20 reviews found
This was at times a hard book for me to read, and I wasn’t expecting that. At thirty-six, I feel comfortably removed from the vicissitudes of young adulthood. I thought I had put to bed the thorny doubts and dissatisfactions with which Sasha wrestles. Yet L.V. Peñalba presents some of the struggles of aroace people in such a raw, unflinching way that is so painfully relatable. My heart. I received an eARC from NetGalley and…
What’s better than a romcom? A story about friendship in the style of a romcom. Dear Wendy checks off so many boxes that it’s actually eerie: aro/ace protagonists, supportive secondary cast, plenty of humour, and a compassionate story to its core. This was one of my most-anticipated books of 2024, and that does not surprise me. I received an eARC from NetGalley and publisher Feiwel & Friends in exchange for a review.
Sophie and Jo…
Finally got around to picking up Our Violent Ends, the sequel to These Violent Delights. These books are a close-knit duology—although the main plot of the first book is resolved, Juliette and Roma’s story is not. Chloe Gong wraps it up here in a poignant, melodramatic way that remains true to the source material while also elevating it in complexity and scope.
Spoilers for the first book but not for this one.
The…
Most of my IRL friends don’t read the same genres as me. There’s overlap but not that much. I don’t mind this, though, because it means that when they recommend a book to me and say, “I think you will really like this,” as my bestie Rebecca did when she gave me Honey and Spice for my birthday last year, I receive an incredible gift. I love when people push me to read outside my…
Four years ago feels almost like a lifetime for me, but that’s when Sara Barnard published Beautiful Broken Things and kicked off this loose trilogy. From Caddy to Suzanne to Rosie, we’ve come full circle. Now the three girls are on the cusp of womanhood, two of them university-bound, the other working a full-time job. Told from Rosie’s perspective, Something Certain, Maybe embraces the uncertainty inherent in youthful transitions and coming of age. It’s a…
I was somewhat skeptical about this book going into it simply because of how it was marketed as a retelling of Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare retellings can be hit-and-miss. Thankfully, These Violent Delights is a hit! Chloe Gong takes the broad strokes of Romeo and Juliet but adapts the story quite heavily. There are some subtle nods (like a bar named Mantua) and some really nice set pieces (like the mistaken-for-dead moment) that Gong…
Do not let the slim form factor and thinness of this book fool you. Sara Farizan poses a thorny problem here and asks very real questions about the lengths to which one might go to be with one’s forbidden love. Ultimately a tragedy of sorts, If You Could Be Mine is nevertheless filled with promises of new beginnings. It is a reminder that, in the face of incredible oppression, people always find a way to…
Few things are as much fun as getting to read the newest book from an author who continues to rise towards the height of her power. Courtney Summers is the Queen of YA/NA Devastation, and with good reason. Her stories, like so much great YA and NA literature, belie the idea that teen and young adult stories can’t grapple with the dark and dangerous aspects of life. The Project is a miasmic and…
As someone who is herself aromantic and asexual, I was very much anticipating Loveless, to the point where I pre-ordered it. My experience with Alice Oseman has been varied: I adored Radio Silence but didn’t much care for Solitaire. Here I find myself very ambivalent: on one hand, I really enjoyed the aro/ace representation here. On the other hand, I’m not sure that, overall, Loveless is a very good book.
A note about…
I’ve had Jumper on my computer for a while now and never got around to reading it, not sure why. Sometimes with books like that, I feel extra trepidation going into it. Why haven’t I read it yet? Is it because I can sense it’s bad? What if I don’t like this book?? I’m on vacation; I want my reading to be good!! Fortunately, although by no means a home run—by dint of Gould’s somewhat…
Arrrgh, I hate writing reviews like this because I never know what tone to take. It would be so much simpler if I just hated or just loved Fat Girl on a Plane, but the complicated truth is that I really liked this book and I think it’s really problematic. I loved it for the fashion but not so much the fat rep, which is never a phrase I thought I would utter. In…
Having not read the graphic novels that started this series, I can’t compare them to Giant Days the novel. Nevertheless, the fingerprints of comic form are all over this book. By this I mean that Non Pratt manages to replicate the slight zaniness inherent in any comic universe, even one purporting to be as prosaic as a story about three people in university. This shouldn’t always work in the novel form (it’s why so many…
Always excited to read a book with any kind of ace-spec rep. Let’s Talk About Love is in many ways your classic coming-of-age YA/NA tale of a protagonist discovering more about herself, her sexuality and romantic identity, and her relationships with her friends. Claire Kann doesn’t make it easy for Alice (or for the reader, for that part). This is a bumpy, uneven book, with parts that shine and parts that make me…
I picked this up from my library on a whim because it was on a display and I liked the description of the premise. I know nothing about Pretty Little Liars or Sara Shepard. The Amateurs has a great premise! Unfortunately, the writing, characterization, and even the plot fail to live up to the expectations I had.
Seneca Frazier has spent most of her first year of college on a message board called Case Not…
I suppose I should start with one of those disclaimers about how I received a free electronic copy of this from NetGalley and Algonquin Young Readers. However, I also preordered two hard copies with my own money (OK, someone else’s money in gift card form) even before that request was approved. But why wait a whole three weeks when I could read it earlier than that? That’s how excited I am for Here We Are:…
Oh my god give me more of these books right damn now.
I don’t normally do this, but can we just stop for a moment and look at this utterly gorgeous cover by Mike Heath? I was going to read Steeplejack from the description alone, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t the cover that caught my eye while I was browsing the New Books shelf. Everything about this cover is amazing. The…
I never wrote much fanfic. Or read much of it. I tried. I consider myself a “fan” of many things. But I don’t like playing in others’ universes that much. And when I do (such as when I do my chatroom-based Star Trek roleplaying every week), I make up my own characters. Nevertheless, I understand why people like Cath Avery of Fangirl are so fascinated with writing in worlds others created. Rainbow Rowell takes this…
Well, here we are. Dreams of Gods and Monsters, the third book in this delightful trilogy from Laini Taylor, was coincidentally published a few weeks before I discovered the first book, Daughter of Smoke and Bone, courtesy my landlady. Two months later and I’ve read all three books. There’s always something fun about binging on a series in short succession. It definitely creates momentum and allows one to keep the characters and their…
In Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Laini Taylor introduced us to Karou, a blue-haired seventeen-year-old girl whose origins are far more fantastic than you could believe at first glance. She is a linchpin in a war between the angelic seraphim and the demonic chimarae of Eretz, a world parallel to Earth. At the end of the first book, Karou learns the secret behind her origins and abandons her on-again/off-again angelic lover Akiva to go…
I have a soft spot for urban fantasy in which there is “another” world within our own world—Neverwhere comes to mind as a good example. I think it speaks to the reader in me; for someone who inhales escapist fiction, the prospect that any door could potentially be a portal to another place is just … intoxicating. Daughter of Smoke and Bone capitalizes on this idea. Karou is the human adopted daughter of a…