Before I dive into the first review of the year, a few housekeeping notes.<\/p>\n
We are, as we have been doing, plan to review in roughly chronological order. So for the next month, we’ll focus on Q1 books, those published between January and March 2017. We’re not going to be super strict about this — sometimes we’ll bump a book up or hold it, for example if we think it goes well with something else, or if we have’t read it and end up circling back to it. But we’re hoping this will make it more likely that people who don’t have amazing ARC\/galley access will have read books we discuss by the time we discuss them.<\/p>\n
In the past, we’ve always shared a list — more recently, an abbreviated list of 25 titles. It’s always sort of arbitrary (although I could tell you already the 10 books I am pulling for hardest). We’re tempted to skip it this year — but we’ll defer to reader opinion. Let us know.<\/p>\n
And of course, as always, we are reviewing specifically for Printz speculation, which means we’re mostly looking for what’s wrong with books — because in the end it’s an elimination game, and being a great book isn’t enough.<\/p>\n
Now, on to the first review of the year.<\/p>\n
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A List of Cages, Robin Roe<\/strong> I totally avoided this one for months, because sometimes I just can’t do depressing, and I had a feeling this was going to be a rough read. But we still use three stars as a cutoff for books we take the time to read, and A List of Cages<\/em> has four,\u00a0which meant I couldn’t put it off forever.<\/p>\n So I read it. And yeah, it was a tough read. Lots of ugly tears — and a moment at the end when I actually had to flip forward and make sure someone wasn’t dead, and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t breathing for a solid 20 second there. Emotionally, I was all in on this.<\/p>\n
\nHyperion, January 2017<\/strong>
\nReviewed from ARC<\/strong><\/p>\n