Let me be clear about something: I wasn’t intending to write and post a review so soon after posting my last one. I really wasn’t. I've been lazy about writing reviews lately, and I struggled a lot to make myself finally buckle down and review The Brilliant Death, a book I adore and will happily recommend to anyone I meet.
After posting the review, I told myself, “Okay, review done. I finally have permission to sit down with another great book and read to my heart’s content. I am not going to review this next one. Nope. Need a break.” The problem is, the next book I read was What If It’s Us, a book cowritten by one of my favorite queer authors, Adam Silvera, and Becky Albertelli, author of Simon Vs the Homosapien Agenda (you know, the book that got adapted into the film Love Simon). I started the book mid-afternoon on December 26th, and finished it at 1:09 AM on the 27th. So uh. I have no chill, and I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about this book. I’m writing this review as much for myself as anyone else.
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The Brilliant Death is one of those books I’ve been hearing queer book Twitter raving about for months—a book I knew I was going to fall in love with even before I opened it. Magic based on Italian folklore, gender fluid characters, difficult questions about family and loyalty. I added it to my Goodreads list pretty much as soon as I heard about it. Then I saw a signed copy displayed at work, and the rest is history.
It’s been like six months since my last review, but hey friends! I’ve been wanting to review this one for months, so better late than never! I’m hoping I can get back to doing at least one or two reviews a month to spread more book love.
I picked up Adrienne Young’s debut novel Sky in the Deep about a week ago because the cover, featuring a beautiful young warrior wielding a battle axe, caught my eye. I thought to myself, Gee, if this book is good, I bet my friend would love this, what with her Viking-inspired dnd character. I told the dnd group chat of my find, and I agreed to read the book and let everyone know if it’s any good.
I finished it in three days, and promptly alerted the chat that this book is fantastic and well worth reading. One of my guilty pleasures on social media is following authors who have great accounts, or who I’ve heard a lot of good stuff about, despite never reading their work. I love getting glimpses into their lives and their writing processes, and the odds of me finally reading their books increases quite a bit if I’m following them. A few weeks ago (okay, probably a month or two, by now), I saw a tweet by Hannah Moskowitz announcing that the e-book version of her novel A History of Glitter and Blood was on sale. Cut to me opening my e-reader app a few days ago and remembering said impulsive book purchase. And now, here I am, breaking my month-long book blog hiatus because I can’t not review this surprising gem of a book.
You might have noticed that I’ve been pretty inactive on my blog for the past few weeks. That’s because for most of May, I’ve been working on reading books by Brené Brown, a shame researcher who has written a number of best-selling self-help books. A teacher of mine who’s been helping me work on my mental and emotional wellbeing recently recommended that I read her work. I figured that a blog post about how these books are helping me would be a good way for me to reflect on my progress so far.
Claire Legrand’s latest novel Furyborn is one of the most anticipated YA fantasy releases of 2018. Set in a world rich with magic and mythology, Furyborn is the story of two young women who live centuries apart, whose roles in an ancient prophecy about two queens could leave the world in ruins—or be humanity’s salvation.
It took me a few days to properly compose my thoughts and feelings after finishing Julia Fine’s debut novel What Should Be Wild. I needed to calm down so my entire review wouldn’t just be incoherent key mashing interspersed with “GO READ THIS BOOK!!!!!!” Hopefully, this review is a little more eloquent.
Apparently lots of great books are going to published in May, and my bookstore has been overflowing with new advance readers copies for us booksellers to snatch up. I grabbed The Honey Farm after a glance at the gorgeous cover and a quick skim of the advance praise on the back cover, with many lauding this debut book as “unnerving,” “mesmerizing,” and “chills-inducing.” All these statements are true and then some.
Lucky me recently snatched up an advance reader’s copy of Danielle Teller’s new upcoming novel All the Ever Afters, the story of Cinderella as told by Cinderella’s “evil” stepmother, Agnes. This book is in a similar vein to Wicked, in that it deeply expands on, reinvents, and complicates the original fairytale in a way that feels very relevant and necessary, minus all the “bippity boppity boo.”
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AuthorWriter, reviewer, bookseller, book nerd extraordinaire. Fiction reader at Waxwing Magazine. Archives
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