I finished out the year by reading two award-winning books!
…Asian
Mini-Reviews : Traveling To Find Home
I was looking for a theme that tied all these mini-reviews together and I realized all these books feature characters who have to travel to unknown places, overcome obstacles and come through the other side changed forever.
…The Ones We’re Meant to Find by Joan He
384 Pages | Roaring Brook Press | Science Fiction YA | 5/4/2021
This book was very much Black Mirror but make it Cli-Fi.
…Meet Cute Diary by Emery Lee
7 Hours 3 Mins | Harper Audio | Contemporary | 5/04/2021
In this book, the titular Meet Cute Diary is a wildly popular Tumblr blog of supposedly true meet-cutes from transgender couples. In reality, all the posts are from the imagination of 16-year-old Noah Ramirez–who has only ever dreamed of having his own meet-cute.
When an anonymous troll tries to discredit the blog, Noah and a handsome bookseller stage a social media love story inspired by Noah’s fake posts.
The Meet Cute Diary is a refreshing take on the coming of age YA love story that creates room for queer and imperfect teens but… its main romance left me wanting more.
*mild spoilers below*
…These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong
14 Hours 4 Mins | Margaret K. McElderry | Historical/Sci-Fi/Horror | 1/26/2021
These Violent Delights is a Historical (sci-fi ?. .horror ?) YA set in the dangerous and dazzling city of Shanghai during the roaring 20s Shanghai. The novel is an homage (read: Not a retelling. Not even a little bit) to Romeo and Juliet and follows rival gang heirs Juliette the cutthroat fierce heir to the Scarlett Gang and Roma the stalworth Russian heir to the White Flowers, as they hunt down the source of a maddening disease sweeping the city
Going in I didn’t know much about Shanghai’s history as an international (read colonized) port. It’s the perfect setting for this dark and mysterious mystery the main characters find themselves in. I’m curious to read more book set during this time period.
…Skyhunter by Marie Lu
11 hours 58 minutes| Macmillan Audio| Dystopian| Release Date: 9/29/2020
Skyhunter feels like a follow-up to Legend (which is almost a decade old at this point). It has all of the things that made Legend such an enticing read; betrayal, biological warfare, experimentation, and coats. Lu loves to write characters in sweeping coats…though there are noticeable fewer epaulets in this one.
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