Ricky Pine's Blog, page 72

Review: Dread Nation

Dread Nation by Justina Ireland
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I didn't have to wait as long for this latest Justina Ireland book as those who read her first two books pretty quickly when they first came out. Which, from what I'm seeing, weren't that many people - certainly not as many as there would be now that Ireland's given us her most commercially successful book yet, peaking at #5 on the New York Times YA bestseller list, if I remember correctly. And now those many people, myself included, h...

Review: Tyler Johnson Was Here

Tyler Johnson Was Here by Jay Coles
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Jay Coles may be young, but don't you dare count that against him. Not when he's got a debut novel so stark and powerful as this one. Cut from much the same cloth as All American Boys, The Hate U Give, and Dear Martin, Tyler Johnson Was Here brings Black Lives Matter to the forefront of YA once again. It's the story of two black boys, twins Tyler and Marvin Johnson, both very smart and very bright and very vivacious, but they're st...

Review: Frat Girl

Frat Girl by Kiley Roache
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

TW for this book: sexism, homophobia, racism, references to rape.

Working at the Stanford Bookstore, seeing this one on the shelves with all copies signed by Roache herself was enough to get my attention. Especially when I found out Roache is a Stanford student and is there any chance I could've greeted her at the store entrance and not even realized? Maybe. If so, it'd be a real honor to meet such a terrific author.

Frat Girl takes the reader...

Review: After the Shot Drops

After the Shot Drops by Randy Ribay
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Paired pretty closely with my first reading of All American Boys, this book is very similar in style, though centered on slightly different themes. There's not so much to do with police brutality here, and the two narrators are far more closely connected than Reynolds and Kiley's, being lifelong best friends...until now, when Bunny's transferred to a high-end Catholic private school and Nasir feels left behind. And that's just the...

Review: The Fates Divide

The Fates Divide by Veronica Roth
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Well, loyal Pinecones, the time has come for me to complete another Veronica Roth series, and while I'm not nearly as enamored with this duology as I was with the Divergent trilogy, I'm still at least reasonably satisfied with how The Fates Divide wraps things up. It's not without its problems, but it finally lets the ambitious visions of Carve the Mark see the light of day. Unless we're on planet Ogra, where the only light is biolum...

Review: Chainbreaker

Chainbreaker by Tara Sim
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The middle entry of Tara Sim's Timekeeper Trilogy takes the reader to India, an India still under British colonial rule, and also under the auspices of the clock towers...except the clock towers there are being attacked too, and strangely, there's no side effect of time Stopping in the process. So, naturally, Danny is sent to investigate, along with Daphne, who's white-passing biracial English-Indian (thus making this book #ownvoices for Sim)...

Avengers: Infinity War - "I Don't Feel So Good..."

***NO SPOILERS FOR INFINITY WAR, BUT SPOILERS FOR PREVIOUS MCU FILMS APPEAR WITHIN. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED: THANOS DEMANDS YOUR SILENCE.***
If you think the quote I'm using as the subtitle of this review is an indication that I didn't, in fact, like Avengers: Infinity War, you couldn't be more wrong. I'm just using that line because, while I can't explain the exact context of its delivery without a massive spoiler (and I have to cut out the name of the character to whom it's addressed, b...

Review: Gilded Cage

Gilded Cage by Vic James
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I managed to sleep on this one for quite a while after waiting for it to come out for a couple of years, mostly because my library couldn't be arsed to get it themselves and I wound up having to special order it from Sacramento. After seeing the sequel join it on the shelves at the bookstore, I decided to finally pick up Gilded Cage, but after all the Wattpad hype, unlike with Taran Matharu's Summoner series, I confess myself disappointed. Th...

Review: The Astonishing Color of After

The Astonishing Color of After by Emily X.R. Pan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was...long.

This book was...difficult to read.

That's not just because of the sheer Silvera-grade feels, but also because of the strange magic involved. Ascribing a genre to this book is very difficult, because it's not only got paranormal-type strangeness, but also just plain surreal fantasy. Magical realism, maybe? Well, maybe not for the purists who insist magical realism must be Latin American in origin, bu...

Review: The Bishop's Pawn

The Bishop's Pawn by Steve Berry
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Steve Berry's continuing his several-years-long hot streak of US-history-based conspiracy thrillers, now with one he claims he's had in the pipeline for a decade, but hasn't published till now because it'd be perfectly timely with the fiftieth anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination. I've heard a few of the conspiracies this book delves into before - like how J. Edgar Hoover was determined to out MLK's character flaws,...