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Mini Reviews // Progress on My Bookish Backlog
I struggled with lack of motivation to blog for most of last year. Throw in the fact that the internet just kept me overwhelmed with lots of bad news for a while last year, and my “laziness” felt pretty justified. So, I’ve had these reviews sitting in my drafts for a while, and I decided to let them see the light of day. Have you read any of these books? Which books have you enjoyed recently?
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What’s on my TBR List This Year?
Hello and happy not-so-new year! I was just looking through the books I read in 2020, and I realised that despite my extended absence from the blogosphere, I was able to read over 120 books (I stopped counting at 127). Since I’m on a roll, I decided to share the titles that have made it to my 2021 TBR list so far. The Empire of Gold by S.A. Chakraborty “The final chapter in the Daevabad Trilogy, in which a con-woman and an idealistic djinn prince join forces to save a magical kingdom from a devastating civil war…“ I’ve read the first two books in this series, and so far, I’m…
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Mixed Feelings // Spin the Dawn Mini Review + Aesthetic
AMAZON — GOODREADS — BARNES & NOBLE — BOOK DEPOSITORY I feel like I should start paying more attention to book descriptions because the first few lines of marketing spiel can be quite deceiving. * “Project Runway meets Mulan in this sweeping YA fantasy about a young girl who poses as a boy to compete for the role of imperial tailor …” * That’s the first (and only) thing I saw about this book that prompted me to read it. It’s probably what’s made several other people eager to read this book, because who wouldn’t be drawn in by the promise of a Mulan kind of story? However, I think…
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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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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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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…
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Book Review: Birthday Girl by Penelope Douglas
AMAZON — GOODREADS — BARNES & NOBLE — BOOK DEPOSITORY *** In Birthday Girl, Jordan meets a man who makes her feel relaxed for the first time in a long time. It isn’t until later that night that she finds out that said man is her boyfriend’s father- Pike. Fast forward to a few hours later when she, as well as her boyfriend, is moving in with Pike. I didn’t read the synopsis of this book before starting, so the whole boyfriend’s dad thing was a big surprise for me. To be honest, had I read the synopsis, I probably wouldn’t have been interested in this book because it hints…
