Genre: General/Issue

ARC August Reviews: All That’s Left to Say and Same Time Next Summer

Posted September 8, 2023 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

Emery Lord has been one of my favorite authors since I first started my blog in 2014. It’s kind of alarming to see how underrated this book is (literally, there are only a few hundred reviews and ratings on Goodreads!). Remember when she was the top author in YA?? I feel like some of my fellow YA comrades have fallen off a bit (which I understand) but she’ll be an auto-buy forever for me. I joined some reading sprints on booktube the other day and people didn’t even really know Emery Lord when I mentioned this was my current read. I MUST EDUCATE EVERYONE. As you can see, I’ll read her books immediately regardless of topic. This book is about very fresh and unexpected grief, which is not something I like to read about. I don’t pick up sad books on purpose and just try to escape to a happier place when I read (or solve a murder mystery – nothing more or less!). Reading about the opioid crisis was even harder. However, as always, Emery Lord treated the topic with care and created a very emotional and powerful story. In ALL THAT’S LEFT TO SAY, Hannah is reeling from losing her cousin Sophie to an extremely unexpected overdose. Perfect, vivacious Sophie would never take pills on purpose! The story features her immediate grief and how she decides to get to the bottom of what happens to her. This includes transferring to Sophie’s school and trying to track down where […]

ARC Review: The Nowhere Girls

Posted October 9, 2017 / Book Reviews / 3 Comments

Initial Excitement & Summary I was over the moon when I got approved for this book. It ended up being one of those digital ones you can’t use on your Kindle, so I added it to my other ebook app. Loooong, annoying story: the book was set to expire on 9/13 (and I just happened to open the book up that day, thinking maybe I’d read it). I decided to binge it in one day to finish before it expired, updated Goodreads, and made my reading plans for after work. The next time I opened the book that day, it had expired. I spent a good 30-45 minutes trying to figure out if I could redownload it and screaming at my computer. I ended up just having to go to Netgalley and redownload it onto my iPad. SIGH. ANYWAYS, all of these issues led up to me just reading the book anyways. The story is about three girls from very different backgrounds who band together against the horrible boys in their high school. A former student was gang raped and no one believed her. Grace, Rosina, and Erin start “The Nowhere Girls” to take on the school’s sexist, lopsided views of what happened and try to make it a better place. Storytelling & Characters The chapters focus on the individual girls, plus a bunch of chapters called “Us.” I thought those chapters were incredibly powerful, as they focused on various girls around the town and what they were feeling. Those […]

ARC Review: What I Lost

Posted May 29, 2017 / Book Reviews / 6 Comments

Trigger warning for eating disorders and some self-harm. Initial Excitement I had almost zero thoughts about this book before I started it. I’ve always been interested in books that involve treatment centers for some strange reason, so I decided to join the ARC tour for this one. I looked at the length of the book, read the synopsis again, and sighed. I figure this was going to take me forever to read and be super heavy. I’m glad that first impressions can be wrong 😉 Quick Summary Elizabeth is sent away to a treatment facility (that’s actually in her hometown) for her anorexia. The story follows her journey and watches her growth throughout the month-long process. She makes friends, tries to develop better eating habits, and struggles with other things in her life. When she first checks in, she receives mysterious packages that seem to point to her ex-boyfriend, so she tries to figure out who they’re coming from and why. Storytelling, Setting, and Feels GUYS. I physically could not put this book down. I started it on a Saturday morning and before I knew it, 350 pages (out of 400) were read. I stopped a couple times to do quick things around the apartment but I preeeetty much finished it in one shot. For a “difficult” book with tough topics, it was so easy to keep reading. I know part of it was my weird fascination with books set in treatment facilities (oh, that just inspired a new read-bait […]

ARC Review: Wrecked

Posted October 3, 2016 / Book Reviews / 8 Comments

I included the content warning because this is a story about sexual assault, and wanted to acknowledge the potential trigger warning for my review and the book itself. Initial Excitement I was pretty excited for this book because I honestly haven’t read a lot of books about sexual assault and its aftermath. This one, set on a college campus, was a good place for me start. There have been far too many stories in the news of things just like this happening across colleges… and, even worse, the terrible school administrations dealing with them. Andi and I decided to buddy read it back at the end of July so we’d have someone to discuss with, and I’m glad we did. We agreed a lot on the characters and the story in general, so that was nice. Summary in a Second Haley and Richard are the two points of view we follow through the story. Haley’s roommate, Jenny, is the one who was raped. Jordan, one of Richard’s housemates, is the rapist. The two are designated to opposite sides of the school’s “trial” against Jordan, just as they’re starting to fall for each other. The story follows everyone involved as they hope for the right, fair ending to the investigation. Storytelling & Setting The overall plot was definitely my favorite part of this story. It sadly felt so real because people deal with situations EXACTLY like this across college campuses. I was specifically eager for this sexual assault story because it parallels […]

Review: None of the Above

Posted February 19, 2016 / Book Reviews / 5 Comments

I think this book is so incredibly important and, a lot of the time, super powerful. I’ve never read a book about an intersex character and I don’t know of any others that exist. The only time I’ve even heard of the term is in the show Faking It. I’m always happy to learn more about the letters across the QUILTBAG spectrum, so this was great for that purpose. Before I get into the characters and plot events aside from the intersex aspect, I’ll just say that this book is really interesting throughout. I wanted to see how Kristin would react to the hand she was dealt and she didn’t often disappoint me. I think it was a super realistic chain of events (unfortunately) that could happen to anyone in her situation. Learning more about AIS was great and for that reason, I’m glad I read this one. It was super informative, without feeling too forced. I think my biggest issue was with the audiobook narrator? While she had a great voice that I liked listening to, she felt really detached from the story emotionally… This made me feel like the MC didn’t have a lot of emotional reaction at times. That’s why I say it didn’t feel TOO forced or clinical, but at times it did. There was one thing that Kristin did that REALLY annoyed me towards the end of the book and I can’t get it out of my head. It involves her friends and determining who spilled […]

ARC Review: The Word for Yes

Posted February 10, 2016 / Book Reviews / 8 Comments

Warning: I am going to probably have a few spoilers in this review. I just… can’t do it without them. Trigger warning: Book is largely focused on a date rape and its aftermath I didn’t like this book and I kind of feel uncomfortable reviewing it. I feel weird about saying that a book with SUCH an important topic… felt pointless. I actually haven’t read a lot of books that involve date rape or anything similar, but I know there are powerful ones out there. How can something like this be breezed over, when it’s meant to be the point of the book? Let me back up a little bit. The synopsis says that three sisters try to move on from the aftermath of something that happens at a party. I mean, sure, that happens? But it wasn’t what I was expecting. They all kind of hate each other and – spoiler alert – that doesn’t really change at the end. In fact, NOTHING changes at the end! Melanie is raped at a party by a guy who is one of her best friends. This impacts her family and her in different ways, but no one is changed by what happened. By the end of it, Melanie kind of moves on and forgets it happens in some ways. She has ONE conversation with a guy she likes and just feels completely better. It’s like in the books where the main character’s depression is ~cured~ by a boy that comes into […]

Review: The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly

Posted October 22, 2015 / Book Reviews / 4 Comments

Usually the longer it takes for me to finish a book, the less I’m going to like it. I know that this usually has nothing to do with how good the book is. I happened to be away on vacation while reading this one and just didn’t have enough time to read. When I did sit down to read it, I felt oddly detached from the story as I kept reading. From the beginning, this book was going to be iffy for me. It’s really out of my comfort zone but I wanted to give it a try with my book club. Cults have always interested me, but religion in generally really does not at all. I don’t think this book was too in-your-face about religion, which was nice, but it was still explored quite a bit. It makes sense given Minnow’s history and lack of education about a lot of things. I started out really intrigued by the story, mostly because of the writing style. I loved how the chapters slowly revealed more from her past, while mixing in with present-day in juvie. (I have to say though, I couldn’t stop thinking of Orange is the New Black.) The plot was really interesting and I was certainly wondering what the fuck happened back at the Kevinian camp. There was a good amount of suspense, again because of the writing style, but I still felt too detached from all of it. I liked Minnow as a character – I think she […]