Tag: 5 star reviews

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How to Become a Planet Review

Posted on by Plaid_Reader
How to Become a Planet by [Nicole Melleby]

Summary

Named after a planet, Pluto for summer has always started with a trip to the planetarium to see her namesake planet. The trip is the launch of her favorite season into her favorite season which also includes visits to the boardwalk arcade, working in her mom’s pizzeria, and her best friend Meredith’s birthday party. But this summer, none of that feels possible.
 
A month before the end of the school year, Pluto’s frightened mom broke down Pluto’s bedroom door. What came next were doctor’s appointments, a diagnosis of depression, and a big black hole that still sits on Pluto’s chest, making it too hard to do anything.
 
Pluto can’t explain to her mom why she can’t do the things she used to love. And it isn’t until Pluto’s dad threatens to make her move with him to the city—where he believes his money, in particular, could help—that Pluto becomes desperate enough to do whatever it takes to be the old Pluto again.
 
She develops a plan and a checklist: If she takes her medication, if she goes to the planetarium with her mom for her birthday, if she successfully finishes her summer school work with her tutor, if she goes to Meredith’s birthday party . . . if she does all the things that “normal” Pluto would do, she can stay with her mom in Jersey. But it takes a new therapist, a new tutor, and a new (and cute) friend with a checklist and plan of her own for Pluto to learn that there is no old and new Pluto. There’s just her.

Review

This book was a great representation for anxiety and depression. It also did a good time showing recovery from a mental break down, the fact that recovery isn’t linear and that some times things have to change not because you had a breakdown but because they were wrong in the first place. My absolutely favorite character is Pluto ‘friend’ Fallon. I also think that Pluto helping them completing their list. Really helped Pluto with her depression and in the end helped Pluto ask some hard questions she needed to ask of her parents.

Finally I love how certain things were just accepted and nothing was said about it and I wish we lived in a world like that.

Amazon: How to Become a Planet

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Soulswift Review

Posted on by Plaid_Reader

Soulswift

Soulswift by [Megan Bannen]

Summary

Gelya is a Vessel, a girl who channels the word of who she believes is the One True God through song, after being rescued from a far away land by a knight she lives a cloistered life with the other vessels of her faith. She believes as all Ovinists do that a saint imprisoned Elath the Great Demon centuries ago saving the world from earthly temptation.

But everything is not as it seems first Gelya finds writings that shouldn’t exist that are different then what she was to believe. She tells her best friend Zofia and head of the convent about it only to find the writings destroyed days later. Then there is a Great Conclave where she has to translate for a Kantari prisoner. The Conclave is barely started when Zofia is murdered and a deadly coverup by the Ovinist miltary goes after the other leaders as well.

Gelya sets the prisoner Tavik, an enemy solider to survive. He believes the Elath is actually a mother goddess who must be set free, and while he manages to open her prision he accidently makes Gelya her unwilling human vessel.

Now the church that raised Gelya is after them both, and it’s a race against the clock to exorcise Elath from Gelya, but will this stop the countdown to the end of the world or cause the earth distruction.

Also as Tavik and Gelya grow closer they wonder: What will become of Gelya?

Review

There were several things that I really loved about this book first Megan Bannen must have spent a lot of time on the world building because the world feels very real and lived in, the different nations even if they are just mentioned are easy to imagine.

Also I appreciate the time spent working on the religion/s. She essentially had to come up with a epic myth and build societies around the way they would have seen that fact as it became myth.

Then there was Tavik and Geyla, okay I’m going to start out by saying I hate romance. But Tavik and Geyla were all sass and banter, and even when they did start to be really romancey at the end it was still sass and banter. They are my favorite couple by a lot also because they are so great individually.

Gelya though she has her moments were she gets rescued doesn’t need Tavik to rescue her and rescues him quite a lot actually. She’s smart and has a pretty quick turn around for someone who has their whole belief system changed pretty quickly.

Tavik, I like his high spirit, I don’t know that he rescues Gelya so much as keeps her spirts up at times, he’s hilarious which is funny for an assassin. Very respectful, very honest, probably one of my favorite male characters.