mglit | Page 2 of 8 | Daddy Mojo

Dead Girls Walking is YA horror that fails to kill

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, good marketing and not judging a book by its cover walk into a bar. Marketing assures the book that the issues impacting its wider enjoyment will be mitigated by the niche appeal and box-checking demographics. After all, an mglit book whose main character is going to a queer, horror-obsessed overnight camp for girls is ripe for crossover appeal. Toss in the fact that the author is a Black queer horror writer who is inspired by the culture’s relation to the supernatural. Alas, this is where I need to stop all but the most devout readers who read books by their sense of obligation, as opposed to their overall enjoyment, and put forth that this is not the horror book that the masses are looking for.

Dead Girls Walking has sick seeds of YA horror, but it’s too dramatic up front and too manic and directionless in the second half.

Keep running, from this book

The Vanquishers: Secret of the Reaping, redeeming vampire mglit sequel

It’s great when the second book is a series is better than the first. Don’t live life in the rear-view mirror, keep pressing on with the pedal to the metal and tell your story. The Vanquishers established its roots as mglit vampire with a family and historical twist. The new generation of vampire slayers and their training had been dormant because the vampires had either called a truce or gone the way of the dodo. In Secret of the Reaping, the dual-fanged creatures are back, getting bolder and the history of the group might have something to do with it. Much to the enjoyment of upper-elementary through middle school students, the sequel zips along at a quicker pace with more action than its predecessor.

The Vanquishers: Secret of the Reaping is an mglit sequel that’s better than the first, with more humor and faster action, but long chapters.

Olivetti, mglit that makes you believe that a typewriter can communicate

If these walls could talk. The aspect of inanimate objects communicating or having personalities is a fun way to think isn’t it? The walls of a school would have a different story than that of a hospital and a home would be something much more personal. Olivetti is the story of a typewriter and how it came to communicate with the family where it’s lived for years. Kids, a typewriter is a manual device that would create documents when the keys are pressed down. The hammer would physically move the specific letter that you pressed before raising a thin film of ink that would allow the indention of said key to create the letter on the paper upon impact. It’s also a go-to for some creative types who like the tactile process of creating manuscripts and find the clacking sound of keys rapidly and correctly hitting their intended destination soothing, cathartic, and an enhancement to the process. As a novel, Olivetti is a charming throwback of an mglit book that asks you to suspend belief, and then effortlessly brings you along if you chose to believe that a typewriter has a personality all its own.

Olivetti is mglit that delivers heart and a strong story in a very sneaky way that will charm reluctant readers and make fans of the genre happy too.

See: Charming and surprising

It Watches in the Dark, shines as age-appropriate horror for ages 10 and up

This book runs, and very few books run. Books that run have that page-turner characteristic that literally makes it challenging to put down. For our money, any form of entertainment can run, and each instance is equally rare. It Watches in the Dark runs. It’s horror mglit that is age-appropriate for upper-elementary audiences, but has the smarts, tension and character development to make it interesting and enjoyable to those middle school students and older. Even the book’s cover reels in possible readers. For example, our eighth-grade student saw It Watches in the Dark by our bed and said “ooooh, when did you start reading that?”

It Watches in the Dark is age-appropriate, mglit horror that’s smart enough for older readers, but restrained enough for younger ones.

Real-time horror that’s fabulous for ages 10 and up

Courtesy of Cupid, mglit that asks what if the God of Love was your daddy?

Courtesy of Cupid disappeared from my book queue. It’s nothing fancy, just a series of books stacked up on top of one another, but I knew that something was missing. After a couple of days, my wife said, “This book is really good.” After a couple more days she let me know that Courtesy of Cupid would be leaving the house. It was going to someone else’s house so that they could read it. The finest form of book flattery is when it travels from house to house before eventually landing on my desk once more.

As much as it pains the stereotypical me, my wife was right on the money, and Courtesy of Cupid is a very entertaining book. Cupid is real, has a daughter and once she turns 13 will inherit the power to make people fall in love. It’s like Groundhog Day, but with love and in real-time. This is Bewitched, except Samantha can only make people fall in or out of love. Both of those aren’t what happens, but it’s where my mind, and possibly yours, immediately went.

Courtesy of Cupid, effortless-to-read mglit about a teen girl who’s the daughter of the God of Love and has inherited some of his abilities.

Just nod and say “Yes, dear”, but for real

Flying Fillies coming-of-age with a historical fiction, female, WWII twist

There’s an advertisement on the radio that so sweet and schmaltzy that your initial reaction is to quickly change the station like some Pavlovian dog. But you’re too late and four seconds into the ad you’re disarmed by its quaint music and down-home copy. By the end of the ad its name is stuck in your head and you’re pining for a pint of that stupid ice cream that you know you shouldn’t eat. It shamelessly reminds you of a different era, a time when things were different, slower, and more patient. Flying Fillies: The Sky’s the Limit is upper-elementary and middle school mglit that harkens back to that feeling. It’s mglit that dances between a coming-of-age story, the non-fiction world of WASPs, and the backdrop of early 1940s WWII paranoia and pride with ease in a way that gives those younger readers an age-appropriate view into trailblazers that you never knew about.

Flying Fillies: The Sky’s the Limit is historical fiction about a real group of women pilots in WWII who bridged the cap and broke a barrier or two.

Historical fiction that resonates if you give it a chance

The Otherwoods, bait and switch mglit on acceptance donned in a horror robe

I love going to a beef jerky store. Due to my high blood pressure, I can’t frequent them too often, thus, it’s great that they’re not on every corner. There is a beef jerky store in the area where we vacation and I go in there just to tease my senses. Imagine that your version of this story exists for whatever you like. However, on the next visit to the beef jerky store, all of the jerky has been replaced by different types of string cheese. The name of the store hasn’t changed, they’re still claiming to sell beef jerky, but the only product that they’re selling is cheese. The Otherwoods is selling cheese when it’s advertising beef jerky.

The Otherwoods is LGBTQ acceptance in sheep-horror clothing. It’s not scary enough for the later, yet aims the book’s jacket at that audience.

This is not the ghost or spooky book that you’re looking for

The Things We Miss, a little time travel, a lot of life and a great book

There’s a new type of reluctant reader that I put my finger on, and I’m one of them- the dramatic reluctant reader. In the venn diagram of readers, this person crosses over into the realistic fiction persona with ease, but our new moniker avoids books that are overly dramatic. The Things We Miss is mglit that were it not for the inclusion of a tree house that’s developed a time porthole would’ve easily fallen into that category. The odds on it being read by even someone who loves to read, but doesn’t like drama would’ve shrunk at a more precipitous rate than the box office for recent Marvel films. However, include a time porthole, put it in a tree house and include all the middle school angst you can handle and you’ve got a winner.

The Things We Miss is mglit that brings in just enough science-fiction to the genre before they realize that it’s realistic fiction that they’ll enjoy as much.

Fear not the realistic fiction, with a touch of drama