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You Must Not Miss by Katrina Leno

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I had such mixed feelings about this one. It started out strong, foundered in the middle and I didn't like the end at all. In some ways it doesn't quite match the blurb and the title makes no sense whatsoever. (though I don't blame the author for that one. She might not have been the one to choose it).

Magpie Lewis starts off sympathetically enough. Her life has imploded. She caught her dad cheating on her mother with her mother's sister (and the family believes the aunt about the events of that day), her mother reverted back to her alcoholism as a result, her older sister has cut her out of her life for her own mental health and abandoning Magpie to deal with their mother's drinking until Maggie is 18 and can leave too. She got drunk herself at Brandon Phipp's party and did something to cause her to do something that made her best friend Allison to stop talking to her (Brandon is Allison's boyfriend so you can figure out what this is)

She's left making new friends with the other h.s. outcasts: Clare (whose father committed suicide) Luke (gay), Ben (trans masc and Magpie's potential love interest) and one more whom I've already forgotten because basically the book did too. Honestly these were good friends (expect Clare constantly insisting they all had to go to Brandon's next party even knowing what happened to Magpie the last time)

The only adult on her side is her english teacher who keeps giving her more changes to not fail his class and the school year than Magpie probably deserves. Her mom is busy drinking herself to death and her dad is out of the house. Her grandma and the rest of mom's family has cut her out.

Magpie has been writing in her yellow notebook about the town of Near which unlike the town she lives in Farther, is kind and empty of people and no one will ever abandoned her there. And then it becomes real. Her guide to this place is Hither a shape shifting speck of ether? Magpie's power? and that's where this begins to bog down.

Frankly the cover and the blurb talks about female rage (I'd like to think any child with all this going on would be enraged regardless of gender) and we don't really see that in believable ways or maybe it's just me. This rage seems to be let me fail out that'll teach them and let me be disengaged with my new friends because they're not the amazing Allison.

Magpie is actually rather unlikeable. I might be sympathetic toward her but I don't like her or what she does, especially at the end when that rage is first turned against her teacher who had the audacity of enforcing consequences for her lack of actions. The ending is weird, confusing and anticlimatic which is all I can say without spoiling it. The story was interesting but I also found it pr oblematic



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Ghostlore Vol. 2 by Cullen Bunn

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This was an interesting evolution of where the first book left off. It felt better paced than the first volume (but still we're not really in Harmony's head enough. While I don't need the story to dwell on it, it seems so unlikely she's spared zero thought to the car accident that killed her mom and brother while she was driving)

Harmony is half mad with all the ghosts trying to tell her a story and the first half of this volume revolves around that. She is found and taken in by others who can also hear the ghosts and try to help them. THey live communally on a farm and Harmony finds a measure of peace there until someone sends people there to force them to work for him or else.

The second half revolves around her father Lucas who is trying to find Harmony. He too hears the ghosts and also runs across the group trying to strong arm the ghost-sensitive into working for him (to do what we're not entirely sure but it has something to do with the mysterious 'the storm.') The group Lucas deals with has no subtly whatsoever, even less than the ones after his daughter. They straight up murder an entire diner to get his attention and that's when we can see what Lucas can do at this point.

I'm still with the mixed feelings here. It's interesting enough but on the other hand I'm glad I'm getting this from the library and not my own wallet.



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