Won Finished Paperback in BookishFirst.com Giveaway!
A Banh Mi for Two is Trinity Nguyen's debut novel about a Vietnamese young woman and a Vietnamese Won Finished Paperback in BookishFirst.com Giveaway!
A Banh Mi for Two is Trinity Nguyen's debut novel about a Vietnamese young woman and a Vietnamese American young woman who are connected by a food blog. Lan runs a food blog about Sai Gon and Vivi is an avid follower of Lan's blog and Instagram. Vivi's mother left Viet Nam when she was young and refuses to talk about it so Vivi takes matters into her own hands and participates in a study abroad program in Viet Nam, though her parents think she is in Singapore. That seemed a little unbelievable to me. I don't see an 18-year-old pulling that kind of scam over on her parents. But aside from that, Vivi and her best friend Cindy study in Viet Nam and end up meeting Lan. Hijinks ensue, kisses happen, it's all very sweet. Lan is feeling stuck in Sai Gon and uninspired but Vivi changes that. I still don't agree with what Vivi did, it's really not her place to question her mother's reasons for not talking about something, I thought it was really disrespectful towards Vivi's mother. Cute sapphic book though. And food talk was top tier. Love Vietnamese food!...more
I did not get along well with The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. I tried the e-book and I tried theNetGalley ARC & BookishFirst.com ARC.
4.5 stars.
I did not get along well with The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. I tried the e-book and I tried the audiobook. I was confused throughout much of the book and it just wasn't an enjoyable reading experience for me. I was hesitant about Turton's follow-up, The Devil and the Dark Water, because I didn't want that same experience. I put off reading it for a year, kept choosing "Deliver Later" every time my hold came in from Libby. I finally read the e-book and I loved it. It was nothing like Evelyn Hardcastle. It was a linear timeline! So I wasn't scared of The Last Murder at the End of the World. I'm so glad I got an ARC of it from BookishFirst and NetGalley and also bought a beautiful Waterstones sprayed edges signed exclusive edition!
The atmosphere in this book is so interesting and intriguing. It's a post-apocalyptic story where fog with deathly insects inside it covers the world except for a small island. The last of humanity lives on this small island. There can only be a certain number of people alive for the island and its food growth to sustain the people so no one lives past a certain age. Except for the Elders, who are of the old world. Who are the scientists and leaders of this small group of people. The way I was pulled into this story! It was so good and so gripping! As you learn more about the people, the island, the science, you learn who to trust and who not to trust....more
This was my first Ginny Myers Sain novel but it won't be my last! I was first drawn to the cover becausWon Paperback ARC in BookishFirst.com Giveaway!
This was my first Ginny Myers Sain novel but it won't be my last! I was first drawn to the cover because the colors really pop and it's also very sinister, the way you're looking through the side mirror at the girl. Really intriguing. I did not know this was going to go into a paranormal aspect (because this was my first GMS novel) and I thought it was a really cool and interesting aspect. I was pulled in from the beginning and didn't want to put it down! It's January and I live in NH so reading about such a hot and sweaty dead of summer Florida town was kind of refreshing! I really wasn't sure who-dun-it till more than halfway through but before the reveal and even then I wasn't a hundred percent confident. I didn't like that that other person that knew who-dun-it didn't seem to get in trouble in the wrap-up epilogue. But overall, I really enjoyed this book!
Won Finished Hardcover in BookishFirst.com Giveaway!
Gorgeous Gruesome Faces is not your average young adult novel. Far from it. It's so much more thanWon Finished Hardcover in BookishFirst.com Giveaway!
Gorgeous Gruesome Faces is not your average young adult novel. Far from it. It's so much more than I was expecting! It takes an Asian folklore tale, the celestial maiden, and contemporizes it with a horror twist! At first I wasn't sure about the plot. I don't listen to K-pop or watch K-dramas, they're just not something I'm much interested in or had much opportunity to delve into. So I wasn't sure I was going to like this book. But then my expectations were turned on their heads because strange goings-on start happening and the explanations are unraveling throughout the book. I enjoyed Sunny, Candie, and Minnie and the Now/Then chapters helped to put all of the pieces together. Some parts gave me chills! The cover is absolutely beautiful but also the naked hardcover is pink and has black end papers! A very aesthetically pleasing book!...more
I was a bit scared to read this book. From the offset, I thought it would be some sort of Black girl magic Won Paperback in BookishFirst.com Giveaway!
I was a bit scared to read this book. From the offset, I thought it would be some sort of Black girl magic HP knockoff. But I was also was hoping so much that it would be more than that! I haven't read much Dhonielle Clayton, just her first middle grade Shattered Midnight, part of a series where each book is written by a different author, which I enjoyed, and The Rumor Game which I did not enjoy at all. So this was really anyone's game. Well! I was so very pleasantly surprised! Just because it's about a school of magic does not mean it's like HP. Clayton did really well at making the Arcanum and the Marvellers entirely her own. I loved the two types of magical people, Marvellers and Conjurors and how there was something amiss between them that was teased out throughout the book. I liked the bad person and liked the snippets in between chapters of their POV and also mixed media to show what was happening outside the Arcanum. I adored Ella and her family so much! I will definitely be continuing this series....more
This was my first Stephanie Oakes book and I was not expecting a dystopian book where life Before and lWon Paperback ARC in BookishFirst.com Giveaway!
This was my first Stephanie Oakes book and I was not expecting a dystopian book where life Before and life After are so different. Where life Before is life as we know it today (mostly), and life After is life where women are again treated as second-class citizens with far less rights than we have today. The "Turn" is when nature supposedly took back and righted itself. We don't learn much about the Turn, except that races, genders, and sexualities were deemed "against nature" and those are what supposedly caused upheaval (I assume flooding, starvation, climate change, etc etc, all the bad things essentially), per the Quorum, a nameless and faceless group of men.
We get to know Eleanor, a thirteen-year-old living with her adoptive mother in a rundown place called the Cove. She receives a letter inviting her to attend the Meadows, a school for the country's "best and brightest." She will attend for four years, then be introduced into society to meet a husband and fulfill her obligation to be a mother and housewife. But Eleanor knows there is something different about herself, though she has no words for it. She likes girls. But the algorithm has chosen her to attend the Meadows and off she goes to learn how to be a proper lady.
We watch Eleanor navigate two timeframes, while she is attending the Meadows and a year after she is released (graduated?) and is working as an adjudicator, checking up on fellow facility attendees who needed to be "reformed" and how they are getting along.
The book starts off pretty slow but once I hit about page 150, I was invested in Eleanor's past and present and wondering what exactly is going on in this society. I really enjoyed the book and where it went, what it had to say, how not very far we are in real life from this dystopia......more
I enjoyed Alex Michaelides' debut novel, The Silent Patient. I didn't quite like his follow-up novel, TWon Paperback ARC in BookishFirst.com Giveaway!
I enjoyed Alex Michaelides' debut novel, The Silent Patient. I didn't quite like his follow-up novel, The Maidens. But I can honestly say that The Fury was the worst of the three. I went into expecting a good or at least mediocre thriller. But the way that Michaelides chose to tell the story just did not work for me. The narrator of the novel was insufferable, annoying, irritating and constantly broke the fourth wall, talking to the reader. I hate when authors do that. I don't want to be in the story. I didn't like the tangents the narrator went on, for seemingly no reason. I didn't like the ending. Good thing it was short or I would have DNFed it. And thankfully short chapters, which I do enjoy. I was incredibly disappointed by this novel. Things didn't add up, things didn't make sense, and why is there the symbol for the evil eye on the cover? It comes up zero times in the book....more
Won Finished Hardcover in BookishFirst.com Giveaway!
This was a sweet young adult contemporary gay novel about a teenage boy who has a lot on his plateWon Finished Hardcover in BookishFirst.com Giveaway!
This was a sweet young adult contemporary gay novel about a teenage boy who has a lot on his plate. Becoming a senior, hopefully becoming soccer captain, falling in love, fighting with friends, it's all very nostalgic. I don't miss it! Ha. Zack seems to have it all so when the former soccer captain, and Zack's idol, Ryan, asks him to lie for him, Zack "takes one for the team" and bears the prank on his shoulders instead of his friend, Meyers's shoulders like Ryan suggested. What comes of that is community service at a marine research center, a cute new crush who happens to be Ryan's cousin and hates soccer, a fallout when he's honest with one friend over another, and more. I think Zack learns a lot over the course of the book and definitely starts growing into his adult self. He finally starts seeing people for who they really are instead of who they pretend to be and he finds some new friends along the way. A great sophomore novel. Now I have to go read Weber's debut!...more
This book has a beautiful cover! The Golub tree in the middle, Yas on one side and RaWon Paperback ARC in BookishFirst.com Giveaway!
**Happy Pub Day!**
This book has a beautiful cover! The Golub tree in the middle, Yas on one side and Raf on the other side, the colors on each side different. It all means so much once you read the book. And the book? It had such an interesting premise, such a good setup. But it suffered from being YA, I guess? And being categorized as 'magical realism?' I feel like labeling books magical realism really hampers the story. It's fantasy, just let it be fantasy and give it another 200 pages! Forty Words for Love needed a lot more substance, it needed a lot more background, it needed a lot more world-building. It felt very incomplete and that was really disappointing. The story had so much potential but wasn't given enough pages/time. It really could have been better than a short, mediocre YA love story. I was far more interested in the Golub tree, the leaves branding the Golub people, the abilities of the tree and the brands, etc....more
Aside from a typo or two and an inconsistency or two in the finished copy, this was a thoroughly enjoyablWon finished hardcover from BookishFirst.com!
Aside from a typo or two and an inconsistency or two in the finished copy, this was a thoroughly enjoyable middle grade Jewish mythological retelling. I thought Zach, Sandra, and Ash made a good team but yikes, what these twelve-year-olds (and an ancient demon) got up to!!! Surprisingly intense and violent! I know nothing of Jewish mythology so it was cool to learn a little bit about it and then turn it on its head! I have never read anything by Aden Polydoros before, had never even heard of him before reading the excerpt for this on BookishFirst. I thought the cover did well at showing the contents of the book, making it look very thrilling and for any tween, it definitely is! Any tween kid could read this and feel comfortable in it. This definitely felt like the start of a series to me...! For fans of Rick Riordan for sure and I'll bet you learn something new along the way!...more
So fun, so sweet. Fat positive, enby positive, race positive, gay positive, even parWon Paperback ARC in BookishFirst.com Giveaway!
**Happy Pub Day!**
So fun, so sweet. Fat positive, enby positive, race positive, gay positive, even parenting positive! If you love teenage fake dating, this is where it's at.
Bethany is a teenager with a dream. That dream is not basketball. Even though she is amazing at it. And her moms and sisters are all basketball legends or soon-to-be legends. Bethany wants to cook. But how do you tell basketball die-hards that you don't want to play ball?
That's just one aspect of this book. Another is that Bethany is known as "Cry-Baby Bethany" from a silly little incident freshman year that has carried through to junior year. But Bethany has discovered boys (and sex) aren't as icky as she thought and she's ready to discover more!
A plan is concocted between Bethany and twice-dumped-in-two-months quiet boy Jacob Yeun. A plan to figure how to be good girlfriends and boyfriends for other people. What could go wrong?
I laughed, I yelled, I cried. This was such a sweet YA romcom. The side characters were fun and enjoyable. This was my first Rebekah Weatherspoon novel but it surely won't be my last....more
If I were to classify it, I guess it would be dystopian so science fiction? I asked mWon Paperback ARC in BookishFirst.com Giveaway!
**Happy Pub Day!**
If I were to classify it, I guess it would be dystopian so science fiction? I asked my husband if all books set in the future, even the near future, or an alternate present are considered science fiction and we weren't really sure?
In Forgive Me Not, if you are a minor and you commit a crime, any crime be it bullying straight up to murder (whether accidental or intentional), the victim and/or the victim's family are the ones who decide the offender's punishment. That...is pretty wild. I was deeply concerned with Letta's family and why they think she should be punished over an accident. Yes, the accident killed her 7-year-old sister (not a spoiler) but it was still an accident and she's only 15 years old. Seemed very extreme to me. And one of the choices was to put the offender through Trials to atone for their crimes. I would have liked more detail into all of the available Trials and more about the rest of the of the justice system set up in this book.
Overall, it was a good read and still showed the penchant for harsher punishments or punishments on general for Black or Brown people. It was a very interesting book!...more
I really liked Promise Boys. I liked that it was short and it had a slew of POVs but more because it was Won finished hardcover from BookishFirst.com!
I really liked Promise Boys. I liked that it was short and it had a slew of POVs but more because it was a mixed media format than because you needed to keep track of who was whom. A principal is dead and three young men of color are the suspects. These young men were not the only men of color in this private preparatory school but they became prime suspects for various reasons, each having some sort of altercation with the white principal prior to his being found murdered. It's juicy. It's a juicy story. I love how not all that you think is true, in numerous ways, in how characters are relating to other characters in this book. This prep school though was abysmal. No talking in class, in the halls, at lunch, they had to follow a blue line in the hallway like they're five-year-olds. It was messed up. That's now how you get upstanding, fine young men. To not be allowed to communicate with their peers, how weird is that?! An important part of school, public and private, is socialization. So this control freak of a principal I already didn't care about in this book! But the relationships that the characters created and fostered despite being in bad circumstances and hard to relate to situations was what made this book for me. I really enjoyed it....more
I wanted to give this a good, honest go. It seemed interesting from the excerpt. Futuristic science fiction. TWon paperback ARC from BookishFirst.com!
I wanted to give this a good, honest go. It seemed interesting from the excerpt. Futuristic science fiction. The cover was cool, I was into it. But the first thing that threw me was the extremely consistent use of they/them. Look, even if you're writing a futuristic novel, you have to remember that present-day people are reading it. Not people from the future. So when every character's pronouns are they/them, it gets very confusing very quickly. Even more confusing when several other characters are he/them. WHO ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?! I would rather have read their names over and over again instead of they/them pronouns. That would have been less confusing. And every time Elise met someone new, she wasn't allowed to assume their gender based on appearance so every new character was they/them until there was any dialogue and the character confirmed their pronouns. It made it so hard to get into and really detracted from the story which was kind of cool but was bogged down by all of these gender neutralities....more
I had never heard of The Three Kingdoms until reading Joan He's Author's Note at the end of Strike the ZiWon Finished Hardcover from BookishFirst.com!
I had never heard of The Three Kingdoms until reading Joan He's Author's Note at the end of Strike the Zither. So this is a retelling of The Three Kingdoms with females reimagined into most of the male roles and a couple of pivotal points changed. But it's all new to me! I didn't have a hard time getting into this book at all. I settled right into the story of Zephyr, strategist to Xin Ren. What threw me was what came halfway through! What a twist! It got so much more interesting and fantastical when the twist happened. I have no idea what will be coming in the next books, there was so much swapping sides and backstabbing in this one. I don't think I'll be seeking out The Three Kingdoms so the rest of the series will be a nice surprise to me. I really enjoyed this book and I look forward to the second one, Sound the Gong! I'm excited for the cover reveal because the cover of Strike the Zither is so beautiful!...more
I had no idea who Sean Dietrich was before seeing this book up for excerpt review. But when I read the exWon Finished Hardcover from BookishFirst.com!
I had no idea who Sean Dietrich was before seeing this book up for excerpt review. But when I read the excerpt, I liked it. I was wondering where it was going to go, how bad it was going to get (in terms of what Jamie was dealing with, not how bad the BOOK was going to get. lol.) I ended up enjoying this book a lot, which surprised me. It's sort of in the vein of Bill Bryson or Nick Offerman (thought not quite as hilarious as Nick Offerman!) but in that whole memoir of the outdoors. I blew through this book in an afternoon and loved it. I would never in a million years do something like Sean and Jamie did but I can appreciate when someone else does it instead! I would have liked to have seen photos in the book. For the GAP trail, they just had an iPad but they still took some silly selfies! And for the C&O towpath, they had new cell phones. So where are the photos?! I already gave this book 5 stars but having photos included would have added more. I would also have liked a Q&A with Jamie and how she experienced the travels. But I still loved this book!...more
I did my due diligence and read Last Night at the Telegraph Club before reading A Scatter of Light. Even Won Finished Hardcover from BookishFirst.com!
I did my due diligence and read Last Night at the Telegraph Club before reading A Scatter of Light. Even though A Scatter of Light is a companion to Last Night at the Telegraph Club and not a direct sequel. (And I'm ashamed to say that Last Night at the Telegraph Club was my first Malinda Lo novel!! Eep! But I fixed that right quick with reading two back-to-back!) I still wanted to whole story if there was a whole story to have! But really, this could have stood alone. Aria's story is her own and you didn't need to know anything about the Californians she ran into in order to understand, appreciate, and love this story. It was messy, it was beautiful, and I was captivated by it. The book cover is so beautiful, it looks like a watercolor painting. I will definitely be reading more of Malinda Lo's back catalog! I can't believe what I've been missing!...more
CJ Tudor and Alex North have a bit in common with their books in that there may or may not be a bit of a superWon Paperback ARC from BookishFirst.com!
CJ Tudor and Alex North have a bit in common with their books in that there may or may not be a bit of a supernatural element! It was a bit confusing at first, jumping around in time but I settled in quickly enough after 30-50 pages. This is not for the faint of heart but none of North's books are so if you've read and enjoyed his other books, you'll be fine with this one. I did feel like this could've gone a little deeper into the "religious cult" aspect and the "Angels" and how they are made into "Angels, so maybe a John Locke POV in one of the past timelines and it would've been a bit more interesting. But I liked the twists and tie-ins that I didn't see coming. I'm glad it didn't get *too* graphic, just a hint at the bad things. I do think I might have missed one connection so one person's plot line didn't make too much sense to me. Overall, I did enjoy this and look forward to his next book, as I always do!...more
Won Finished Paperback from BookishFirst.com & NetGalley Audio ARC!
This book is an eye-opening collection of female immigrant stories. This is a shortWon Finished Paperback from BookishFirst.com & NetGalley Audio ARC!
This book is an eye-opening collection of female immigrant stories. This is a short story collection published by a small independent publisher, written by an immigrant. Munashe Keseke has first-hand experience with a lot of the themes in these stories. As uncomfortable as it makes me feel to read this as a white woman, I can't even imagine how awful it would be to actually experience what happens in these short stories. It's...disgusting. And this book needs to be written. It needs to be read. By people of all races. By people of all genders. We need to see the other side and sit with it, sit with the feelings it brings up. I struggle with why people think that any color of skin is superior to another. It makes no sense to me. We all have the same things inside, the same amount of body parts, who cares what we're packaged in? It just seems so strange but it's real and too many people believe they're better than others solely based on skin color. WHY?! Read this book! Read other books that make you uncomfortable. Ask questions. FIND ANSWERS YOURSELF. It's not up to Black people or any other POC to educate YOU on racism. Do your own work. But these stories aren't just about racism and prejudice. They're also about struggling to find your footing, finding your place, which is something I think most can relate to....more
Compass by Murray Lee. What can I say about this book? I accidentally won it. I didn't want it. I left a so-soWon Paperback ARC from BookishFirst.com!
Compass by Murray Lee. What can I say about this book? I accidentally won it. I didn't want it. I left a so-so excerpt review and passed it along. A week later, I got an email saying I'd won! Oh damn. Did not uncheck the box. So I received it and put it aside. I won it in May and it didn't publish until September. Plenty of time to read a book I didn't want to read to begin with.
Fast forward to the end of September and I still had not read the book. I finally buckled down. It was as I suspected. A mediocre, dull book. There were a couple of chuckle moments but all in all, this is not a book for me. General fiction is not a go-to for me. I find it tedious. This book was 330 pages long and each page dragged. I grew to tolerate the insufferable, self-centered main character whose name I don't even remember, a day after finishing the book. I just didn't jive with this "search for meaning," I don't even know what to call it book. Not for me....more
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