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Book Review: A Very Large Expanse of Sea by Tahereh Mafi
CONTENT WARNING: BULLYING, XENOPHOBIA, AND GENERAL DISPLAYS OF ASSHOLERY AMAZON — GOODREADS — BARNES & NOBLE — BOOK DEPOSITORY I’d been wanting to read a Tahereh Mafi book for a while (I tried reading Shatter Me, but couldn’t get past the first few pages), so this seemed like a good place to start. And I must say, I devoured this book in a few hours and loved every minute of it. * “I was stuck in another small town, trapped in another universe populated by the kind of people who’d only ever seen faces like mine on their evening news, and I hated it.“ * Right from the second page,…
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Book Review: Let’s Talk About Love by Claire Kann
AMAZON — GOODREADS — BARNES & NOBLES — BOOK DEPOSITORY I really didn’t have such high hopes before I read this book, and that can be blamed on the fact that I only picked it up because of the cover and the fact that it features an ace character. I’m quite glad I read it, though, since it brought me out of my reading slump/smut fest. Let’s Talk About Love is about Alice and her experiences as an ace person trying to navigate life and relationships. Although the book’s focus is the romance, it also shows how Alice is going about deciding what she wants for her future, even though…
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Mood Reading at its Finest || Where I’ve Been
When this year started, I made a list of my most anticipated book releases of 2019. Knowing myself, I made no promise to actually read those books. But I planned to. The hope was that I’d make no promises so that if I eventually did succeed in reading them all, I’d post a 2019 wrap-up talking about it. Alas, we’re now in the second half of 2019, and I’ve only read one of those books. I have access to quite a few of them; I’ve just not read them. Because mood reading. I usually call it a reading slump (because that’s what it feels like) but the truth is, I’ve…
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Three Things I Wish to See More in (Contemporary Romance) Books
For most of the past semester, I went through a reading slump of sorts. I didn’t necessarily stop reading, but everything I found myself reading was as a result of stress, and they were all fluffy, contemporary romances. You know, the kind of story where Person A meets Person B, sparks fly, conflict happens, and they live happily ever after. During my stress-induced romance binge, I noticed some things that got me thinking. So, here are three things I wish to see more in romance books. Characters with STDs. I went right to the heavy stuff, didn’t I? But don’t you wonder about the characters that go through “ho phases”,…
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On the Topic of YA Not Being True to Its Audience
This isn’t a new topic as far as discussions in the book community go, but I’ve seen a few Twitter threads floating around that seem to be talking about this. So, I decided to add my tuppence. *** I honestly have a problem with the category being called Young Adult, and that’s mostly because technically, young adulthood is from late teenage years to mid twenties (some people say it ends at mid thirties, but I draw the line at 28). That is very broad, but it’s a bit more accurate, because thirteen year olds are not young adults. But in the book world, young adults are age 12-18. So, for…
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Mini Reviews: Once Upon A Harem
I’m a sucker for fairytale retellings and reverse harem, so when I heard about this series, I was sold! The Once Upon A Harem series is a joint effort by several authors who are retelling select fairytales the reverse harem way. Each book is a standalone, as it features a different fairytale, so I’m reviewing in the order I read (rather than the order they were released). *** While Beauty Sleeps by Ripley Proserpina My Thoughts: I’ve read other RH stories by Ripley Proserpina, so I was expecting to be impressed. While this was well written, easy to follow, and just very interesting, it was just too fluffy. Maybe it’s…
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Book Series I Started (and loved) but Never Finished
I haven’t finished a lot of series, and I realised this when I was gathering books for my 20 Books for 20 Years post. So, here’s a list of book series I started, enjoyed, and plan to finish. Eventually. The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer Cinder is one of the many books that have sparked joy in my life, and I can’t really say why I haven’t finished reading this series, especially since I have Winter, which is the book I’m yet to read. The Premonition by Amy Bartol It always helps when I have all the books at once, and that was the problem with this series. I binge…
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Book Review: My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
AMAZON — GOODREADS — BARNES & NOBLE — BOOK DEPOSITORY The blurb pretty much tells you what to expect from this story; it’s about Korede, whose sister has formed a habit of killing her lovers for whatever reason. However, it’s also about many other things, including family and sisterhood, jealousy, favouritism, and loyalty. Korede has spent her life overshadowed by her younger sister’s beauty. While Ayoola can get away with a lot of things because of her physical appearance, Korede can’t. This means that Korede can’t tell anyone about her sister’s murderous ways, because who’d believe her? Everyone would just think she’s jealous. So, she goes on cleaning up after…
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Bookish Tropes I Haven’t Seen In A While
There was a time when a lot of New Adult Romance books I read or heard of were filled with clichés. I recently came across a book that brought memories of all the silly tropes that probably started out meaning well, but only managed to annoy me. It also made me realise that I must have honed my skills when it comes to avoiding such books, because it’s been a while since I read one. I know that writing a post about tropes is cliché, but I just couldn’t resist. Besides, these types of posts seem like a rite of passage for book bloggers. Just for kicks, I made a…
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6 Things I Like About A Girl Like Her
This is one of those reviews where I can’t do much more than gush, so here’s a dedicated post to me just gushing about A Girl Like Her. First Impressions: This book grabbed my attention from the start and it was all because of the period mention. First impressions count, folks! Representation: Ruth is a curvy, autistic character of colour who has been abused in the past. And she’s of Sierra Leonean descent (I’m biased when it comes to African characters). Just having marginalised characters is not enough, the story also has to do justice to the characters, and I think A Girl Like Her does Ruth justice! It also…
