#ya reading

                                                                                            September, 12                                                                                             Damnville You know Dad,

If I counted up the number of times I’ve been in BIG trouble, I’d open a Trouble Museum. Ma says it’s all coz I was born on a plane and caused quite a trouble to everyone aboard. Or as she calls it — bloody mess. ‘You are born to get in all the wrong places,’ she says and I say it wasn’t me in the first place who took that 14-hour flight drop-dead pregnant to the hell of a nowhere.

But maybe she does have the point. Coz I got to a TERRIBLY wrong place just yesterday and would rather prefer a 14-hour flight to nowhere, please. We’ve been to Hecta’s Gran’s on a visit at her Palace-like house in Ratyshche. The place is HUGE and full of people like a cucumber of seeds (her clan is like Golden Horde, and as barbaric). Nobody attacked our Amazons Army though, so we were dying of just boredom. But not until Heck had her *BRILLIANT IDEA* to play Hide and Seek.

‘Ew! We’re too big for that,’ Agnieszka retorted. 

‘We play that or go for another round of Gran’s babble on Pan Grant cheating on his wife with a milkman,’ Hecta said and Neshka jumped to her feet with, ‘You count!’

Rukhsana Ali is a bright, beautiful, and all around great kid. But as the daughter of immigrant parents who are set in their ways, she often feels underappreciated and misunderstood. Rukhsana wants so badly to be honest with her family but she knows they could never understand. She’s supposed to be the perfect daughter, learning how to cook and clean and her one goal in life should be to get married to a bangladeshi man, and live her life as a mother and housewife. But Rukhsana has different plans, she wants to go to school, Caltech specifically, with her white girlfriend, Ariana. All she has to do is keep those parts of her life hidden until she turns eighteen and can leave for college. But when Ariana and Rukhsana are found out, all takes a turn for the worst. Will Rukhsana be able to take control of her life and live it how she wants? Or will she get trapped within the oppressive ways of her family’s beliefs?

–SPOILERS–

I loved this book so much, it incorporated so many important themes and it just pulled at every single one of my heart strings. At first the book moved a little slow but only for the fist chapter and then it’s so incredibly good I have no words. Rukhsana is representative of so many people all over the world, having to keep their love secret because people won’t accept them and it’s really sad to know that real people go through what she went through every day. Rukhsana is such an amazingly strong female protagonist and it was so nice to see a different religion/culture represented in a Young Adult novel, it really adds to your typical YA storyline. Her relationship with her brother was adorable and her and her girlfriend, ugh, 10/10. I was so fricken upset when her parents tricked her into going to Bangladesh, that was so wrong on so many levels and it was really heart wrenching to read everything she went through and how manipulative a group of people can get when their way of life is threatened. And then she was so close to escaping and she did and then Sohail was killed. I can’t imagine experiencing everything she went thorough and then the only person who really understood her was taken from the world. It was so sad! But when she got home and her parents were there and they tried to understand and make things better and at first she was really fing pissed and I totally get that, after everything she went through she deserves to be furious. But then her parents admitting that they were being stupid and that they didn’t want to lose her, it was heartwarming. Then her aunt and mother started to ask questions wanting to understand and undo what they had learned I think that was really great character development. I also love what she goes through with her mom, I feel like they both went through so much, that doesn’t make what her mom did less wrong, but it puts things into perspective and allowed them to relate to each other and I think that that was really important to concluding the book and leaving it a happy place. Overall this book was so incredible and I would highly recommend it to everyone.

Hey guys thoughts I'd reach out to my readerly friends to get some recs for my kiddos.

It's summer reading time.

14yo son wants some fresh dystopian fiction. He's read Hunger Games, Divergent, Maze Runner, 5th Wave (disliked), and wants MORE. He also likes creepy stories and has read several Steven King novels.

13yo daughter likes romance and horror. She's also read Hunger Games. More Scary stories to tell in the dark. Listens to creepypasta and watches horror films.

Both read at young adult and adult level and only thing I prefer to avoid is explicit sexual content (vivid sex scenes in particular). They are voracious readers so book length isn't an issue. If it's a series that's okay too. Books featuring gender, race, and/or LGBT issues/content are also fine.