All tagged J. Anderson Coats

{Book Matchmaker} Kate Needs Some Quality Reads with Deep Themes

Sarah Moon
Book Matchmaker

Our latest book matchmaker victim participant is Kate, who loves good young adult fiction. This is one of the most fun book matchmaker posts we’ve done, since Kate’s tastes appear to be very similar to Laura’s and mine. She’s looking for YA novels that have either historical or contemporary settings and have some depth.

The biggest challenge was finding books to recommend that Kate hadn’t read yet! 

Kate’s Responses

Adult, YA or Both: YA

Genres: Contemporary, Historical, Romance

Narrative Style & POV: First Person, Multiple POV, Present Tense, Past Tense, Male POV, Main Character or Narrator, Female POV, Main Character or Narrator 

Swoon Factor: 4

Gross Out Factor: 1

Fluff Factor: 3  

Smut Factor: 3

Likes: “Favorites include: The Summer books by Jenny Han, Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys, Nicholas Sparks. But I also books with deep themes, such as dealing with death, etc. I’m really up for anything. Just not a huge fantasy fan!”

Dislikes: Vampires, made-up creatures, really improbable plotlines :)

The Results

All the Broken Pieces by Ann E. Burg

This is a novel in verse recommended by Laura that deals with several big issues and has a semi-historical setting (the 1970s—which I can’t really comprehend as “historic,” but oh well). This is an emotional book in which the author makes every word count. 

 

{Review} The Wicked and The Just by J. Anderson Coats

{Review} The Wicked and The Just by J. Anderson Coats

Laura
Books

The Wicked and the Just by J. Anderson Coats

“To the Victor Belong the Spoils” and “Winner Takes All” are common sayings. It makes sense on some levels. Someone wins, someone loses. Winner takes, loser gives.

In the context of Monopoly, it’s all fun and games. But what about when it comes to occupying someone’s land in real life? Or taking over their culture? Stripping them or their home? And what about their livelihood? Or their mere survival? 

J. Anderson Coats thoughtfully navigates these thorny questions in her thoroughly-researched historical novel, The Wicked and the Just, which is told from the eyes of two girls on opposites ends of the English occupation of Wales during the late 13th century. 

Cecily, an English girl, has long fantasized about the day when she would become the Lady of Edgely Manor. But when a court rules in favor of her uncle Robert, she and her father are left landless.

Facing the choice of being steward of the manor of which he was formerly the master and becoming a burgess in Wales, with none of the financial and military obligations of a manor lord, Cecily’s father chooses the latter. He packs up their belongings in Coventry, where he and Cecily have been living while awaiting the verdict on Edgely manor, and they begin their life in Caernarvon, the heart of occupied Wales.