Lord of the Flies is a classic piece of literary history documenting the rapid descent of a group of English schoolboys into chaos after being stranded on a tropical island.
Fyre Festival was a disaster of a different sort, with many promises being made to the would-be attendees about an island music festival that would never actually happen.
Goldy Moldavsky’s new YA novel, Lord of the Fly Fest is a beautiful and terrible blend of these two, otherwise unrelated things. Our protagonist, Rafi, is a young and (hopefully) upcoming podcast host with a show called “Musical Mysteries.” She’s staked the success of her show’s second season on snagging an interview with River Stone, the hottest musical act to ever come out of Australia, and also a bad murderer, maybe. His former girlfriend, Tracy, disappeared, and he was the last person to have seen her. So Rafi spends every last dollar she has to be at Fly Fest, an upcoming music festival that everybody who’s anybody on the internet has been promoting. Arrival on the island quickly proves that everything involved with the preparation for the event has gone wrong. There’s no staff to welcome the guests, few tents for shelter, and nothing but an abandoned shipping container full of inedible “cheese” sandwiches for food. Worst of all? None of the musicians who were slated to appear have shown up. None, that is, except for River Stone.
So now, Rafi is faced with a quandary. Does she band resources together to contact the outside world and summon rescue? Or does she let things drag out in the hope of getting that exclusive interview with River, getting the big celebrity shot her podcast needs to get the big endorsement deals (and, y’know, maybe some justice for River’s dead [again, maybe] girlfriend, Tracy). She’s got to navigate an island full of upset social media influencers and makeup gurus to make her plan work, one way or another. But what if getting River out on an island without contact with the mainland is exactly what he needs to kill again? What really lies beneath the surface of Fly Fest?
Lord of the Fly Fest is brilliant, combining the satirical takes of Libba Bray’s Beauty Queens (I’m looking at you, fictional influencer/musician Hella Badid, and bland interchangeable Paul and Ryan) with the atmospheric tension of Agatha Christie. My utmost thanks to NetGalley and MacMillan for an eARC in exchange for a fair review.
The Swords of the Ancients 
National Library Workers Day
Today is National Library Workers Day.
Today is a reminder that not everyone
Who works in a library is a librarian,
But the library doesn’t work without
All of them.
To keep a library running, you need people.
People who care about other people;
People who know how to find answers;
People who know how to fix things;
People who know how to clean things;
People who want to help;
People who want to learn and grow;
People who aren’t afraid of change;
People who are courageous in the
Face of people who would sow fear;
People who are good with money;
People who are good with kids;
People who are good with teens;
People who are good with adults;
People who are good with seniors;
People who are artistic;
People who are young and old;
People who are there to build others
Up, not merely themselves;
People who long to tear down
Hatred, not stoke its flames;
People who want to share in their
Community;
People who have seen the struggles
Faced by libraries in the past who can
Guide them into the future;
Skeptics and believers;
Leaders and followers;
People who exist within and without
All of the categories that so many strive
To create to enforce a rigid order;
Night owls and early birds;
People who want to use the library’s
Services and expand them;
Shushing people, laughing people;
The people whose eyes grow wide
With sheer wonder when they see
Everything that a library can be;
People who want to make the library
A place that is truly welcoming and
Safe.
Because without all of these people doing
What they do, a library
Isn’t a library. It’s just a building full of books.