A Grim Reaper’s Guide to Cheating Death by Maxie Dara

 

Reviewed by Kristin

Nora Bird has always been cautious in life. She and her twin brother Charlie lost their parents in an accident when they were six. Nora knows exactly how dangerous life is, and she is well prepared for almost any emergency that might come up. Choking? Nora knows the Heimlich maneuver. Fire? Nora has several routes out of the building. Poison? Nora probably knows all the antidotes you might possibly need.

Charlie, on the other hand, is a little more laid back. He’s more likely to accept rides from suspicious looking strangers and take in stray animals, no matter whether rabies or bird flu is in the offing.

Nora is such an expert on death that she was a natural fit for a career at S.C.Y.T.H.E., Secure Collection, Yielding, and Transportation of Human Essences. She’s an administrative assistant, but she sees every file that goes out to the various agents tasked with escorting newly departed souls to the afterlife. One morning, she sees that Charles Ezra Bird is due to be collected at 11:15 a.m. after a car accident.

Charles Ezra Bird. Charlie.

Nora grabs the file and runs.

Once she has convinced Charlie of the extreme urgency of her mission, Nora leads them off to try to escape death. But, wait! After 11:15 a.m. passes uneventfully and Nora takes a second to breathe, the cause of death in Charlie’s file changes: Choking. (Charlie, put down those Doritos!)

With visions of black clad S.C.Y.T.H.E. agents chasing after them, Nora does her absolute best to protect her brother. They travel to a remote location where they find more than they expected. And yes, the cause of death keeps changing, as Charlie and Nora have more close calls than one might expect on their twenty-sixth birthday.

This was a delightful mystery that kept me guessing to the very end. Plus, there is a foul mouthed parrot named Jessica to add even more comic relief. This is the second in the series, following A Grim Reaper’s Guide to Catching a Killer, but each book has a different S.C.Y.T.H.E. employee as the protagonist, so they can definitely be read as stand-alones. I look forward to the next book due out in November 2026, A Grim Reaper’s Guide to Living Twice.

A Grim Reaper’s Guide to Catching a Killer by Maxie Dara

 

Reviewed by Jeanne

Kathy Valance’s father told her she had the Sadim touch.  That’s Midas spelled backwards.  He meant that everything she touched went bad and some days Kathy believes he might be right. She had thought things were looking up.  She’d finally found a job she loved and one she was good at—or had been good at until tonight.  As an employee for Secure Collection, Yielding, and Transportation of Human Essences (S.C.Y.T.H.E.), her job is to collect souls of the newly deceased and send them on their way before they turn into ghosts.  The problem is that while she has a body lying on a kitchen floor, the essence of that body is nowhere to be found. 

This is a problem. A big problem.

When she finally tracks him down in a meadow, she finds an angry teenager named Connor who refuses to leave.  He also insists he was murdered.

Murder victims are not Kathy’s department.  She’s Natural Causes.  And if she can’t get Connor to move on, she’ll lose her job, the one thing she feels good about in her life. So she has to find out if Connor was murdered and by who, and she has to do it before he turns into a ghost and is stuck here permanently.

Oh, and Kathy was in the process of divorcing Simon, the husband she really loved because she can’t talk about her job AND because she’s afraid of losing him. As the comedian says, “It makes sense if you don’t think about it.”

She’s also pregnant by Simon.  Her life can’t possibly get more messed up.

Oh, yes it can.

I found this to be one funny and delightful romp.  It as if Elle Cosimano’s Finlay Donovan took a job as a soul collector.  Kathy’s observations are a delight—a teen’s wispy mustache is “the male equivalent of a training bra”—and I loved all the characters I was supposed to love.  Kathy is a funny, compassionate, and open-hearted.  Simon is no GQ model but he adores Kathy and is willing to do anything for her.  Kathy’s friend Jo is funny, sarcastic, and resourceful.  And Connor—Connor is a surly teen, angry at being dead, but underneath it all he’s a sweet kid and a literal lost soul.

There is a second book coming out in a few months, and I’ll be looking forward to it.

Scythe by Neal Shusterman

Reviewed by Ambrea

Citra and Rowan live in an extraordinary world.  No hunger, no disease, no war, no poverty—for most, it is a perfect world where incredible technology has evolved a collective consciousness and humanity does not age, does not die, unless a Scythe chooses you for gleaning.  Citra and Rowan, however, discover their world is far from perfect.

Chosen as apprentices for Scythe Faraday, Citra and Rowan must endure a grueling regimen of training to become scythes, free agents who select individuals for gleaning—for permanent death.  They must learn how to end a life through any means necessary, no matter how grisly.  As they step into the world of the scythes, they uncover a bewildering world of policies and politics and danger…especially when Scythe Goddard sets his eyes on them.

Scythe by Neal Shusterman is incredibly compelling.  I’ll be honest, it’s one of those books that I could hardly put down for more than a few minutes.  I mean, on the one hand, it’s like watching a train wreck:  something very bad is happening, but it’s difficult to look away.  On the other hand, it’s a breathtaking story with endearing characters, a fascinating setting, and an intriguing plot.

As the story goes on, it’s easy to become attached to Citra and Rowan.  I was right in the middle of their story from the moment Scythe Faraday selected them as apprentices, so I quickly became invested in their lives and caught up in their world.  Speaking of which, I was particularly fascinated by how this futuristic world worked , because everything down to the smallest detail is micromanaged by the Thunderhead, a “cloud” system in which the collective knowledge of all humanity is stored.

Shusterman creates a unique story with Scythe, because he doesn’t immediately offer readers a dystopian world even if that’s what we eventually get.  It wouldn’t be a stretch to say dystopian is a popular genre in YA literature (think:  Hunger Games, Maze Runner, Cinder, City of Ember—and I’m sure there’s even more); however, Shusterman doesn’t start out with a terrible world.  In fact, the world seems pretty perfect.

There’s no war, no disease, no hunger, no inequality, no aging, no natural death.  Humanity has reached the zenith of its evolution:  it is perfect.  Yet beneath this veneer of perfection, you have the scythes who help keep the human population in check—and you have a world that, for all its perfection is stagnating.

What does humanity have left to achieve if everything has been done already?

Scythe is one of those YA novels that cause readers to ask some very hard questions about life and death, humanity’s relationship and/or dependence on technology, and what would really happen in a Utopian society.  It’s an exciting, spine-tingling thrill ride, but it’s also an intriguing examination of human psychology because it constantly made me wonder, “What is really the purpose of life when life never ends?”

I quickly fell in love with Scythe, but I’ll be the first to admit that it’s a pretty intense novel.  Although death is everywhere in this book, it seems like such a distant concept as people can no longer truly die.  There are revival centers where, if someone unexpectedly dies, they’re brought back to life and reconstructed.  Diseases are nonexistent, aging is a thing of the past, and horrific accidents are merely an inconvenience.  There’s blood and gore and horrific things that happen, yet they’re only temporary—and it’s really difficult to digest this cavalier attitude about death.

Besides which, I think I was spooked by the way people lived.  I don’t mean the general prosperity or lack of disease or the utopia the Thunderhead has appeared to create; rather, I was a bit perturbed by the general disrespect for life.  In one of the journal entries between chapters, which are shared by the various Scythes readers meet, I stumbled across one that really made me think:

“If you’ve ever studied mortal age cartoons, you’ll remember this one.  A coyote was always plotting the demise of a smirking long-necked bird.  The coyote never succeeded; instead, his plans always backfired.  He would blow up, or get shot, or splat from a ridiculous height.

“And it was funny.  […]  Because no matter how deadly his failure, he was always back in the next scene…

“I’ve seen human foibles that have resulted in temporary maiming or momentary loss of life.  […]  And when it happens, people laugh, because no matter how gruesome the event, that person, just like the coyote, will be back in a day or two, as good as new, and no worse—or wiser—for the wear.

“Immortality has turned us all into cartoons.”

Human life has been downplayed, made into something laughable.  More importantly, it’s not seen as a finite, precious thing; rather, it’s an indefinite commodity that can be wasted.  Immortality has created a type of stagnation in human culture.  There’s nothing new to discover, nothing new for which to strive, nothing new to create—so what’s really left?

Scythe brings up some very interesting questions about life and human emotion and immortality, specifically what it could mean and what it could bring.  It’s entertaining, yes; however, it also makes you think and it makes you wonder.  It feels distinctly dystopian, even though humanity is arguably faced with a utopian society; it makes you wonder, like Citra and Rowan, what’s the real price tag for a perfect world.