Courtney's Book Nook

by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes      Vance is a quetzal shapeshifter who lives with the vampires of Midnight in the 19th century.  He has had everything he could want, but when a man visits the vampires and speaks with Vance, his dreamlike life starts to crack as Vance begins to question the actions of his beloved guardians and rulers of Midnight.      Vance has good conflicts, and even when he starts doubting, the vampires don’t change their characters.  The consistency is nice because it makes it harder for Vance and easier for the reader to understand him.  I did not like Vance as a character, though, and I felt that a lot of his thoughts and doubts were forced.  He would arrive at a state of mind suddenly and then sit there for a while instead of gradually coming to realizations, and, given what happened to him throughout the book, I’m not sure Vance really would have gotten to where he ended up mentally at the end.      Th...

by Vicky Alvear Shecter    Set in Pompeii just before the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, Lucia is about to be married off to a much older man so her father can get money for his gladiator school.  Just weeks before the impending marriage, however, Tag, one of her father’s slaves, returns from Rome where he had been studying medicine so he could heal hurt gladiators, and an old friendship rekindles between them.  The relationship blossoms into something more, but both Lucia and Tag know it wouldn’t be able to cross their class difference even if Lucia weren’t already engaged to someone else.      I liked the story and found that I was engaged in the characters and the story and wanted to know what would happen even without the element of Mt. Vesuvius adding the sense of impending doom.  Although I’m not an expert in Ancient Rome, from what I’ve read of other reviews, the book is historically accurate and should appeal to those interested in historical ...

by Terence Blacker      Efren is a rat living in the rat kingdom in the sewers.  When the king dies and new leaders are selected, they decide that humans are a bigger threat than they had previously believed and they decide to wage war.  Meanwhile, a human doctor who has been studying the rats decides that they are one of the biggest threats to humans, and he rallies the people of the city to attack the rats.  Then Efren and some human children meet, and both types of animals have to decide which side deserves their victory.      Efren was a likable character.  He noticed that he had differences, but he accepted them and still tried to serve his kingdom as best he could.  The children, Dogboy and Caz, both have interesting back stories and conflicts that they have to deal with.  Out of all the characters, only Efren, Dogboy, Caz, and two others really try to understand anything about the other species.  This helps flesh th...

by Chris Stuyk-Bonn       Whisper has lived in the woods ever since she was abandoned as an infant because of a disfigured mouth.   In her society, disfigurations are frowned upon, so she instead lives with a few others who were also abandoned and taken in by a man named Nathaniel.   The beginning is very expository because Whisper doesn’t talk much, and when she does, she whispers - hence her name - and the book takes a while for the book to get going.       After Whisper is taken away by the father who abandoned her then moved again to the city and forced to work to give her father money, the story picks up.   Whisper meets other characters who also have disfigurations and learns how to live with her own and use the talents she has to make a living.   I enjoyed the middle when Whisper was growing as a character and learning new things and the story was developing.   However, partway through, a doctor offered to fix Whisper’s disfi...