We're an Open Book
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.
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384 Pages | Roaring Brook Press | Science Fiction YA | 5/4/2021
This book was very much Black Mirror but make it Cli-Fi.
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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*
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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.
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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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Unrated | 384 pages | Simon Pulse | Contemporary | Release Date: 2/18/2020
Of Curses and Kisses is an introspective slow cooker ( I saw this term on Twitter and I couldn’t wait to use it !) of a romance about Jaya, a reserved modern-day princess at St. Rosetta’s International Academy. She’s on a mission to take down a rival family’s heir, Grey Emmerson, for a slight against her sister. It’s a lofty goal, but Jaya discovers instead of being a fierce rival, Grey Emerson is a broody, introverted outcast.
We follow Jaya as she is entrenched in Rosemont drama, this book is genre-savvy and Emerson sees through Jaya’s start-a-fake-relationship-and-dump-him plan so the initial premise of the book is dropped pretty quickly. The book is a lot of Jaya and Emerson working through their emotions and coming to terms with who they want to be versus who their families expect them to be.