Books and Sensibility

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Book Review: The Court of Miracles by Kester Grant

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Rating: 3 out of 5.

 399 Pages | Knopf | AU Historical Fiction  | Release Date: 06/02/2020 

The Court of Miracles is a Les Miserables retelling that re-imagines discarded daughter Eponine “Nina” Thenadier as a thief in the underground Parisian criminal network known as The Miracle Court. When a powerful member of the Miracle Court threatens to enslave Nina’s sister Ettie (aka Cosette)  she makes moves to bring him down. All while the June Revolution is stirring. 

Am I the only one who thought this was a fantasy ? Because it isn’t and I’m trying not to let my review be clouded by what I expected to be.

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Book Review : Salty, Bitter, Sweet by Mayra Cuevas

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Rating: Unrated | 320 pages | Blink YA | Contemporary | Release Date: 03/03/20

Mayra Cuevas debut is a coming of age novel for fans of decadent food and charming European cities. Seventeen-year-old Isa has a passion for French cooking, which has kept her afloat now that she has left Chicago for the scenic coastal city of Nantes, France with her father and his new wife–the woman he cheated on her mom with.

The situation is a little awkward but it’s all worth it when Isa is accepted into a cutthroat culinary program where failure is not an option. She is determined to keep her focus– even if her family’s new charming young house guest proves to be a bit of a distraction.

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Audiobook Review: Memorial Drive by Natasha Tretheway

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Rating: 5 out of 5.

 5 hours 9 min. | Harper Audio | Non-Fiction  | Release Date: 7/28/2020 

I’ve finally been in the mood for nonfiction again and picked this one up while browsing the new release shelf with no context whatsoever. I skim read it was about a murder and thought it was maybe true crime (it’s not). I didn’t even look at the cover long enough to realize Tretheway is a Pulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. Poet Laureate.

Memorial Drive is a literary eulogy to Tretheway’s mother, who was shot and killed by her abusive ex-husband in 1985 while Tretheway was away at college. The book begins with Tretheway’s experiences growing up as a biracial girl in 1960s South and she takes us along through triumphs and heartbreaks as she and her mother make their way to Atlanta for a new life together.

Tretheway has a Pulitzer Prize in poetry so it’s no surprise that the writing is amazing. There is a large section where the narrative voice switches to the second person and it is done flawlessly. I was listening to this on audio and it took me a minute to even realized she’d switched.

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Book Review: A Love Hate Thing by Whitney D. Grandison

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Rating: Unrated | 448 pages | Inkyard Press | Contemporary | Release Date: 01/07/2020

This book has a lot of mixed reviews and I think part of it is because it has a premise I thought we left behind in the early 2000s. You know– a kid from the hood is dropped into an affluent neighborhood where he finds redemption and peace through writing.

In A Love Hate Thing Tyson Trice is taken in by family friends after a horrific tragedy and reunited with his childhood best friend Nandy. Nandy wants nothing to do with Trice and makes snap judgments about him because he was raised in the hood, while Trice sees her as the spoiled popular girl who only thinks of herself. To rekindle their friendship these stubborn teens have to get past their prejudices and learn to trust each other again.

Audiobook Review: The New David Espinoza by Fred Aceves

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Rating: 4 out of 5.

 Audiobook length: 7 hours 50 min. | Publisher: Harper Audio | Genre: YA Contemporary| Release Date: 2/11/20

Jess gave a glowing review to  Fred Aceves debut, The Closest I’ve Come, making me particularly eager to pick up his sophomore novel.

After a video of 17-year-old David Espinoza getting slapped unconscious goes viral, David is too embarrassed to ever show his face around town. He’s tired of being bullied for how thin he is and spends the summer of his senior year working out to attain a physique like his favorite action movie stars. He joins a bodybuilding gym where he is slowly pulled into the insanely toxic community of professional bodybuilding and steroids.

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All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung

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Rating: 5 out of 5.

6 hrs. 42 min. | Memoir | Catapult | Release Date: 10/2/2018

Nicole Chung is probably most well known around the internet as the managing editor of the now-defunct The Toast and her If John Cho Was Your Boyfriend piece.  In her memoir she tells the story of her transracial adoption, her path to finding her birth family and how she inadvertently uncovers a family secret. 

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