★★★★★

American Panda by Gloria Chao

April 25, 2018 Leave a Comment

7 hours 32 mins | Simon & Schuster Audio | Contemporary YA | 02/06/2018

I’ll admit I didn’t mean to read this book. I was listening to audiobook samples on Scribd, trying to find something to listen to when I accidentally clicked on American Panda. By the time I started driving I couldn’t change it and before I was home… I was really into it.

At seventeen years old, Mei Lu is starting her first year at MIT. She is just a few steps away from completing her parent’s plans for her to become a doctor, marry a good Taiwanese man and have Taiwanese babies. But now that she is on her own Mei is starting to feel the tension between the Taiwanese and American cultures she straddles. She starts to question the things she’s always believed and to make things worse she’s falling for a spiky-haired Japanese co-ed named Darrin.

American Panda is a story about family, empathy and discovering who you are; it’s perfect for fans of Sarah Dessen, especially because of how the romance and mother/daughter storyline evolves. Darrin even has a little “manic pixie dream dude” in him. I have always struggled with YA romances but this one was perfectly executed.

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Audiobook Review : Strange The Dreamer by Laini Taylor

January 9, 2018 Leave a Comment

Hachette Audio | Fantasy | 3/28/17

*Trigger Warning : Infanticide, and Sexual Assault

If you read Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bones series and said “I want more GIVE IT TO ME NOW”—well here you go ! In this duology Taylor pits science against imagination and an impossible future against centuries of pain.

Strange The Dreamer is the unusual tale of young librarian Lazlo Strange and how a mysterious city without a name becomes his great adventure. Strange The Dreamer roots itself in many of the same themes from the Smoke and Bone series; there arevividly imagined characters woven out of tragic histories, blinding hope and dreams… .literally on that last one. In a way it’s a love letter to fiction and the power of stories.

Lazlo Strange’s world appears to have a tenuous connection to the world of Smoke and Bone.

Laini Taylor’s imagination is just plain interesting, seriously what goes on in her head? Is it the pink hair? Her brand of YA fantasy is so immersive and her worlds are complicated and beautiful.

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Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zappia

December 6, 2017 Leave a Comment

Release Date: 05/30/17 | Contemporary | 385 pages | Buy Now !

At school, Eliza Mirk is the weird girl with no friends who never talks. At home she’s the black sheep among her athletic-obsessed family. She doesn’t think anyone can truly understand her until she meets the new boy in school, Wallace Warland. They bond over their love of Monstrous Sea, a popular fantasy webcomic. He’s the first person who gets what it means to have internet friends and be apart of an active online fandom–Wallace and his friends are BNF fan creators in the Monstrous Sea fan community. But what Wallace doesn’t know is that she’s not just any fan, she’s LadyConstellation–the anonymous creator of Monstrous Sea.

This book absolutely captivated me, I devoured the whole thing in in one day and I haven’t done that in years. Zappia (who I believe used to be a book blogger) has this amazing handle on the importance of online friendship, what it means to negotiate your online self with your IRL self, the inner workings of rabid online fandoms while also incorporating important themes about mental illness and self care for creative people.

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Audiobook Review: The Gentlemen’s Guide to Vice and Virtue

September 18, 2017 Leave a Comment

Release Date: 06/27/17 | Historical | 10 hours 47 minutes | Harper Audio

It’s Georgian London ya’ll and Henry “Monty” Montague, the rouge18-year-old Viscount of Disley, is all set for his year long Grand Tour of the European continent–where he hopes to attend to some general rakish-ness. Along for the tour is his annoying younger sister Felicity and his best friend Percy–who he also happens to be madly in love with. Yeah, what could possibly go wrong ?

I think this should be one of those books that the less you know going in the better. This book gets talked about as a road trip novel, but to me it is less road trip and more Hero’s Journey with a sprinkling of Dan Brown intrigue and like a pinch of Southern Gothic tropes. I’ve never read anything quite like it before and it was amazing.

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The Rose Society by Marie Lu

March 5, 2017 Leave a Comment

Release Date: October 13th 2015
Audiobook Hours: 11 hours 7 minutes
Genre: Historical Fantasy
Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Son (Penguin)

Child sex trafficking, slave camps, genocide and a one sided love triangle ?

Yep, I must be reading a fantasy YA novel !

We’re back in Marie Lu’s vaguely Italian 12th century where the scarred children who survived a blood fever are known as malfettos and some malfettos known young elites have developed special powers. After the events of the last book all malfettos have been banned from the city and forced into refugee camps for the safety of the city (stop me if you’ve heard this one). There is a lot going on in this book but most we follow along while our heroine Adelina Amouteru goes off to find other young elites outside the city.

The Rose Society has to be one of the most subversive and creative YA books I’ve ever read. I liked the first book in this series but this second book has really hooked me. Marie Lu is breaking a lot of the typical YA fiction rules and I am here for it.

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Magonia by Maria Dahvana Headley

February 15, 2017 Leave a Comment

Release Date: April 28th 2015

Pages: 309

Genre: Fantasy

Publisher: HarperCollins

When Aza Ray Boyle dies in the middle of an unusual storm; one life ends and another begins. Because her true destiny lies with the captain of a ship that sails the sky, but not everyone on Earth is ready to let Aza go.

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