The Princess Game by Melanie Cellier

 In this fourth installment of the "Four Kingdoms" series, Celeste is struggling with a curse her aunt gave her on her christening day.  Until she was 16 she was above average in both beauty and intelligence.  But on her 16th birthday her intelligence was taken away and she was left as a mindless beauty...or so everyone thinks.  In reality her sharp mind is intact, but the curse prevents her from revealing her true thoughts.  That does not stop her, however, from leading a double life.  By night she turns from the silly princess into the kindom's spy master.  As long as she conseals her identy with masks and costumes, she is free to do whatever it takes to protect her beloved kingdom.  She finds an unexpected ally in a visiting prince and together they uncover a plot that threatens not only her home, but all of the four kingdoms.

I have been really enjoying this series.  The stories only have glancing reference to the original fairytales (this one is based on Sleeping Beauty) but they are fresh and fun.  I like that fact that the different princesses are uniquely flawed. This book also has a pretty well crafted mystery. Cellier was able to stump me.  I didn't figure out who was the real bad guy until nearly the end.  (2018, 314 p.)

Actually, I just realized I have missed one in the series.  I guess I need to go back and read #3 The Princess Pact next.

Blended by Sharon M. Draper

Isabella's mom and dad had been fighting for a while when they finally decided to split up.  Two years later, Isabella's African American dad lives with his new girlfriend in a big house in the rich part of town, and her caucasian mom and her boyfriend live in a more humble home on the poor side of town.  Her parents have joint custody, so Isabella spends one week at her mom's house, and the next at her dad's. When racial tension flares up at school, Isabella feels caught between worlds, and confused about who she really is and where she fits in.

This book got a lot of starred reviews last year and I wonder if it will win awards next week at the ALA Youth Media Award announcements.  The book's strengths are that it deals with a really common situation in modern America. With racial tension higher than it has been in decades, children from mixed races are caught in the crossfire.  Also, Sharon Draper has a pretty light touch with difficult issues and can make them accessible to fairly young readers. The book's weakness, in my opinion, was (spoiler allert) the shooting situation in the last scene.  I just feel that the whole thing about a black youth being shot by a white police has been totally overdone in children's and youth literature.  I know it happens, and it is tragic, but it doesn't happen to every black child you ever meet.  There must be some other situation that an author can use to show that racial profiling is still a problem in our country. Also, it bugged me that they mentioned the shooting in the publisher's book description, so I was dreading it the whole time I was reading the book, and it kind of kept me from enjoying the rest of the story.  I understand why they did it.  They knew if they didn't a whole bunch of parents and educators would have been upset that such a violent thing happened at the end of an otherwise nonviolent story without warning, but still.  Also, (more spoilers!) would a woman officer really be so afraid that a 11 year old girl (of any color) was packing a gun, that she would shoot her?  If it had been her 17 year old step brother, maybe, but an 11 year old girl?  Really?  (2020, 320 p.)

(Ok, I just checked google for articles about girls being shot by police.  In my brief search, I couldn't find any pre-teens who were shot by police , but there are plenty about pre-teen girls being shot in gang violence.  Older teen girls have been shot by police.)

The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

Four senior citizens in a posh retirement community get together and discuss cold police investigations each Thursday. They love pouring over the thrilling details and looking for connections in the cases that the police missed. Imagine their delight when they get to investigate an actual murder in their own community! Using their considerable skill, connections, and experience, the four stay one step ahead of the police.  It isn't all fun and games though, and as the case progresses there are consequences they could not have forseen.

This is one of the titles I read because it is one of the top ten most requested books on my library's Overdrive right now.  I really enjoy a good mystery, and this is one of the best I have read in a long time.  The plot is very complex and tightly woven.  The thing that makes this a gem, through, is Osman's insight into old age, and his compasionate, insightful, and really delightful portrayal of the main characters. The author is only 50 years old, and this is (believe it or not) his first novel, but he hits the nail on the head when it comes to understanding the vissisitudes of aging. The author's day job is as a UK TV personality, but I hope he writes some more. (2020, 368 p.)

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

This is a memoir of a man who dedicated his professional life as a lawyer to trying to help people on death row and others with unjust sentences of life imprisonment.  Stevenson explains that poor black people and people with mental diability are much more likely to end up on death row than average white people are.  He recounts several cases when people were convicted of crimes on little evidence, just because they were convenient and helpless scapegoats for police trying to pin a crime on someone.  Other of the people he describes were imprisoned as juveniles and spent their whole adult life in prison with no chance of parole.  Still others he tried to help were women who had still born babies, but were convicted of killing their infants. It is a heart wrending story told with honest and accessible prose. 

I read this book because I had read several fluffy novels in a row and thought I was ready for something a little more serious.  It was super serious, but I am glad I read it.  I thought it was interesting that he clamed that black people in the US had gone through four kinds/periods of oppression; inslavement up until the civil war, Jim Crow laws until the mid 1900's, civil rights struggles of the mid1900's and mass imprisonment starting in the 1970's.  In my mind I knew that blacks were over-represented in prisons, but I had never put it on a similar level of oppression as enslavement or Jim Crow laws. The story of Stevenson's strugglesto find justice for wrongfully imprisoned black people at least suggests it is a problem much bigger than most people think. The book has been made into a motion picture, and as a result it is on the top of the Overdrive checkout lists right now. (2014, 336 p.)