Reviews written by Christina Franke, Staff

What I Liked: For those who don’t know, I have a degree in librarianship. Sadly, I hated my Master’s program, but you can call me “master” which is pretty cool. One of the only courses I actually enjoyed during my time in library school was on the history of...

What I Liked By far the best part of the Soul Screamers series in the first two books is the mythology. Rachel Vincent makes use of Celtic and other mythologies to devise a paranormal landscape not quite like any I’ve ever read about. There’s a depth and cleverness here...

Woohoo! A new Gene Luen Yang graphic novel! Basically, any time I hear about one, I’m really excited. The Shadow Hero is about a superhero, which meant that I was even more excited. I was right to be, because The Shadow Hero is fantastic. Of course, that’s expected from Gene...

What I Liked: The problem I had with most of the prior Stiefvater novels were the leads, who were basically the sort of people who murder banter. They bore me to tears. Cole and Isabel’s narration on the other hand crackles and pops with incendiary wit. They’re rough-edges, tremendously-flawed,...

What I Liked I cannot remember the last time a book made me feel so incredibly, incandescently, indescribably enraged. Seriously, I was filled with anger for most of the book. Loathing. Unadulterated loathing. Right now, I can see you looking at the rating and wondering whether I slipped up....

What I Liked: Despite the fact that Dissonance is almost five hundred pages, Dissonance kept my attention consistently. Considering that I’ve not been able to make it through some much shorter books, this means something. This book is parallel universe awesomeness. I liked it from the start, but the...

What I Liked: There is nothing like the right book at the right time. I mean, obviously, a good book is good whenever, but a good book just when you needed it? Bookish heaven. Magnolia is what I needed in this slumpish mood I’ve been in. I’ve been craving...

What I Liked: First things first, you should know that Lenore is one of my besties. I know some people make the decision not to officially review books by author friends because of conflict of interest and I totally respect that. Personally, though, I still want to be able...

What I Liked: Likely following in the trend of The Fault in Our Stars, Somebody Up There Hates You is about a romance between two teens in hospice. In case, like me, you didn’t actually know what a hospice is, I’ve learned that it’s where people are sent when...

What I Liked: One Death, Nine Stories didn’t really scream Christina book, but I couldn’t resist the premise of the anthology. It actually turned out to be much cooler than I was even expecting. I thought they’d be essentially companion stories by different people associated with the deceased. That’s...

What I Liked: What’s funny about Fiendish is that I was really tempted to DNF after the first chapter. I was confused and it didn’t make any damn sense. Plus, I’ve been DNFing left and right and that’s been working for me. However, I pushed on a couple of...

As it stands, I’d rank the When We Wake series very highly among the YA dystopian novels I’ve read. They’re very focused on the plot and world building, and, perhaps more importantly, they don’t follow the traditional YA path of revolution and happy ending. While We Run is a surprisingly...

What I Liked The Fourth Wish is a delightful, norm-smashing, humorous sequel and all people who enjoy a well-placed pop culture reference simply must read this series. There will be some spoilers for The Art of Wishing, so if you haven’t read that yet, just go do that. ...

What I Liked: I’d been reserving Shut Out for a rainy day. See, Kody Keplinger is one of those authors where not having any books left to read makes me feel a bit twitchy. What is life without any new to me Rainbow Rowell or Kody Keplinger or Courney...

What I loved: THIS is how you end a trilogy, my friends. Like a freaking BAMF. Seriously, I had my doubts going in after a favorite trilogy went down in a fiery mess of plotberg, but Dennard’s ending is more than I could have dreamed. It’s heartbreaking and beautiful...