Thought Train to Pusan

--> Like a mashup of the teen detective gang in Scooby Doo with the return-to-what-still-haunts-you-in-your-home-town vibes of It, Meddling Kids brings us a club of teenagers who would solve mysteries in their town over the summer; 13 years later, however, and their once-bright futures are all anything but, as the remaining members of the club all still affected by the last case they did together in some way or another. Their final case seemed straightforward enough, finding a man in a mask imitating an old legend of a lake monster in town as a way to scare people off as he tried to find gold supposedly hidden under a mansion. But what the kids say that night as they found their culprit stayed with them, and they feel they have no choice but to return and reopen the case (with, of course, a dog companion in tow!). First and foremost, this novel is definitely fun, and pays a lot of homage to all the teen-detectives on whom inspired it. Though to diverge on it’s ow...

--> Timekeeper is a YA novel set in England in the late 1800s, with some historical (mostly, inventions, etc) aspects played with by the author for her version of this world: it has a very steampunk feel to it, and this is only added to by the fact that clocks play a huge role in the story. The clock-towers effectively control and guide the towns around them, and our young protagonist, Danny, is a mechanic of these clocks who can feel the threads of time acutely. He is working towards trying to be a major mechanic at a new clock that is being built to try and save a town who became trapped in time after their clock tower was destroyed. One of the people trapped inside was Danny’s father, adding to his emotions on the project. There are also myths surrounding what happened—and the clocks in general—regarding the spirits of the clocks themselves, and I’m sure you can guess that maybe more comes to light about said spirits which causes complications in Danny’s journey. ...

Honestly, I’m probably a little biased with this one, and writing a review feels a little strange because not only was it written by an old pal of mine from high school but it is also quite a love-hate letter to the city I live (albeit a somewhat fictional one), Edmonton, which doesn’t always get much of a feature in a lot of the things I read or watch (though one of my previous reads this year, Birdie , did include the city as a part of the protagonists’ larger journey). There’s a familiarity to the locations and settings and feelings about living here, but this is indeed a work of fiction with some befuddling logistics, as well as some fantasy thrown in there too. Honestly, this is a bit of a strange book, but definitely hits on some important subjects and is enjoyable, if a little heavy-handed at times. The Melting Queen , follows a young individual who we are introduced to as Adam, who soon comes to reveal to the reader that they are coming to terms with a t...