Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older.

This book is: different in a good way.
Other elements: family legacies, street art, Brooklyn, art, how race affects personal identity, magic in the real world.
Read it: if you like the idea of magical that works through the art on the streets of NYC.
Overall rating: 7/10

I really enjoyed reading this book. I love the idea of a kind of magic that works through art, and the background of Brooklyn was a great contrast to how many magic-at-boarding school novels I’ve read (not that I don’t love magic at boarding schools, but it’s nice to have a change sometimes).

At the end Shadowshaper, once I paused to think things through, I realized I wasn’t quite sure how some of the plot elements fit together. I also found the ending to be rather sudden. Fantasy novels often have some degree of “and then the fantastic mysterious forces interfered!” in the climax of the story, and this one did that just a liiiiiiittle too much for me. I needed a bit more of a logical framework to believe fully in the magic that was supposed to be happening. I was left with a small, lingering “wait,what?” feeling that the story didn’t resolve for me.

The author is also a man, and the protagonist is a teenage girl. This worked for me for almost the whole book, but there were one or two parts when the character didn’t quiiiiite ring true for me. Mostly when she was having teenage angst-ey moments. And when the boy she was dating complimented her belly fat.

Despite those minor elements that didn’t work for me, the concept behind Shadowshaper is really cool, and it had a bright, fresh feeling that’s been lacking in other urban fantasy I’ve read recently. If urban fantasy – magic that happens in the real world – is your jam, then Shadowshaper is worth your time.

My recent reads have all come from the suggested reading list for Book Riot Live, an upcoming and-sure-to-be-magnificent convention by Book Riot, the website I write for in my other life, is putting together for November. It’s going to be a great event: if you’re a book-lover in the NYC area, you should check it out.

For more reads anytime, check out my Amazon recommended books store. This post contains affiliate links. 

Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll.

This book is: sharp and engaging.
Other elements: school violence, rape, eating disorders, the effect that violence has on the people who experience it.
Read it: if you like meaty, gritty, well-written stories.
Overall rating: 7.75/10

I hate recommending books based on Gone Girl because I feel like that gives people very specific expectations. But it’s undeniable that the main character in Luckiest Girl Alive shared some of the characteristics that I found interesting in the femme fatale of Gone Girl. However, I found Luckiest Girl Alive‘s Ani to be a much fuller, more human character than Gone Girl‘s scheming Amy.

When you meet Ani, she’s a high-powered NYC magazine writer and bride-to-be on a hardcore diet for her wedding to a rich man. As the reader follows Ani through her life, it becomes clear that there are powerful and violent events in her past, events that have shaped the complicated person that she’s forced herself to become.

As the reader learns more about Ani’s life – why she’s being asked to appear in a documentary about her high school, why strangers sometimes recognize her name – Ani begins to question what she’d always thought was true about her past and it starts to affect the carefully constructed identity she’s living in her present.

This novel is dark, as I said – there’s sexual violence and violence involving teenagers. But I found it to be well done and fascinating from a character development standpoint. I only know one other person whose read it, and she didn’t like it as much as I did.

Has anyone out there read Luckiest Girl Alive? Talk to me. What did you think of it?

My thanks to Simon & Schuster for providing me with a copy of Luckiest Girl Alive for review consideration.

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