This is the story of Circe, a minor Greek goddess, who was the daughter of Helios who was god of the sun, and Oceanus goddess of fresh water, both of whom were titans. Circe is a nymph. Oddly Circe wasn't born with any special powers and she grew up in her father's palace. Most were...

Tiny Pretty Things is a story that centers around three young ballet dancers who attend the elite American Ballet Conservatory (ABC) in New York City. Gigi, June and Bette are all vying for the lead roles in the school productions. Getting the lead roles is a big deal because those dancers are sometimes picked to...

This story takes place in Panga, where robots achieved sentience, but instead of a Matrix-type world, they just withdrew to live among themselves. The people live in a post-factory age, now low tech where people are taught to respect the environment. The main character is Dex, is a non-binary "tea monk." As a monk, their...

I Am Margaret Moore by Hannah Capin was an unexpected favorite. The story is written in a first person stream of consciousness type of narrative that can be hard for an author to pull off and hard for readers to follow. In this mystery Margaret, or Mar, is a girl who has attended a naval...

This is the story about Jess Morgan, a high school girl who is on a journey of self discovery. She is a writer, but keeps most of her work to herself. Jess finds it hard to believe that she is the girlfriend of a star on the football team Ryan and he chose her. This...

This is the story of Andromeda, or Andi, who is a debtera, an exorcist hired to cleanse households of the Evil Eye. Andi grew up on the street and was raised by a famous debtera named Jember. He was very strict with her. Andi has been hired by a very wealthy young man, Magnus, whose...

Verpertine is the story of Artemisia, a troubled teen who was possessed as a child. Her parents thought she was wild and unrulily and locked her in a shed, and there she stayed until a nun, one of the Gray Sisters, found her. The spirit was exorcised and Artemisia was taken to live at a...

Some Fine Day by Kat Ross is a dystopian story that takes place in the future. As a result of global warming massive hurricanes, or Hypercanes, arose that were so big they destroyed everything in their path. Unlike the hurricanes we are used to, these never dissipated. Consequently, people had to move underground and several...

Spells Trouble by P.C. and Kristin Cast begins in the 1600s where we meet Sarah Goode and her daughter. They are locked in the town jail because Sarah has been accused of being a witch. The twist, however, is that unlike most who were accused of witchcraft, Sarah actually was a witch, and a pretty...

The Sapiens Run Trilogy is the story of a teenager named Cass that takes place in the year 2055. She grew up in a Sapiens enclave, a community for people who do not believe in cybernetic enhancements. People who get such enhancements are called "subs," to imply they are subhuman. Her father is an important...

Wow. I really enjoyed A Dark and Hollow Star. A nice surprise. This is an Urban Fantasy about the Fae community in Toronto and conflicts between the Mortal and Immortal realms. One of the main characters is Nausicaä, who was one of the three Furies. "Was," because she was exiled from the Immortal realm for...

Children of Eden is a dystopian novel about a future time when the earth has suffered the Ecofail and the remainder of humanity lives within the EcoPanopticon, an artificial bubble city largely run by computers. Here humanity must stay until the earth is able to heal itself. The main protagonist of the story is a...

I Come with Knives starts without any preamble. We are thrown into a flashback or telling of something that happened in the past. At first I was a bit surprised and I was scrambling to remember the characters from the first volume. I had been nine months since I read Burn the Dark. Then as...

Spoiler warning - this review contains details about the story that are revealed hundreds of pages in. The book is that slow. Carve the Mark is the first in a two book series by Veronica Roth, the author of the Divergent series. In the book two peoples share a planet. The Shotet are a warrior...

The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams is a story about Kyra, a girl who is 13 and lives in a polygamous sect in Utah. Her father has three wives and she has 20 brothers and sisters. She loves her mother and father and siblings and has grown up in a sheltered environment where there is...