letting the intruder into her heart, and her children’s lives. Utterly enchanted and numb to his sharp edges, her mom abandons the world around her to weave the masterpiece the crane demands.

In this stunning contemporary retelling of “The Crane Wife” by the Newbery Medal-winning author of The Girl Who Drank the Moon, one fiercely pragmatic teen forced to grow up faster than was fair will do whatever it takes to protect her family—and change the story.

This little novella definitely packs a punch. I knew Barnhill as a Newbery-award winning author of The Girl Who Drank the Moon, but this book was shelved in the adult fiction section of my public library, and despite the teenage protagonist, it definitely feels more like an adult novel. It wasn't clear to me in the beginning that the narrator, who isn't named in the story, is telling the story twenty years after the actual events of the plot, but the nameless narrator and the fairy tale elements give this story a timeless quality. I sat down at a Starbucks and polished the whole thing off in an hour and a half. I heartily recommend taking the time to read this. It's a little heartbreaking, but it's well worth the time.

Here is a synopsis from the author's website:

Ghosts, a kidnapping, a crew of young detectives, and family secrets mix in this new standalone mystery set in the world of the bestselling Greenglass House, from a National Book Award nominee and Edgar Award-winning author.

Marzana and her best friend are bored. Even though they live in a notorious city where normal rules do not apply, nothing interesting ever happens to them. Nothing, that is, until Marzana’s parents are recruited to help solve an odd crime, and she realizes that this could be the excitement she’s been waiting for. She assembles a group of kid detectives with special skills—including the ghost of a ship captain’s daughter—and together, they explore hidden passageways, navigate architecture that changes overnight, and try to unravel the puzzle of who the kidnappers are—and where they’re hiding. But will they beat the deadline for a ransom that’s impossible to pay?

Legendary smugglers, suspicious teachers, and some scary bad guys are just a few of the adults the crew must circumvent while discovering hidden truths about their families and themselves in this smart, richly imagined tale.

Okay, first, if you haven't read Greenglass House, you're gonna want to take a break and read it immediately. It's one of the best books I've read. I picked it up at the Scholastic Book Fair at my last US school after a student told me it was one of her favorites, and I devoured it in like three hours. The world of Greenglass House is probably my ideal fiction world: a coastal town (non-specific North Atlantic in this case, although I would also accept Cornwall) with intrigue, old buildings, smugglers, adventure, etc. While I don't think I could participate in any dubiously legal shenanigans myself, I would love to own a cafe or bookstore in such a town. I would absolutely have a hidden room or passage behind a bookcase.