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Read 8/13-8/16

Four Stars

Read 6/20-6/21

Four Stars

No one writes characters like Casey McQuiston. They're just the perfect level of quirky and fun. I loved this book because I loved the characters. August, who spent her childhood as a reluctant P.I. has been bouncing from school to school and major to major trying to figure out what she wants to do with her life. Jane, is a charming outgoing punk literally straight out of the 70s, who's found herself stuck on a subway line. There's also August's three eclectic roommates. Niko, a good physic and terrible bartender. Myla, Niko's girlfriend who makes sculptures out of things like mouse traps and tiny frog bones. Wes, lost his inheritance when he quit school to be gay and create art, now works as a tattoo artist at night and sleeps most of the day away with his dog Noodles. I also have to mention Isaiah/Annie Depresant who lives across the hall, an accountant by day and a fabulous Drag Queen by night. That's not even getting into the amazing cast of characters who work at Pancake Billy's House of Pancakes where August finds herself employed.

Read 6/6-6/7

Four Stars

This was such a wild ride! I was so sucked into the mystery of Aces and some of these scenes gave me serious chills. Reading this late at night was uhhh maybe not the best choice. I enjoyed nearly every second of this book and the things I didn't really like are small and more me nitpicking aspects of the story. Chiamaka and Devon were excellent narrators. I love the differing perspective each brought to the story. Chiamaka comes from a wealthy family but never fit in at school until she makes a plan to claw her way to the top in high school. Devon is a scholarship student who loves music and can't wait for the day when he can help his mother out of poverty. I loved the way each secret about the two was slowly revealed and got worse and worse and the book went on. I think if you know the premise of Get Out, on of this books comps, it is fairly easy to guess at what's going on but the journey to that discovery was still amazing.

Read 5/25-5/29

Five Stars

I've been sitting on this trying to come up with the words to describe how much I loved this book and they're just not coming to me. So: THIS BOOK WAS SO GOOD! PLEASE PREORDER IT IMMEDIATELY YOU WILL NOT REGRET IT! That's it, that's all I've really got. If you like ATLA you'll like Jade Fire Gold. There are some small cute similarities like the mentor of our exiled prince loving tea and our prince being less than enthused. There's also elemental magic but unlike in ATLA it's possible to wield more than one element, though it is rarer for someone to be able to do so.

Read 1/4-1/5

Five Stars

Thank you to Penguin and Netgalley for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This has been on my radar for quite a while now and I'm so excited that I was able to read an early copy! I'm happy to report this is my first 5-star read of the year! There was so much good in this book and it was utterly addicting, I could not stop turning the pages (well...tapping the right side of my screen, but you get the point). Only the threat of work in the morning kept me from staying up all night to finish, though I did stay up way later than I meant to. The nonlinear timeline of this book kept me hooked as I was desperate to see what would happen in the present during the bank robbery and very interested in learning about each girl Nora had become in her mother's cons and how those experiences shaped her.

I really enjoyed the characters. Nora is clever and slick; a few years out of the con game hasn't made her rusty in the slightest. When she needs to recall her mother's teachings they come right back to her. I adored her relationship with Wes but that may be because Wes is the best and I just want to keep him close and protect him from everything. Wes is just so genuinely good. This is demonstrated multiple times in the first few chapters when he keeps trying to put himself between the robbers and the other victims trapped in the bank. I think the synopsis implies that this book is a sort of love triangle situation and that's not the case. Wes and Nora were close friends who dated in the past but they remain best friends, even if the relationship had to heal around Wes's broken trust when he learns Nora's secrets. Wes is hurt at the start of this book because Nora has been keeping another secret from him, her relationship with Iris. Even though he would have been happy for both of them. Iris was absolutely fantastic, a whip-smart girl with a penchant for fifties fashion (right down to the proper undergarments) and just a bit of a fire obsession. She also suffered from endometriosis and I really liked seeing that and the discussion around how debilitating it can be in this book.

Read 3/7-3/11

Five Stars

I've waited a little bit after finishing The Ones We're Meant to Find hoping some coherent thoughts would find their way into my brain and it's just not happening. This book has left me speechless. It's no secret that I loved Joan' first novel, Descendant of the Crane and this book is just as good (maybe better but don't tell Hesina!) The genre is a bit different, more of dystopian sci-fi setting but there's still the classic Joan plot twists that left me screaming and some super sad scenes that brought out all of my tears.

This is primarily a book about sisters, Celia and Kasey. Cee has been stuck on an abandoned island with only an outdated robot for company. She's lost most of her memory but knows that she has a sister out in the world and is trying her best to get back to her. Kasey back home in eco-city, a floating metropolis designed to protect people from the decaying planet, has no idea what happened to her sister after a camera records her taking a boat out to sea more than three months prior. Kasey rules her life by logic and science and logic says that Celia should have died of dehydration or drowning after being missing for so long but she can't stop the hope that Celia will be found. Celia is the only one who could break through Kasey's stoicism. I loved the sisters so much, their relationship and characterization was so much more complex than the initial assumption of social butterfly and stoic loner.

Read 1/22-1/23

Five Stars

I don't know that I have the ability to actually write a review for this book. It was so good that thinking about it just makes my brain do this high pitched "squee" noise. Graceling has always been one of my favorite YA novels but I decided since I didn't remember Fire or Bitterblue as well to do a reread of them before I started Winterkeep. I'm really glad I spent the last week back in the Graceling Realm. I'm not sure if some scenes would have touched me quite the same way without the refresher.

Winterkeep is a bit unique from the previous three books in that there are five unique points of view. Two are characters from the previous books, Bitterblue and Giddon, and three are all new characters. I loved that we got to spend more with Giddon and Bitterblue. I loved their relationship and the trust they built between each other in Bitterblue's novel. I will admit there was an aspect of their relationship in that book that I was a little sad not to see realized and boy does it finally get realized here! Giddon is such a precious pining fool and I love him so much. I also loved his relationship with Hava. It's been five years since the end of Bitterblue and Hava has really come out of her shell and developed such a fun slightly mean bit of banter with Giddon. One of the other points of view is Lovisa Cavenda, a student in Winterkeep and daughter of the President of Winterkeep. She tries her best to be a dutiful daughter and follow in the steps of her political parents. Indeed she is a bit of a schemer and is seen sneaking around for much of the book. I wasn't sure of Lovisa at first but she really grew on me and by the end of the book I was in love with her. Another point of view is that of Adventure Fox, one of the blue telepathic foxes that populates Winterkeep. He is bonded to Lovisa's mother and is struggling with some of the rules of foxkind. I was not expecting to love his POV chapters so much when I first heard a fox was going to be one of the POVs. He was such an interesting character and I'm so happy with how his story concluded in this book. The final point of view is that of a mysterious many-eyed thirteen tentacled sea monster known as the Keeper. I loved the Keeper, every thought from it was just such a mood. All the Keeper wants is to collect treasures at the bottom of the ocean, be left alone, and occasionally sing badly. Truly an icon.

Read 3/29-3/30

Five Stars

This book was so brilliantly plotted and incredibly well done. Anna-Marie McLemore did that, I'm in such awe of them. Here's the thing, I was initially hesitant to read this book because I had read one of McLemore's books previously and a couple of their short stories and while I adore their writing style there's been something that stops me from loving (and sometimes even liking) what I've read. When you add in the sensitive nature of the bulk of this book, I didn't want to end up with a similar experience. I honestly could not resist the cover of this book and so I ended up picking it up. There's a dedication in the beginning of this book and an author's note at the end that explains how incredibly personal this story is for McLemore. It's something I could feel while reading the care with how they wrote the two main characters.

Ciela is a girl with magic running through her passed down from her great-grandmother, she's able to look at a person and know what pastry from her family's pastelería will help them the most. However, after the night she and a boy are assaulted at the same party she loses that magic and fears she's lost most of her identity with it. When the boy shows up at her school after the summer she realizes helping him may be the key to getting her magic back. They strike up a tentative friendship in which Ceila learns that Lock has no memory of what really happened that night and has no desire for the details Ceila carries with her. I loved Lock from the moment he pulled out crochet in the middle of class to discovering his secret night time activities to seeing him interact with his 4-year-old sister. He was a great character and he and Celia together were magic.