Leah Busque Solivan, an American entrepreneur, is the Founder and CEO of TaskRabbit. Here are some quotes from her.  Read more @ https://bit.ly/2X06EtW

Very occasionally, in the midst of all the other books, you come across one that feels like it was written literally and specifically for you. An Inheritance of Ashes is one of those books for me. As such–fair warning–the rest of this post is not even going to be remotely unbiased.

There are several things that An Inheritance of Ashes has going for it. I  loved the richness of the language; it’s a marvelous combination of realistic (and often funny) dialogue, and poetic prose without a misplaced word. The book opens like this: “The barley was in. The stubble of it lay bent-broke in the fields as far as the eye could see, rows of golden soldiers, endlessly falling, from the river to the blacktop road. On a clear evening, with the harvesting done, you could see both river and road from the farmhouse porch: every acre, lined in sunset light, of Roadstead Farm.” It’s lovely to read, and on re-reading it just now, I caught so many echoes that we’ll see later on in the book.

But while language is certainly important, for me as a reader characters will make or break a book. And here they make it. I cared about all of them: Marthe, and Heron, and Asphodel Jones. Even the more minor characters read as rounded and vibrant in their own right. As I think about it, I suspect that this is quite intentional; that we are supposed to see all of these people as real and important.

However, Hallie, our narrator, is central to this story. We have a tight first person narration here; we see everything through her eyes, through her experiences, and personality, and biases. Bobet is quite aware of this and plays with it throughout the book. While I wouldn’t say that Hallie is exactly an unreliable narrator, we are reminded several times that her point of view is not the only one.

Hallie’s voice is clear and strong and wonderful. She is neither perfect nor passive. She reads as very human: flawed, stubborn, contradictory, full of hope and fear and wanting to love. I completely and utterly believed in her.

The other area where An Inheritance of Ashes really shone for me was in the themes. Partly this is personal–the way Hallie and Marthe’s family is described, the way they struggle to deal with that past while not letting it define them, the way they don’t always succeed–all of that rang so familiar and so true that it felt almost eerie. It moved me to tears several times. I kept thinking, “Yes. This is how it is. This is how it feels. This is how I feel.”

But as well as this aspect, I also truly appreciated the way the book shows the importance of relationships, that our strength lies in each other. That it lies in reaching out, beyond all hope (a little bit of Cordelia Vorkosigan there, maybe). And again there’s that moment when Hallie’s perspective is shown to be limited, when the twists of the past are finally unknotted and we see, with her, a different truth. It might not have worked, but here it does, and it reinforces the idea that by reaching towards others, we can find our own strength.

Finally, I’ll mention that I found the worldbuilding and imagery here fantastic, and gorgeous, and scary, in all the right ways. There’s a lot of depth and richness to the images and the way they tie into the worldbuilding. I really felt that sense of history lying behind the story that we don’t see but that informs everything else.

I’m so glad that the Cybils gave me a reason to pick this one up; it’it will absolutely be one of my favorite books for the year, and one I intended to re-read regularly.

Book information: 2015, Clarion Books; YA

Book source: review copy from the publisher provided for the Cybils

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Other reviews: The Midnight Garden, Teen Reads, Kirkus, you?

Release Date: April 28, 2015
Published by: Atria

WARNING: This is a New Adult book, which means that it features scenes that may be considered too much for younger readers.

Black Iris - Leah Raeder | Goodreads

The next dark and sexy romantic suspense novel from the USA Today bestselling author of Unteachable.

It only took one moment of weakness for Laney Keating’s world to fall apart. One stupid gesture for a hopeless crush. Then the rumors began. Slut, they called her. Queer. Psycho. Mentally ill, messed up, so messed up even her own mother decided she wasn't worth sticking around for.

If Laney could erase that whole year, she would. College is her chance to start with a clean slate.

She's not looking for new friends, but they find her: charming, handsome Armin, the only guy patient enough to work through her thorny defenses—and fiery, filterless Blythe, the bad girl and partner in crime who has thorns of her own.

But Laney knows nothing good ever lasts. When a ghost from her past resurfaces—the bully who broke her down completely—she decides it's time to live up to her own legend. And Armin and Blythe are going to help.

Which was the plan all along.

Because the rumors are true. Every single one. And Laney is going to show them just how true.

She's going to show them all.

So about a week ago, a friend of mine asked me what I was reading. She missed talking to me about books. I told her BLACK IRIS and soon A COURT OF THORNS AND ROSES, and she ordered both immediately. Now that I've finished BLACK IRIS, I asked her how far in she is and where she thinks the book is going. She said 20% and "she has no idea where it's going, just that it's not anywhere sunny."

Here's the thing about BLACK IRIS: It's dark. Really dark. Challenging. Radical. With any book that points out less palatable genre conventions(e.g. "magic dick lit"), and makes you aware that it is doing so (e.g. the fourth wall is down), and features questionable ethics and/or young people acting out when all the adults want them to conform to standards, you can expect some sort of polarized reaction. That's why, when scrolling through Goodreads, you'll see lovers and haters and people in between who just haven't decided where they lie on that spectrum.

Here's another thing to consider: This reads like Leah Raeder's heart book. Some books feel dry, stale; you wonder why the author even wrote the book if he/she wasn't passionate about it, or was just passionate about the topic and not the characters. But, every once in a while, you'll read a book that brims with sincerity and passion, and even if you don't have a character who says that the fourth wall is down, you already know that the fourth wall is down because here is the author, in every page. Those are always my favorites to read because there's a good chance the author has considered every word and action, and your emotions are going to get tangled in the words. The book will evoke some sort of reaction in you (rather than being another "meh" read).

There are a lot of things I could say about BLACK IRIS. As a suspense novel, it does its job well. The unreliable narrator? Very well established and definitely made it harder to predict where things were going and what would happen next. As a romance novel, it does its job well. The sex scenes are… wow. And in Leah’s poetic voice? They feel ALIVE. As a new adult novel, it does its job well. The characters are balancing college classes and deeper issues (e.g. their pasts & futures) amid the main plot. Plus contemporary romance, y’know.

But what I most want to say doesn’t really have to do with the actual plot or the very well developed characters. It has to do with the lovely moments of realization and deeper issues being tackled in BLACK IRIS.

It’s rare to find a book that handles mental illness, gender and sexual identity among other issues so well, so boldly, and so fearlessly. Especially a book with younger characters. When I was in college, one of the labs I was in, its main purpose was to “unbox science.” We were researching the queer community and one of the questionnaires asked participants to rate themselves on a sliding scale for how they viewed their gender and sexual identity, and if that scale didn’t fit, there was another area where participants could explain. If they wanted to label themselves, they could. It was meant to give participants their voices back in the science community and to allow them the chance to define themselves, but the irony was that once it came to analysis, we had to find a way to compress the scales and numbers and labels. Maybe it was too ambitious of a project, but maybe this is where art like BLACK IRIS comes in to bridge that gap. And BLACK IRIS addresses this in many beautiful moments.

“If I was gay, I wouldn't need an asterisk beside my name. I could stop worrying if the girl I like will bounce when she finds out I also like dick. I could have a coming-out party without people thinking I just want attention. I wouldn't have to explain that I fall in love with minds, not genders or body parts. People wouldn't say I'm 'just a slut' or 'faking it' or 'undecided' or 'confused.' I'm not confused. I don't categorize people by who I'm allowed to like and who I'm allowed to love. Love doesn't fit into boxes like that. It's blurry, slippery, quantum. It's only limited by our perceptions and before we slap a label on it and cram it into some category, everything is possible.”

As for how BLACK IRIS handled mental illness, my god. I cried. Actual tears. I'm emphasizing that because it is SO rare for me to actually cry while reading. Let's see... North of Beautiful by Justina Chen; Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling; The Bridge of Terabithia by Katherine Paterson. These are the novels that I can name off the top of my head which have made me cry. I don’t have the book with me right now, but there’s a moment when Laney talks about feeling all the pressure build up and just cracking. That's it. That's what I became in that moment too.

But you know, it’s not even how BLACK IRIS handles social issues that should make it really popular. It’s the beautiful writing at the moments on characters and character realizations.

“Girls love each other like animals. There is something ferocious and unself-conscious about it. We don't guard ourselves like we do with boys. No one trains us to shield our hearts from each other. With girls, it's total vulnerability from the beginning. Our skin is bare and soft. We love with claws and teeth and the blood is just proof of how much. It's feral. 

And it's relentless.”

This quote is tagged as an example of Laney and Blythe together, but whenever Laney talked about the relationships between girls, I found myself nodding. Whenever Laney talked about love and forgiveness and gender expectations – and so, so many other things – I found myself nodding. Leah Raeder has a beautiful writing style and one of the things I most appreciate in novels – these little observations about life – was done perfectly by her hand. Even if I don’t necessarily agree with what the characters do, it doesn’t matter. This book captivated me from start to finish.

So, I mean, what am I really saying here? We have a book that's thought-provoking and likely to manipulate your emotions, beautiful writing, wonderful moments of life truths. In short, even if you don't like revenge or suspense stories, or you don't want to read something that's very dark, or you don't tend to like "the typical NA" novel, you should still read BLACK IRIS. At the very least you know you'll have read something interesting.

After reading and mostly liking Cypess’s Death Sworn last year, I definitely wanted to read the second book in the duology. Ileni has left the assassins’ cave and is now in the sorcerers’ power. But what she finds there will test her loyalty all over again. As with the first book, my reaction is mostly positive. I like Ileni quite a bit, and especially the way she’s shown to be powerful without being the awesomest everrr!!!! Her power does have limitations and a lot of the book is her grappling with the moral issues that her use of the sorcerers’ lodestones brings up. At the same time, I felt that the romance subplot never worked for me, even less than it did in the first book. And I found the conclusion more than a bit abrupt and not entirely convincing. All in all, this is one I perhaps wanted to like more than I did, although I suspect that some readers will love it.

Book source: eARC from Edelweiss
Book information: 2015, Greenwillow Books; YA fantasy