Tag: short story collection

REVIEW: Together, Apart

REVIEW: Together, Apart

Posted on by Jaymie

[I received an electronic review copy of this book from Netgalley and Delacorte Press in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.]

Summary and Review

This is a collection of 9 romantic stories for young adults about love in the time of Covid and quarantine.

“Love, Delivered” by Erin A. Craig
A family’s move is accelerated due to the pandemic as Millie’s scientist parents are needed at their new jobs ASAP. Thanks to the pandemic, her folks have to report to work right away, but their groceries won’t be delivered for a few days. This leaves Millie ordering a lot of pizza from a local joint – and getting to know the delivery guy.

This was ADORABLE! So sweet. I thought it captured the early days of the pandemic well as people tried to adjust to new masking and distancing requirements. Loved this! ♥♥♥♥½

“The Socially Distant Dog-Walking Brigade” by Bill Konigsberg
After several awkward encounters with a group of dog walkers, a cute boy invites Kaz to join them.

This is a far more serious, angsty story than the first one. Kaz has been burned in relationships before. He’s introverted and shy to begin with, but now he’s also protective. But slowly Daxton gets him to warm up. This was good, although halfway through the book it became clear that the cozy, squishy stories were more my speed than the more serious ones in general. (Language, LGBTQ+, TW: Cutting) ♥♥♥

“One Day” by Sajni Patel
A girl in search of peace and quiet while in lockdown with her family in their apartment starts communicating with a boy playing guitar on his balcony, after she throws her shoe at him and he refuses to return it.

This was another cute, flirty story – right up my alley. I loved how all of these stories so far have taken a different angle on the lockdown, in this case, a small apartment with four people at home. ♥♥♥♥

“The Rules of Comedy” by Auriane Desombre
Harper gets her older sister’s help with a funny TikTok video to get her crush’s attention. But when it works, Harper thinks she’s not funny enough on her own to keep up with the conversation.

I enjoyed the relationship with the sisters here. For me that was the more interesting, and in the end, satisfying, relationship addressed in the story. Covid was the context for why Harper was connecting with Alyssa through devices rather than at school in person, but otherwise it wasn’t a big factor in this story. (LGBTQ+) ♥♥♥

“The New Boy Next Door” by Natasha Preston
Quinn’s new neighbor is gorgeous – and brooding. But she’s determined to break down his walls and get to know him – from a safe distance.

This was delightful! The flirty banter is exactly what I love in stories. I also enjoyed the glimpse at how the fictional neighborhood was dealing with Covid and staying connected. ♥♥♥♥½

“The Green Thumb War” by Brittney Morris
Two teens growing herbs on their balconies devise a contest to see who can do something amazing with them.

This starts with antagonists, not unlike “One Day,” although with a cat and dog fight as well as an injury instead of just a thrown shoe. But I enjoyed the awkward, quirky characters and their back-and-forth banter. The set up for this one was clever, as was the resolution. ♥♥♥♥½

“Stuck with Her” by Rachael Lippincott
Allie’s roommate, Mia, is making her crazy, eating all her food and playing loud music at 3am while they are stuck together in lockdown.

This may be the most relatable regarding Covid for me, reading this in December. This shows some of the wear and tear of constant togetherness, the question of whether things will ever get back to normal, etc. Allie’s coming out story is heartbreaking. The description of her panic attack felt realistic, and the way Mia cares for her and responds is endearing. The coming out story and panic attack could be triggering for some readers. (LGBTQ+) ♥♥♥♥½

“Masked” by Erin Hahn
When Covid cancels prom, Gray decides to use the material she bought to make her dream dress to make masks instead. She meets Jude on a neighborhood app when he reaches out to have her make masks for his uncle’s business.

This is my favorite story from the collection! Not a surprise because I already love the author. There’s a fun music component to this, like in a lot of her work. I was devastated for Gray to sacrifice her dress and her dreams for prom. I felt like the author did a great job demonstrating that piece of the early part of the pandemic. That she used her sewing skills and her precious material to do something to help others was endearing. And then she met Jude. *swoon* ♥♥♥♥♥

 

This whole collection is a delight. Don’t miss this one!

Rating: ♥♥♥♥½*

*♥♥♥♥½ = I loved it! Would re-read.

SATURDAY SMORGASBORD: Amish Christmas Twins

SATURDAY SMORGASBORD: Amish Christmas Twins

Posted on by Jaymie

[I received an electronic review copy of this short story collection from Netgalley and Kensington in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.]

“The Christmas Not-Wish” by Shelley Shepard Gray

After a series of foster homes, Jemima and Roy move in with Will and Elizabeth Ann right before Christmas. The kids’ last foster home was bad, and now they are gun-shy. When they find out EA is pregnant, the kids are afraid they’ll have to leave and take their chances on another foster home.

This was delightful! Nothing terribly surprising, but completely heartwarming and sweet. I loved the kids, and Will and EA worked well through the inevitable bumps along the way as they all adjusted to one another.

 

“New Beginnings” by Rachel J. Good

Elizabeth is a young widow trying to get through the holiday season. Then the hard season is compounded by an injury. But it does bring Luke into her life more often as he comes to her aid. Both are filled with regrets over what might have been.

This was a more painful, but also more precious and heart warming story. Lots of faith components in this one as both Elizabeth and Luke seek God for their struggles. It’s a toss up which of these two stories I liked more. Both were terrific. (CW: grief/loss, teen pregnancy)

 

“Twins Times Two” by Loree Lough

The Briskey twins – Paul and Peter – and their cousins the Hartz twins – James and Thomas – are known around town as Double Trouble. At almost 14, their antics are getting more serious all the time. Playing chicken with a bull is the last straw. As punishment, their parents require them to work for Jubal on his dairy farm to make up for the trouble they have caused.

This one was more slow moving than the other two stories. The love story shared equal time with this redemption story with the four boys. I found that story, with the teens, an absolute delight. Sadly, the romance really didn’t grab me at all in this one. Every scene with the boys, though, made this a worthwhile read. (CW: grief/loss)

 

Overall, the collection of stories here is lovely. I would read all three again. If you love Amish fiction, don’t miss these Christmas stories that all involve twins in one way or another.

Rating: ♥♥♥♥*

*♥♥♥♥=Great!

BONUS REVIEW: The Eighth Detective by Alex Pavesi

BONUS REVIEW: The Eighth Detective by Alex Pavesi

Posted on by Jaymie

[I received an electronic review copy of this book from Netgalley and Henry Holt and Co. in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.]

Summary

Years ago, mathematician Grant McAllister posited a math theory about literature, specifically murder mysteries. He privately published the theory along with a book of seven short mysteries to illustrate his ideas called The White Murders.

Julia Hart is working for a small publishing house that wants to re-publish the book for a wider audience. So she’s tracked Grant down and traveled to his seaside cottage to talk through the stories in the book in order to prepare them for publication.

Except Julia has noticed some oddities and inconsistencies in the stories. She’s hoping Grant will be able to explain them to her. Maybe they are the innocent errors of a writing novice. Or maybe there’s a connection to an unsolved murder from over 20 years ago.

Review

The book launches with the first short story in The White Murders before introducing readers to Julia and Grant in chapter 2. The rest of the book toggles back and forth between the short stories and Julia’s work on the manuscript.

Honestly, I felt the short stories were more engaging than the larger story of the novel which is the Grant/Julia piece. If I was rating the short stories alone, I’d give them 4 stars. But the Julia/Grant portion was maybe a 2 star read on it’s own. So my overall rating for the book is an average of the two.

The Julia and Grant story never clicked for me. There wasn’t a lot of time in the book for readers to really get a feel for the characters. It’s a lot of Julia pushing and probing for information Grant doesn’t want to give and him telling her how little he remembers of the stories in the book. And the math pieces of this – Venn diagrams, sets and subsets – felt so basic (as far as “math” goes). Even the application to mysteries – killers and suspects and victims and detectives – wasn’t much of a revelation. It was a stretch for me to think this work was anything “significant” enough to warrant a first book much less a republication. There ARE twists to this part of the book, but they weren’t enough to elevate my enjoyment of it, and in some ways they undercut my enjoyment of the short stories. That said, I DID enjoy the short stories, though some were more violent/gruesome than I usually read.

This one is a mixed bag for me. Come for the short stories. If they work for you, awesome. I think you can easily just read the short stories – they are basically every other chapter of the book. If you like the short stories enough to stick around for the larger story, good for you. You will have some twists and turns in store. (LGBTQ+)

Rating: ♥♥♥*

*♥♥♥ = “Solid/Fine”

REVIEW: Star Wars The Clone Wars: Stories of Light and Dark

REVIEW: Star Wars The Clone Wars: Stories of Light and Dark

Posted on by Jaymie

[I received an electronic review copy of this book from Netgalley and Disney LucasFilm Press in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.]

Summary

These are 11 short stories from the Star Wars Universe that take place during the Clone Wars. The stories are told from the perspective of one character. Every story is adapted from one or more episodes of the Clone Wars TV series – 3 from season 1, 1 from season 3, 5 from season 4, and 2 from season 5.

Review

When I started the first story, “Sharing the Same Face,” I was struck immediately by how familiar everything seemed. Sure enough, after some research on Wookiepedia, I turned on the first episode of the series, “Ambush,” and followed along. Yes, there were extra bits of Yoda’s musings on clones and individuality, and their engineering to follow orders. But essentially the story was one I had watched in the show.

I read through six of the eleven stories this way – looking for an episode with a similar descriptions and watching along while reading – before realizing that every short story was based on the show. (Readers can look up the title of each short story on Wookiepedia, and it will list the episode(s) involved.) That’s when I stopped reading.

Somewhere along the way I missed that these were adaptations rather than original stories. And I was disappointed.

Taken alone, the adaptations are good. There’s a reason Star Wars is such a huge property. These are great characters and stories. And I liked the tidbits of personal content or thought processes that were included. But for the stories I read, the new, original material was only a small bit of the whole story.

Readers who are Star Wars fans who like novelizations of the movies might enjoy these retellings. There are plenty of very positive reviews for this book. I don’t know if readers who aren’t somewhat versed in the Clone Wars show will be able to follow all of the stories here because some reference characters, places, and events that aren’t in the main 9 films. But readers who already love the show may enjoy this look at those stories. There is an audience for this book.

That audience is not me, though. I wanted new stories with my favorite characters. Or new stories that endeared other characters I didn’t already love to me. I wanted to see the Star Wars Universe expanded. It’s why I read Star Wars and Star Trek novels. If I had bought this and then discovered it was only adaptations of episodes I have already seen (some multiple times), I would have felt betrayed.

For readers who understand what this is, and who are eager to read it, I think this could be a 3 or 3.5 star book – or more. I personally didn’t find a lot of new insights in this. So for me it was a 2 star read, which means “finished (or not), but didn’t like, not a good fit”

Rating: ♥♥

REVIEW: Voyagers: The Third Ghost

REVIEW: Voyagers: The Third Ghost

Posted on by Jaymie

[I received an electronic review copy of this book from the publisher – Dancing Lemur Press – in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.]

Summary and Review

This is a collection of short stories for middle grade readers. There’s a mix of genres – fantasy, science fiction, history.  As examples, there’s a story with ghosts, some with time travel, one with a character on a slave ship, and another with nature-based magic. It’s an eclectic mix so readers are likely to find a few stories that click for them no matter what genre they prefer.

I think the format of short stories can be especially helpful for developing readers. Shorter stories means a shorter time commitment. For the longest time the books my students all wanted to read were 400 page behemoths. My poor kiddos who weren’t strong readers languished for weeks trying to make some progress on those longer books. A collection of short stories might have allowed them a sense of accomplishment when they finished some of the stories. They can also be great for classroom use as a group of students could all read one story fairly quickly and move on to discussion, where reading whole novels takes longer.

“The Orchard” was probably my favorite of the stories – I liked the characters. “The Blind Ship” was good and also horribly sad. I liked that it was based on a true story and that the actual journal the character was keeping was used to fight slavery. “The Third Ghost” is the story that has stuck with me the most since I finished reading.

Rating: ♥♥♥

BONUS REVIEW: A Very Scalzi Christmas by John Scalzi

BONUS REVIEW: A Very Scalzi Christmas by John Scalzi

Posted on by Jaymie

[I received an electronic review copy of this book from Netgalley and Subterranean in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.]

Summary and Review

A collection of seasonal essays and short stories from John Scalzi. My favorites include:

  • A hilarious Thanksgiving prayer of gratitude,
  • A hilarious conversation with a bitter month of November, feeling crowded out by December and its festivities,
  • A hilarious interview with Santa’s Reindeer Wrangler, and
  • A hilarious list of script notes on the Birth of Jesus (written to “Matt and Luke”).

This is a short collection – around 15 pieces. They’re mostly quirky and often funny. These four listed above had me cackling aloud. I enjoyed the science fiction references as well as the riffs on the Biblical accounts of Jesus’ birth.

If you are looking for humor in your holiday fare, don’t skip this one! (Although, the $40 price tag seems steep for a print copy of such a small collection. I noticed this week that the print copy is no longer showing as an option. $6 for an e-book version is a much nicer price.)

Rating: ♥♥♥♥

REVIEW: How to Fracture a Fairy Tale by Jane Yolen

REVIEW: How to Fracture a Fairy Tale by Jane Yolen

Posted on by Jaymie

[I received an electronic review copy from Netgalley and Tachyon Publications in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.]

Summary

A collection of 28 fractured fairy tales as well as notes and poems from the author. Some of the material also ties back to the author’s other works. Reading this gave me the same feelings I felt when reading Tales of Beedle the Bard by JK Rowling. You might not know the origins of all the stories, but there is a tone and cadence to them that feels familiar anyway.

Review

It’s difficult to summarize a collection of short stories, at least for me. I find that I enjoy some of the stories and others don’t click. It’s rare for me to love everything in a collection like this. My favorite fairy tales in this collection are:

Snow in Summer – A twist on Snow White with a satisfying ending I really enjoyed.

One Ox, Two, Ox, Three Ox and the Dragon King – A story of three brothers on a quest to save their mother.

Slipping Sideways Through Eternity – A time travel story that shifts from modern times to the Holocaust.

Sleeping Ugly – A Sleeping Beauty-esque story starring a beautiful princess with an ugly personality.

I love fractured fairy tales in general and have enjoyed many books in that style. This was an interesting collection of them, although many weren’t my style. This could be a great resource for writers, writing students and writing classrooms as well as for poetry work. I wish the collection had been arranged so the notes and poems were with their fairy tale counterpart rather than having the fairy tales at the front of the book and all the notes at the back. I also found that I enjoyed this more when I read only a couple fairy tales at a time and then let the stories sit in my mind for awhile rather than trying to read through the whole book as you would a novel.

Rating: ♥♥♥