The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen
The Magic Fish By Trung Le Nguyen I knew this book had won awards going in, but I wasn’t really sure what to expect. Whatever awards this got, it most definitely deserved! Going in, I knew that it was about a Vietnamese boy, Tíển, struggling to find the words to come out to his parents, while bonding with them over fairy tales. But it is so much more than that. It is a story about family and immigration and survival. It’s about acceptance […]
Any Way the Wind Blows (Simon Snow, #3) by Rainbow Rowell
I will be honest. I do not want to review this book. First of all, I liked it. And I liked it better than the second one. It felt so comfortable to be back in England (and at Watford!) with these characters, and I was satisfied by all their endings, even the ones I didn’t see coming. But it also gave me a couple things I’ve been wanting since book one, so on that front I was very happy as well. There was resolution for […]
The Wee Free Men (Discworld, #30) by Terry Pratchett
“Yes! I’m me! I am careful and logical and I look up things I don’t understand! When I hear people use the wrong words, I get edgy! I am good with cheese. I read books fast! I think! And I always have a piece of string! That’s the kind of person I am!” My second witchy read of the season, although I didn’t consciously choose to read it now with all my other upcoming witchy reads; I just wanted to read my next Discworld book. […]
Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green & David Levithan
I’m rounding down on this one for now, after weeks (months) of letting it sit in limbo because I couldn’t make up my mind how I felt about it. But this is a true 3.5 star book right here. Parts of it I loved and found very funny and charming and parts of irritated the hell out of me. The ending is very heartwarming and the characters are ultimately lovable. I think I might have just missed my window on loving this one. Too bad, […]
The Cousins by Karen M. McManus
I’m using this as my GATEWAY square for bingo, because I think it’s a great place to jump into the world of YA teen intrigue and Karen M. McManus in general. I’m familiar with McManus’s work because of One of Us is Lying, which I very much enjoyed. I haven’t yet watched the series, but that one book was enough for me to want to read more. The Cousins follows the tradition of teens solving a mystery on an island. It’s almost gothic in the […]
A Universe of Wishes by ed. Dhonielle Clayton
This was a pretty disappointing collection. I only enjoyed a handful of stories. I think the thing that frustrates me the most about YA fantasy and sf recently is that these are the genres of the imagination, and yet so many authors keep telling the same old stories, even, as it turns out, when those stories are populated by a diverse cast of characters, featuring characters of many races, genders, and sexualities. Some of these stories were dull and uninspired, some I thought were just […]
