Have scythe, will travel

 

The Keeper of Night by Kylie Lee Baker

Genres: YA and fantasy

Ren Scarborough is a young adult soul collector in London. She is half Reaper and half Shinigami, 

the Japanese version of soul collectors. The only person that truly accepts her is her brother Neven 

who happens to be a full Reaper. A situation Ren accidentally causes forces both her and her brother 

to leave London and head to Japan. Ren hopes to be accepted by the Japanese Goddess of Death 

only to discover her expectations of Japan weren’t accurate. Ren then sets out on a dangerous 

mission with her brother and new friend Hiro to try and claim her place in the world. 

 

There is a lot about The Keeper of Night that I like. First, I love the world Baker created. 

Learning about the folklore and myths of Japan, and a little of Britain, was super interesting. 

I adore the character of Neven, Ren’s extremely caring brother. This is a character type I usually

 find myself eye rolling over, but not this time. I even found the mysteriously helpful stranger Hiro

 interesting. Ren was a little more problematic for me. 

 

Ren is the underdog who can’t seem to find her place in the world. She’s got super cool powers 

but no one seems to care because all the characters have super cool powers. I like that she is 

unapologetically ambitious. She doesn’t shy away from the fact that she wants power and respect.

 Unfortunately, Ren spends way too much of the book in her head berating herself and going over 

and over about how worthless she is. I get that she is supposed to have issues from where and how 

she grew up, I’m fine with that, it just got a bit tiresome reading the same thing over and over. 

I found it especially annoying when she would have these thoughts and then immediately the tides 

would turn in her favor. Again, I don’t have anything against the ideas. My problem lies with the execution. 

This leads into my biggest problem with the book and the reason I didn’t rate it higher. I found 

Baker’s writing to be a bit inconsistent. Some parts were really well written and clever. Then, there 

were other times that I had to reread something because I felt like it was an exact copy paste from 

the previous page. I also feel like there wasn’t enough information given about the two societies we 

get to see. The Reaper society hates Ren from the get go. Everyone hates her except for her brother,

 who is a failure at being a Reaper because he is too empathetic. Her father seems to be more 

apathetic to her than anything else which, for me, was very problematic. He is supposed to be a 

British Reaper that had some illicit affair with a Japanese Shinigami. I have a lot of questions for this

 man and all I really get is one line about how Ren asked him stuff and he never answered. 

 

Ren and Neven travel from England to Japan by boat yet we barely get to see any of the journey. 

I would have loved to read a bit about the death societies in other countries, even if it was just a 

chapter for each one. How would Ren and Neven fit in in those places? Is the French death society 

more or less empathetic than the British? When they get to Japan most of the people there don’t seem 

to care about them. Here and there we are reminded that Ren doesn’t belong but outside of some 

people calling her a foreigner or looking at her strangely nothing else happens. Ren and Neven walk 

right into the Yomi, the Japanese city of death, and Ren immediately gets to talk to the Goddess of 

Death. Ren gets sassed a little from her but then gets handed a mission and told to be on her way. I 

feel like I am being told Ren is hated because of her parentage but I don’t get the motivation for the 

hate. Or the motivation for the ambivalence in Japan. Maybe it gets cleared up in the sequel. 

 

A quick glance at Baker’s Goodreads page reveals she doesn’t have many books under her belt  so

 I am hoping her writing will improve with time. I genuinely do like this book. I think her ideas are 

interesting, her characters were engaging, and her pacing is spot on, at least for me. I’ll keep my

 eye on her future works. 

My Rating: 3.5/5

I purchased this book as one of my Book of the Month club picks.

I do not plan on adding it to my permanent collection. 

Reckless Girls

 Title: Reckless Girls

Author: Rachel Hawkins

What’s it about?

Lux, a twenty-something that recently lost her mother to cancer, wants to travel the world with her boyfriend Nico. The problem is they can’t start until Nico gets enough money to repair their boat. Enter Amma and Brittany, two other twenty-somethings that hire Lux and Nico to take them to the mysterious Meroe Island. Meroe Island is said to be the final resting place of shipwrecked sailors from years ago. It might be haunted, maybe just cursed. Amma and Brittany think visiting there will be a great way to wrap up their globe-hopping trip. The girls pay in advance so the boat can get fixed up and pretty soon the four sail away from Hawaii and to Meroe Island. 

On arrival, they find another couple already there. It’s okay though because the two groups quickly become friends and they all decide to have fun. A little partying, a little adventuring, lots of sun and swimming, sounds like the perfect vacation. Unfortunately, things don’t stay all fun and games, instead, they start becoming deadly. Lux will need to navigate the dangers of the island and the people she shares it with if she wants to make it out alive.

What do I think?

There is a lot I enjoyed about this book. It is winter and cold where I live so I was happy to snuggle up in a warm blanket and read about a tropical island adventure. One thing that needs to be said upfront, minor spoilers, all of the girls have lost someone in their lives. Their losses are talked about and so is their grief, so if that is something you aren’t able to handle I’d stay away. I think it is pretty obvious that the book is going to have death in it, but I want to warn anyone thinking of reading it that there is more than just the usual characters getting killed. 

Lux, the main character, lost her mother to cancer. Her parents divorced when she was young and her father remarried and started a new family without Lux being a part of it. Before the start of the book, Lux doesn’t have any real friends outside of her boyfriend, Nico. She’s a young lonely lost girl and, for me at least, that explains most of her actions in the book. 

Hawkins wrote Nico to be a likable guy. Over the course of the story that facade slips but I never find myself hating him. Unfortunately, I also never found myself invested in Lux’s relationship with him. It’s okay though because the book really isn’t about Lux and Nico. In my opinion, it’s actually about Lux’s relationship with Amma, Brittany, and Eliza, the three other central female characters in the story. As the book goes on we learn more about each of their lives and how they ended up on Meroe Island. 

Reckless Girls is more than a fluff thriller novel. Hawkins offers the reader an opportunity to ponder many ideas about the social differences between men and women, sisterhood, grief, and loss. I didn’t expect all of that when I started reading and was pleasantly surprised. The story is split between first-person chapters with Lux and third-person chapters with the rest of the girls. I think Reckless Girls manages a nice balance between thoughtful and fluff and could be a book club read or a beach read.

Rating: 4 /5 

Did I buy it? This was my Book of the Month pick for January 2022. I will not be keeping it in my permanent collection. 

2021 Year End

Goodbye 2021, hello 2022 

2021, I wish I could say that I will miss you but the best I can do is say you were better than the previous year. According to Goodreads, I read 8,679 pages in 2021. My book goal was 30 books. 

My favorite read is the wonderful "The Lathe of Heaven" by Ursula K. Le Guin. A Le Guin book taking the number one spot for me should be no surprise, she was an amazing author that has left behind a treasure trove of works. My least favorite read is "The Maidens" by Alex Michaelides. I'm still mad about this book. The biggest surprise read is "Survive The Night" by Riley Sager. I had little to no expectations going into it. I read the blurb that BotM had on their website, thought it sounded interesting and gave it a go. I'm so happy I did. Is it perfect? No, but it was so enjoyable to read. 

I set my reading goal this year for 50 books. That will be almost one a week giving me a little leeway in case something comes up. I had been planning on writing a review for every book I read last year, which obviously didn't happen, so I'm going to try again this year. I'm going to also work on making my reviews better. How? Hopefully, through practice. 

Another goal I have is to, finally, make a dent in my tbr list. My bookshelves groan under the weight of all the books Tetrised into them. I'm just a sucker for buying books. Anyway, here is wishing everyone a good 2022.