Riverland, Fran Wilde, middlegrade. I haven't historically been a Wilde fan but it's on the Lodestar and Norton ballots. There are certain books that I think of as life preservers, written and thrown out into the water in hopes that they'll make their way to someone who's struggling and could use them. I definitely hope this book finds some people and they find it useful! But, as my invocation of this category always goes, Not Me. I found the real-life parts suitably tense and awful but the climax didn't land and the resolution mostly happened off-page; the fantasy parts felt flat and I never cared. Was at least a fast read. And I have now finished another category! Ballot stuff behind the cut.
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