a debut YA contemporary mystery/thriller featuring indigenous teens
(4.5 stars rounded up to a 5)
Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley is a debut YA contemporary mystery/thriller featuring indigenous teens. I listened to the audiobook, which clocks in at fourteen hours and is narrated by Isabella Star LaBlanc. We follow our main character with a first-person point-of-view.
Daunis Fontaine is a biracial, unenrolled Ojibwe woman, living in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, who was a star hockey player in high school. After several family tragedies, she decides to defer her enrollment at the University of Michigan to spend her freshman year at a local college in order to care for her fragile mother. Things start looking up when she meets Jamie, a charming new recruit on her brother's hockey team. But then Daunis witnesses a shocking murder, she's roped into a criminal investigation, and agrees to go undercover investigating a string of meth-related deaths in her community.
I was very surprised that this was the author's debut novel! She has a really great voice her and her prose is both super readable but also lyrical. This hit me really hard in my emotions, more than I had expected in a YA book. But it was really well done. Maybe it leans a little more New Adult than Young Adult for me?
I really enjoyed listening to all of the indigenous stories and descriptions of natural medicine in this book. Daunis is in a rough spot in a lot of ways, and I understand why she feels like such an outsider even though she routinely shows how deeply connected she is to her heritage.
I'm going to read pretty much anything Boulley publishes in the future.
Tropes in this book include: own voices Indigenous representation
CW: drugs (addiction, abuse, selling, manufacturing), gun violence, grief, dead parent (referenced), abusive parents, sexual assault (on-page, mentioned), racism, kidnapping, drugging, victim blaming, fat phobia
Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley is a debut YA contemporary mystery/thriller featuring indigenous teens. I listened to the audiobook, which clocks in at fourteen hours and is narrated by Isabella Star LaBlanc. We follow our main character with a first-person point-of-view.
Daunis Fontaine is a biracial, unenrolled Ojibwe woman, living in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, who was a star hockey player in high school. After several family tragedies, she decides to defer her enrollment at the University of Michigan to spend her freshman year at a local college in order to care for her fragile mother. Things start looking up when she meets Jamie, a charming new recruit on her brother's hockey team. But then Daunis witnesses a shocking murder, she's roped into a criminal investigation, and agrees to go undercover investigating a string of meth-related deaths in her community.
I was very surprised that this was the author's debut novel! She has a really great voice her and her prose is both super readable but also lyrical. This hit me really hard in my emotions, more than I had expected in a YA book. But it was really well done. Maybe it leans a little more New Adult than Young Adult for me?
I really enjoyed listening to all of the indigenous stories and descriptions of natural medicine in this book. Daunis is in a rough spot in a lot of ways, and I understand why she feels like such an outsider even though she routinely shows how deeply connected she is to her heritage.
I'm going to read pretty much anything Boulley publishes in the future.
Tropes in this book include: own voices Indigenous representation
CW: drugs (addiction, abuse, selling, manufacturing), gun violence, grief, dead parent (referenced), abusive parents, sexual assault (on-page, mentioned), racism, kidnapping, drugging, victim blaming, fat phobia