When it comes to running 1600 meters, Sunny Lancaster is a winner. Wih-winner. And he makes his dad, his coach and his teammates proud. Unfortunately, he’s also bored with running. What he really wants to do is dance.

Jason Reynolds’ Sunny is fantastic. His story of a boy who feels pressured into doing something he doesn’t enjoy is sure to resonate with middle grade readers. I love that both Sunny and his dad are driven by their love for his mom (who died when Sunny was born) — Sunny’s dad wants him to run because his mom was a runner, and Sunny wants to dance because it’s in dancing that he feels closest to his mom. I love the story about his mom, and how Sunny and his dad have to deal with their grief over her death.

I also love that Sunny’s coach made the effort to think outside the box in finding a compromise between Sunny’s love for dancing and Sunny’s being part of the track team. No spoilers, but I thought what the coach recommended is genius. Too often, I’ve seen YA books and movies where the adults are inflexible and deliver ultimatums, forcing the child to choose between pleasing their parents or following their dreams, so it was great to see that these choices aren’t always an either/or, all-or-nothing dichotomy.

Finally, I love the format. Reynolds tells Sunny’s story completely in diary entries, and does a great job in making Sunny’s voice real. Sunny’s love of music and rhythm comes through in the cadence of his writing, and he occasionally inserts beats and sounds. I love the way Sunny describes the way he moves, as he really makes us feel the connection between what he does on the track team and the dance moves he wants to make. Sunny comes alive through his voice, and I can imagine his voice resonating with young readers who also love music and dance.

+

Thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for an advance reading copy of this in exchange for an honest review.

Iain Reading has an interesting concept: a heroine who is a Nancy Drew-type teen who can fly planes like Amelia Earhart and goes on Indiana Jones-type adventures. Unfortunately, Kitty Hawk and the Curse of the Yukon Gold felt bloated and too much of an info dump to live up to its promise.

In this first of Kitty’s adventures, a summer trip to study humpback whales turns into a gold rush type adventure when Kitty stumbles upon a group of gold thieves who take her hostage and force her to help them transport the gold over the border. As they encounter adventures on the journey, Kitty comes to discover that her kidnappers may not be the bad guys after all.

It’s hard to pinpoint an audience for Kitty Hawk. The story and style feel very middle grade — the narrative is fairly simplistic and there’s never any real sense of danger. Even when Kitty encounters kidnappers and bears and strenuous physical labour, you know her spunk will get her through. However, the length and format of the story feel more YA / adult, and there just isn’t enough of a story to merit it.

The book’s biggest flaw for me was the massive info dumps that get inserted every few chapters. Kitty flies in search of humpback whales and we get a fully detailed run-through of her research plan. Kitty has dinner with a local family and we get an entire chapter about the gold rush. When Charlie (the leader of the kidnappers) tells Kitty a brief overview of something that happened in their past, Kitty and the other kidnappers complain that he needed to go into more detail (I disagreed), and so we get an entire chapter about events that happened in the 1800s that culminated in the story Charlie originally told. These digressions do often play a part in the larger story, but take far too long to tell, and sound like history lessons more than anything else. The format of the book doesn’t help — the small font and justified margins make the info dumps feel even more like a history textbook.

This book just felt long. I’m glad I finished it because the second half is more interesting than the first, but I also ended up skimming a lot. Kitty’s parallels to Nancy Drew are clear — she has Nancy’s red hair, spunk, and can-do attitude with practically any situation. But her story just isn’t as interesting.

+

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

Paul Reeves is an immigration lawyer in New York City with a passion for old maps. When he discovers his beautiful and married next door neighbour Jennifer Mehraz in the arms of a handsome man who isn’t her husband, Paul is unwittingly drawn into a complex scheme of murder and obsession. Jennifer’s husband Ahmed, a wealthy Iranian financier-lawyer, puts out a hit on his wife’s boyfriend, and the job eventually makes its way to a bloodthirsty Mexican biker who used to work for El Chapo and who is determined to find the source of the job and demand a higher payday.

Paul wants to help Jennifer, but more importantly, he wants to own an old map he discovered at an auction which the current owner wants to sell for much higher than Paul can afford. This obsession over the map will eventually play a role in the larger scale scheme with the Mexican assassin.

You Belong To Me kept me reading but never really grabbed me. It reminded me of old school Hollywood action movies where the men are muscled and own guns and the women are beautiful but don’t do too much. It’s an entertaining enough story and, on the big screen with a tub of popcorn and an action star being chased by stunt men, it may be exciting. As it was, it felt solid but not very memorable. I’ve heard it described as a ‘noir’ thriller, which could explain the stock characters, but it lacked the edge, distinct voice and atmosphere that I like about Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammett’s books.

Minor spoiler (but hopefully vague enough that it isn’t spoilerish): The one thing that did evoke a reaction in me was the part about Ahmed’s citizenship status. I know he’s a bad guy in this book, and he did a lot of bad things that make him deserve whatever he gets. But some of his characterization and the things that happened to him didn’t quite sit right with me. Much of the book built up Ahmed as being super powerful and untouchable because of his wealth, whereas Jennifer and her blond soldier were the poor unfortunates in danger. I admit my own personal bias here, but all I kept thinking was that in present day America, no matter how much wealth you’ve amassed, with a name like Ahmed Mehraz, you can still never be secure about victory in the courtroom. And when his past is dredged up and his citizenship status becomes an issue, it was a stark reminder of how tenuous a right citizenship is.

Overall, I think the book just felt stale to me. We’ve seen all of this before: the racialized villains, the beautiful damsel in distress, the ordinary hero and the beautiful women utterly in love with him. And the book itself just didn’t feel compelling enough to make it all feel fresh.

+

Thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.