River Readers

Scarlet moves to Norway and gets bullied by Greta. Then her grandma gives her a red hoodie and when she zips it up she is transported to a Viking village being attacked by a dragon. 

This was a bit of a mess and didn't go together at all. Either there wasn't enough of the story to make sense or there were too many ideas or something. I didn't really like it.

I liked this teen novel about becoming a Southern belle debutante. I have to admit that when I was of a certain age, the idea of being a debutante would have been a dream come true. Now however, I have to admit that it would not be a very fun situation. On the other hand, these four girls are no wilting blossoms and can stir up trouble with the best of them. Sawyer is looking for her father, but finds a hornets nest. When she does find the truth, she doesn't know what to do with it. Can't wait to see what happens next!

Ramona is a six foot tall lesbian with blue hair in her small town of Eulogy, Mississippi. She lives with her dad and big sister Hattie in a FEMA trailer they moved into after Hurricane Katrina and never left. It is the beginning of senior year and Ramona has plans to get out of Eulogy. Then Hattie gets pregnant and Ramona believes she has to stay and take care of her sister and future niece. Then childhood best friend Freddie moves back to town with his grandma and things go sideways for Ramona. Suddenly, she is having feelings for a boy!

This final book in the trilogy may have been my favorite. Petunia is no shrinking violet and I liked the added Red Riding Hood twist. It would be nice to know a little more about the other 9 sisters, but at least we get a glimpse in this one.

This was an intriguing story about a boy, his father and his baseball hero. Since I have always been a Cardinals baseball fan, I had to allow myself to internally root for a Cubs player, however, I did like the way this story played out. Not your typical John Grisham legal story, but well worth the listen.

Whatever happened to Calico Joe?

Alice and her mother Ella (real name Vanilla ugh!) have been on the run her entire life. They never stay very long in one place because bad luck always seems to find them. When Ella is kidnapped Alice decides she must find her grandmother's estate Hazel Wood. Grandmother Althea Proserpine is a reclusive author who wrote one book, Tales from the Hinterland. The book has a cult following and is extremely hard to find. Alice has only seen it once and never read it. So she teams up with schoolmate Finch who has read the book to find her mother and the Hazel Wood. 

This book was so good, that I read it again, actually, my husband and I took turns reading it to each other. My husband doesn't usually like fantasy, but this title was so well written, he enjoyed it tremendously. I was surprised at some of the things I missed the first time through (when I listened to it). GoodReads listed it as one of the top books of 2018 (actually it is on the top of several of their lists for 2018).

This was a really interesting collection of African American women biographies. They are each one page with an illustration. I was not a huge fan of the illustrations since they were all basically the same woman with different clothes. I wanted a bit more variety in the illustrations. The biographical information was good though.

This is P. Dj̀eli Clark’s debut novella, after having his writings appear in Daily Science Fiction, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly and Lightspeed and other publications. Born in New York primarily raised in Houston, he spent much of his formative years in Trinidad and Tobago. Clark brings a fresh look at New Orleans in this alternative history story.

**** Good old-fashioned detective story set on Mars.