June Book Club Reviews
Shelf Awareness Book Club
Places We’ve Never Been by Kasie West
Norah hasn’t seen her childhood best friend, Skyler, in years. When he first moved away, they'd talk all the time, but lately their relationship has been reduced to liking each other’s Instagram posts. That’s why Norah can’t wait for the joint RV road trip their families have planned for the summer.
But when Skyler finally arrives, he seems...like he’d rather be anywhere else. Hurt and confused, Norah reacts in kind. Suddenly, her oldest friendship is on the rocks.
A summer spent driving across the country leads both Norah and Skyler down new roads and to new discoveries. Before long, they are, once again, seeing each other in a different light. Can their friendship-turned-rivalry turn into something more?
Places We've Never Been is an iconic best-friends-to-lovers novel with hardships and laughter throughout the winding road of the book. Most of Kasie West's YA romance books are centered more toward tweens and younger young adult readers, so at times, I wasn't as interested in the plot because I wasn't the target audience. However, the book was very well written, and I found I had a smile on my face almost the entire time while reading.
Norah, the main character, and Skylar, her old best friend, reunite for the first time in years, and it is not exactly how she pictured it. Norah has exciting plans for the RV trip, but they are quickly shot down when Skylar starts treating her like a contagious disease, and he can't wait to escape. The two once best friends' interactions are filled with tension and awkwardness, leaving you with more questions than answers, especially with Skylar's cold and curt responses when Norah desperately tries to get him to open up.
Upon meeting Skylar, I thought he was an absolute jerk, and I dreaded reading 200+ pages about his interactions with the sweet but slightly odd main character. I especially didn't want Norah to fall in love with someone like him. Still, as the book continued, the details about Skylar's personality slowly started to fall into place, and suddenly, everything made sense. Obviously, I can't explain why he went from jerk of the year to boyfriend material in a few short weeks because that would be major spoilers, but Skylar quickly became one of my favorite characters with his small one-liners, his family guy personality, and devotion to Norah.
Most of the characters were likable and had an edge of humor, but I didn't connect with any of them on a personal level. All of the characters were pretty surface-level, with only a bit of depth. However, I can see how many people would relate to Skylar with the pressure he deals with from his dad or Norah with wanting to do something that people find silly and childish, especially for a girl. Norah sometimes annoyed me, but I realized that is just a part of her quirkiness, just like how Skylar shuts people out when he is hurt. At times, Norah's best friend infuriated me, and I couldn't tell if she was a walking red flag or just had no filter because she broke girl code on several occasions, but luckily, Norah made her grovel a little to fix the friendship.
The romance portion of the book wasn't super intense, which I was okay with since this is a YA book. There was no build-up of tension that was so suffocating that you couldn't breathe until the characters kissed or dramatic declarations of love that made you melt. Instead, it was a sweet, cozy little romance that made you giggle and wish guys like this were everywhere in the world. However, with the cozy, sweet romance comes the secondhand embarrassment. There were a few instances between Norah and Skylar that left me incredibly frustrated because they were both being petty because they hurt each other and then it backfired. Or one of them doing or saying something that would leave me absolutely mortified. But in reality, none of the embarrassment I felt for the characters affected the plot; it only added drama. Another part of the book that I disliked was the amount of miscommunication between characters. There were lies upon lies between almost every character, which caused several arguments throughout the book. If they had talked to each other instead of keeping secrets or assuming things, the RV trip would have gone much smoother.
Overall, the book was a quick and engaging read. The plot twists were fairly predictable, but this predictability added a sense of anticipation and engagement to the story. If you're a fan of The Summer She Turned Pretty, you'll likely enjoy Places We've Never Been by Kasie West for its fast-paced narrative and familiar romantic elements.
Literary Ladies Book Club
The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo
In a shabby house, on a shabby street, in the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil as a scullion. But when her scheming mistress discovers the lump of a servant cowering in the kitchen is actually hiding a talent for little miracles, she demands Luzia use those gifts to better the family's social position.
What begins as simple amusement for the bored nobility takes a perilous turn when Luzia garners the notice of Antonio Pérez, the disgraced secretary to Spain's king. Still reeling from the defeat of his armada, the king is desperate for any advantage in the war against England's heretic queen—and Pérez will stop at nothing to regain the king's favor.
Determined to seize this one chance to better her fortunes, Luzia plunges into a world of seers and alchemists, holy men and hucksters, where the line between magic, science, and fraud is never certain. But as her notoriety grows, so does the danger that her Jewish blood will doom her to the Inquisition's wrath. She will have to use every bit of her wit and will to survive—even if that means enlisting the help of Guillén Santangel, an embittered immortal familiar whose own secrets could prove deadly for them both.
I keep reading Leigh Bardugo's books, and they always have the same outcome for me. The plots are almost always overcomplicated with too many information dumps that I can't even remember what I read on the previous page; The Familiar was no different. However, despite my dislike for her books, I have to admit that Leigh Bardugo knows how to write a character. Her books almost always have me falling in love with someone or leaving me with a burning fire of hate that lingers for years.
While Leigh Bardugo is an incredibly well-known author known for creating masterpieces, namely The Grishaverse, The Familiar fell flat for me, and I finally had to come to terms with the fact that her writing style might not be for me. Regardless, I still had high expectations that weren't met. When reading the summary, the book promises trials, champions, magic, and what life is like under an oppressor, but plot-wise, the book is underdeveloped. The story focuses on Lizia living under extremists while being a show pony with magic instead of concentrating on her overcoming her oppressors and the trials she faces. The plot had a lot of potential, but it was rushed. The story could have easily been stretched another 200 pages or even another book. Because Leigh Bardugo writes such immersive worlds with complex magic systems, it was hard to grasp the storyline because everything happened so quickly. However, I did enjoy the historical portion of the book, and you could tell the author did a lot of research to pull the book together to balance both the fantasy aspect and the historical fiction aspect.
The book started off boring, and I had to force myself to stay, but I'm glad I did. The characters and the descriptions were spectacular. The setting is absolutely brilliant, and you can almost picture the seven-course meals, the elaborate gowns, and the glamorous mansions with their equally beautiful gardens. The descriptions projected the luxurious life of nobility during the Spanish Golden Age but also showed the struggles of people that society looked down on during this time. The book is about living in times of fear and that every day is a testament to survival, not only as a person but at our very soul. The Familiar teaches that the only way to survive is to persevere through the hardships.
Luzia, the main character, fights to survive throughout the book. She started out as a naive girl, opening doors that she wasn't ready to explore yet, but by the end of the book, she had grown into a fierce young woman who grew into her skin and accepted her self-worth. She was persistent but not reckless, which most authors can't tell the difference between. But don't even get me started on Santangel. He's an immortal familiar tasked with training Luzia for the upcoming competition. He's dark and brooding. His secrets have secrets, and every aspect of him is a mystery that Luzia is desperate to uncover. The romance between Santangel and Luzia was off the charts. Santangel's yearning for Luzia was no simple crush or statement of love but a divine declaration of his eternal devotion to her.
This is a story of want. It's for the people who want what they can't have, for the people who want too much, for the people who want the wrong person, and for the people who want too late.
Written by Carlie Renee
