If a Tree Falls at Lunch Period

This middle grades book has been on my want to read list for awhile, so I’m glad i finally found the time to read it!  This middle grade novel is all about changing friendships and finding your place to belong, which are both very important to tweens and teens.

Kirsten cannot wait for seventh grade to start, if only to get away from her parents constant fighting and her mother’s concerns over her weight gain.  But she’s not prepared for her best friend to leave her for the popular crowd, leaving Kirsten feel like she doesn’t fit anywhere.  Walk is nervous for his first day of school, especially since he’s one of the few Black kids at his new private school.  He feels confident academically, but socially he feels like he’s a little out of his element.  He’s surprised that popular Brianna can get away with anything while people look at him with suspicion.  When an extra credit assignment brings Walk and Kirsten together, they find that maybe having a few nice, loyal friends is all you need to survive middle school.

This book pulled at my teacher heart-strings because I see many kids come into middle school trying to navigate the social minefields.  What happens when your friends outgrow you?  What happens when you’re the new kid?  How do you know who to befriend and trust?  What happens when your parents start fighting all the time?  Emotions in middle schoolers run high (remember, hormones), but they cannot be dismissed as trivial.  This story highlights the trials of middle school and all the mixed emotions that go along with it.  I was pleasantly surprised at this quick read.

All is Fair

This WWI YA spy novel was a pleasant surprise!  Most of the historical war stories seem to be about WWII, which is fine, but I’ve found myself burned out by the overexposure. But with this book revolving around WWI, it reminded me of early Downton Abbey.

Lady Thomasina—Mina—is called back home by her father to help with the war effort.  Her family estate, one of the only large estates that have not been turned into a convalescence home, seems empty with her mother away caring for family, her father’s secretive job in London, her brother Crispin missing in action, and her sister Margaret’s nervous temperament.  But Mina never expected “helping” would involve her hosting a play for the local airmen, stumbling upon a spy in the household, and a secretive American soldier named Lucas.  When secret plans start to go wrong, Mina must prove that she isn’t just a spoiled rich girl…she’s a girl with spunk and many hidden strengths.

I liked that this book had a strong female lead.  Mina is a very well-developed character that you can identify with, especially her need to be of use when everyone sees her as a silly girl. I also liked how it showed the old ways of life for England’s rich versus the changing landscape because of war.  Like I said previously, the forced decorum and social structure that is then challenged by the war reminds me of Downton Abbey, so maybe that helped color my perspective of this novel.  It’s very YA appropriate, especially for people who like spies and intrigues.  I found it to be a very well-done novel!

**Thank you Net Galley for this free read in exchange for an honest review.**

The Everlasting Rose

I read The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton earlier this year because she was coming to ReadUp Greenville (the local YA author’s conference).  The book definitely took some getting used to since it’s fantasy world takes a little getting used to (read the review here).  However, as the story goes along, you do get sucked into Camille’s tale.

The Everlasting Rose continues the story where the last story left off.  On the run and hiding from beauty-obsessed Princess Sophia, Camille and her friends must find a way to try and stop Sophia’s reign of terror.  Camille is determined to find all her Belle sisters (girls who grew up with special talents—arcana—to change people looks and personalities) before they are abused by Sophia, who wants to control all beauty changes in the country.  But Camille cannot do it alone and reluctantly accepts help from the Spiders, an underground web of women who reject beauty treatments and want to purge the empire of it’s beauty obsession.

I think I liked this one more than the first only because it had more espionage and spying with the first book focusing more on setting up the fantasy world and it’s infatuation with beauty.  Camille, her sisters Amber and Edel, and her guard Remy are all wanted criminals, so their plotting and scheming to get away from Princess Sophia—who has eyes and ears everywhere—was interesting to see.  The one part that was a little bit of a let down was the ending.  It seemed rushed and hasty.  I still had many unanswered questions, but it feels like it could be the end of the series…maybe?

Overall, it was an enjoyable YA fantasy read.

**Thank you Net Galley for this free copy in exchange for an honest review.**

The Kiss Quotient

I had high hopes for this book going into it since I’d seen many, many reviews and hype for this book…and it didn’t disappoint!

This contemporary love story is about Stella, a thirty-year-old  with Asperger’s.  Her ability to be singularly focused, scheduled, and driven is wonderful at her job in econometrics (predicting buying trends by using data and coding) but not so great when trying to find a compatible boyfriend.  With her mother’s bluntness about wanting her to get married soon and her empty social calendar, she decides she needs some help.  So she did what any girl would do:  hire a male escort to teach her how to improve her romantic life.  She finds Michael (who has emotional baggage of his own), proposes a deal to meet up weekly to work out her romantic deficiencies, and soon finds herself invested in her fake relationship more than she ever thought she could be.

I guess what I really loved about this novel was the fact that she acknowledges her quirkiness but it’s not her only defining trait.  She’s still kind and trusting and inquisitive and just like most women who want to find someone to connect with.  It shows that everyone feels self-conscious about some part of themselves, even people who seem perfect from the outside like Michael.  I also liked how the point of view changes in each chapter between her and Michael.  It makes it feel like a fuller story knowing that her infatuation turned love isn’t just a one-sided affair.

Disclaimer:  This is an adult novel.  An adult romance novel.  With sex (regular and consensual, but still a little graphic in nature).  I mean, the whole premise of the novel is her trying to hook up with a male prostitute, so you’re not going into this one with false pretenses.

The Matchmaker's List

I’d seen this book all around, and with part of my new year’s reading resolution being to read more diverse books, I thought this would fit right into my February rom-com reads.  However, it fell a little flat for me.

Raina is almost thirty, her best friend is engaged, and she’s still secretly pining for her ex-boyfriend who’s been out of her life for years.  She reluctantly agrees to let her Indian grandma play matchmaker.  Hence, the matchmaker’s list of pre-approved eligible bachelors.  As Raina goes on one bad date after another, she finds out that her ex is moving back to town, her best friend is trying to push a groomsman at her, and Raina is at her wits end.  Even in Canada, her Indian culture of marrying to find fulfillment rubs her the wrong way, but how do you tell the ones who love you the most that they’re making you miserable?

I guess with the name like the Matchmaker’s List, I thought most of the story would be Raina going through her grandmother’s list, when in actuality that lasts the first fifty or so pages.  After that, it starts to get a little off track…like her grandmother signing her up for an IndianSingles.com profile without telling her or her not correcting her grandmother when she asks if she’s a lesbian (which leads to another whole drama in itself).  By the end, it does all come back together in a very predictable “I know that was going to happen” way, but some of the choices in the middle seemed a little off from the original story premise.

I did enjoy learning about another culture and their expectations around marriage.  I also liked how the problems Raina created in the story forced her traditional, close-knit community to shed some of its biased nature.  There were redeemable qualities about the book, however, it wasn’t a must-read, in my opinion.

Comics Will Break Your Heart

When I saw this advanced reader’s copy on Net Galley, I knew I had to snag it!  I was already familiar with the author, Faith Erin Hicks, through some of her graphic novels, Friends With Boys and Brain Camp.  Even though this one was not a graphic novel, I was excited to see her take on a modern-day Romeo & Juliet story revolving around…comic books.

Miriam lives in the small Canadian town of Sandford, a place that feels small yet familiar to Miriam.  She dreams of leaving to go off to college but is afraid because all her friends will be staying behind.  On top of her college worries, her best friend Raleigh is becoming more distant the more she spends with her hard-edged boyfriend.  One comfort is working at the Emporium of Wonders, a book and comics shop.  Not only can she save money for college, but she can also feel connected to her grandfather, the illustrator of the original TomorrowMen comic books who signed away his half of the TomorrowMen fortune to his business partner.

Weldon is new to Sandford and is living with his aunt and uncle for the summer because of his poor decisions that keep getting him suspended from school.  His father, the owner of the TomorrowMen comic characters, is also busy overseeing the new TomorrowMen action movie and has no time to control his out-of-control son.  Weldon, bored, finds the Emporium of Wonders and by chance meets Miriam.  His interest is peaked, however, once hearing his name Miriam visibly goes cold towards him.  Time and time again, the two find themselves thrown together, but can they get over generations of hostilities between the two families?

I loved just about everything about this YA novel.  Miriam’s uncertainty about leaving her hometown, family, and friends to pursue her college dreams and her troubles navigating her changing friendships.  Weldon’s complicated family relationships (divorced parents who both won’t take him in for the summer or find the time to stop his rebellious antics) and his public facade that many people can’t—or are unwilling—to see through.  They all felt very real and applicable to students today.  Then there’s the who idea of putting aside prejudices against people just because of who their family is.

Yes, it’s Romeo & Juliet, star-crossed lovers, but it also has heart and strength and vulnerability.

Unmarriageable

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

This famous first line by Jane Austen is the launching point for Sonia Kamal’s novel, Unmarriageable, a Pride and Prejudice retelling in Pakistan.  In a modern-day 2000’s culture, many Pakistani girls marry young or find love through family connections and arranged marriages.  This is no different for the five Binat daughters.  Jena and Alys, the oldest two daughters, are in their early thirties and seen as closing in on their marriage expiration dates, until the day the Binat family receives a coveted invitation to a blow-out wedding in their small Pakistani town.  Mrs. Binat believes this is a gift to launch her daughters into the arms of eligible bachelors.  Enter Fahad “Bungles” Bingla and his best friend Valentine Darsee.  As Bungles falls head over heels for Jena, Valentine’s stand-offish manner rubs Alys the wrong way, but she finds herself thrown into situations with him again and again.  With Bungles’ interfering sisters—Hammy and Sammy—and Valentine’s disapproval, Alys can see that Jena has a hard road to climb if she wants to keep her demur reputation.

This book is very much in the same vein as the original—the conniving mother, the love-at-first-sight, the misinterpretations, the family dynamics—just set in Pakistani culture.  Having never been to Pakistan and not read much literature from there, it was nice to read it from a Pakistani author’s perspective.  She did a wonderful job showing how themes bridge cultures and how classics can be reimagined with the same essence as the original.  Kamal says it best in her acknowledgements at the end:

“In reading literature through a Pakistani lens, it seemed to me that all cultures were concerned with the same eternal questions and that people were more similar to one another than they were different.  As Alys Binat says in Unmarriageable, ‘Reading widely can lead to an appreciation of the universalities across cultures.’”

The Princess and the Fangirl

I love a good fairy tale reimagining, so when I saw Ashley Poston’s follow-up novel to her debut Geekarella, I knew I had to read it.

Geekarella revolves around ExcelsiCon, a comic-con convention in Atlanta whose big lure is the sci-fi franchise Starfield.  It’s your basic Cinderella retelling:  girl wants to go to comic-con, step-mother forbids it, a friend with a food truck (aptly named The Magic Pumpkin) helps get her there, meets famous actor who also turns out to be a Starfield fan, they fall in love, the end.

This book takes place a year later at the next ExcelsiCon where the reboot movie Starfield has just crushed the box office and the actors are coming back to announce a movie sequel.  However, Jessica, the main actress in the movie, isn’t thrilled.  She’s been lampooned online for her portrayal of her character and desperately wants out of her contract.  By chance, she meets Imogen, a Starfield superfan who has an uncanny resemblance to Jessica.  They decide to change places (in the style of the Prince and the Pauper…hence the title).  Now Jessica is reveling in anonymity pretending to be Imogen while Imogen is basking the limelight as perfect movie star Jessica.  But with a mysterious person leaking the next Starfield script online, unlikely romantic possibilities, and internet trolls, the girls start to realize the importance of what they already had.

I throughly enjoyed this book!  I remember liking Geekarella, but by the end, it felt like it was dragging, since we all knew the happy ending was right around the corner.  With this book, the tension and plot never slowed down.  Maybe because the whole story takes place over the comic-con weekend, so there was no time for it to drag?  Whatever the case may be, this one, in my opinion, was even better than the first.  I liked how it showed the ugly side of the Internet, how people don’t realize that what they say online does matter, and how insecure everyone is.  Imogen felt like she was never seen as herself, always in her brother’s shadow, while Jessica always felt like she wasn’t enough, for her fans, her agents, or herself.  It also brought up the question of being happy and how you shouldn’t try to conform yourself to other’s ideas of you.  

I think this book will be a great book for those geeky girls, the ones who feel like they don’t fit in when in reality they don’t need to.  Make sure you set your calendars for April when this book hits the shelves!

**Thanks Net Galley and Quirk Books for this free copy in exchange for an honest review.**

On Thin Ice

To kick off February, I started with this free teen romance book from Net Galley and Entangled Publishing!  On Thin Ice fits its genre well and knows it’s clientele, but it was just an okay read.

Set in Minnesota, the small town of Juniper Falls lives and breathes hockey.  Jake knows this all too well, as one of the star seniors of the high school hockey team.  But when a decades-long hockey hazing tradition goes terribly wrong, Jake is now on the sidelines and questioning his town’s adoration of all things hockey.  Enter Brooke, the new girl who moved to town to live with her grandmother.  She’s an outsider, and she’s dealing with the town gossip about her parents.  But when the school’s new JV girls’ hockey team needs new players, she decides to try being “normal” and play for the team…even though she’s never played hockey before.  Jake is helping coach the team, and he seems to be drawn to Brooke’s quiet strength.  But can she help him stand up for what he knows is right, even if it means going against the entire town?

Again, it’s obvious from the beginning how the story will play out…guy meets girl, they have a connection, conflict ensues, resolve by kissing.  But there is another facet to the story with Jake and the hazing charges.  It’s a conflict that’s applicable today with all the stories in the news about fraternity and sports hazing rituals.  It’s a good moral for the story, but again a very predictable ending.  The one thing that did bother me and I felt didn’t add to the story was the sex scene between Brooke and Jake.  I just don’t feel it sets the right morals for feelings-enhanced teens to see characters say “I love you…now we must have sex.”  There’s also a line between implied sex and explicitly stated sex, like in this book.  Anyways, that was the only part, as a parent and a middle school teacher, that felt wrong.

This book is actually the third in the Juniper Falls series, but the books are all about different kids in town, so reading them in order isn’t necessary.  

One Day in December

This book gave me some anxiety.  I think part of it was I knew from the back that I was jumping into a ten year love saga that may not have a happy ending.  Part of it dredged up some unpleasant memories from my past.  Regardless, it took me a week to crack the cover, and then another week to read the first 120 pages.  But after breaking through that barrier, I finished the last 275 pages in two days.

Don’t let the “Christmas” sticker fool you in the library…this isn’t really a Christmas book.  It just happens that December marked the first time that Laurie and Jack meet, her on the bus while he was at the bus stop.  It was a movie-cliche love at first sight moment.  But the bus left, hauling Laurie away, embarking her on a year-long quest to find her missing “bus boy” with the help of her vivacious friend Sarah.  A year later, Sarah excitedly introduces Laurie to her new boyfriend…Jack, the mysterious bus boy.  This is where my anxious heart couldn’t take it because Laurie and Sarah are close.  BFFs.  Practically sisters.  But now Laurie has to decide whether to tell Sarah her new boyfriend is in fact the mystery man they’ve been looking for all year.  It’s stressful and tension filled and enough awkwardness to make anyone cringe.

But the story doesn’t end there.  It keeps going…for years!  Skipping every few months, it tells of Laurie and Sarah’s friendship, of Laurie and Jack’s infatuation turned friendship, of Laurie trying to mend her heart without uprooting friendships.  Heartbreak.  Loss.  Love.  Fallouts.  

This book reminded me of the 2014 movie Boyhood because it gives you snippets and pieces of Laurie and Jack’s lives without filling in all the tiny details.  Sometimes it will jump a month, sometimes six months.  Sometimes we’re in Laurie’s point of view, other times we go to Jack.  

I guess part of my reluctance once I started reading was the fact that I identified with Laurie.  Not in the love at first sight part (because if you’ve read any of my romance reviews, you know how I feel about that subject), but the effervescent best friend who always catches the eye of the guys part.  In high school, one of my best friends was that person.  She never stole the guys I liked, but it seemed that I was always the third wheel, the awkward side-kick without a date, the one who was not quite pretty enough.  I shrugged it off, like Laurie, but that nagging voice stays in your head longer than you’d like it to.  Laurie’s shock and pain at realizing her friend (even unknowingly) took the guy she’s been pining for brought back some of those high school feelings, so it was hard to get through the first part of the book.  But that same feeling is what pushed me towards the ending with abandon.  I needed to know that Laurie got her happy ending, just like me.

Overall, a slow start but a good read for any rom-com fans.  

Greetings from Witness Protection!

This middle grades book was a $2 find at our school’s last Scholastic book sale, and I knew I couldn’t pass it up!

Nicolette has been in the foster system since her father was incarcerated and her grammy died.  She’s been through five foster homes but always finds herself back at the Center because she doesn’t “stick.”  Then the US Marshall’s show up with an interesting proposition:  they are looking for kids willing to go into witness protection with a family to change their searchable profile.  Nicolette, now named Charlotte, joins the Trevor family who is on the run from a crime syndicate family.  Now she has to bond with her new parents, find a way to keep her new sullen younger brother from contacting his old friends, and keep her old kleptomaniac habits hidden so she doesn’t get sent away again.

This was a very well done book and has a lot of elements that would make middle grade kids enjoy it.  There’s a spunky lead who seems to outsmart those around her (even the adults).  There’s the suspense and threat of danger without overdoing the violence.  There’s the friend-dynamic of Charlotte trying to make new friends at school while trying to deflect the mean girl comments.  Overall, it was a very relatable book for upper elementary and middle schoolers (which is easy to understand when you read the author’s bio and find out he’s a current 5th grade teacher himself).  And parents will enjoy that the content is clean without any cursing or intimate situations.

The Raven's Tale

This book caught my eye because it’s a fictionalized version of Edgar Allan Poe’s youth.  Add a little mystical fantasy touch and I knew I wanted to read it.

In school, you read Poe at some point, whether it’s The Raven or The Pit and the Pendulum or The Tell-Tale Heart.  He’s seen as one of the great gothic writers of the weird and macabre.  But what if he dreamed of being a romantic?  A satirist?  That’s the question this book revolves around.

We meet a seventeen-year-old Edgar Allan Poe, orphaned when his theatrical mother died of tuberculous when he was three and adopted by the affluent Allan family.  Poe is anxiously wanting to leave Richmond, Virginia, and cannot wait to start university classes at the University of Virginia.  But his adoptive father is threatening to not send him if he doesn’t stop his frivolous writing habit, his adoptive mother is constantly sick and in a fragile state, and the love of his life is being wishy-washy about commitment for fear of her father’s disdain of Poe’s lowly background.  Basically, Poe’s feeling pressure from all around to be successful.  So this is not the most ideal time for his gothic writing muse to spring from his imagination into real flesh and blood.  His muse, named Lenore (obviously), spends a year trying to convince Poe that telling ghastly stories about death is his true path so she can evolve into the raven she’s meant to be.

I really enjoyed the language in this book, the way Cat Winters weaves her words together using language from the 1800s (I guess it’s the English teacher in me).  The author also spent a quite a bit of time researching Edgar Allan Poe’s life to keep it as accurate as possible. However, the tale was just okay.  It was an interesting concept, but unless the reader is really into Poe, then I don’t see them really connecting with this book.

If writing that springs to life, ghostly specters, and tormented artists don’t catch your reading fancy, then this YA novel won’t hold your attention.

**Thank you, NetGalley and Amulet Books, for this free copy in exchange for an honest review.**

Extracted Trilogy

I have lots of book genres that I enjoy reading, and sci-fi is one of them!  Time travel, fictional technology, mysterious events…what’s not to love?  Sure, sometimes the stories can get a little out there and confusing, but as long as there is a line of plausibility, I’m up for it.

I read the first book in this series about a year ago.  Extracted sets up the main conflict of the series.  In the year 2061, a genius kid built a time machine to save his father’s life, but after jumping into 2111, he finds out the world has been left in utter destruction with no sign of life.  It’s decided that they need to extract people from history with a special set of skills—both military and intelligence—so they can figure out what went wrong in the future and fix it.  The problem is they don’t want to disrupt history’s timeline further, so they need to choose people who died but whose bodies were never recovered.  They decide on three:  “Mad” Harry Madden—a WWII legend who is built like a tank; Ben Ryder—an insurance investigator with a brain to make complex connections; and Safa Patel—an elite police officer with impressive combat skills. 

The first book, Extracted, really lets the reader get to know the characters and understand the conflict of the story while the second book, Executed, picks up where the last on left off.  Now a special force unit—comprised of Alpha, Beta, Charlie, Delta, and Echo—is after the group because they want the time machine.  They report back to their mysterious leader “Mother” and are willing to do whatever it takes to find the group and take the time machine.  Harry, Safa, and Ben also have other changes:  Roland, their previous leader and the person responsible for extracting them, is out and Miri, an old intelligence leader for the military, is now in charge.  With Miri’s help—and a lot of time machine practice—Harry, Safa, and Ben are able to save the time machine inventor and his sister (in a previous timeline—after he built the machine but before people started coming after them) so that they can protect the time travel technology from getting into the wrong hands.  This book, though it gets a little crazy, is still easy to track and understand because only one group is time traveling while the other is fixed in 2061.

The third book is when it starts to get really wibbly-wobbly (and if you make it this far, trust me, you’ll want to finish the series).  In Extinct, Ben, Safa, Harry, and their new recruit Emily have slipped by the special force unit, but Mother is undeterred.  She hijacks the time traveling technology and now has a working time machine of her own.  Now the two groups are fighting against time and each other to figure out how to stop the other…oh, and how to save the world from destroying in 2111.  There’s now three working time machines, lots of jumping here and there in time, and a whole lot of deception.

I really enjoyed the ingenuity of this trilogy (and who doesn’t love a good time traveling book?).  The only fault was the coarse language throughout the entire series (this is definitely an adult book), and some sexual references that weren’t explicit but enough to make me not want to pass this on to a high schooler (again, adult book).

If you enjoy some science fiction hilarity, then you should enjoy this series as much as I did.

The Library Book

I’m not typically a nonfiction reader unless it’s more of a narrative nonfiction.  After seeing some hyped reviews for this book about the Los Angeles fire of 1986, I really wanted to read it.  It seemed right up my alley:  a book about books!  However, it was a little off for me.

On the gorgeous front cover, there’s a review that says it’s a mix of “true crime, history, biography, and immersion journalism.”  This book doesn’t fit into just one nonfiction genre; it’s a mix of many different types which made it feel very disjointed for me.  Part of the story is the history of the Los Angeles public library, from it’s start as a gentlemen’s reading room to its current state as a modern day information center.  Part of the story is the history of libraries themselves, focusing on the history behind book burnings and library fires.  Part of the story is the Los Angeles library fire and the hunt for the arsonist.  Part of the story is Susan Orlean’s research process and interviews with past and current library staff.  

It was interesting, but all of the differing stories seemed to make it feel disjointed, in my opinion.  You’d be skipping from the background story of the main arson suspect to the modern day librarian interviews to World War II book burnings to the eccentric library director in 1905 who hiked from Chicago to Los Angeles.  I had a hard time staying engaged with the book because it seemed so scattered.  I’d get really into one chapter then find myself skimming the next to get through it.  

For anyone who loves libraries, history, and books, this will be a great book for you.  If you need linear, chronological order when reading a book, then you may just want to skip this one.

The Incredible True Story of the Making of the Eve of Destruction

I'm completely mixed about this book.  The first half of the book drew me in:  the 1980s culture, the elements of a blended family during a time when it wasn’t as common, the threat of nuclear destruction and Laura’s nervousness about it.  However, the second half of the book was a let down.  It was very over dramatic and just skimmed over events so it didn’t have the same connected feeling.

Laura wins a guest role in a movie that's being filmed in her town.  It's the 1980s and people are still anxious about Russia and impending nuclear attacks, which makes people a little edgy about the 1950s style movie about an accidental nuclear war.  Laura is especially anxious about mutually assured destruction because her dad works in one of the nuclear silos located near her town, however, the rest of the town can only talk about Laura’s mother new marriage to a black man.  I enjoyed hearing Laura's backstory about her family and new stepbrother Terrance, however, the second half of the book just made me say, "What?"  Some of the side stories got lost somewhere, and the details just got confusing. 

I was really hoping for a little more cohesive storyline, so it was a little bit of a let down for me.

**Thank you, Net Galley, for this free read in exchange for an honest review.**

Pride: a Pride and Prejudice Remix

I have a soft spot for Pride and Prejudice (as you know from this post and this post), so when my husband got me this book for my stocking this year, I was over the moon!

This YA book modernizes the classic story while also having its own heart and soul.  Set in modern day Bushwick, Brooklyn, Zuri and her loud Haitian-Dominican family love where they live.  Zuri loves the block parties, the old men who sit outside the corner bodega all day, her fortune telling landlady in the basement, and the sense of togetherness.  However, she has noticed changes coming to her neighborhood, the biggest of which is the rich family who bought the old dilapidated house across the street and restored it.  Zuri is worried that the Darcy family moving in is the beginning of the end of her close-knit neighborhood, since they obviously don’t belong with their wealth and uppity son, Darius.  The summer before her senior year should have been filled with college essay writing and sister-bonding, but Zuri finds she now must worry about her sweet older sister Janae falling for Ansley (the other Darcy brother), her two younger sisters emerging into the world of puberty and boys, and the sincerity of her her love interest Warren.

This was a great start to my New Year’s reading!  The characters were well-developed (or at least Zuri, Janae, and the Darcy boys are…no one ever really thinks about her poor middle sister Mary), and I think many teens will resonate with this story. 

You don’t have to have read the original to appreciate this one, however, it does add to the layers of the story to know the original.

New Year's Resolutions and Reading Challenges

I admit, I’ve never been one to pick a resolution for the new year (except that one year I tried to give up chocolate in college and it ended flopping like a professional basketball player).

So this year I’m doing something different:  I’m committing to a reading challenge.  

There are tons of reading challenges out there:  post a picture every day on a specific theme, read through the genres, read lesser known books with fewer review hits…but the one I’ve decided to do is the Unread Shelf Project for 2019.

My current unread stack of books

The rules are simple, read books you already own (or in my case, books that I’ve wanted to read but haven’t found the time).  I currently have a stack of 23 books next to my nightstand waiting to be read, another 18 books on my Kindle, and 71 books on my Goodreads “Want to Read” list.  And in all sincere honesty, I blame all of you for this.  You give me really good book recommendations.  My husband passes on great library finds to me.  Instagram is inundated with books, books, and more books.  I also blame myself.  I’m a mood reader, so if I’m reminded of a favorite book, I really want to go back to reread it (for example, I read Fangirl FOUR TIMES in 2018 because it’s my go-to book to destress my anxious mind).

So what are the specifics, you may ask?

• January:  read any unread book
• February: read a book gifted to you
• March:  read the book that’s been on your self the longest
• April: read the book you most recently acquired
• May: read a book you bought because of the movie/TV/theater adaptation
• June: read a book about travel or set in a country you’ve never been to
• July: read a book from a series on your shelf or one you already started
• August: read a book recommended for you by a friend
• September:  read a book you can buddy read with someone else
• October: read a book that scares you (can be its length, content, or genre that’s out of your comfort zone)
• November: read a book from your favorite genre
• December: read the shortest book on your shelf

Usually I read multiple books a month, so this will be one of my monthly picks to give me some emotional freedom to still moody read.

Want to join me?  I’d love the company and the accountability.

Happy reading in 2019!