EFR REVIEWS

  WONDER SHOW Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, step inside Mosco’s Traveling Wonder Show, a menagerie of human curiosities and misfits guaranteed to astound and amaze! But perhaps the strangest act of Mosco’s display is Portia Remini, a normal among the freaks, on the run from McGreavy’s Home for Wayward Girls, where Mister watches and waits. He said he would always find Portia, that she could never leave. Free at last, Portia begins a new life on the bally, seeking answers about her father’s disappearance. Will she find him before Mister finds her? It’s a story for the ages, and like everyone who enters the Wonder Show, Portia will never be the same. ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ Not even gonna lie, definitely the cover that initially sucked me in... that, and me being a sucker for a story set in a circus community! Growing up in the 1920s-30s, Portia Remini, having been abandoned by her parents, is left in the care of her Aunt Sophia. By Portia's teen years, Sophia decides she's not equippe...

** Two of these stories involve the Romanov family and that time period (I'll let you guess which two 😉 ) but the last one is a Cold War era YA romance. Romanov by Nadine Brandes My name is Anastasia . . . The history books say I died . . . They don’t know the half of it. Anastasia “Nastya” Romanov was given a single mission: to smuggle an ancient spell into her suitcase on her way to exile in Siberia. It might be her family’s only salvation. But the leader of the Bolshevik army is after them, and he’s hunted Romanov before. Nastya’s only chances of saving herself and her family are either to release the spell and deal with the consequences, or to enlist help from Zash, the handsome soldier who doesn’t act like the average Bolshevik. Nastya has only dabbled in magic, but it doesn’t frighten her half as much as her growing attraction to Zash. She likes him. She thinks he might even like her. That is, until she’s on one side of a firing squad . . . and he’s on the other. ★ ★ ★ ★1/2 ...

PIECES OF WHY Tia lives with her mom in a high-risk neighborhood in New Orleans and loves singing gospel in the Rainbow Choir with Keisha, her boisterous and assertive best friend. Tia's dream is to change the world with her voice; and by all accounts, she might be talented enough. But when a shooting happens in her neighborhood and she learns the truth about the crime that sent her father to prison years ago, Tia finds she can't sing anymore. The loss prompts her to start asking the people in her community hard questions--questions everyone has always been too afraid to ask. ★ ★ ★1/2 Tia is at her local church practicing with the children's Rainbow Choir when the sound of gunfire rings through the air. All the children are immediately hustled down to the church's basement, where they are instructed to stay until police arrive and investigate. Once the go-ahead is given to bring everyone back upstairs, the kids learn that someone was taken to the hospital...

SNOW IN SUMMER With her black hair, red lips, and lily-white skin, Summer is as beautiful as her father's garden. And her life in the mountains of West Virginia seems like a fairy tale; her parents sing and dance with her, Cousin Nancy dotes on her, and she is about to get a new baby brother. But when the baby dies soon after he's born, taking Summer's mama with him, Summer's fairy-tale life turns grim. Things get even worse when her father marries a woman who brings poisons and magical mirrors into Summer's world. Stepmama puts up a pretty face, but Summer suspects she's up to no good - and is afraid she's powerless to stop her. ***WARNING: POTENTIAL SPOILERS BELOW *** ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ In this Appalachian re-imagining of the classic tale of Snow White, Jane Yolen introduces us to young West Virginia native Snow-in-Summer, named for the flowers that grow in front of her house. The story opens with Summer sharing the memory of attending her mother...

WESLEY JAMES  Quinn is having a rough summer. Her beloved grandmother has been put into a nursing home, her dad’s gambling addiction has flared back up, and now her worst enemy is back in town: Wesley James, former childhood friend and life ruiner. So when Wesley is hired to work with her at Tudor Tymes, a medieval England-themed restaurant, the last thing Quinn’s going to do is forgive and forget. She’s determined to remove him from her life and even the score for once and for all―by getting him fired. But getting rid of Wesley isn’t as easy as she’d hoped. When Quinn finds herself falling for him, she has to decide what she wants more: to get even, or to get the boy. ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ Quinn's not having her best year. Grandma's Alzheimer's is advancing so she recently had to be moved to a nursing home; dad's fallen off the wagon again with his gambling addiction (Quinn's parents ended up divorcing over this years earlier); and her once-friend-now-nemesis Wesl...