BookWormin'

Thank you to Social Butterfly PR and Erin Nicholas for sending me an ARC of this book to read and review! It was supposed to be just a one-night stand after Zeke Landry crashed his bike in front of Jillian Morris’ motel room. But then the next morning, they realized they were neighbors. And Zeke was renovating Jill’s house after building the habitat for her Galápagos penguins. His laid back manner and her tight schedule don’t seem like they would work, but Zeke fills in all the cracks of Jillian’s life.  As Jillian learns to get comfortable with letting others help her, Zeke gets comfortable being the one to rely on.   Opposites attract in another romance from Autre, Louisiana.   And another lost sheep gets brought into the Landry fold. I’ve said it before with these Boys of the Bayou Gone Wild books; I love that not only is it a romance but that the whole family (and even town) is involved in these stories. I get attached to all the characters and so excited for the upda...

One of my English classes spoke with author Jessica Goudeau about her upcoming (at the time, it has since been published) book After the Last Border.   During the talk, I asked about book recommendations and books that inspired her while she was writing.  She recommended several, including Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo, Evicted  by Matthew Desmond, and The Latehomecomer by Kao Kalia Yang.  Goudeau's book topic was inspiring as were the excerpts we had the  chance to read, and I was eager to see the types of books that had inspired her.  The first chance I got, I picked up The Latehomecomer from my local library.  Below is a quick review, where I decided to quickly free write my honest impression of the book immediately after finishing it. Life, strength, trials, community, and family. In this memoir we learn about immigration from a child’s eyes, grow up with the author, and experience different countries through the journey ...

  Legendborn  by Tracy Deonn is a fantastic retelling (of sorts) of Arthurian legends.  It's not what you expect, but just as incredible and magical as the legends we all know.  Maybe even more so - I love myths and legends and so I was pretty excited for this book, but it blew through my expectations and raised the bar for retellings in my first read-through.  (I already am looking forward to a re-read!)  I've copy and pasted the summary below, and if you keep scrolling you'll get to my review! Photo by me - this is the alternate cover from OwlCrate Book summary (from the author's website ):   After her mother dies in an accident, sixteen-year-old Bree Matthews wants nothing to do with her family memories or childhood home. A residential program for bright high schoolers at UNC–Chapel Hill seems like the perfect escape—until Bree witnesses a magical attack her very first night on campus. A flying demon feeding on human energies. A secret society of so...

I read this book sometime last year and it stuck with me enough that I was taking notes and writing down my thoughts as I read.  This post is a very informal review - it is literally those notes and thoughts combined and made a little easier to read than my sentence fragments.     The author does an excellent job of conveying the fear and pain they live with on a daily basis, and calls readers to examine their own lives to bring attention to when they feel the same fear, or have caused that very pain. Vivek Shraya writes about being afraid of men in the way that all women have learned to be afraid of men - afraid to look for fear of inciting groping or unwanted compliments, afraid to walk alone or dress up too nice, afraid to be themselves. But there is the additional lenses of the author being both a male-to-female transgender person and non-white. While the majority of readers might see a feminist statement, and I do think there is one being made, it is important to not...