Hello! I’m here with another installment in my Buzzword Readathon series. **And every day we are reminded that discrimination against marginalized communities is still a serious problem, so click here to find a compilation of resources where you can donate your time, money, or whatever you can to support these communities. I still encourage you to research these causes on your own to educate yourself and find the best way to lend your support.**
This is the fifth post in my Buzzword-a-thon series for 2022. In case you’re new here, Buzzword-a-thon (or Buzzword Readathon) was originally created by Kayla at the YouTube channel booksandlala. It centers around readers choosing books that include specific words or ‘types’ of words. This is the second year where all 12 prompts were selected in advance and it’s being loosely hosted once a month on sites like Goodreads and Storygraph. Last year had an even split of specific words and themed-words alternating every month, but this year it’s more themed-based with a few original buzzword catagories making a reappearance from past read-a-thons. In 2022, I am challenging myself to read at least one book that satisfies the prompt every month, and suggesting books I’ve read previsously that would also fufill it within these posts. The theme for May was “directional words” and I had some good options to choose from. I ultimately decided to continue a series, as a part of the 48-hour readathon I participated in.
Book read in May: Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire
Twin sisters Jack and Jill were seventeen when they found their way home and were packed off to Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children, where we encounter them in Every Heart a Doorway. Down Among the Sticks and Bones follows their lives before. Jacqueline was her mother’s perfect daughter – polite, quiet, dressed like a princess, and strictly disciplined. Jillian was her father’s perfect daughter – curious, thrill-seeking, and a bit of a tom-boy, though her father would have preferred a son. They spent the first twelve years of their lives trying to play their parts in their parents perfect roles. Then they found an impossible staircase which brought them to the dark and enchanted world of the Moors, a land filled with mad scientists and death and, perhaps most importantly of all, choices.
When I was reading Every Heart a Doorway, I was fascinated with Jack and Jill as characters. They’re twins, vastly different from each other, and while they do share a sisterly familial bond it always felt like some sort of tension was present between them. And the events and revelations towards the end of the book really sparked an interest into figuring out what exactly went wrong. I knew this second installment of the Wayward Children series was not going to be a continuation, and instead focus on the backstory of Jack and Jill – their lives with their parents leading up to finding their door to a world that welcomed them both in different ways. These books always pack so much in so few pages, I often find myself itching to reread them as soon as I finish. I loved the discussion of parental expectations in the beginning – Jack and Jill’s parents had a very solid set of ideals they placed on their daughters, without considering what their daughters truly wanted out of life, which placed them in bubbles excluding them from each other, and harboring a bit of resentment for what the other had. So when they entered the Moors, and were faced with a choice, Jack, who had never been able to be the one expected to be reckless, made sure to choose the path for the future she wanted. The book also talks about loneliness – Jack and Jill had felt neglected by their parents since they were young, and when Jack makes her choice to become a scientist’s apprentice it leaves Jill left with almost no one to confide in. Her Master makes it so anyone she interacts with disappears, and that resentment she’s harbored for Jack bubbles back up to the surface. She is jealous that Jack can show her face in town without other people cowering in fear, and feels anger when she sees her sister’s happiness. It causes Jill to react in ways that have consequences for both of them, and it helps to better establish the tension between them at Eleanor West’s Home. I know there is another book that focuses on Jack and Jill’s story later on in the series, one that follows the events of Every Heart a Doorway, so I can’t wait to see how the story progresses from there.
In conclusion, we’re almost halfway through the year, and I can’t wait to see what the next few months of this readathon brings.
Where to find Down Among the Sticks and Bones:
Bookshop
Amazon
Goodreads
Storygraph
Seanan McGuire’s site
Additional Book Recommendations:
–All the Right Mistakes by Laura Jamison (Adult Fiction) [review]
–All the Right Reasons by Bethany Mangle (YA Contemporary)
–Get it Right by Skye Kilean (Adult Romance)
–Shake Things Up by Skye Kilean (Adult Romance)
–Right Where I Left You by Julian Winters (YA Contemporary)
–How it All Blew Up by Arvin Ahmadi (YA Contemporary) [review]
–Sorted: Growing Up, Coming Out, and Finding My Place by Jackson Bird (Memoir)
–Down with this Ship by Katie Kingman (YA Contemporary)
–Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds (YA novel in verse)
–Upside Down by N.R. Walker (Adult Romance)
Thoughts About Things 