Author: Tirzah Price

Set in a Western-inspired fantasy world, this book follows Violet, Aster, Tansy, Mallow, and Clementine, five young women who were sold to a Welcome House to be Good Luck Girls when they were just children. Aster has already been working a year when her younger sister Clementine has her first night on the job…and she inadvertently kills the man who bought her for the evening. Knowing that Clementine could hang for this, Aster is determined to break free and save her. But Violet, Tansy, and Mallow end up coming with, and now the five have to learn how to trust one another and use all of their skills in order to escape to freedom.

The world building, as I hinted above, is really excellent in this book. Davis portrays not a watered-down fantasy version of a western, but the harsh realities and injustices told from the perspective of five girls who have the least amount of power in this world. Aside from rough desert terrain, lawmen, and bandits, the girls must also contend with the spirits of the dead that roam the land and can kill them if they’re not careful, with the added complication of being marked by “favors”—magical tattoos that brand them as Good Luck Girls, and burn when covered. It’s enough to make most girls want to quit, but even when the odds are stacked against them, these five keep going. The book is action-packed and full of twists and turns as all five struggle to figure out how they’re going to get out of the Scab, aka the desert they call home, and keep away from the lawmen who are hot on their tails. Davis does an excellent job at coming up with high stakes situations and then upping the tension even more, leading to a nail-biting ending that, while complete for the moment, will have you clamoring for book two.

I also liked that this book is very diverse when it comes to race, sexuality, and class, and Davis does a great job of drawing out these nuances without making the book feel too heavy-handed or overtly an “issue” book. There is no sex or sexual assault on the page, but Aster in particular is dealing with the emotional fallout of having escaped forced sex work and while she doesn’t dwell on details, it can be difficult for her to process her emotions, which feels very realistic to her experiences. Davis is sensitive to all of this, and manages to balance these bigger emotional moments with enough fantasy adventure tropes so that the book doesn’t feel too heavy, but still genuine. I’d definitely recommend it to older teens and adults alike!

Rachel DeLoache Williams first met Anna Sorokin, who was going by Anna Delvey, in New York City. They traveled in the same social groups and eventually found their paths crossing and a friendship sprang up between them. Williams details how she and Anna became close: Going out to eat together, working out together, enjoying spa treatments…all of which Anna almost always footed the bill for. Rachel was impressed by Anna and her ambitions to open up an arts center, and was dazzled by her wealth. She was a junior employee at Vanity Fair, so while she had a nice job and was in proximity to wealth and fame, she didn’t have the kind of money that Anna threw around, and she enjoyed her friend’s generosity. She would occasionally get drawn into Anna’s personal drama, but that was nothing compared to what would eventually be the demise of their friendship: Anna invited her to a luxurious resort in Morocco, then left her footing the $60,000 credit card bill. When Anna ghosted Rachel without repaying her, Rachel went to the New York State Attorney’s office.

This is a fascinating memoir that definitely reads like fiction, so it’s no surprise to me that Netflix has a miniseries in the works (produced by Shonda Rimes, no less!). My big takeaway from this book is that you can know the major highlights of this story and think, “How can anyone be so gullible as to put tens of thousands of dollars on their own credit card for a friend who was clearly so sketchy?” But Rachel walks you through her story, and her friendship, and she doesn’t ask you to feel sorry for her, but she does want to show how easy it is to trust a friend, and how easy it is to want to help out that friend in a pinch. Not all of us would make the same choices that Rachel did, but I couldn’t help but feel compassion for the extremely awkward position she was put in, and the way that Anna so deftly manipulated the people around her to get what she wanted. As far as con artists go, Anna is certainly an interesting one, and I felt like this story just showed how much benefit of the doubt is given to wealthy people, or people presumed wealthy, which allows them to get away with so much. This is a good book if you want a stranger-than-fiction tale, and it dives into the messy landscape of friendship and betrayal.

In this contemporary retelling of Persuasion, Reyna has grown up at her family’s resort, the Plumeria, in Tobago. It’s been tough, though, since her mom died. Her dad doesn’t seem to be really invested in running the resort, the new manager wants to change everything, and all her friends seem ready to leave the island while Reyna’s own future is uncertain. Then, she gets the worst possible news: Aiden, her childhood best friend and one-time love, is returning to the island. Only instead of being the boy down the street, he’s coming back as a VIP guest, one-third of the hottest band making headlines.

As Reyna tries to ignore her feelings for Aiden, she dutifully shows his group around the island. But despite the time that’s passed, she can’t deny there’s a spark still there. Is it too late for something to happen between them?

There’s so much to love about this novel: the lush descriptions, Reyna’s emotional journey, the fact that it’s a beautiful retelling of an Austen novel that doesn’t often get its due. Reyna is averse to change thanks to her mother’s death, but she also struggles with the idea that she needs to be in control in all things. This results in her not always making the best choices, but throughout it all, Dass writes her in such a sympathetic way that the reader is always in her corner. She also balances the romantic tension that lingers between Reyna and Aiden brilliantly, adding in little snippets of flashbacks to help readers understand the depth of their one-time connection. I enjoyed the large group dynamics that are portrayed, as well. Aside from Aiden’s bandmates, they’re also accompanied by the sisters of Reyna’s brother-in-law, making for a large group that sometimes clashes in interesting ways.

I highly recommend this book for fans of Austen retellings, but also for anyone looking for a nice little vacation in book form! Bonus: The audiobook, narrated by Antonevia Ocho-Coultes is excellent!

When Ellie was a child, her mother took her out onto a frozen fjord in their home in Norway, and whistled at the northern lights before getting swept away. No one believes Ellie when she recounts this story, and now she’s a teen living in Cape Cod with her dad. When the northern lights appear in the sky one winter, Ellie whistles at them…and they return her mother to her. But Ellie’s mother isn’t as she remembered, and as more strange and magical events occur, Ellie becomes convinced that the only way to get to the truth about what happened all those years ago is to return to her first home in Svalbard and face the past.

This is a beautifully written novel about loss and longing, infused with magic on every page. Ellie relies on the stories her mother told her in order to maintain a connection to her, but as the novel unfolds and she looks more closely at these fairy tales and sees them come to life in surprising and frightening ways, she gets to see her mother from another perspective. I loved the fairy tale elements in this book (and when I say fairy tales, think more of the traditional, grim stories rather than Disney) and the beautiful settings. As someone who has grown up in parts of the world that sees serious winter, I think there’s wonder in winter and it’s not often that books reflect that beauty and the harshness in equal measure. I also really enjoyed Ellie’s relationship with her family—beyond her mom, she has a wonderful and caring father, and she also has a very complicated relationship with her maternal grandmother that develops beautifully over the course of this book.

This book will pull at your heartstrings, but I think it will also have readers wanting to believe in magic as well. There’s truly nothing else like it in YA at the moment, and that alone makes it worth picking up! Bonus: The audiobook narrated by Brittany Pressley was quite excellent!