My Week in Book Review: Not If I See You First and The Iron Will of Genie Lo

Not If I See You First by Eric Lindstrom

The Rules Don't deceive me. Ever. Especially using my blindness. Especially in public. Don't help me unless I ask. Otherwise you're just getting in my way or bothering me.

Don't be weird. Seriously, other than having my eyes closed all the time, I'm just like you only smarter. Parker Grant doesn't need 20/20 vision to see right through you. That's why she created the Rules: Don't treat her any differently just because she's blind, and never take advantage. There will be no second chances. Just ask Scott Kilpatrick, the boy who broke her heart. When Scott suddenly reappears in her life after being gone for years, Parker knows there's only one way to react—shun him so hard it hurts. She has enough on her mind already, like trying out for the track team (that's right, her eyes don't work but her legs still do), doling out tough-love advice to her painfully naive classmates, and giving herself gold stars for every day she hasn't cried since her dad's death three months ago. But avoiding her past quickly proves impossible, and the more Parker learns about what really happened—both with Scott, and her dad—the more she starts to question if things are always as they seem. Maybe, just maybe, some Rules are meant to be broken.

My thoughts are all over the place with this book. Let’s start with what I like.

1. Parker is fiercely independent. She finds her way around the mall, shops alone, cooks, etc. When the book starts, Parker goes on runs every day. She does it only in a field near her house where she’s mapped out how many steps it takes to get from one side to the other and she slows to a walk when she gets close so she doesn’t hit the fence. The book description talks about her trying out for the track team like it’s no big deal, but it definitely is. What we see of her running track is awesome, but unfortunately, very little of it comes until the end of the book. I could have read a whole book about Parker figuring out track, so I’m a little sad the novel didn’t focus on that as much as I’d hoped.

2. I liked that there was nuance to Parker and Scott’s relationship. Resolving their issues wasn’t as easy as just fixing the misunderstanding from when they were 13. It wasn’t like they both understood what had happened and then everything was suddenly all good. I think it was a lot more realistic that they, especially Scott, struggled with their feelings.

3. I like that Parker delves into her feelings for her friend Sarah. She really comes to understand how much she loves Sarah as a friend. It feels unusual for novels today to promote platonic friendship and the virtues of it for its own sake (rather than as a substitute for a romantic relationship) so positively, and I love it.

What I was less sure about:

1. I sometimes felt a little lost in story? Like I wasn’t sure what the driving force of the book was. It’s only in rereading the description that I remember it was pitched as a romance. Scott was definitely a part of the book, but it felt like the book went in and out of how important their relationship was, although it definitely ramped up in the second half. I enjoyed the book, but I didn’t always feel like I knew what kind of story I was reading.

2. Okay, now I’m getting my thoughts together. Sort of like the book itself! I think maybe the reason I feel unsure about this book is that it tried to explore a lot of subplots that all could have been fleshed out into longer stories but weren’t and ended up feeling like they were cut short. Exhibits A-E below:

a. Parker and Scott’s relationship. This is the central focus of the book, in theory, but it doesn’t come up a lot for a the first large chunk of the book and then gets really important in the second half.

b. Parker’s relationship with her friends, Sarah and Faith, and her new friend/school-assigned buddy, Molly. We get into her relationship with Sarah a fair amount, but I feel like there was a lot that could have been explored with Faith and Molly.

c. Parker running! I would have loved to see way more of this! It was a very small part of the book but one of my favorite parts.

d. Parker dealing with being blind isn’t really a focus of the book since she’s been blind for years at this point, but her ability to be independent and navigate a new family situation (her aunt/uncle/cousins moved in with her after her dad died) comes up a lot, and I feel like I would have enjoyed even more about it.

e. Parker’s relationship with her dad and her learning to carry her grief and find peace about it. The book explored this, but there was so much other emotional stuff packed in at the same time that I think it didn’t have the space it needed to pack a major punch.

I feel so much better now that I figured that out. It think it tried to do too much, but I still enjoyed it, would still recommend.

The Iron Will of Genie Lo by F.C. Yee

Genie Lo thought she was busy last year, juggling her academic career with protecting the Bay Area from demons. But now, as the Heaven-appointed Guardian of California, she's responsible for the well-being of all yaoguai and spirits on Earth. Even the ones who interrupt her long-weekend visit to a prestigious college, bearing terrible news about a cosmos-threatening force of destruction in a nearby alternate dimension. The goddess Guanyin and Genie's boyfriend, Quentin Sun Wukong, do their best to help, but it's really the Jade Emperor who's supposed to handle crises of this magnitude. Unfortunately for Genie and the rest of existence, he's gone AWOL. Fed up with the Jade Emperor's negligence, Genie spots an opportunity to change the system for the better by undertaking a quest that spans multiple planes of reality along with an adventuring party of quarrelsome Chinese gods. But when faced with true danger, Genie and her friends realize that what will save the universe this time isn't strength, but sacrifice.

Aaaaa! I one hundred percent loved The Epic Crush of Genie Lo, book 1 in this duology, and this book came in swinging close behind. It’s hard to recreate the magic of a first book, especially when the second comes out so long after the first, but this book held up to the test. Genie is still completely bad-A, but as the pitch says, she’s learning that there’s more to solving problems than punching them in the face. A little more. I mean, that’s still a valid and frequently used method, too.

As this book opens, Genie’s got a slew of problems on her plate:

· She’s the Shouhushen, or Guardian, of California, protecting it from demons by settling the demons’ petty problems. Demon politics and power plays, ugh

· Her mom has a hyperintensive episode and has to go to the hospital, making Genie freak out both about her health and also about her dad coming in to help handle it (her divorced parents do NOT get along)

· MONEY. The always-present concern on Genie’s mind, most powerfully brought up in . . . .

o Choosing a college to go to. She and her best friend, Yunie, take a weekend trip to see what college life is like, but all Genie can think about is how freaking expensive college is

o And on that note, a hotshot entrepreneur spots a popular app Genie made and offers to pay her a crapton of money to work with him—if she publicly denounces higher education and drops out of college before she even starts (if you don’t remember from book 1, Genie is OBSESSED with education/college)

· Although while we’re talking about it, she doesn’t really know what she’d want to major in at college . . . or if she still wants to play volleyball when there . . . or if she should be looking at basketball instead?

· Finally, she and Quentin are on the fritz because of all the complicated crap in their lives, and neither of them can get mature enough to talk about why they’re upset instead of yelling at each other or freezing each other out. Good stuff

So. Girl’s got problems. And then, instead of resolving any of these problems, Genie gets served an even bigger one—there’s a power so big and crazy that Heaven, not to mention Earth, is in danger, and the King of Heaven is nowhere to be found. So there’s a challenge called—whoever defeats the big, bad evil gets to be the new King of Heaven. Opportunity to help an actually well-qualified candidate rule Heaven? Genie is all about that. In fact, she nominates someone for the job. But she can’t anticipate the challenges she’s going to face going forward, or the price that will have to be paid for success.

I liked that this book had Genie working on a lot of levels. On a relationship level, with both her and Quentin and also as she watched her mom and dad interact. On the level of Genie learning more about her powers as the Ruyi Jingu Bang. On the level of mentorship, Genie learns so much from Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy, who shows her time and time again that in order to be a true leader, sacrifice, not just brute strength, is necessary. There was lots of fun Genie sass in this book as well. I love that Genie is unapologetically tall and strong and snarky as all get out. The full cast of characters was great, and it included someone I didn’t expect to see again, someone Genie hates with a burning passion . . .

My tip to you? Read this book. You won’t regret it.