Twelve year old Daisy Tanenbaum is sent to live in Paris with her cool code breaker aunt, and gets embroiled in a spy caper involving the Queen’s Diamonds. Daisy in Exile is very much targeted to the middle-grade crowd, and includes an entertaining series of hijinks as Daisy and her Parisian friends — a cat burglar from the wrong side of the tracks named Sief and a beautiful, stylish teen named Nina — race around the city and through the sewers to escape Russian spies.

The first book in the series was written as a pitch for a Disney Channel show, and I can definitely imagine Daisy on the small screen. The danger is lighthearted, the adults are almost unbelievably naive, and the mystery of the secret code and the diamonds are almost secondary to the romp around Paris. It reminds me somewhat of the Mary Kate and Ashley books I read when I was younger, or the Lizzie McGuire movie, and will likely appeal to middle grade readers.

There are middle grade books that also appeal to adult readers, but this one didn’t quite make the cut for me. The story is fun and whimsical, the plot hits all the notes of teen action adventures, and it was a solid read overall, but it never quite hooked me. The writing is strong enough, but the plot twists felt predictable, and despite Daisy’s mad dash around and underneath Paris, it never quite felt urgent. Possibly, younger readers will enjoy it more. I do really like the Paris descriptions, and the beginning in particular really made me want to visit Paris.

One note of warning is that this book has much smaller font than what I would expect for a story for younger readers. I don’t need to read large print books, but I found it a physical strain at times to read this one, though I admit that may have to do with my expectations around fonts for this kind of story. If I were to try another Daisy Tanenbaum book, I may consider the ebook version instead.

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Thank you to the author for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Warbringer is a YA take on the Wonder Woman origin story, which for the first half of the book, feels like Bardugo just took the story from the 2017 movie and changed up a few details. In this book, Diana is 17 rather than in her 20s/30s, the mortal she has to save is a teenage girl rather than a World War I pilot, and her venture into the human world is with present day New York City rather than early 20th century England. But pretty much the entire first half is exactly the same.

I realize that this book should be judged as a completely separate entity from the movie, and that superhero stories are rebooted and retold multiple times, even within the comics universe. The problem is, this book’s retelling felt stale. I like the added diversity (the teenagers whom Diana befriends are persons of colour, and one of them is also bisexual and plus-size), but for the most part, I felt like I’ve seen this story before. I could even predict the kind of jokes Bardugo was going to make about Diana’s fish-out-of-water naivete in our world. (e.g. A teenage boy goes skinny dipping, and Diana takes off her clothes as well and wonders why the other teenagers react differently to her nakedness than to the boy’s. The naivete is understandable, but the humour is flat.)

The story picks up in the second half, once the Warbringer mythology has been established and the characters are off in full quest mode. The central human in this story is a teenage girl named Alia Keralis, who is a direct descendant of Helen of Troy. Like Helen, Alia is a Warbringer, which means that her very presence incites discord and strife, and her birth signals that a war is to come. When Diana takes her to Themyscira to save her life, the presence of a mortal causes the island and its Amazons to sicken and proximity to the island causes Alia to sicken. To save both Alia and her people, Diana must take Alia to Helen of Troy’s resting place to be purified in a spring before a particular phase of the moon on her 17th year (basically a week or two in the book’s timeline). Alia’s bathing in the spring before the deadline will remove the Warbringer in her and end the Warbringer line altogether, which will end wars for all time. The problem is, that solution isn’t very well known in the mortal world, whereas there are people who know that killing Alia before that same deadline will stop at least whatever specific war she’s destined to bring for her generation. Alia’s brother Jason and their friends Nim and Theo join Alia and Diana in the quest to get Alia to the spring safely before the deadline.

I like the Warbringer mythology, and I particularly like the point another character makes that conflict is in the very fabric of humanity, and simply solving the Warbringer issue isn’t likely to end all wars. I personally wish this thread had been delved into a bit more, as with the movie, where Diana has to learn that war isn’t as simple as she’d like to believe. I don’t think she quite got that opportunity here.

The quest half of the novel is entertaining and fun to read. There are the usual elements of romance, bickering, family issues, and coming to terms with who you are. I like the friendship between Diana and Alia and the deepening understanding of Jason’s overprotectiveness towards his sister. Still, I felt Nim and Theo had so much untapped potential as characters. It seemed like a lot of their actions throughout the quest had to do with their proximity to Alia’s brand of discord or their being possessed by some spiritual being, and I thought it was when they were simply human and dealing with stuff that they shone the most.

I also enjoyed learning more about the Amazons and Themyscira. For example, I had no idea until now that the Amazons were once mortal women warriors who died in battle and were taken to Themyscira as a reward for their bravery. I’m also glad the Aamzons here are more diverse than in the movie — they come from various countries in the world. Much as I like the Warbringer mythology and the human characters, I personally would have preferred a prequel to the movie, an exploration into 17 year old Diana’s life in Themyscira and some kind of conflict on the island before mortals ever crossed that barrier.

Still, the story, particularly the second half, was an entertaining read. The book cover art is absolutely beautiful (kudos to the artist Jacey), and the hardcover includes a fold out poster with a beautiful coloured artwork of a teenage Wonder Woman by Afua Richardson.

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

I grew up on Nora Ephron movies. You’ve Got Mail remains one of my favourite romance movies of all time — how often have I dreamed of being Kathleen Kelly, with a charming little bookstore of my own and being swept off my feet by a man who put me out of business but is really the sweetest guy with the biggest heart. (I’m not even being ironic here. Losing a tiny corner bookshop seemed a small price to pay for Tom Hanks falling madly in love with me and giving me a job at his bookstore empire.) Even at the height of instant messaging, however, I could never quite pull off messages like “I love the smell of a bouquet of pencils,” which I figured was the reason the people I spoke to online were never as charming as Tom Hanks.

Nora Ephron defined my idea of romance. Even as my classmates and I swooned over Nicholas Sparks’ stories, it was Joe Fox who remained my ideal man. And if I couldn’t have a bookstore empire, I wanted a man with a son who loved him so much he’d find his father the love of his life over the radio. I wanted this man to love his son back so much, and to be so open to the possibility of love, that he’d meet a complete stranger on top of the Empire State Building for the chance of a fairy tale ending. Even as I grew old enough to realize that romance in real-life doesn’t quite have the soft lighting nor swelling soundtrack these movies promised, these movies continued to tug at my heartstrings, and remain among my notion of romantic ideals.

I’ll Have What She’s Having, by arts and entertainment writer Erin Carlson, is about Nora Ephron’s three iconic films (When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail) and how they influenced the romantic comedy genre. Reading this book took me back to my starry-eyed teen years. I loved learning about the stories behind-the-scenes of these three films, and I loved learning more about the life of such a powerful, influential woman in the arts. Carlson writes about the sexism Ephron faced, and the pressures of being one of the few powerful women in Hollywood. She delves into the process by which these films were written and produced; I was fascinated by how the ideas of these films may have come from other writers, but it was Ephron’s comedic genius that elevated them to the classics they’ve become. Carlson also touches on Ephron’s childhood, and how her comedy was influenced by her alcoholic mother’s adage that “everything is copy.”

I particularly love that Carlson delves into how ground-breaking and revolutionary Ephron’s brand of romantic comedy is. Unlike many other movies of the time, which deferred to the preferences of the largely male industry, Ephron’s movies kept female fantasy front and centre. Her movies are defiantly aspirational and tailored for female audiences, and therefore became iconic for generations of women movie goers. For example, in When Harry Met Sally, director Rob Reiner thought he was telling Harry’s story, with Billy Crystal having a bigger role and more lines, but Ephron slyly sneaks in subtle touches that gave Sally a more nuanced character arc, and Meg Ryan picks up on these pieces and steals the show. The movie’s most iconic scene, from which the book takes its title, is all about women’s experience of sex, and the fact that most women have faked orgasms turns out to be as much a revelation to Reiner and the other men on set as it was to Harry.

Even Tom Hanks is very much a woman’s fantasy of the ideal man — caring, sensitive, a single dad who manages to keep a neat houseboat with twinkling fairy lights. Hanks advocated for more traditionally masculine dialogue, and a male production designer stubbornly insisted that a single dad would have a messy houseboat. Ephron fired the production designer and while she incorporated Hanks’ suggestions, her heroes remained highly sensitive and caring versions of the alpha male. Similarly, You’ve Got Mail maintained its Jane Austen view of romance, maintaining its belief in MFEO (made for each other) in a market that included cynical romances like There’s Something About Mary. Carlson’s book details how Ephron championed this brand of romantic comedy, and how her success defied the odds.

The book could have used better editing. The perspective within chapters switched suddenly between Ephron’s life, the behind-the-scenes of her film, and the lives of film stars Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, and the transitions were random and scattered. At various points, I was just getting into the details of how a film was being developed when the next few paragraph inexplicably talk about an unrelated story like Meg Ryan’s romance with Dennis Quaid before returning to the story about the film. The book seemed a bit unsure throughout about what it wanted to be about, whether its focus was Ephron’s life, the films or their stars. Better editing could have clarified that and pulled the story together more tightly. I read an uncorrected proof, so it’s possible (and I hope this is the case) that the published version has smoother transitions; even section breaks would have helped.

The book also presumes a great deal of knowledge on the reader’s part about the actors’ lives; for example, Carlson writes about Meg Ryan not liking something because it was too much like a character on As the World Turns without explaining Ryan’s connection to the soap opera. It also presumes a great deal of familiarity with the films; I found the chapters about You’ve Got Mail to have the smoothest flow, and I wonder if it’s because I was most familiar with this film and therefore picked up on the various references most easily.

Overall, I absolutely loved this deep dive into the romantic comedies of my childhood. The book gave me a better appreciation for Ephron’s talent and legacy, and made me long to re-watch these classics.

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Thank you to Hachette Book Group Canada for an advance reading copy in exchange for an honest review.