Shannon

Seasonal Vibe: spring/summer

Travel Location: Brittany, France, Austria

Historical Time: 1490

Genres: Historical, Fantasy

Read: June 19-July 1, 2026

Format: Hardcover(library book) and audiobook

347 pages • 🎧 Great Audiobook

****

The Unicorn Hunters was a beautiful book. It starts off leaning more historical with court/political drama than fantasy, and gradually moves into a story of enchanting legend. It grows to be a magical and romantic story. The writing style is lovely.

The Unicorn Hunters was a beautiful book. It starts off leaning more historical with court/political drama than fantasy, and gradually moves into a story of enchanting legend. It grows to be a magical and romantic story. The writing style is lovely.

This historical fantasy brings an about an alternate version of history, which really makes me think about why fantasy is a form of "speculative" fiction. I'm actually reminded of the The Lady Janies and Mary books (starting with My Lady Jane ), which are a series of alternative historical fantasy YA books. They are favorites of mine. The tone of the Lady Janie books is more humorous, so the style is quite different from The Unicorn Hunters, but they have a common theme; to take a real woman from history and "improve" her story(and add fantasy!).

My daughter's sixth grade class was reading Holes by Louis Sachar. I decided to read it too since I had never read the book, but liked the movie.    This is a really wonderful book. It touches on so many important themes in really accessible ways. It's easy to read, but still compelling. I love the way everything works together in each character's backstory for a really satisfying connection.    My daughter, who is usually an all-fantasy reader, really liked it too.    It occured to me that this book might be considered magical realism. It's mostly realistic fiction, with interspersed historical fiction, but the element of the “curse” could be a bit of magical realism.  

Seasonal Vibe: Summer! Takes place on June 20
This Night is Ours was a wonderful book about understanding yourself with friendship, some romance, and art. The characters and relationships feel very authentic. The book takes place all in 24 hours, on the Summer Solstice. It's a wonderful book I happily recommend for teens and up. 

Rewitched was a perfect October book. It literally took place in October, and had a wonderful combination of cozy magic with darker mysterious elements. There was a small amount of romance as well, but most of it was about personal development, family, and friendship. 

Seasonal Vibe: Fall (October specifically)
Travel Location: London
Historical Time: It doesn't specify this, but I feel like this book takes place in the 1990's because pagers are mentioned.

I saw the Rewitched special edition on the Waterstones website and was so taken with the cover and adorable cat on the edges. I preordered it along with the upcoming Percy Jackson book. This edition of Rewitched is so adorable, and it was fun to track my reading progress by how far into the edge cat I was. (I'm past the ears! Now I'm at the tail!)

Rewitched Features
Witches
A Bookstore
A Cat
Lots of coffee
A Magical Mystery
Family Secrets
Best Friends
London in the Fall
A bit of romance

I picked this book up for my daughter from the "young teen" graphic novel section in the library, and decided to read it myself before it got returned.

This is a really cute story about a bunch of middle school kids putting on a pretty involved musical theatre production. I love how there was so much focus on the stage crew, with kids fully participating in every part of bringing theatre to life. It really warmed my Thespian alumni heart.

This was published in 2012, which made it older than I expected. It was actually really fun to see tweens using Instant Messages and "feature" phones with the little slide out keyboards.