young adult Archives - The Gilmore Guide to Books

January Reading Wrap-Up

Catherine — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 08:28:54 +0000

Wrap-up is the perfect word for this January. One, it is COLD here in Seattle. Flannel sheets cold which makes for cozy reading. Two, for the first time in a very long time a month has felt like it lasted a year. I went from my normal head shake over “where did this month go” […]

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All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir

Catherine — Tue, 09 Jan 2024 08:46:01 +0000

Salahudin and Noor have been best friends since the first grade when Sal was the only person who could communicate with Noor, newly arrived from Pakistan. This friendship, set in a small California town, is the cornerstone of All My Rage, a powerful novel about coming-of-age in a place where you’re always the outsider. When […]

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Muse of Nightmares

Catherine — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 08:14:59 +0000

I don’t often get to write about books in a series one right after the other because there’s usually wait time until the next one comes out, but not today. I’m thrilled to be back with Muse of Nightmares, the final book in Laini Taylor’s duology about a fantasy world of gods and humans. I’m […]

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Strange the Dreamer

Catherine — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 08:59:44 +0000

The unconscious mind is open terrain—no walls or barriers, for better or worse. Thoughts and feelings are free to wander, like characters leaving their books to taste life in other stories. Terrors roam, and so do yearnings. Secrets are turned out like pockets, and old memories meet new…The only rule is that there are no […]

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Check & Mate

Catherine — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 08:58:56 +0000

Mallory is only 18 but she already has an unwanted reputation. She’s the only person to have beaten Nolan Sawyer, the 20-year-old World Chess Champion who hasn’t lost in over three years. Some would be thrilled, but Mallory hates chess and hasn’t played since that infamous game. This is the board upon which Ali Hazelwood […]

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True Biz by Sara Novic

Catherine — Fri, 17 Mar 2023 07:20:14 +0000

So much of today’s zeitgeist revolves around the much needed recognition of vulnerable communities, but what about acknowledgement for the community that can’t hear? Sara Novic explores the realities of deaf life in her riveting novel True Biz. Set at the River Valley School for the Deaf boarding school, the novel encompasses the lives of […]

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Daughter of Smoke & Bone

Catherine — Mon, 13 Jun 2022 04:17:41 +0000

I don’t know about the rest of you, but it’s requiring more and more effort to calm my reading brain. Between watching the real footage of the January 6th insurrection and trying to negotiate a cross country move I was as finicky and unhappy as a baby with colic. Nothing helped—not bright and shiny or […]

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Firekeeper’s Daughter: A Novel

Catherine — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 05:49:45 +0000

As a biracial member of the Ojibwe tribe Daunis Fontaine lives in the uncomfortable in-between space of not belonging to any one community. What bought her acceptance from everyone were her incredible skills as a hockey player. After graduating high school she was looking forward to a bright future as a player at the University […]

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Under the Whispering Door

Catherine — Thu, 23 Sep 2021 04:30:05 +0000

I wasn’t planning on it, but this is going to be a week of reviewing fantastical fiction. On Monday I discussed Cloud Cuckoo Land and today I’m back with Under the Whispering Door by T.J. Klune. It’s the story of Wallace Price, an astute and successful lawyer, who also happens to be a fairly terrible […]

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The House in the Cerulean Sea

Catherine — Mon, 11 Jan 2021 05:05:11 +0000

Often when it’s time to begin a book review I try and draw from the facts—plot, place, biographical details. Because I read so much (and don’t have the discipline I should) specifics tend to blur by the time I sit down to write so in starting there I bring the book back to me. All […]

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