Curious, Healing
Books about healing, business, and fun
Recommended to me by: Reading Every Heart a Doorway
This is book 6 in the Wayward Children series. Young Regan ends up in the Hooflands world, and has adventures. The book starts out full of drama, and also has quiet parts full of good fellowship. It seemed all too predictable for a while, but the ending was unexpected. I liked how Regan handled it.
Highly recommended.
This is young adult book with a fourteen-year-old protagonist opens with a dead body on the bakery’s floor. Young Mona is a baker with an ability to magically affect dough, and her power becomes crucial to save her city. The book is plot-driven, and also emphasizes Mona’s relationships with others (without a romance!) and her embodied experience.
This quick read resonates with current events and also provides a satisfying distraction. Recommended!
Recommended to me by: Reading Every Heart a Doorway
This is book 4 in the Wayward Children series, and it stuck with me more than the others. Katherine Lundy finds a doorway to the Goblin Market world, where everything has its price, but unlike in our capitalism, the Market ensures that the bargains are fair. Children find their way in, and the rules are more gentle for the younger ones.
To me, the ending does not seem fair. Of course, a lot of things happen to children and young adults in this world that are horrifically unfair, and sometimes we also make it look like the children had a free choice, when they did not fully understand the consequences of their choices.
Thought-provoking. Highly recommended.
I also read “Beneath the Sugar Sky” and “Come Tumbling Down” in this series. They were more plot-driven.
Recommended to me by: Marissa Lingen
This book is based on the short story Cat Pictures Please, which touches on serious issues but is basically lighthearted and positive.
The book, less so. Yes, there’s a benevolent AI (artificial intelligence) who loves cat pictures. There are delightfully depicted internet friendships, and in-person friendships. Some of the characters are non-binary, and (almost) everyone is respectful about pronouns.
There’s also an 11th grader whose mom moves them all the time to keep away from her stalker dad, and some just barely off-screen domestic violence. It all comes right in the end, and I’m glad the book addresses those topics. At the same time, it felt jarring to me to have these deadly serious issues juxtaposed with a lighthearted cat-picture-loving AI who can fix all the problems.
It’s well-written. Recommended if you don’t mind fictionalized, simplified domestic violence. For me it was too realistic to be fun but not realistic enough at the end of the book about how difficult it is to escape.
Recommended to me by: Redbird
This novella has a similar structure to T. Kingfisher’s The Raven and the Reindeer. A young person sets off on a mission through empty countryside, encounters a solitary farmhouse whose inhabitants are dangerous, has or acquires a talking animal companion, acquires a human companion, encounters a bandit camp, and eventually succeeds in the mission.
In this book, the twelve-year-old titular minor mage Oliver sets off with his armadillo familiar to bring rain to his drought-stricken village. The underlying theme of his adventures is the ethics of power and responsibility. There is some violence, which is considered and regretted afterwards, not simply ignored or taken for granted.
It’s a quick, enjoyable read. Recommended!
Recommended to me by: Redbird
A slant-wise retelling of the Snow Queen story originally by Hans Christian Anderson. It’s been a long time since I read the original, but I remember a sense of heavy oppressiveness. The beginning of this book has the same feeling to it, but fortunately veers away from that after the first few (short) chapters.
Young Gerta thinks of Kay as her best friend, and Kay barely notices her. That’s a big part of the oppressiveness. It’s a great depiction of the shame that arises from associating with a narcissist. The book does not use the word narcissist (“frost in his eyes and frost in his heart”), but Gerta does name the shame she feels, and she breathes through it until it passes.
As in the fairy tale, Kay gets taken by the Snow Queen and Gerta goes after him. First thing, she gets caught by a milder kind of narcissist who is kind, but delays Gerta for her own purposes. “Gerta’s desire to be useful was an open road down which nearly any magic could walk.”
After she gets away, she still has difficulties and there is some violence, but she has more agency and less shame and the book is more comfortable to read. Her relationships with the allies she finds are delightful and kind.
Overall the book is engaging and beautifully written and surprising and inclusive. Highly recommended.