Book Review: The Veils of Valoria.

Book 35 of 2022.

The Veils of Valoria (Book One) Written by Kirsty F. McKay.

**I received a free copy of this book from Voracious Readers for an honest review.**

It took me a while to warm up to this book, however once I did I could not put it down. It is the story of two different worlds and stories that come together for the combined prophecy. There were lots of aspects that I have not read before, and that I really enjoyed.

I loved the spiritual guide for the humans, and Bessie. There were so many awesome moments. I did find that probably for the last third of the book I skipped over the story of Kane and focused on the story of Finn as I found this way more interesting.

I thought that perhaps the pace of the two viewpoints was slightly off, but other than that the writing was brilliant and the story fantastic. I genuinely look forward to teh second book.

Mrs K

Genre: Speculative Fiction, Voracious Readers, Kirsty F McKay, Veils of Valoria, Fantasy, phrophecy, book review, Mrs K Reads,

Book Review: The Virgin Paige: My 12 Months a Troll

Book 34 of 2022

The Virgin Paige: My 12 Months a Troll. Written by  Maria Wallingford.

I received a free copy of this book through Voracious Readers Only in exchange for an honest review.

My initial thoughts on this book were that I did not like the writing style, it is very much a train of thinking monologue. However I did find that once I put it down I was still thinking about it quite a bit. Which to me is the sign of a good book.

Overall this book was a good premise but it was hard to follow, hard to get into the writing style. However I will say that I think Paige was a real character, she was genuinely trying to figure out who she was and how she fitted into the world, which is of course an important part of the coming of age journey.

Even as an older reader there were many things I could relate too, something that struck me early on was the idea of the Virgin Paige – I know as a teenage girl I used to absolutely collect notebooks but never write in them because I was alwyas worried that my ideas were somehow never worthy of the paige. Which kind of tied in really nicely with what the book was about – the worthyness of ideas.

Overall while I liked the concept of this book, I found it hard to follow and keep up, the writing style making this quite challenging.

Mrs K

Genre: Maria Wallingford, Coming of age, book reviews, Voracious Readers only, The virgin Paige, My 12 months as a troll, Mrs K reads, Book reviews, contemporary, fiction, social media, young adult, teenage fiction,

Book Review: Yusef Azeem is not a Hero.

Book 33 of 2022

Yusef Azeem is not a Hero. Written by Saadia Faruqi.

Wow! So I saw this book, and the start of the blurb read

What’s you name?” came the dreaded question.

For a split second, Yusuf thought using an American version of his name. Joseph? Jow? How hard could it be? After all, Kamran had managed the transformation into Cameron in fifth grade without any trouble. It was the first day of middle school. He could do this, if he wanted.

No. Abba always said, “Be proud of who you are. Be proud of the name and everything that comes with it.” He took a deep breath and said, enunciating each syllable clearly, “Yusuf Azeem, sir.”

Yusuf Azeem Is Not a Hero is a poignant look at the impact of 9/11 on Muslim communities in America. This book encourages self-examination and delves into ways to deal with prejudice around us.

I really enjoyed this book and devoured it in one sitting. It was so relevant, and so amazing. I remember when 911 happened I was in my final year at high school and we watched it on TV before school that morning. It was a huge impact, but of course living in NZ there was very little fall out for me from it.

What I had never considered until some literature recently about the impact of the immediate day to day racism in the communities for people. I had also never really considered the fallout from this even that continues 20 years later.

This book, was a non judgemental look at what happened to people in the small town, and how they can overcome and stand up for the prejudice that they see around them.

Much like with Firekeepers Daughter – this book was everything that we want our young adult fiction to be. It offers ideas that go far beyond the simple ideas of the text, and challenge us to think very clearly about the world that we live in and the changes that we can make.

Mrs K

Genre: Middle Grade, Children’s fiction, Teenage fiction, Young Adult fiction, realistic fiction, fiction, youg afult, historical fiction, contemporary, academic, school, religion, family, book reviews, Mrs K Reads,

Book Review: The Runaways of Haddington Hall

Book 32 of 2022

The Runaways of Haddington Hall. Written by Vivian French.

I was really excited about this book, grabbing it somewhat impulsively from a libary quite some distance from home. This book disappointed me, not necessarily because the book was not good but because the book was so not what I expected.

Don’t get me wrong – I am well aware that I should not be judging a book by its cover, but based on the cover, the blurb and also the title I thought that this book would be more fantasy based which would be about the misadventures of the children who escaped Haddington Hall. To be honest I was definitely thinking more like Morrigan Crow.

However this book was not like that at all – it was instead a much more serious book which was about people being taken advantage of and further than that the ways to overcome a variety of oppression within society. It was about strong characters who stood up when they saw what was happening and decided that it was not quite right.

My overall feeling about the book was more about my expectations than the actual final book.

Mrs K

Genre: Speculative fiction, book review, Mrs K Reads, Middle Grade, Children’s fiction, fiction, The Runaways of Haddington Hall, Vivian French,

Book Review: Guard Your Heart

Book 31 of 2022

Book 5 of the YOTO Carnegie Shortlist 2022

Guard Your Heart. Written by Sue Divin.

So for me one of the really interesting things about this book was that it was a modern book that still showed a lot of the struggles between northern ireland and Ireland. This was fascinating to me, as someone who travelled to these areas just before the pandemic hit, I had not realised that it was so much still an issue.

The book starts incredibly powerfully, with a couple of different instances which really make you see what people are dealing with and how people get by.

Then the story progresses and you feel desperately sorry for Aidan as he tries so hard to be better, to be the change he wants to see and to be someone different, all the while sacrificing himself and what it is that he actually wants. Then you see the contrast between him and Iona.

Although I honestly think that my favourite character may just have to have been Iona’s dad. The honesty and rawness of his realisations were something else!

Overall I do not think that this is my favourite book of the shortlist so far, but it is one that I pleased that I read.

Mrs K

Genre: Sue Divin, Guard your heart, family, Young Adult, Contemporary, Fiction, Romance, Teen, Irish literature, YA Contemporary, Carnegie Shortlist 2022, book review, Mrs K Reads,