Etta Invincible
by Reese EschmannPublished by: Aladdin on July 12, 2022
Genres: Middle Grade, Fantasy, Magical Realism
Pages: 368
Format: eARC
Source: Publisher
Rating:
A girl with hearing loss and a boy adjusting to life in a new country connect through their love of comics and get entangled in their own fantastical adventure.
Twelve-year-old Etta Johnson has Loud Days where she can hear just fine and Quiet Days where sounds come from far away and she gets to retreat into her thoughts. Etta spends most of her time alone, working on her comic book about Invisible Girl, the superhero who takes down super villain Petra Fide and does all the things Etta thinks she can’t.
But when Louisa May Alcott, a friendly Goldendoodle from across the street, disappears, Etta and the dog’s boy, Eleazar, must find their inner heroes to save her. The catch? LMA has run onto a magical train that mysteriously arrived at the station near Etta and Eleazar’s houses. On-board, they discover each train car is its own magical world with individual riddles and challenges that must be solved before they can reach the engine room and rescue LMA.
Only, the stakes are even higher than they thought. The train’s magic is malfunctioning and spreading a purple smoke called The Fear through the streets of Chicago. Etta and Eleazar are the only ones who can save the city, save Louisa May Alcott—and save each other.
Content Tags:
Perfect for readers who want:
- Magical trains
- A diverse trio of protagonists learning to be friends
- Magical coming-of-age story about bravery and friendship
- Superhero elements!
- (Pssst there’s also a dragon, too, but just for a few minutes . . . still counts!)
- A protagonist with a chronic illness
Many thanks to Aladdin and TBR and Beyond Tours for an eARC in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.
The cover of Etta Invincible is just *chef’s kiss*. It gives me hardcore The Train to Impossible Places vibes mixed with superheroes, which if I’m honest is a brilliant sort of mixture that I never knew I wanted until I saw it. Plus, who can resist diverse characters AND a cute doggo? Not this bookwyrm, that’s for sure.
Etta Invincible is a magical coming-of-age story about a protagonist with a chronic illness who learns that it doesn’t take being a superhero to be brave. It just takes good friends and a little bit of magic.
Let me tell you something: Eschmann can write. The prose in this book is striking and beautiful, and I just wanted to crawl inside the words and live there. Wait . . . is that weird? Tell me that’s a perfectly normal desire. *cough* Anyway, I definitely want to read more works by the author because her writing style is just gorgeous. That being said, I wish the setting was a little more developed, because I was confused with the way characters ignored magical things around them, like it was commonplace, even though the book appeared to be a contemporary with magical realism. Also, if I ever hear the word THWACK used again to describe something a normal, healthy human heart does, I’ll probably scream.
Etta is a very interesting protagonist. She’s a little Black girl who believes in magic and has a chronic illness known as Ménière’s disease.
I want to say, right off the bat, that the book is not about Etta’s illness. However, it’s hard to deny that it plays a part in how her adventure goes, as one might expect. For anyone who doesn’t know what Ménière’s disease (like I didn’t), this book is a really eye-opening experience. Basically, it’s a disease of the inner ear that causes pressure to build up, which causes symptoms like vertigo, migraines/headaches, and loss of hearing. Easy to see how that might be important when one’s off chasing magical trains, right?!
Throughout the book, Etta is having her Quiet days, when her Ménière’s disease flares up and she can’t hear, which means she needs to rely on things like lip reading, assistive technology through her phone, and sign language in order to communicate and understand the people around her. It doesn’t mean she can’t still go on adventures, but it sure does change the way her adventure looks because of it!
I feel like it should go without saying (though I’ll say it anyway) that I absolutely love the inclusion of this representation! When I was Etta’s age, I had hearing loss and problems related to my ears, too, and her struggles are so relatable. Especially since my grandmother also was hard of hearing, and basic ASL was a regular thing in my household that I just took for granted. So it was so meaning to read a middle grade book with this representation! Especially with how hard Etta’s parents are trying to adjust their lives to this new (maybe) diagnosis.
My headaches come with the Quiet sometimes, which doesn’t seem fair. It’s like when you finally get to eat a place with burgers and they give you a side salad instead of fries. I’ve been taking my medicine every day since pollen season came whooshing back like a mean, green hurricane of swirling grass a few days ago, but I knew I’d have a Quiet Day sooner or later. I can feel them coming—it’s like a bunch of little beavers live in my ears and they put up a wall to protect themselves from the River of Allergies, but spring comes rushing in and pushes against the wall until so much pressure builds that it bursts.
Rep aside (because people are neither their illnesses nor their disabilities), Etta is a little girl with a big imagination, which is entirely endearing.
She reminds me a lot of me at that age: seeing the world as this thing filled with magic and living wholeheartedly in her imagination. Etta loves comics and art, to the point of creating her very own superhero: Invincible Girl. Invincible Girl is brave when Etta feels scared and handles the big things that Etta doesn’t feel ready to take on. Oftentimes, she’ll imagine what Invincible Girl would do in a situation. Or if things get tough, Etta personifies the challenge she’s facing as a villain in one of her Invincible Girl comics, easily overtaken by the superpowered superhero.
In real life, though, Etta is afraid. A lot. Her life is unpredictable right now, especially with her new (maybe) diagnosis and how her chronic illness makes it difficult to make new friends. She’s alone and isolated and not feeling nearly as brave as her superhero counterpart. Which is such a relatable situation to be in, right? Goodness knows I was at that age (still am, even, from time to time). I imagine that middle schoolers will have absolutely no trouble whatsoever relating with and connecting to Etta!
If we become friends, Eleazar would carry things for me too. I remember the promise I made to him and hold on to the brand-new feeling of his name.
Eleazar. Two e‘s and two a‘s, just like Laureatte.
Friend may be a heavy word, but Eleazar is a good name.
Etta manages to stumble her way into a small squad, with her new (hopefully) friends Eleazar and Mariana joining her in her magical adventure.
And boy are these three kids different. Which is most of their charm.
Eleazar has recently moved from Colombia, where his grandmother still lives. He’s an ESL student whose first language is Spanish, and he’s new to the area. The move hasn’t exactly been easy on him, either. He puts on a brave face and says he’s not afraid, no matter what, but deep down, he’s having a hard time adjusting to his new life in Chicago.
Mariana, on the other hand, is a logical, no-nonsense girl with a plan. She’s already thought it through and knows exactly how her plan should go and what she hopes to achieve, and she’ll see it through until the end. Unlike the other two, who tend to have their heads in the clouds, Mariana is much more practical, though that’s not to say that she doesn’t believe in magic. Not at all. She just approaches it with more of a rational brain than her companions.
It’s their unique strengths (and, ultimately, weaknesses) that makes this trio work so well together. They each have different struggles in their life and different things they hope for, but at the end of the day, they’re still in it together.
Mariana crosses her arms defensively. “They have a lot of nutrients.”
“There are arepas on this train,” Eleazar says. “I don’t think you need potatoes.”
“Well, I couldn’t be sure,” Mariana sighs. “Look, when I was little, I wanted to be an astronaut, and I read about growing potatoes in space colonies. You can keep planting new ones with the sprouts, so really they’re a perfect food.”
“That makes sense,” I say. “You got any sweet potatoes?”
“No.”
That makes less sense. Sweet potatoes are obviously superior.
All board the magical train, where your deepest wishes can come true . . . just maybe not in ways you might expect.
I absolutely loved this train. It’s magical, but also slightly ominous. When you travel from one car to the next, you never quite know what to expect, because there could be just about anything on the other side of the door. Most notably in this book, though: the train is malfunctioning. What seems magical at first takes a slightly more sinister turn as the magic goes wrong.
Moreover, when Eleazar and Etta board the train, they assume they’re alone, but that’s definitely not the case. They run across several characters on their journey, like Akio. Who is definitely a character. Probably my favorite character in this book, actually! He’s quirky and slightly whimsical and not at all happy about now having the share the train with children who are messing things up (his words, not mine).
Readers will likely love the magic of the train, combined with the mystery of what’s causing its magic to go awry. Eschmann creates a setting that will easily entrance readers of all ages.
Akio turns the pages slowly for me, all the way to the very last page:
Grievance #811: Waves.
Grievance #812: Really big waves.
Grievance #813: Wish for umbrella not working.
He scribbles, Grievance #814: Dogs apparently allowed now.
“What do you mean, ‘wish not working’?” I ask.
Akio looks at me suspiciously. He writes, Grievance #815: Humanoid girl named Etta commenting on the nature of my grievances.
At the heart of this book is a rather heartwarming coming-of-age story about friendship and bravery, which I think every reader will be able to relate to and enjoy.
It takes quite a bit of time to build to that story, of course. As I said, the beginning is really slow to get started. Once it does, though, the underlying story is absolutely beautiful! The big, overarching messages are written very poignantly, with passages that are sure to tug on a reader’s heartstrings. Especially anyone who can see themselves in Etta, who might be afraid or feel not particularly brave or even just someone who struggles to make friends.
My favorite parts of this book are definitely where the main trio work together and learn what it means to be friends and support each other, even when things get difficult and potentially scary. There’s a lot to be said about the power of friendship and being there for the people you care about that I absolutely loved!
Like to be someone else.
Like to have a different story.
Etta’s heart THWACKs an awful lot in this book. To the point where I’m pretty sure this is a medical issue that should be examined by a doctor.
When I first ran across a THWACK, I assumed that this would be a red flag for something like afib or some sort of heart issue. It only came up when Etta was stressed or worried, so it makes sense if that’s part of her medical diagnosis. That appears to not be the case at all.
Etta’s heart THWACKs probably every three or four pages, and it’s such an awkward description. A couple times, fine, but it happened every time she was stressed or worried. Considering this whole book is about fear and worry, it popped up a lot. Every time, it made me roll my eyes, because that’s a horrible description of what your heart does every single time you’re stressed, and it felt so overdone.
I highly doubt this will matter to any middle grade readers, but it annoyed me to the point that I actually dreaded running into another THWACK. Actually, come to think of it, it’d make a great drinking game . . . if someone weren’t afraid of potential alcohol poisoning. This is one of those sticking points that is probably just a me thing, but since this is my review . . . ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The beginning of Etta Invincible is very slow, and it skirts this strange line between realism and magical realism that doesn’t quite make sense, before settling on an obviously fantasy second half.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it definitely tripped me up and almost felt like the first part of the book was somehow divorced from the second part. To start with, nothing really happens in the book until about 35% of the way in. Girl has chronic illness. Girl meets boy. Then Girl meets boy’s dog. Dog goes missing. Girl (and boy) are understandably upset. That’s basically the first 35% in the nutshell, and none of that is actually spoiler because it’s in the blurb.
There are hints of magic early on in the book, but they feel almost like Etta simply living in her own imagination. She writes this comic strip about Invincible Girl, who’s basically real to her, and okay, yes, this makes sense. She also wants there to be magic and superheroes in the world (and honestly, who the heck doesn’t?!). So it makes perfect sense that when strange things happen around her, she sees it as magic. She describes purple smoke, but in a way that isn’t particularly alarming so I think, okay, that’s weird, but I guess it’s commonplace there since literally no one is commenting on it?! There are strange fireworks that feel magical, but again . . . Etta clearly lives inside her imagination and wants magic to exist. So this definitely seems figurative.
Then there’s the instance of a boy who runs so fast he keeps up with a bus and aside from some students thinking it’s cool, literally no one says anything about how weird it is. Etta has a momentary thought that maybe he’s a superhero like Invincible Girl, but that’s it. At which point, I was seriously confused.
Granted, most of these occurrences themselves are explained, but not the reaction (or lack thereof, specifically) of the characters. The genre lines were so blurry that I ended up super confused about what was supposed to be real and what wasn’t, and then I was confused about why no one reacted to what was obviously magic if magic wasn’t supposed to be commonplace in the world. This is another thing that I don’t think will bother middle grade readers (who I hope live, at least to some extent, in their imaginations, because I sure did, and it’s a great place to be!). It was enough to constantly pull me out of the story, though, to where I struggled to understand the world the author was establishing.
About Reese Eschmann
Reese Eschmann holds a Master’s degree in Social Work from the University of Illinois-Chicago and worked in schools for six years. When she’s not writing or taking naps, Reese enjoys rock climbing, baking, and making movies with her family. She lives outside of Chicago with her husband and their hound dog. Etta Invincible is her debut novel.
July 18th
Nine Bookish Lives – Interview
The Book Dutchesses – Promotional Post
July 19th
The Bookwyrm’s Den – Review
Justice For Readers – Promotional Post
Rajiv’s Reviews – Review
July 20th
Anjali Writes And Reads – Review
PopTheButterfly Reads – Review
July 21st
Melancholic Blithe – Interview
Tirilu – 15 Reactions While Reading Etta Invincible
Paiges of Novels – Top 5 Reasons to Read Etta Invincible & Favorite Quotes
July 22nd
Stuck in Fiction – Promotional Post
Jen Jen Reviews – Review
July 23rd
Inkhaven – Top 5 Reasons to Read Etta Invincible
The Momma Spot – Review
Sheaf and Ink – Promotional Post
July 24th
Kait Plus Books – Interview
The Nutty Bookworm Reads Alot – Review
Similar Books You Might Also Enjoy:
Magical train! It sounds wonderful. I also didn’t know what Ménière’s disease is, so thanks for that explanation.
Wendy recently posted…Book Review: From the Jump by Lacie Waldon
Magic trains are always fun!