Climate change – The Bookish Mutant

Happy Monday, bibliophiles!

Goodreads Monday is a weekly meme created by Lauren’s Page Turners. All you have to do to participate is pick a book from your Goodreads TBR, and explain why you want to read it.

Continuing with AAPI books on my TBR for the rest of the month, here’s one I can’t wait to read! I’ve been seeing this one EVERYWHERE lately, and every time I see a post about it, I get even madder that my library doesn’t have it yet…[screams in the void]

I was a huge fan of Descendant of the Crane, and this one sounds even better! We’ll see…

Let’s begin, shall we?

GOODREADS MONDAY (5/24/21) – THE ONES WE’RE MEANT TO FIND by Joan He

Blurb from Goodreads:

Cee has been trapped on an abandoned island for three years without any recollection of how she arrived, or memories from her life prior. All she knows is that somewhere out there, beyond the horizon, she has a sister named Kay, and it’s up to Cee to cross the ocean and find her.

In a world apart, 16-year-old STEM prodigy Kasey Mizuhara lives in an eco-city built for people who protected the planet―and now need protecting from it. With natural disasters on the rise due to climate change, eco-cities provide clean air, water, and shelter. Their residents, in exchange, must spend at least a third of their time in stasis pods, conducting business virtually whenever possible to reduce their environmental footprint. While Kasey, an introvert and loner, doesn’t mind the lifestyle, her sister Celia hated it. Popular and lovable, Celia much preferred the outside world. But no one could have predicted that Celia would take a boat out to sea, never to return.

Now it’s been three months since Celia’s disappearance, and Kasey has given up hope. Logic says that her sister must be dead. But nevertheless, she decides to retrace Celia’s last steps. Where they’ll lead her, she does not know. Her sister was full of secrets. But Kasey has a secret of her own.

So why do I want to read this?

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NO NO I’M JUST VIBRATING IN MY SEAT WAITING TO GET MY HANDS ON THIS BOOK –

Joan He’s thing in writing must be genre-blending, and man, it looks like she hit her stride again! Both of the sisters’ plots – one on an empty island and the other in a near-future eco city – sound equally fascinating. I always love sibling stories as well, so I’m excited to see how Cee and Kasey’s narratives are tied together and what their relationship looks like.

And the themes are…eerily timely here. Looks like there’s going to be a big discussion about climate change, what with these near-future eco cities presumably being built to withstand the severe natural disasters that come with it. I haven’t read much cli-fi (sci-fi specifically dealing with climate change – new term for me), and I’m excited to expand my horizons with this one!

Oh, and I can’t NOT talk about that beautiful cover…🥺

In short:

a) I’m here for Joan He

b) I’m here for sci-fi Joan He

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Today’s song:

That’s it for this week’s Goodreads Monday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Happy Wednesday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has been treating you well.

This eARC was one of several that I received about a week and a half ago, and it’s definitely a unique one. A bizarre and inventive twist on both your traditional survival story and post-apocalyptic dystopia.

Enjoy this eARC review!

Jelly–Clare Rees

Martha is stranded. Stranded, that is, on the back of an enormous jellyfish. She and several other people have been, in fact, for such a long time that the concept of time has all but escaped them. And despite many attempts to escape, they may be permanently stuck.

But land is in sight, and with it may come new opportunities. Will Martha and the others be able to get to dry land–and survive the trip?

Thank you to Edelweiss+ and ABRAMS/Amulet Books for sending me this eARC in exchange for an honest review!

At the present moment, Jelly has quite a low Goodreads rating–about 3.31. Though I thought it was decent, I really don’t think it deserves a rating like that. Even though the execution was largely flawed, this was a novel with such an inventive premise.

First off, LOOK AT HOW GORGEOUS THE HARDCOVER EDITION IS. It’s the edition that came on my eARC as well, and it’s just…so beautiful. I love all the vibrant colors!

Before I get to the positives, however, let’s start off with my major problem with this novel–the characters. There’s a wide cast of characters stranded on the gigantic jellyfish, and while Rees does a good job of keeping track of all of them, most of them were either caricatures, or not memorable at all. We got a few characters that boasted one (1) personality trait each (ex. James was obnoxious and immature, Kate was sensitive, Lana was snarky, Dr. Jones attempts to turn everything into a learning opportunity, etc.), but the rest had nothing that distinguished them from the others. Jelly is told from the POV of Martha, but by the end of the novel, we know next to nothing about her. So that aspect took away from my enjoyment of some of the novel. And beyond that, the humor of the comic relief characters fell flat more than not.

However, other than that criticism, this was a fascinating novel! I was instantly hooked by the premise of a survival story set almost entirely on the back of a giant jellyfish. Jellyfish are such fascinating creatures, and Rees deftly weaves bits of their biology into the story without info-dumping anything.

We later learn that the reason why it’s even possible for jellyfish to grow to such a size is due to them evolving to climate change; there’s even some other marine animals that have done the same–some species of crabs (now dubbed “kriks”) have crawled out of the sea, grown huge, and terrorized the human race, which is hinted to being part of the reason why humanity is nearly extinct in Jelly. There’s some interesting worldbuilding going on here, and it’s definitely the kind of cautionary tale we need about climate change and the rising oceans. (Stop climate change or the crabs will exact their revenge on us, kids!)

All in all, while Jelly lacked authentic characters/character development, it partially made up for it with a fresh and original concept. 3 stars!