I’m sharing another instalment of my Mini Review Mondays, the most recent of which was last week. In case you haven’t seen any of my previous posts, I do ‘mini’ reviews of books that I’ve previously read and am now ready to share my full thoughts about.
First up, I’d like to talk about A Million to One by Adiba Jaigirdar. Thank you to Hachette Children’s Group for sending me an eARC in exchange for my honest review.
Four friends have stolen aboard the Titanic. They’re after the Rubaiyat – a book inlaid with priceless jewels. Josefa is a charismatic thief, Hinnah a daring acrobat, Violet an outstanding actress and Emilie a talented artist.
It is Josefa’s plan, but she needs all of their skills. Despite their very different backgrounds, in a world of first-class passengers and suspicious crew members, the girls must work together to pull off the heist of their lives.
But careless mistakes, old grudges and new romances threaten to jeopardise everything they’ve worked towards. And with the Titanic sailing ever further north, the girls’ chances of survival are a million to one…
Publication Date: 5th January 2023
TW: death, drowning, parental abandonment, neglect, abuse, parental death
My Thoughts:
A Million to One proved once more why Adiba Jagirdar is one of my auto-buy authors. She has such an exceptional talent for creating characters that you instantly take to your heart.
Spoiler alert, I was always going to adore this book. I mean, a sapphic heist story set aboard the Titanic? That’s a must read if I ever heard of one.
This is very much a character driven story. We have our four central protagonists: Josefa, a pickpocket from Spain, Emilie, a Haitian-French painter, Violet, an actress from Croatia, and Hinnah, an acrobat from 1912 India (now Pakistan). All of them have such distinctive voices and are full-realised, three-dimensional characters with unique quirks. Hinnah leaped into my heart instantly, but I fell in love with all of them. They form such a heart-warming and strong found family, with intense emotional connections and maybe feelings beyond the platonic. The found family trope is always a winner for me. Here, Jaigirdar deploys it for these four people trying to carve their own way in a world that rejects and marginalises them. It does not want to see them succeed, but they attempt to flourish anyway. The way Jaigirdar weaves in conversations about race and class is fantastic and resounds even stronger in today’s climate when these issues are still keenly felt.
While much of the book sits in its strengths with its wonderful characters, there is still plenty of intrigue and tension building up to the big heist. Character dynamics are revealed and secrets exposed, making the suspense climb ever and ever higher. Watching the Ocean’s 8 like manoeuvres of the team is fascinating and so much fun to read about. However, everything switches when the inevitable happens. Reading a Titanic set story was never going to end well and Jaigirdar does not play around. This section is one that hits hard and really emotionally resonates with me. All of that incredible character work raises the stakes even more and makes you race through the pages, hoping they all make it out.
A Million to One sets every odd against our wonderful central quartet and you will lose your heart rooting for them to beat them all. This is an emotionally fraught and fantastically thrilling read.
Next up, I’d like to talk about The Girl Who Broke the Sea by A Connors. Thank you to the lovely Kiran Khanom at Scholastic for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review.
Lily’s emotional problems run deep – three miles deep.
After she gets kicked out of school for her destructive behaviour, Lily agrees to an unusual fresh start: going with her mum to live at Deephaven, an experimental deep-sea mining rig and research station located at the bottom of the ocean.
Lily instantly regrets her decision: claustrophobic and isolated, it’s hardly her idea of home. Turns out, Deephaven has problems of its own.
The head scientist, they quickly learn, has disappeared – just as he was on the brink of a shocking discovery. In the darkness of the deep, something is stirring … something dangerous. And it’s calling out to Lily.
A mind-expanding thriller set in the ocean’s depths, a terrifying struggle for survival – and the story of one girl’s path to self-acceptance.
Publication Date: 2nd February
TW: death, car accident, impulsive behaviour
My Thoughts:
I love a book that stops and makes me think. The Girl Who Broke the Sea definitely did that and left me with plenty of topics to keep puzzling over long after the final page.
Again, that premise completely ensnared me. It sounded like a mix of something darkly unknowable and a good old mystery, complete with the most claustrophobic and high pressure setting I could think of. I got all of that and so, so much more. Lily was a shining star of the book for me. I connected with her instantly and those little fragments we got of her past made me want to know everything. We are slowly able to put the pieces together as the book unfolds, with breadcrumbs of her ‘incidents’ and family life being thrown. She was a deeply raw character, who wore her heart on her sleeve but also had it in the right place most of the time. Her circumstances and past have deeply affected her, but she is also ostracised and villainised for these moments. For me, she came across as such an authentic and lovable character, who occasionally made reckless decisions and mistakes. Beyond that, the connections she forms with other characters are wonderful to watch. You can watch her walls come tumbling down as she has her observations and thoughts validated.
As someone who does not know much about science generally, Connors made me want to race off and research everything. It was all presented in such an accessible and fascinating way, clearly and logically laid out. Consequently, the environmentally conscious and anti-capitalist message pulsating through the book hits that much harder. The overuse of resources and the resultant supply and demand strips our natural world of so much. Also, the deep sea is something we know so little about and this is played with wonderfully in the book. It is almost like another planet and every moment felt magical, if also extremely dangerous. That danger continues in known spaces with the enclosed setting pushing dynamics to their extremes.
The Girl Who Broke the Sea is an environmentally driven thriller that is so unique.
Finally, I’d like to delve into Promise Boys by Nick Brooks. Thank you to Macmillan Children’s Books for sending me an eARC in exchange for an honest review.
Nick Brooks’s Promise Boys is a trailblazing, blockbuster YA mystery about three teen boys of colour who must investigate their principal’s murder to clear their own names. For fans of Angie Thomas, Jason Reynolds, and Karen McManus.
The Urban Promise Prep School vows to turn boys into men. As students, J.B., Ramon, and Trey are forced to follow the prestigious “program’s” strict rules. Extreme discipline, they’ve been told, is what it takes to be college bound, to avoid the fates of many men in their neighborhoods. This, the Principal Moore Method, supposedly saves lives.
But when Moore ends up murdered and the cops come sniffing around, the trio emerges as the case’s prime suspects. With all three maintaining their innocence, they must band together to track down the real killer before they are arrested. But is the true culprit hiding among them?
This exquisitely taut thriller shines a glaring light on how the system too often condemns Black and Latinx teen boys to failure before they’ve even had a chance at success.
Publication Date: 2nd February
TW: death, murder, shooting, racism, police brutality, institutional racism
My Thoughts:
Promise Boys is an expeditious, explosive book. Brooks is onto an absolute stunner of a book here.
I loved the multimedia aspect of this book. It is woven from interviews, newspaper articles, snippets from side characters and the voices of the central three boys. This helps create the full picture of a corrupt system determined to put down men of colour before they get a chance to succeed. You watch the villainisation of these boys spread from the first page and also peek into the racism built into the entire process. It encourages you to question every little detail and interrogate where it really stems from.
Ramon, J.B. and Trey are such nuanced characters and when actually given a chance to speak, come across so strongly and fold into your heart instantly. Each of them is trying to thrive and live up to the expectations pressing down on him. They have dreams and desires that the school and society wants to drive out of them, but they cling to them anyway. The way family and friend connections are explored as well is fantastic. Also, this is such a taut and well-written murder mystery. The way the narrative also moves forwards and backwards in time belies some potential motivations for actions, but also slowly explains the truth behind other moments previously glimpsed. This is a tantalising thriller, with a real sense of time ticking away and tension building. We are presented with multiple clues, red herrings and some shocking twists and turns. Your foot stays on the pedal throughout, with impeccable pacing and revelations flying at you thick and fast. The system of this school is so unnerving and becomes increasingly so, as more details are unveiled.
Promise Boys is one of those books that will completely devour you and keep you captivated until the very end.
A Short Book Lover 
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