Tag: arc

3.5 star, YA

ARC Review: All the Way Around the Sun by Xixi Tian

Andge @ Down the Rabbit Hole

From the acclaimed author of This Place is Still Beautiful comes an evocative, achingly romantic road trip story about grief, diasporic identities, and deep-buried secrets that haunt us, perfect for fans of Past Lives and The Farewell.

Stella Chen’s life ground to a halt when her brother unexpectedly passed away a year ago. Raised together by their grandmother in the Chinese countryside before rejoining their parents in the United States, his absence destroys the connective tissue in her family. With another jarring move her senior year, from rural Illinois to unfamiliar surroundings in San Diego, she is left alone and adrift in her family’s suffocating silence and the void of unanswered questions around her brother’s death.

So when Stella’s parents force her to join her estranged childhood friend Alan Zhao for a college tour all over California, Stella dreads it. Alan is a reminder of everything Stella wishes she could be — popular, gregarious, unburdened — and a reminder of how lost she is.

As this road trip takes Stella and Alan down beautiful coastlines and through fraught family dynamics, Stella can’t help but feel the spark of why she and Alan were once so close. Before long, they find themselves pulled into each other’s orbits, forcing unspoken feelings and long-hidden truths into the light.

Thank you to Books Forward for this copy. All quotes are subject to change.

I tell you that we are the only two people in the world who have lived the same lives. The same memories growing up. The same arc. We flew over the sea together, you and I. I think this must mean that even though you are gone, I carry the parts of you onward.

One thing I have come to enjoy about Xixi Tian’s writing is the way she interweaves the Chinese immigrant experiences into her characters’ lives. While it may not be everyone’s exact experiences, including my own, the heart of our people’s collective struggles is there and that is something I find truly powerful to see in an English novel where only a decade ago it would not have been a story easily shared for the masses.

All the Way Around the Sun features themes of grief and finding one’s way through life after momentous changes. Told from Stella’s perspective several months after her older brother had passed away in college, I thought the best part of this book was the slow unfolding of her and her brother Sam’s story. As children they had grown up in China with their grandmother while their parents had come to America to make money first so they could give their kids a better life before bringing them over. I know these are the experiences of some Chinese immigrants and I cannot imagine the depth of hardship it would be for the parents to sacrifice time with their children during momentous milestones in their youth, but also for the children to uproot their childhood into a foreign place with people that are family but also strangers.

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5 star, YA

ARC Review: The Notorious Virtues by Alwyn Hamilton

Andge @ Down the Rabbit Hole

Series: The Notorious Virtues #1

A glamorous media darling, a surprise heiress, and the magical competition of a lifetime.

At sixteen, Honora “Nora” Holtzfall is the daughter of the most powerful heiress in all of Walstad. Her family controls all the money–and all the magic–in the entire country. But despite being the center of attention, Nora has always felt like an outsider. When her mother is found dead in an alley, the family throne and fortune are suddenly up for grabs, and Nora will be pitted against her cousins in the Veritaz, the ultimate magical competition for power that determines the one family heir. 

But there’s a surprise contestant this time: Lotte, the illegitimate daughter of Nora’s aunt. When Lotte’s absent mother retrieves her from the rural convent she’d abandoned her to, Lotte goes from being an orphan to surrounded by family. Unfortunately, most of them want her dead. 

And soon, Nora discovers that her mother’s death wasn’t random–it was murder. And the only person she can trust to uncover the truth of what happened is a rakish young reporter who despises everything Nora and her family stand for. 

With everyone against her, Lotte’s last hope is hunting for the identity of her father. But the dangerous competition–and her feelings for Theo, one of the Holtzfalls’ sworn protectors–turns her world upside down.

**The Notorious Virtues comes out April 1, 2025**

Thank you Penguin Random House Canada for this copy in exchange for an honest review

Family trials. Cousin against cousin. Social unrest in a society built on crushing the lower classes even further down. Magic only the elite could access. The scary woods filled with the stuff in legends and nightmares.

This book has it all, and while the tropes are by far from unique, the way Alwyn Hamilton weaves the story together really makes every piece come alive. I was astonished at how much I liked this book while reading it as I feel I’ve gotten more jaded with time in my reading.

Built on 4 POVs that bring to life very different perspectives, we the reader can see this world from all angles.

  • Nora, the heiress apparent until she no longer was with the death (murder?) of her mother, the next heir in line
  • Lotte, the long lost cousin and descendant of the Holtzfalls, who grew up being abused at a convent in a small town away from the city her family rules
  • August, the newspaper journalist seeking after the truth, or at least the next big thing to get his paycheck in a city that keeps oppressing individuals like him
  • Theo, the knight bound by oath from his ancestor to protect the Holtzfalls with his life, though perhaps they don’t always deserve it

I felt the pacing and tension for the next plot piece was the perfect amount. Who doesn’t love a family competition for inheritance? From Jennifer Lynn Barnes’ Inheritance Games to Kayvion Lewis’ debut series, it’s definitely a trope that draws us in. I will say that the games were not solely the focus of the book, so you are forewarned if that is what you’re hoping it would be. While the trials they face are present, it’s time on page is less often than expected. The true highlight of the book comes in figuring out the mystery behind Nora’s mother’s death.

The lore crafted behind the rise of the Holtzfalls and the purpose of the Veritaz trials was well developed. Everything has a purpose and everything is more linked than one may expect. The integration into the same world of Hamilton’s other series is also probably a huge luring factor to this book, although I haven’t read it yet. It definitely takes careful planning to draw out a world that fits with an existing story but also add new details for this part of the continent. I loved the piecemeal way we got to see how this skewed society came to be and where the Holtzfalls lost their way somehow from what it once should have been.

Beyond the plot points, the characters equally drew me in. While I definitely favoured August and Nora’s POVs, the perspectives they all provided were supremely helpful in adding individual stakes in the overall game. The unlikely alliance between a lowly reporter and the heiress was always fun to see, and their witty banter was absolutely perfection. I’m a little less enthused with the romantic turn Theo and Lotte were headed towards, but if you enjoy the damsel in distress feel, then it works well enough. The biggest character development though comes from Lotte and Nora’s growth together as they figure out what it means to be an actual virtuous individual who doesn’t just look out for themselves or their rich buddies they control. I enjoyed the progression in their characters, especially as they’re competitors for the same ultimate prize.

The ending was also not what I expected and leaves the door wide open for what may come next in the series. I love that the author enjoys shaking things up and possibly having a different story arc in each book. The overall murder and family trials definitely wraps up in book one so it’s not that kind of cliffhanger, but the tidbit of what awaits in the next book has me almost wishing I didn’t read this book so early. Whenever book two comes out, it’ll be worth the wait if it’s anything like its predecessor.

4 star, YA

ARC Review: The Meadowbrook Murders by Jessica Goodman

Andge @ Down the Rabbit Hole

From New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of They Wish They Were Us and The Counselors, comes a page-turning murder mystery set at a prestigious New England boarding school and the dark secrets a killer desperately wants hidden.

Secrets don’t die when you do.

It’s the first week of senior year at Meadowbrook Academy. For Amy and her best friend Sarah, that means late-night parties at the boathouse, bike rides through their sleepy Connecticut town, and the crisp beginning of a New England fall.

Then tragedy. Sarah and her boyfriend are brutally murdered in their dorm room. Now the week Amy has been dreaming about for years has turned into a nightmare, especially when all eyes turn to her as the culprit. She was Sarah’s only roommate, the only other person there when she died—or so she told the police to cover for her own boyfriend’s suspicious whereabouts. And even though they were best friends, with every passing day, Amy begins to learn that Sarah lied about a lot of things.

Liz, editor of the school newspaper and social outcast, is determined to uncover the truth about what happened on campus, in hopes her reporting will land a prestigious scholarship to college. As Liz dives deeper into her investigation, the secrets these murdered seniors never wanted out come to light. The deeper Liz digs, the messier the truth becomes – and with a killer still on campus, she can’t afford to make any mistakes. 

The Meadowbrook Murders is a gripping mystery about the inextricable way power, privilege, and secrets are linked, and how telling the truth can come at a deadly price.

**The Meadowbrook Murders comes out February 4, 2025**

Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for this copy in exchange for an honest review.

I’m always down for a boarding school story, but what makes one even better? When there happens to be a murderer among them. In what I’m starting to see as Jessica Goodman’s usual writing style, The Meadowbrook Murders was a fast-paced and fun murder mystery to dive into on a slow afternoon.

Written in two first-person POVs, we follow Liz, an avid student journalist, and Amy, the suspect (ahem I mean, roommate) of the two students who were killed. I’m seeing a trend in YA murder mysteries to be written in at least more than one POV to give us more insight into the investigation, and thereby suspect more people, but in this case, I am not sure if it was my favourite use of it. I’ll get back to this point later. But with senior year about to start and fellow students in the lower grades still yet to arrive on campus, this book gave almost a locked-room mystery vibe as who else could have done it than someone with access to the school dorms on a private campus?

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