Full review at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books 
 Shadowshaper is a freaking incredible novel. It's a bit outside my reading tastes because it's urban fantasy and it's for teen readers, a vein of YA I haven't read much of. But it's also got a huge portion of my catnip because it includes so many different cultures so fluently, and because so many characters in the story were individuals, with unique voices, and there was plenty of dialogue for them. I could have listened to everyone in this story talking to each other for about 500 more pages. 
 There are so many details that make up the world of this story, in both the fantasy sense and in the "no, really, this is really Brooklyn, for real" sense. I keep catching myself typing them out and have to delete because they're not germane to the review despite being awesome. For example, the casual bilingualism of the characters, the way Spanish and English flow together in Sierra's world, and how that blended language is one part of Sierra's Afro-Latina heritage, which informs so many of her thoughts, her language, her personal style, her art, and her own choices. 
 If I listed all the challenges and issues this book addresses, this review would be really, really long. The fantasy plot reflects the larger, insidious problems of the real world, too, though I can't really get into details or analysis without spoiling the book. There's a LOT that Sierra and her friends deal with on a daily basis, from the gentrification of their Brooklyn neighborhood and the high priced coffee shops taking the place of shops they loved, to the threat of police violence and the casual, deeply established racism of family members. But Sierra and her friends, and Sierra by herself, deal with it and then move on. It's painful, but it's not the only thing going on. It's not like she can dismiss racism as easily as she would push her hair back over her shoulder, but dealing with it is part of her daily life, and she learns how to meet each challenge with strength because the other stuff she's facing is even bigger. And weirder. 
 Unfortunately that's where this book didn't work as well for me: the world building of Brooklyn and of the cast of characters was incredibly good. The fantasy plot and the events therein weren't as strong, and the more I thought about the story after I finished it, the less it held together. 
 - SB Sarah