Fresh Reads, Honest reviews, Educator-approved
T. J. Klune’s Somewhere Beyond the Sea revisits Marsyas Island with tenderness and heart. Told from Arthur’s perspective, this emotional sequel explores identity, family, and courage in the face of oppression. It is a beautiful continuation of a world defined by love, empathy, and belonging.
Set in the eerie Ozark Mountains, When the Bones Sing follows Dovie, a teen from a long line of women who can “hear the bones of the dead.” When hikers start vanishing near her town, the local sheriff turns to Dovie’s strange ability to help find the bodies.
After the mysterious and grisly murder of her father, Marjan, an Iranian American teen, struggles to manage his struggling veterinary practice. When a stranger delivers a plane ticket to London and claims Marjan must tend to a mythical animal, she is thrust into a hidden world where griffons, unicorns, and other legendary creatures exist. A
Tavia is already at odds with the world, forced to keep her siren identity under wraps in a society that wants to keep her kind under lock and key. Nevermind she’s also stuck in Portland, Oregon, a city with only a handful of black folk and even fewer of those with magical powers.
Remarkably Bright Creatures, an exploration of friendship, reckoning, and hope, tracing a widow’s unlikely connection with a giant pacific octopus.