​Thanks to partners NetGalley and Macmillan Children's Publishing Group for the digital ARC of Angeline Boulley’s Sisters in the Wind.

Sisters in the Wind is the third book in Angeline Boulley’s loosely connected YA trilogy, which includes Firekeeper’s Daughter and Warrior Girl Unearthed. Each focuses on a different teenager from the same Ojibwe community, though Lucy Smith, the protagonist of Sisters in the Wind, begins the book unaware of her heritage.

Lucy was raised by her white father who told her that her mother relinquished all parental rights when she was young. He told her the bare minimum about her mother, and so, after her father dies, and Lucy is left with only her cold, uncaring stepmother, she’s adrift. Eventually, after a definitive break with her stepmother, Lucy navigates the foster system on her own.

The novel opens with Lucy working in a diner and on her own—she feels safer without close relationships, and so she has tried to keep herself at a distance from everyone. If someone gets too close, she leaves.

When an attorney shows up at the diner with what seems to be a random offer of help, Lucy is immediately suspicious and starts planning her escape, ready to pack up and leave to keep herself safe.

And then something happens that keeps her firmly in place.

Sisters in the Wind is set between Boulley’s previous books, and it was lovely to revisit characters from those novels. Lucy is a compelling protagonist, and her journey to finding the truth about her identity and the support of the community that she’s never known is a powerful one. I greatly appreciated the information woven through the book about the Indian Child Welfare Act, and how it should have protected Lucy from the lack of connection that has plagued her.

As in Firekeeper’s Daughter and, particularly, Warrior Girl Unearthed, there’s also a sort of mystery/thriller plot that propels the story, and I didn’t find it to be quite as seamless as I’d hoped, though I certainly wanted to know how everything would resolve.

Despite that caveat, I’m a big fan of Boulley’s work, and I’ll definitely be eager to read whatever she writes next. I’ll absolutely be including this one in my classroom library. 

Thanks to partners NetGalley and Penguin for the digital ARC of Ivy Pochoda’s Ecstasy. The book will be published on June 17!

I’ve seen many reviewers calling Ivy Pochoda’s Ecstasy a fever dream, and that feels exactly right. This loose retelling of The Bacchae (which I’ve read about but haven’t read) immerses the reader in a world of entitlement and luxury and oppression, in a battle between masculine and feminine forces, in a power struggle whose fate feels pre-determined. It was a one-sitting read for me.

The book begins with a quartet of travelers (not “vacationers”—they’re too cultured to “vacation”) to the island of Naxos where Lena, her best friend Hedy, Lena’s son Drew, and Drew’s pregnant wife Jordan will stay at the family’s luxe hotel, which is in the last stages before its grand opening.

Some of the dynamics become immediately clear. Lena and Hedy were dancers together until Lena married Stavros, who swept her away from the excitement of that life into an existence driven by an obsession with class and wealth and putting forth the right facade. It’s a world centered on Stavros in which Lena is a type of prop.

Drew has clearly taken it upon himself to continue the dominant role of his father, who recently died on the island’s beach.

When the group arrives, they find that there’s a major hiccup with the preparations: there’s a group of women who are refusing to leave the beach. They assert that it’s a cultural and historical landmark that belongs to the island, not to the hotel. Drew, of course, disagrees and is willing to do whatever it takes to eject them from the property. Legally, though, that’s a more complex proposition than he’s willing to accept.

That’s the setup. What seems a fairly straightforward tale of class and misogyny quickly, however, shifts because of Luz, the leader of the women on the beach. As Lena is drawn into her circle—into drugs and dancing and unfettered self-expression—she begins to push back against the relationship dynamics that have controlled her life for so long.

So much about this book worked for me. I appreciated the shifts in narrative perspective, which allow the reader a glimpse into the group’s slow immersion into surreality, and Pochoda’s writing is undeniably gorgeous. I thought that the changing group dynamics beautifully illuminated the messages of the book: the despicable Drew’s entitled, brought about by his wealth and his gender; the ways that Hedy served as a grounding influence for Lena; Jordan’s attempts to maintain her own agency in the face of Drew’s micromanaging and close-mindedness. I did wish, however, that parts of the book’s message were more subtle, some of the plot elements less predictable. Still, Ecstasy is an absorbing tale that is compelling and thought provoking. ​