Fierce Kingdom has a tense premise — gun men take over the zoo right before closing time — but most of the execution was less nail-biting thriller and more a depiction of how fiercely a mother would protect her son. It’s not that the danger didn’t exist but that the focus was more on how Joan kept Lincoln safe as they hid from the bad guys.

I love that the question of how far a mother would go to protect her son wasn’t just the usual one of how much she’s willing to sacrifice herself but also how far she’s willing to suppress her own humanity and instinct for kindness. Joan makes some tough decisions to protect Lincoln (a particularly damning one involves a baby), but we can understand why. At one point she thinks that to protect her son, she’d ‘splatter brains’, and many readers can likely think of a loved one they’d go to that extent for.

I’m also glad that Joan’s devotion to her son is tinged by a touch of resentment at having to protect him. Often, she thinks of how much easier it would be for her to escape/stay safe without a 40 lb 4 year old at her hip demanding food and toys, and I like how realistic and human this feels. She isn’t just a heroic mom who does super heroic feats, but rather also a woman who wants to survive herself.

The secondary characters Mrs Powell and Kailynn added texture to the novel. I wish we’d learned more of their back stories and spent more time with them as they’re at least as interesting if not more so as Joan and her son. More importantly though, it’s Joan and Lincoln encountering them that makes the pace pick up considerably in the latter half. As the bad guys’ plan nears its completion and things like Mrs Powell’s age and Kailynn’s nervous chatter heighten the danger for Joan and Lincoln, the book becomes more like a traditional nail-biter and difficult to put down.

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Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

In Shade, the Changing Girl, an alien takes over the body of a high school bully in a coma and learns how utterly despised this girl is. It’s part of DC’s Young Animal series, which gives a fresh take on classic DC characters.

The best part of this book is the artwork. Marley Zarcone’s psychedelic panels are absolutely beautiful and create the impression of a feverish dream. The story itself feels a bit thin and unnecessarily complicated, but the artwork alone is worth obtaining a copy of this book.

The story started off really confusing. An bird alien named Loma who idolizes a poet named Rac Shade puts on his colourful cloak, and it somehow allows her to possess the body of a young girl, but also will eventually cause her to go mad. Bad guys on her home planet want the coat back and so capture her best friend (who is secretly in love with her) to track her down. The story is based on a character called Shade, the Changing Man, and likely readers who are familiar with his story would appreciate the references a lot more. I was just confused, and it took me a while to figure out what was happening. For example, the cloak makes its wearers go mad, and both the bad guys and Loma’s best friend are very concerned about its impact on her sanity, but I can’t quite figure out how long it’ll take for her to be mad, or if the way she acts in Megan’s body is already symptomatic of her madness.

The heart of the story lies in the human elements. Loma inhabits the body of a girl named Megan, who was the bitchy head of a high school clique. Megan’s classmates react mostly in dismay that she seems to have recovered from her coma, and Loma-as-Megan needs to figure out how to navigate this world being so utterly despised. In that way, the story is a wonderful metaphor of high school — how does it feel to realize how unpopular you really are?

A lot of high school stories that deal with being unpopular drive a sharp divide between the popular and the unpopular girls, so it’s a bit of a karmic twist to have someone who started as a powerful figure suddenly have to come face-to-face with the consequences of her actions. If the story had been about Megan coming to terms with this reality, it would have been an absolutely emotional, heart-wrenching tale. Unfortunately, this story makes it clear that Megan’s spirit experiences no remorse for her actions nor growth from her experiences, and it’s only Loma’s alien possession that accounts for her apparent change of heart. I figure Megan’s spirit is kept evil because it’s Loma who’s the heroine of this series, but I couldn’t help thinking that Megan deserved her body back, even if it meant she’d end up dead. The story does somewhat address this moral ambiguity, with Megan basically saying it’s her right to inhabit her body for better or worse, but it’s done only in passing and I hope future volumes delve deeper into that.

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Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Marriage of a Thousand Lies is a moving, beautifully written story about family and love, and the difficult choices we must make to honour both. The narrator, Lucky, is gay, as is her husband Krishna. Theirs is a marriage of convenience, appeasing their families’ marital aspirations for their children while allowing both the freedom to continue enjoying same-sex relationships on the side.

Lucky is forced to reexamine her life when she learns that Nisha, her childhood best friend and first lover, has announced her engagement. Family expectations forced them to break up when they were younger, but now that they’re adults, Lucky feels compelled to save both Nisha and herself from loveless marriages and pursue their own happy ending. But does Nisha even want to be saved?

Marriage of a Thousand Lies is a beautifully written book that just draws you into Lucky’s life and immerses you in her world. More than the love Lucky feels for Nisha, it’s the love she feels for her family that reverberates from the page, as well as the painful tension between what Lucky wants and what her duty to her family dictates. I absolutely love the nuances in the relationships between the characters; Sindu’s writing makes Lucky feel real, and we want her to find happiness.

I also love the character of Lucky’s husband Krishnu. While Lucky scoffs at her grandmother’s desire for them to have a baby, Krishnu admits it’s something he’s been considering. Unlike Lucky, who’s longing to free herself from the constraints of tradition, Krishnu is perfectly happy with their arrangement, and values the stability afforded by the facade of their marriage as much as he does the freedom to go out partying with other men. There’s also a very real power dynamic in play here, as his residency in the US is dependent on his marriage to Lucky, and so his desire to remain married to Lucky is also in part a desire to remain in America.

The book presents no easy answers, but rather gives us family and tradition and love in all its glorious messiness. It’s a fantastic debut, and with so many contemporary LGBTQ books with diverse characters on my radar being YA, this adult novel about a lesbian of Sri Lankan descent is a much welcome addition to my shelves.

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Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.