Tag Archives: fiction

My Feet Don’t Touch the Ground by W. Lee Baker Book Review

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Book Description

Snatched from the safety of her day-to-day life, young Crysalline wanders in search of the world she has lost.
Alone, she searches for refuge in a wild land of the 1840s.
When her own deep, yet undeniable, yearnings begin to surface, she sets off into her life adventure. The new path only reveals itself after she takes the risk and seeks what lies ahead.
This is the story of a life richly lived.

Review

Thoughts and Themes: This isn’t the type of book that I would normally pick up but the premise interested me so I decided to give it a try. At first I was invested in the story and wanted to know what would happen to our main character, Crysalline. I was wondering if she would be alone for the whole story and then if she would ever come across her family.

I really enjoyed the portions in which she found another family and was accepted into their family as one of them. I liked watching her group up with that family and learn about herself and the world while staying with them. I liked reading as they went out in search for her family and even as things didn’t go right.

One thing that threw me off with this book was that nothing really happened. it was just a day by day description of this one girl’s journey. While there were portions that I enjoyed the day to day because things were happening, once she becomes an adult things aren’t so interesting anymore. I am not a big fan of books that don’t have a plot and for so much of this book I couldn’t see it going anywhere. Once I got to the last 40 pages I winded up skimming through the book since nothing really happened.

Characters: This book introduces you to several characters as our main character, Crysalline, comes across them. She meets a family while she is young and spends quite some time with them. While she spends time with this family and they are looking for the place she came from, they come across other people who add to the story.

I wasn’t too much of a fan of any of the characters as I didn’t attach to anyone. I did like the relationships that Crysalline develops with others and how she develops because of those relationships. I wasn’t sold on the romance in this story and it felt very shallow both on Crysalline’s end and the love interest.

Writing Style: This book is told in the first person through the perspective of Crysalline which I thought was a good way to tell the story. I felt that throughout the story as Crysalline ages we get to see this occur. I liked how at first it sounds like a child is telling you the story and voice matures as Crysalline experiences more of life.

Author Information

W. Lee Baker’s writing is inspired by life’s passages and wisdom gained along the way. His first novel is a story of that path to become a mature, well rounded adult. It is the adventure of what life can bring alive for each of us.


He has a love of wonder, inspired by his spiritual quest. Continuing to learn from challenges has provided joy and rewards of character never previously imagined. He has also climbed in the Himalayas, scuba-dived at Cocos Island, Costa Rica, and enjoyed afternoons in the cafes of Paris and Prague. A lifelong creative with a career in professional photography, he found the time and gateway to be able to write and share this novel. He brings life into his writing so we may see the beautiful delicacy of this world. It can be a wondrous ride.

vViIrRuUsS: I Never Forget by Jazalyn Book Review

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Book Description

A virus invades the lives of all humanity and causes a madness pandemic from the reminder of the past and the exposure of thoughts threatening to change everything, but then another virus attempts to erase the memories and recover the future, while a third virus scopes to save the new generations.

Review

Thoughts and Themes: When I read the description of this book I was quite excited to read it because I haven’t read a sci-fi book written in prose. I was also excited because it has to do with viruses and their effect on humanity and it was multiple viruses that were involved in telling this story. I was kind of disappointed though as this read more of a reflection of the author on the Covid-19 pandemic rather than what I expected from reading the description.

All of that being said I still really enjoyed the book after letting go of what my original expectations were for it. A lot of the poems felt like they were feelings that happen when viruses take over and I found myself relating to a lot of the poems included in this book because of that. I felt like this book was taking me through the Covid-19 pandemic in slow-motion and allowing me to see another perspective that I hadn’t thought about before.

Writing Style: Something I really enjoyed were how the poems were separated through time but also by the feelings and consequences that these viruses were having on a person’s mind, on society, and on the virus itself. I loved that some poems focused on the feelings of the virus and the destruction that it was causing and the way it was watching the population be helpless and lose to it.

Author Information

With millions of impressions, half million engagements and 30,000 followers in social media, Jazalyn is among the most-promising newcomers authors-poets.

Her books have sold in 4 Continents and have been featured on prominent lists on Amazon US, Amazon UK and Amazon AU. Soon she will expand in every corner of the Earth.

Jazalyn attracts all cultures and traditions with an audience from all walks and stages of life as a consequence of the universal atmosphere that encircles her themes.

Her innovative and versatile writing style stemming from abstraction and absurdness captivates mystery and suspense with words swimming in surrealism and magical realism.

Her imaginative and inventive narration unites the philosophical with the psychological and the scientific elements of both fantasy and fiction that create and solve riddles and puzzles.

In what results as a contemporary genre of cinematic (epic) poetry in slice of life-vignette expression which provokes thinking and eyes new horizons.

Jazalyn’s art is purposely colorful, geometrical and fashionable in its totality to match the aesthetics of a qualitative artfulness which expands the consciousness of an enlightenment painted in a kind of mysticism and spirituality that knows no boundaries.

Her latest books vViIrRuUsS, Rose, Hollow signify Jazalyn’s transition towards literary magnificence. 

Luz At Midnight by Marisol Cortez Book Review

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Book Description

Deeply embedded in the landscapes of South Texas, Luz at Midnight tells the story of an ill-timed love that unfolds in the time of climate change. Booksmart but naïve, Citlali Sanchez-O’Connor has just been hired to organize a San Antonio campaign against “gleaning,” a controversial new mining practice that promises a rapid transition away from fossil fuels. In the process, she soon encounters Joel Champlain, a journalist struggling to hide his manic-depression as he uncovers the corrupt politics that surround gleaning. During a chance trip together to Texas’s Gulf Coast, Lali is struck by a love as powerful and sudden as the electrical storm that birthed Luz, the unearthly canine trickster who has thrown them together. But Lali—married with a baby, poised to leave town for an academic job, and trained to think everything is explicable—finds she must decide what their connection means, if anything, for a path already set in motion.

A genre-hopping narrative that layers story with reporting, poetry, scholarship, and teatro, Luz questions the nature of desire and power, asking: What throws us into the path of those we love, and what pulls us apart? What agency powers the universe—and do we have any agency of our own to create a world different from the one powerful others have planned for us? Along the way of considering these questions, Luz is about the humorous (and not-so-humorous) inner workings of the nonprofit industrial complex; about Newtonian and Quantum theory; about birds, and about dogs. It is also about what we call mental illness, and the possibility that love may be pathology, while madness may open some important window into the nature of reality. 

Review

Thoughts and Themes: When I started reading this book I was thrilled to find that it was hoping through different genres and that it was touching on climate change, but unfortunately the thrill wore off rather quickly. Halfway through the book, the switching of genres was just confusing me and I wasn’t able to follow the storyline anymore. I thought this was going to be a love story and not just between a man and a woman but also between humans and the earth.

I did get to a point in the book in which I was just skimming my way through it as it couldn’t hold my attention any longer. I thought that the build up of the story took way too much time in the book and I was a bit over halway and the love interest still wasn’t in the picture. It felt a lot like world building which was strange because it was taking place in our world but at the same time it felt like it wasn’t our world.

Characters: One of the things that I really did like about this book was all of the characters that you are introduced to throughout the book. I really did enjoy getting to meet each character at the start of the book as the story is being introduced to us. I liked how they all have their unique traits, connections with each other and the many things that they added to the story.

Writing Style: This book switched between genres a lot and that really was confusing to me. I do believe that people who are a fan of multiple genres in a book, environmental books, magical realism, etc would really enjoy this book. Something else that kept throwing me off was the research notes that were included in the story, I found that those took a way from the story as I couldn’t really build the connection. At first I thought they were outside notes being brought into the story until I realized that these were notes the main character was taking.

Author Information

From Marisol’s Website:

As a mentally-intense, mixed-blood Xicana weirdo rooted in San Antonio but formally coming of age in rural Central Texas, poetry was the first form of political agency accessible to me and also the first theoretical work I produced. Even after I found communities for political resistance and critical inquiry—for a time I strayed into an academic career, then later worked as a community organizer—I could never really get away from creative writing either in my scholarship or my activism.

These days, I understand myself primarily as a writer and community-based scholar, albeit one who feels most comfortable writing in the spaces between artistic, activist, and academic worlds, as well as across creative genres (poetry, fiction, essay, theory, manifesto). Much of my writing bears out all these tensions: I write hybrid, cross-genre, mixed-blood Xicana texts that can’t quite (and ultimately don’t want to) extricate poetry and storytelling from historical analysis and cultural theory from direct, on-the-ground struggle. As a writer grounded in the collective work of movement building for environmental and social justice, I find myself most often gravitating toward questions of place, power, and the possibilities proliferating at the margins. I write to remember the land and its pluriverse of inhabitants; to make visible colonial logics of displacement; and above all to give voice to those longings that might call forth new relationships of ecosocial interdependence and solidarity. I write for all the other borderwalking weirdos out there.

A mama of two, I currently juggle writing, full-time parenting, and co-editing responsibilities for Deceleration, an online journal of environmental justice thought and praxis. In 2020 I published my debut novel Luz at Midnight (FlowerSong Press 2020), which in 2021 won the Texas Institute of Letter’s Sergio Troncoso Award for First Book of Fiction. I’m also the author of I Call on the Earth (Double Drop Press 2019), a chapbook of documentary poetry, and “Making Displacement Visible: A Case Study Analysis of the ‘Mission Trail of Tears,’” which together bear witness to the forced removal of Mission Trails Mobile Home Community. Other poems and prose have appeared in Mutha Magazine, About Place Journal, Orion, Vice Canada, Caigibi, Metafore Magazine, Outsider Poetry, Voices de la Luna, and La Voz de Esperanza, among other anthologies and journals. For more information on projects and publications, click HERE. 

The Maidens by Alex Michaelides Book Review

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Author Information

Alex Michaelides was born and raised in Cyprus. He has an M.A. in English literature from Trinity College, Cambridge University, and an M.A. in screenwriting from the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. The Silent Patient was his first novel and was the biggest-selling debut in the world in 2019. It spent more than a year on the New York Times bestseller list and sold in a record-breaking forty-nine countries. Alex lives in London.

Book Description

Edward Fosca is a murderer. Of this Mariana is certain. But Fosca is untouchable. A handsome and charismatic Greek Tragedy professor at Cambridge University, Fosca is adored by staff and students alike—particularly by the members of a secret society of female students known as The Maidens.

Mariana Andros is a brilliant but troubled group therapist who becomes fixated on The Maidens when one member, a friend of Mariana’s niece Zoe, is found murdered in Cambridge.

Mariana, who was once herself a student at the university, quickly suspects that behind the idyllic beauty of the spires and turrets, and beneath the ancient traditions, lies something sinister. And she becomes convinced that, despite his alibi, Edward Fosca is guilty of the murder. But why would the professor target one of his students? And why does he keep returning to the rites of Persephone, the maiden, and her journey to the underworld?

When another body is found, Mariana’s obsession with proving Fosca’s guilt spirals out of control, threatening to destroy her credibility as well as her closest relationships. But Mariana is determined to stop this killer, even if it costs her everything—including her own life. 

Review

Thank you to Celadon Books, Netgalley and Macmillan Audio for the advanced reader and advanced listening copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Thoughts and Themes: I rarely read mystery books and I haven’t read many since I was a teenager. I used to love this type of book so I’ve been trying to get into them again. I listened to this one on audiobook and I believe that I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I had read the book.

I’m not a big fan of the way that the mystery unravels itself in the end of the book, I was really enjoying it until the last hour of listening. I found that this portion of the book sped up but it also was a little off to me. I found that the book kept speeding up while they were close to figuring things out only to slow back down with filler information. While I like twists and turns in the book, I would like the tension to remain in the story without it feeling like it was gone.

Something that I did enjoy about this book was the way that Greek Mythology was weaved into the murder mystery. While the beginning of this story was slow to start because it had to introduce the murder mystery and the Greek aspects, I found that the best part to read.

Characters: In this book you get to meet a few characters as they are interreacting with Mariana. I liked Mariana as a main character and found that she was easy to follow along with. I liked getting to learn a bit from her past and also see how that past informs the way she investigates this murder.

I also liked the short pieces that we get from the male perspective. I thought those pieces were just the right amount of creepy and the way they are written kind of deter you from figuring out who did it.

I wasn’t really invested in any of the characters throughout this book. I wanted to like Mariana but she was just the character we needed to tell the story to me. I did like Zoe though and really wanted to believe the best of her even as Mariana starts to doubt her. I like the relationship that Mariana has with Zoe and also the relationships we get to see that Mariana has with some of her patients.

Writing Style: This story is told in third person when it is about Mariana and then it switches to first person when it is the male perspective. I thought this was an interesting way to write this because it makes you feel like the male is our narrator for the rest of the story. I wondered if this was the case and someone was watching Mariana’s every move throughout the book. I really liked having the shift in point of view included because it throws you off and it also makes you question the reliability of our narrator.

I liked that the way this book is written makes you question who is believable. I was wondering the whole time if I should believe what Mariana thinks or what those around her are trying to tell her. I liked that Mariana is a therapist because that makes you think that she must be reliable. The way that the book sets up this story makes you believe that she is the only one who is reliable throughout this whole story. It really isn’t until the end of the book that you start to think about how reliable Mariana is.

Fat Chance Charlie Vega by Crystal Maldonado Book Tour Post

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I am so excited to get a chance to be a part of this book tour hosted by HearOurVoicesBookTours . Make sure you check out the rest of the posts that are a part of this tour by looking at the schedule for the tour found here. 

Author Information

Crystal Maldonado is a young adult author with a lot of feelings. Her debut novel, FAT CHANCE, CHARLIE VEGA (Holiday House), will be released on Feb. 2, 2021.

By day, she is a social media manager working in higher ed, and by night, a writer who loves Beyoncé, shopping, the internet, and being extra.

She lives in western Massachusetts with her husband, daughter, and dog. 

You can find Crystal Maldonado at:

Twitter ~ Instagram ~ Website ~ Goodreads

Book Description

Publisher: Penguin Random House

Release Date: February 2, 2021

Genre: YA Fiction

Book Info:

Coming of age as a Fat brown girl in a white Connecticut suburb is hard.

Harder when your whole life is on fire, though.

Charlie Vega is a lot of things. Smart. Funny. Artistic. Ambitious. Fat.

People sometimes have a problem with that last one. Especially her mom. Charlie wants a good relationship with her body, but it’s hard, and her mom leaving a billion weight loss shakes on her dresser doesn’t help. The world and everyone in it have ideas about what she should look like: thinner, lighter, slimmer-faced, straighter-haired. Be smaller. Be whiter. Be quieter.

But there’s one person who’s always in Charlie’s corner: her best friend Amelia. Slim. Popular. Athletic. Totally dope. So when Charlie starts a tentative relationship with cute classmate Brian, the first worthwhile guy to notice her, everything is perfect until she learns one thing–he asked Amelia out first. So is she his second choice or what? Does he even really see her? UGHHH. Everything is now officially a MESS.

A sensitive, funny, and painful coming-of-age story with a wry voice and tons of chisme, Fat Chance, Charlie Vega tackles our relationships to our parents, our bodies, our cultures, and ourselves.

You Can Find this Book at:

Goodreads ~ Amazon ~ Barnes & Noble  ~ Bookshop.org

Review

Thoughts and Themes: I normally write my reviews as I read the book so that I don’t forget anything about them. I did this one differently though because I didn’t want to put it down even to take notes. I just highlighted all the important things in my kindle and most of my notes are exclamation marks or emojis.

There are so many themes that are explored throughout this book, weight issues, anxiety, self-esteem, jealousy, and friendship. I really enjoyed the way that each of these themes are tackled and how we get each of these themes through multiple characters.

I liked that this book focuses on weight issues and we have a fat main character who isn’t trying to change herself. I like that rather than lose weight through the course of this story or give in to what society and her mother wants, Charlie learns to love herself and immerse herself in the body positivity community online.

I also like the conversations that Charlie has with Amelia, and with Brian. I think we get to see a lot of her in those conversations and this is where we see her insecurities. I liked how we see those insecurities and we see both Amelia and Brian try to lift her but also struggle with the way she talks about herself.

I just want and need more happy ending for Latinxs, and stories that are just full of joy for us.

Characters: Throughout this story you are introduced to a wide range of characters who I really enjoyed. There is just one character that is really hard to love but in the end I like what they did with the character.

I really liked the complexity of Charlie and Amelia’s friendship and how Charlie waited so long to tell Amelia how she felt. I also like the way Charlie just assumed that Amelia had no problems because everyone thinks she’s beautiful. Their relationship reminded me of the relationship that I have with my best friend but thankfully we were never into the same people.

I had a hard time with Charlie’s mother because of how she treated Charlie due to the way she saw herself and the internalized fatphobia. It was hard to like her even at the closing of the story but what I did enjoy is that things didn’t magically get fixed between them. I liked that the mother and daughter relationship was complicated from start to finish because it felt real.

I really enjoyed the relationship between Charlie and Brian, with my favorite part being that the whole story wasn’t revolving around this. I loved that the book points out how important it is to find ways to love yourself and not only because someone else loves you. I thought it was nice to see the progression of their relationship and see the difficulties that they face due to Charlie’s insecurities.

Writing Style: This story is told in the first person through Charlie’s perspective which I love. I liked that through this whole story we are in Charlie’s mind and seeing what she thinks about everything happening around her and to her. I thought it was great that we didn’t get to know how Brian felt about Charlie’s actions or even how Amelia felt unless they shared with Charlie. I think because you are only getting her perspective it allows you to feel for her each time something goes wrong.

Grown Ups Book Review

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Summary: Jenny McLaine is an adult. Supposedly. At thirty-five she owns her own house, writes for a cool magazine and has hilarious friends just a message away.

But the thing is:

• She can’t actually afford her house since her criminally sexy ex-boyfriend Art left,

• her best friend Kelly is clearly trying to break up with her,

• she’s so frazzled trying to keep up with everything you can practically hear her nerves jangling,

• she spends all day online-stalking women with beautiful lives as her career goes down the drain.

And now her mother has appeared on her doorstep, unbidden, to save the day…

Is Jenny ready to grow up and save herself this time?

Deliciously candid and gloriously heartfelt, ADULTS is the story of one woman learning how to fall back in love with her life. It will remind you that when the world throws you a curve ball (or nine), it may take friendship, gin & tonics or even your mother to bring you back…

Thoughts: Thanks to scout press for the advanced copy of the book in exchange for my review.

The book starts off a bit slow and its just a woman’s daily life. Jenny is very immature and you can tell in the way she thinks and her actions. You also get a glimpse of how self-absorbed she is through her obsession with social media. Jenny wants her life to look a certain way to others and when she can no longer fake that ideal life, she starts breaking down.

It feels like your in her head with her and she’s a very nervous person so you feel all of her feelings. By giving you Jenny’s every thought with no filter, its as if you are there with her. This was something that I actually did enjoy. Reading through Jenny’s perspective made other characters stand out and I felt bad that they had to deal with her.

My favorite part of this book was the other characters that are introduced throughout. I love the way that Jenny paints each of the people in her life and how frustrated they all are with her. I like how they all try to please her but at one point they realize that she’s too much and she needs to grow up.

The way she treated others and the things she does and say really made me dislike Jenny as a character. She was very childish and way too self absorbed. I found that a lot of the things she did were just bothersome and her life was very mundane. The main reason as to why I didn’t like this book was because we got way too much of Jenny.

I think that people who enjoy reading books about social media, woman having mid life crisis, and books with no real plot would enjoy this book. You can get this book at Eso Won Books or look for it at your local library.

Layover Book Review

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Goodreads Summary: Joshua Fields takes the same flights every week for work. His life is a series of departures and arrivals, hotels and airports. During yet another layover, Joshua meets Morgan, a beautiful stranger with whom he feels an immediate connection. When it’s time for their flights, Morgan gets up to leave, leans over and passionately kisses Joshua, lamenting that they’ll never see each other again.

As Morgan slips away, Joshua is left feeling confused by what just happened between them. That’s when he looks up and is shocked to see Morgan’s face flashing on a nearby TV screen. He’s even more shocked when he learns the reason why–Morgan is a missing person.

What follows is a whirlwind, fast-paced journey filled with lies, deceit, and secrets to discover the truth about why Morgan is on the run. But when he finally thinks every mystery is solved, another rears its head, and Joshua’s worst enemy may be his own assumptions about those around him…

Thoughts: This was another book that I followed along with the book while listening to on audio which I found was a great way to read this book. There were so many moving parts in this book that I found it great to pause the audio and re-read certain portions in the book.

Part One: In this section of the book you are introduced to all of the characters that are going to play a significant role in the search for this missing person. You get to meet Joshua, a guy in his mid twenties who typically keeps to himself and hates his life, Kimberly, a detective who is a single mother that works on missing people cases, and Morgan who has been claimed as a missing person. Joshua and Morgan meet at a random encounter at the airport and Joshua does something completely out of character and follows her onto her flight. It isn’t until later that he is concerned and obsesses over her case as he finds out that she has been reported as a missing person.

I like how the characters are introduced to you slowly and you get to see them interact with other people before they interact with each other. I like how you get to see Joshua interact with others and his thought process and how that differs drastically from the actions he takes with Morgan. I also really enjoy how you are hearing Morgan’s story through her interactions with Joshua and you can begin to guess why she has taken the actions that she has.

So far this book has just confused me and I am unsure of what is really going on. I am unsure if Morgan is a real person that Joshua is interacting with or if this is a figment of his imagination. Maybe Joshua creates Morgan so that his life is more interesting and everyone around him is just going along with him or ignoring his strange actions.

I really enjoy the parts that you learn more about Morgan and about why she is a missing person. I like the circumstances that lead to her actions and to her responses to Joshua. I think it is interesting to try and figure out what Joshua is thinking as he continues following the story of this woman.

Part two: In this section of the book another mystery is revealed and you start to find out that the mystery of Morgan being a missing person is a lot more complicated than you originally thought. This part makes the book really pick up and takes you through a roller coaster ride of feelings and thoughts.

I really enjoy the way things stack onto each other and how the mystery becomes more complicated before it gets anywhere near being solved. I love that you think that the book is almost done to only find out that you are just halfway through this book.

Part three: This portion of the book wraps up the story as everyone gets involved in the story of two missing people. I don’t want to put any spoilers so I won’t say how this ends. It does have a great closure and the story does come together quite well. I think they did a good job explaining the whole thing and I liked how characters explained their actions.

Overall: I like that the pace of this book is very slow and easy to follow along. The narrator was great to listen to and their voice was smooth and easy going. The way that characters were slowly introduced into the story was well done and smooth.

I like how each scene gets its own chapter and there is space to take each of these scenes in. I really enjoy how you can get through the chapters quickly and it makes you feel like you are reading this book quickly. I also like how it transitions smoothly between a chapter of Joshua and Morgan, Joshua on his own, and Kimberly.

I really like how the book goes back and forth between the story from Joshua’s perspective and Kimberly’s perspective. I like how you get to know not just their ties to the story of Morgan but also their lives beyond that. I really enjoy the moment that their two lives get wrapped up with each other because of the mystery. I liked how the two stories came together and the reasons why Kimberly was searching not just for Morgon but also for Joshua now.

You can get this book at Eso Won Books or look for it at your local library.

The Big Finish Book Review

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GoodReads Summary: For Duffy Sinclair, life boils down to one simple thing: maintaining his residence at the idyllic Centennial Assisted Living. Without it, he’s destined for the roach-infested nursing home down the road—and after wasting the first eighty-eight years of his life, he refuses to waste away for the rest. So, he keeps his shenanigans to the bare minimum with the help of his straight-laced best friend and roommate, Carl Upton.

But when Carl’s granddaughter Josie climbs through their bedroom window with booze on her breath and a black eye, Duffy’s faced with trouble that’s sticking around and hard to hide—from Centennial’s management and Josie’s toxic boyfriend. Before he knows it, he’s running a covert operation that includes hitchhiking and barhopping.

He might as well write himself a one-way ticket to the nursing home…or the morgue. Yet Duffy’s all in. Because thanks to an unlikely friendship that becomes fast family—his life doesn’t boil down the same anymore. Not when he finally has a chance to leave a legacy.

Have the tissues ready when you read this book

Thoughts: Thank you to Berkley Books and Penguin Random House for the advanced copy of this book in exchange for my review.

I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t enjoy this book since it started off pretty slow but was pleased to find how attached I was to each of the characters at the half way point. I was also worried because at one point it seems like the days would be repeating themselves and I cant stand that. I was pleased to find each day brought something new for everyone.

You get introduced to the characters slowly throughout the events of one day and this is where you start to get to know who Duffy was before he lived in the assisted living facility. As you get to know Duffy you begin to understand the connection that he is going to have with Josie, whom is Carl’s Granddaughter. It is during these moments in which I got invested in the story as I wanted to know if these two would wind up saving each other.

I really loved all the characters that are introduced throughout the book whether the story revolves around them or not. I like the way that the relationship that Duffy has with Carl is played out and how it informs the relationship he feels the need to have with Josie. I really enjoy how Duffy forms a team to save Josie from herself and its so sweet watching as how each person on that team has a different role to play in Josie’s life.

I really enjoyed the writing style of this book as I felt that I was in the room as Duffy was telling me the story of when he met Josie. It’s a nice, slow read that reminds me of the stories my grandma tells me sometimes. There’s some funny moments throughout this book and then there are some more serious moments yet both of these make the book a pleasure to read.

I recommend this to those of you who enjoy books with little to no action scenes, books with characters to love, or books that feel like home .

Starting today you can get this book at Barnes and Noble, IndieBound, or look for it at your local library.

Long Bright River Book Review

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Summary: In a Philadelphia neighborhood rocked by the opioid crisis, two once-inseparable sisters find themselves at odds. One, Kacey, lives on the streets in the vise of addiction. The other, Mickey, walks those same blocks on her police beat. They don’t speak anymore, but Mickey never stops worrying about her sibling.

Then Kacey disappears, suddenly, at the same time that a mysterious string of murders begins in Mickey’s district, and Mickey becomes dangerously obsessed with finding the culprit–and her sister–before it’s too late.

Alternating its present-day mystery with the story of the sisters’ childhood and adolescence, Long Bright River is at once heart-pounding and heart-wrenching: a gripping suspense novel that is also a moving story of sisters, addiction, and the formidable ties that persist between place, family, and fate.

Thoughts: I won this book in a giveaway by Riverhasd books and was a bit concerned I wouldn’t like it. The description on the back didn’t catch my attention but bookstagram was raving about it so I had to read it. I’m very glad that I did, there’s something about the writing style that I find beautiful.

I love how this story goes back and forth between then and now. It’s nice to watch as Kacey grows up and to see how she became the person she is now. Its interesting to see how people and events from her past impact her current life and I love seeing the mystery of Simon.

I like how the style of writing lends itself to the shorter chapters. The story flows well and the shorter chapters make you feel like the story is going quickly. While this is a longer book th re shoft chapters and the back and forth between then and now make it feel a lot shorter.

I really enjoyed getting to know each character throughout the novel even if it’s all through Kacey’s perspective. I think so much of the characters get vilanized through Kacey that its fascinating to watch as they each get introduced into the story.

The twists that occur throughout the book were unexpected and kept me interested. I loved the anticipation of what was going to happen next and trying to solve the mystery.

You can get this book at Barnes and Noble or look for it at your local library very soon. This book publishes on January 7th.

I’m a Gay Wizard

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Thank You to Netgalley for the chance to read and review this book.

Summary: (Borrowed from NetGalley) When Johnny and his best friend, Alison, pass their summer holidays dabbling in magic, they never expect it to have consequences. Sure, it’d be great if they could banish bullies or change their lives for the better, and what harm could come from lighting a few candles and chanting a few spells? They get their answer in the form of an earthquake unleashed at their behest, which draws the attention of the Marduk Institute, an age-old organization dedicated to fostering the talents of young wizards.

Whisked away to the institute and told they can never return to their old lives, Johnny and Alison must quickly adapt to a new world shimmering with monsters, fraternities, and cute boys like Hunter and Blake. But when they’re pulled into a dark, supernatural fight that could cost them their lives, they’ll have to find strength they never knew they had as they battle for love, acceptance, and their own happy endings―all with the help of a little bit of magic

Thoughts: I really wanted to love this book when I saw that it was own voices and I pushed hard to find some things that I enjoyed. There were aspects that I found were funny and memorable but there was too much parts that I just disliked.

For me it’s really important to like at least one of the characters or to at least build a connection to one and from the start that was something I liked. It was easy to like Hunter and want him to develop as a character and hope for the best for him. What I didn’t like was the sudden change in character for him, I thought okay maybe it’ll turn out that he’s a bad guy so I kept reading and was disappointed. I just thought it was too quick to go from angry, I’m definitely not gay to OMG I love johnny and want everyone to know.

Something else I didn’t really like was how drawn out everything was. Like the whole story just kept going on when it didn’t have to and I felt things were left unanswered or didn’t add up. I liked when we got a bit of action scenes at the beginning or if Hunter and Johnny were not in the same room. I felt that those scenes were a lot more impactful and through since they didn’t stop to love each other every few words.

I think that if you’re looking for a quick magic read with an LGBTQ+ protagonist you might enjoy this. It is a Wattpad book so I also kept that part in mind.

This book comes out tomorrow, October 29, 2019. You can get it at Barnes and Noble or look for it at your local library.