OSBR #50: Ink Exchange by Melissa Marr
A cursed tattoo makes for both a good story and an extended metaphor on sexual assault and recovery in this book that’s a little darker – and, in my opinion, […]
OSBR #49: Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr (YA)
I’d recommend this story for Marr’s slyly feminist re-imagining of both an old fairy tale and the “young woman choosing between two guys who like her” storyline.
OSBR #42: Darkbeast Rebellion by Morgan Keyes.
This book about a headstrong girl who challenges her society’s cruelty ends with a bizarre popularity contest in which she has to make the rebellion’s town-members like her.
OSBR #39: The Keepers’ Tattoo by Gill Arbuthnott
In a European archipelago, in what might be the future or the past or an alternate dimension, a young woman discovers her hidden ancestry, what is has to do with […]
OSBR #38: Kill Me Softly by Sarah Cross
This book might make it onto my as-yet-unwritten list of favorite urban fantasy novels if I stop being aggravated at the YA novel trend toward creating settings of unquestioned wealth/teen […]
OSBR #36 & #37: Cinder and Scarlet by Marissa Meyers (Books 1 and 2 of The Lunar Chronicles)
Cinder is a futuristic version of Cinderella, with a cyborg heroine, a down-to-earth prince, and an evil Lunar queen, but I never got really excited about it. I’m glad I stuck […]
OSBR #34: The Book of Blood and Shadow by Robin Wasserman
The Da Vinci Code meets the bluster and turmoil of high school relationships in this YA novel (and it’s better written than Dan Brown’s, too.)
OSBR #28: Incarnate and Asunder (first two books in the Incarnate trilogy) by Jodi Meadows
Meadows sets up a fascinating world where the same people have been re-born again and again for thousands of years, and then spends all of her time assembling another awful […]
OSBR #21: Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor
I enjoyed the blue-haired, artsy-ninja heroine of this young adult novel enough that, even though the plot somewhat suffers from the inclusion of a devil/angel, Romeo/Juliet, Twilight-style relationship, I still […]
OSBR #6: Wither by Lauren DeStefano (YA)
As I meandered through this future world where a virus causes all young people to die by age 25 and young women are regularly kidnapped as bridal-slaves for wealthy families, […]