3.5 Star

The Revolution of Birdie Randolph by Brandy Colbert

October 7, 2019 Leave a Comment

6 hours 30 minutes | Contemporary | LBFYR | Release Date: 8/20/2019

16-year-old Dove “Birdie” Randolph obediently follows every expectation her strict mother sets out for her. But the summer before her junior year her estranged Aunt–recovering from addiction–moves in with the family and Birdie starts to challenge everything she’s ever been told.

This book delivered a lot of what I expect from Colbert; quiet, deeply character-driven, slice-of-life YAs that can serve as an introduction to sensitive topics to teens. I liked the journey Dove went on as she learns about addiction and recovery from her aunt and starts dating a new boy.

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Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

September 1, 2019 Leave a Comment

12 hours 32 minutes | Adult SFF | Harper Audio | Audio Release Date: 11/10/2009

In this 1990 Sci-Fiction/Fantasy debut novelist Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett tell a satirical story about the end of the world. I went in knowing this book was about an angel and a demon teaming up to stop armageddon, but Good Omens also involves a book of prophecies, a witch hunter, the four horsemen of the apocalypse and…an 11-year-old antichrist.

I have a vague memory of a teacher talking about this book when I was 9th grade but I’d kind of forgotten about it. I was reading a lot of Left Behind books at that time so I can’t imagine what I would have thought about this tongue and cheek interpretation of the end days. The only reason I picked it up this year is so I could check out the Amazon Prime show. A show that I was Streisand Effected into knowing about. I had no idea this show was even a thing until the controversy.

I found this book to be imaginative and kind of weird and the humor felt very British. There are a lot of plots threaded into the story and I feel like some of it may have gone over my head. I’m sure this is a book like this holds up well to re-reading, In fact, I started the show and the show is essentially a scene by scene remake of the book and things kept clicking while I watched the show that I hadn’t noticed when reading.

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Adult Genre Fiction: A Curious Beginning and Kill The Queen

July 2, 2019 Leave a Comment

I remember being a teenager in Borders (RIP) and hating that one day I’d have to give up YA and read only boring “adult” books. But over the years I’ve discovered adult books are kind of awesome too and this year I’ve been dabbling in adult genre fiction.

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The Scarlett Letters: My Secret Year of Men in an L.A. Dungeon by Jenny Nordbak

December 31, 2018 Leave a Comment

9 hrs. 11 min. | St. Martin’s Press | Macmillian | Release Date: 4/4/2017

Jenny Nordbak’s podcast, The Wicked Wallflowers Club, has been one of my favorite podcasts this year. Their author interviews are always a fun mix of craft talk, raunch, and bookish squee. After hearing Nordbak share a few snippets of her time as a dominatrix on the podcast I decided to check out her book to get the full story.

This memoir follows the two years in Nordbak’s early twenties where she secretly trained and worked as a dominatrix at a BDSM dungeon in Los Angeles. Nordbak weaves together the events of her “vanilla” life with anecdotes about her sessions with clients as she becomes Mistress Scarlett. I found the peek into the BDSM scene fascinating and enjoyed getting to know the irreverent found family Nordbak creates for herself.

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I Can’t Date Jesus: Love, Sex, Family, Race, and Other Reasons I’ve Put My Faith in Beyoncé

October 17, 2018 Leave a Comment

6 hrs and 9 min | Simon & Schuster | Memoir/Essay Collection | 07/24/2018

This memoir caught my eye because well . . . how can you bypass a book with a subtitle like that? I wasn’t familiar with Arceneaux before, but he is a prolific pop culture writer who often writes about the intersection of being Black and gay.

I’ve been kind of meh on memoirs by millennials lately*, particularly the ones around identity, because they feel like they are written specifically for the gaze of White liberal progressives. But Arceneaux’s stories are messier and have a personal authenticity that I enjoyed.

My favorite essays were the ones he wrote about his relationship to Catholicism and the importance of R&B music in his life. At first, it seemed like Beyoncé’s name was put in the title just to get clicks but once you get to his essay about Beyoncé it fell into place.

Arceneaux reads the audiobook, and it didn’t 100% work for me. While it was great to hear his particular southern accent, his affect was flat and stilted at times.

I also just admire Arceneaux’s hustle to become the media personality he’s become. While he doesn’t address it directly, there is an ongoing thread in the background of his essays about the years of hard work he put into building his career.

Arceneaux offers something new to the gay/pop culture essayist genre and I’m sure there will be many more books from him in the future.

*This review of Morgan Jenkins’ This Will Be My Undoinghits on a few the issues I have with some of these millennial memoirs about identity

A Gathering of Shadows by V.E Schwab (Shades of Magic #2)

August 29, 2018 Leave a Comment

512 pages | 2/23/16 | Shades of Magic #2 | Tor Books | Fantasy

A Gathering of Shadow picks up a few months after ADSOM and our characters are reunited just in time for an international contest that pits magician against magician— and it’s a lot like Goblet of Fire. I legit kept thinking that for the first few chapters of the books. I mean Lilah even “Harry Potters” herself into the competition. You know that thing where an underqualified competitor gets themselves into the competition and The Powers That Be let it slide because. . . Chosen One? (yes, I know Harry doesn’t put his own name in, but still.)

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