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Book Review: Serwa Boateng’s Guide to Vampire Hunting (Serwa Boateng #1) by Roseanne A. Brown

Cover art for Serwa Boateng's Guide to Vampire Hunting by Roseanne A. Brown

Serwa Boateng’s Guide to Vampire Hunting (Serwa Boatang #1) by Roseanne A. Brown

Rick Riordan Presents, 2022

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1368066365

Buy: Bookshop.org | Amazon.com

 

 

This is a wild ride of a book. Serwa Boateng is a Ghanaian-American (born in Ghana) 12 year old, the daughter of Slayers of vampires called adze, who look like fireflies and can possess people, and obaifyo, witches who use black magic. She has always been homeschooled, but after a supernatural attack on her home, her parents are sent on a mission she can’t be a part of and she is sent to live with her Aunt Latricia and cousin Roxy in Rocky Gorge, Maryland, a supernatural dead zone, where she will have to attend middle school and deal with microaggressions, hostility, racism, and an adze who has crossed into the dead zone, without help from her parents or the council that directs their missions.

 

When Serwa accidentally starts a food fight in home ec, she and four other students end up with detention, picking up trash in and around the school. While picking trash in the woods, they are attacked by an adze, and when Serwa explains what’s happening, they want to help. Eujun used to be friends with Roxy but when forced to pick between friends picked popular mean girl Ashley. Gavin is Black and a jokester. Mateo is Guatemalan and a model student, who stutters. Roxy’s father has been deported to Ghana. Their teacher, Mrs. Dean, has it out for Serwa, who she calls Sarah Boating, and Serwa thinks she is the adze.

 

The kids are terrible fighters and have no magic. Serwa calls on the earth goddess with a request to bless them with divine wisdom. They are sent to the underworld to retrieve her sword, which never stops fighting. Their mission is successful, and also incredibly funny. The goddess gives the kids divine wisdom and an elemental blessing that will let them draw on the power of their element.

 

The art teacher, Mr. Riley. reveals that the origin of the dead zone is unique because his ancestor, who had divine wisdom, and Roxy’s, who had black magic, combined them to protect enslaved people during a rebellion.

 

Ghanaian mythology is not something I was familiar with, so this was a fresh approach to the “chosen one” storyline. Serwa has a distinct voice and point of view that make her stand out from the current crop. While the story is sometimes predictable, I was wowed by the energy and rage at the end. Never underestimate a teenager in an emotional storm. Highly recommended.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Posted on July 28, 2024 by , Reply

Book Review: When Cicadas Cry by Caroline Cleveland

Cover art for When Cicadas Cry by Caroline Cleveland

When Cicadas Cry by Caroline Cleveland

Union Square & Co, 2024

ISBN 978-1-4549-5231-2

ISBN 978-1-4549-5232-9  (e-book)

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

Buy:  Amazon.com | Bookshop.org

 

When Cicadas Cry by Caroline Cleveland is an engaging murder mystery.

 

A beautiful, young, white woman is bludgeoned to death in rural South Carolina church. A young black accountant, covered in blood, crouches over her. In the eyes of the prosecutor and most of the whites in the town, the young man’s guilt is clear. A disgraced lawyer reluctantly agrees to defend the young man in what seems like a lost cause. But he must also deal with ra town torn by racial tensions.

 

Thirty-four years earlier, two teenage girls were murdered in the same town. Their case was never solved. As a novel approach, the author weaves the first-person voice of the true killer into the plot. The reader is challenged to identify the killer among the novel’s many characters.

 

The author, being a practicing lawyer, weaves interesting insights about lawyerly thinking and courtroom procedures into her story. The novel’s style and plot twists will remind readers of mysteries by other lawyer-novelists, such as John Grisham.

 

Recommended: young adults

 

Contains: gore, mild sex

 

Reviewed by Robert D. Yee

Posted on May 8, 2024 by , Reply

Book Review: Bitter by Akwaeke Emezi

Cover art for Bitter by Akwaeke Emezi

Bitter by Akwaeke Emezi.

Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2022

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593309032

Available:: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook

Buy:  Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com

 

 

Bitter is a prequel to Pet. In Pet, Jam accidentally brings a monstrous angel created by her artist mother through a gate to our world, opened by her bleeding on the image. In Bitter, we learn that it isn’t the first time Jam’s mother brought an angel through.

 

The city of Lucille is filled with protests turned violent. Bitter, who grew up in foster homes where she felt unsafe, has found refuge in Eucalyptus, a residential school for artistic teens run by Miss Virtue . She avoids the protests, focusing on her art, believing there’s no hope for change. She meets Aloe, a sound artist training to be a street medic to help the Assatta, grassroots revolutionaries, and he starts giving her hope. I liked the idea that everyone can contribute in their own way, even if they aren’t on the front lines.

 

After a particularly violent protest, Bitter, who can make her art come to life briefly with blood, creates a monstrous creature and brings it to life in hopes of ending the violence. Unfortunately, the intention he sensed in her was anger, so instead of helping her stop it, he becomes an angel of Vengeance, a hunter of monsters (in this case billionaires and politicians) who wants to kill or burn away evil. When Bitter refuses to help, he convinces members of Assata to hunt with him, but despite their anger, none of them are ready for the brutal, impersonal violence of the angel.

 

Bitter realizes she can force him back through the gate, but the damage is done, with both innocent and not-so-innocent people dead. Bitter and the Assatta cover up the angel involvement and are able to use the incident to gain concessions and change the system to make it more equitable, the beginnings of the mostly utopian world that exists at the beginning of Pet.

 

Emezi wrote Bitter during the pandemic and watched their fiction come far too close to reality. They were becoming progressively more disabled while it was written: they dictated it to a friend over Zoom.

 

Bitter is an angrier book than Pet, and the characters are older teens: while Pet works as a middle grade book and almost a fairytale, Bitter is definitely YA. Highly recommended.

 

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Posted on March 29, 2024 by , Reply
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