A few weeks ago, I attended the Epic Reads Winter Tour when it stopped at my local indie, Anderson’s Bookshop. The event itself was awesome (see my full write-up of it HERE), but what made it even more awesome was that I bought a couple books–and got all of them signed–and also got a cool free totebag to take home! I finally got around to photographing all those books, so here they are!
Author: Adalyn Grace
Publication date: February 4, 2020
Genre: young adult, fantasy
My rating: 4/5 stars
Magical and imaginative, All the Stars and Teeth is an excellent debut novel and gives a promising start to both a new series and Adalyn Grace’s career. Filled to the brim with curses, powers, mythical creatures, and lovable characters, this book will immerse you in a fantastical world where magic is commonplace and nothing is as it seems.
Continue readingAuthor: Emily Lloyd Jones
Publication date: September 24, 2019
Genre: young adult, fantasy, light horror
My rating: 4.5/5 stars
THIS BOOK HAS A ZOMBIE GOAT. If that isn’t enough to convince you it’s worth reading, well…I don’t know what is. But here are a few more things this delightful book has to offer:
As some of you may have noticed, I ended up taking a hiatus (inadvertently, might I add) for most of February and March this year. This was due to a large number of factors, including stress about law school (by which I mean I was spending every free moment refreshing my application status checkers and checking r/lawschooladmissions to see which schools were sending waves of decisions), added responsibilities from my new position as a moderator in the TBR and Beyond Facebook group (big shoutout to everyone there–y’all are wonderful and I love it so much), general coronavirus anxiety (yeah, we’re all in that headspace now), and a family vacation to California (which was super fun until the coronavirus things started majorly blowing up during our last 2-ish days there, and then was a tad more stressful).
But there was one other thing that I think was keeping me from making blog posts, and it wasn’t just being generally busy, because let’s face it–even when I was really stressed and had a lot going on, I still had time to watch TV with my family, idly scroll through social media, and keep reading books. No, the real problem was that I was starting to dread making posts because of the time commitment involved.
Continue reading
Author: Mary Cecilia Jackson
Publication date: March 17, 2020
Genre: young adult contemporary
My rating: 4.5/5 stars
Huge thank you to the Fantastic Flying Book Club for selecting me to participate in this blog tour! At the end of this review, you’ll find the link to a giveaway for this truly impactful book.
Poignant, painful, but ultimately hopeful, Sparrow provides a harrowing look at one girl’s journey from victim to survivor. This is the sort of book that will stick with you for a while–and, yes, you’ll probably shed some tears.
Continue readingHello, lovelies! I’m trying to get caught up on sharing all the books I’ve acquired recently, through a wide variety of sources (mostly giveaways, but a couple that just came from the publisher!). Note that this is only part of my haul for last month–you can expect more pretty pictures soon 😊
Continue reading
Earlier this week, the Epic Reads tour for Winter 2020 stopped at my local indie bookstore (shoutout to Anderson’s Bookshop!). Having attended a stop on their tour last spring–and loving it–I naturally had to check this one out as well.
What ensued was a lively and highly informative discussion between three YA authors: Evelyn Skye, Elana K. Arnold, and Mindy McGinnis. All three were insightful and authentic, each one brought a unique personality to the conversation, and all three ended up convincing me to purchase one of their books in the end. (My wallet is crying, but my heart is happy. Expect a book haul post sometime soon!)
I took some hasty and frantic notes throughout the entire thing; I’ve attempted to cobble them together here into a comprehensive description of the event. Here’s what went down:
Continue readingYes, yes, I’ve been gone for a while. I got stressed and stopped blogging for a few weeks, just letting the stack of reviews I still needed to write grow steadily. But I’m back now, and I’m bringing you not one, not two, not even three, but FOUR audiobook mini-reviews here! It’s been long enough since I listened to Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino that I don’t feel like I could write any sort of substantial review for it, but with the exception of that title, these books represent all the audiobooks I have listened to so far in 2020. On deck for this post we have a classic, an adult fantasy, a YA small-town fantasy, and a memoir of a journalist who worked in Silicon Valley (in a non-tech role at a tech company).
Continue readingAfter a fairly long time away from the blog (thanks, law school stress and other things), I’m glad to be getting back to you all with more bookish content! Today’s Tuesday, and you know what that means: time for a Top Ten Tuesday post! TTT is a weekly meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, and it always provides some fun listicle content. This week’s prompt is “Books with Single-Word Titles.” In a world where the whole [Blank] of [Blank] and [Blank] title format is painfully overused, there is something very refreshing about titles that pack a one-word punch. Here are a few of my favorites (and some big disappointments):
Continue readingAuthor: Sophie Gonzales
Publication date: March 3, 2020
Genre: young adult, contemporary, romance, LGBTQ+
My rating: 5/5 stars
Cute, queer, and oh-so-diverse, this might be my favorite book I’ve read this year thus far. Only Mostly Devastated is essentially a gay retelling of Grease, only with more humor (and emotions), broader social awareness, healthier relationships, and none of the “change the most fundamental aspects of your personality just to please a boy” nonsense that fills the end of the original musical. In other words, it is everything the world of light, contemporary YA thrives on, and I am so here for it.
Continue reading
Metaphors and Miscellanea 