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You’d Be Mine by Erin Hahn

August 18, 2019 Leave a Comment

Unrated | 304 pages | Contemporary/Romance | Macmillian | Release Date: 4/2/2019

I’ve seen this book recommended as Nashville meets A Star Is Born which I don’t think is fair because this book was so much better than A Star is Born. Like, this book was what I wanted A Star Is Born to be. I will say music is my pop culture blind spot. I’m not a music person but I’m fascinated by media about music.

Annie Mathers’ is a bright, talented and humble country girl raised by two country music icons whose lives came to a tragic end six years ago. Now she’s is ready to head out on her own and tour with the bad boy of country music; Clay Coolidge. Clay and Annie become a sensation on tour with enough chemistry and talent to sell out stadiums.

What the world doesn’t know is that Clay Coolidge’s swaggering party frat boy persona is just an act that Jefferson Daniels wears to cover the pain of losing his brother and grandfather. The more Jefferson embraces “Clay” the more he sinks into depression and alcoholism and when Annie and her band join his tour for the summer, they pull him out of his siloed world and remind him what it is to be young, talented and free.

The characters in this book all have a lot of fun together, they form a bond only performers (and theater kids) can understand. Clay and Annie’s bands both have fiddlers who have an instant spark and passionate summer romance.

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Book Review : The Care and Feeding of Ravenous Girls by Annisa Gray

June 18, 2019 Leave a Comment

304 pages | Berkeley | Adult Fiction | Release Date: 02/19/2019

I like a book with a really long title. Just throwing that out there.

The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls is this blend of African-American, Women’s and Literary fiction that I’m starting to find myself drawn to more.

This is a very human story of the Butler siblings who are brought together after their seemingly perfect elder sister, Althea, and her husband Proctor are convicted of a crime that shakes up their small lakeside town.

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Mini Reviews : Women To Watch Out For

August 14, 2018 Leave a Comment

Pages: 1 2

Smoke Thieves by Sally Green

August 14, 2018 Leave a Comment

400 pages | Viking | YA Fantasy | 05/01/2018

YA fantasy isn’t for me

This is something I’ve thought and said for so long now because when it coms to the big YA fantasies e.g. The Belles, Throne of Glass, The Wrath and The Dawn … they just didn’t 100% work for me.

I guess I felt like a YA Fantasy can easily become predictable; there are always love triangles, secret crushes, rebellions, secret gays, captains of the guard . . . FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WHY IS THERE ALWAYS A CAPTAIN OF THE GUARD ???

So, Smoke Thieves.

This YA Fantasy totally worked for me and I shocked. I think one of the major reasons is because it has an unconventional structure. The book is told from the POV of five different characters in different parts of the world, which I think bolstered the word building and gave depth to the story. There is a fierce princess oppressed by her patriarchal kingdom, a soldier who turns against his crown (okay, so he is a captain of the guard with a secret crush but like…it’s different okay) a young thief who ventures into demon territories to steal demon smoke, a pompous secret heir on a journey home and a young servant taking revenge on the king who sacrificed his people.

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Tiffany Sly Lives Here by Dana L Davis

August 11, 2018 3 Comments

Rating: unrated | 334 pages | Harlequin Teen Inknyard Press ? | Contemporary | 05/01/2018

I was really excited to read this book after hearing about it on the Hey, YA podcast. I firmly remember actress Dana L. Davis in the 2000s for being “that black lady” who showed up on TV shows in the early 2000s. I was also interested in a book that deals with respectability politics and all the shades of the black experience.

Tiffany Sly has had it rough. After losing her mother to cancer this music-loving rocker girl is headed from Chicago to the mansions and private school of Simi Valley, California; to live with the wealthy and successful father she’s never met. Anthony Stone (get it ? Sly…Stone ? Get it ?)

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The Parking Lot Attendant by : Nafkote Tamirat

June 10, 2018 Leave a Comment

Unrated | 225 pages | Henry Holt and Co| Literary Fiction | 3/13/18

The Parking Lot Attendant is this sort of unsettling literary novel about a teenage girl and her father living in Boston’s Ethiopian community. They are both introverted and reserved people who keep to themselves; their insulated lives are not perfect but it works. Until the unnamed teenage protagonist bonds with Ayale, a charismatic parking lot attendant who rules this part of Boston, the teen soon finds herself caught up in something bigger than herself. Throughout the book, she serves as an unreliable narrator as she lays out how she and her father ended up on the run and living in an isolated island community.

The book is well written and dives into a very specific world. There was this constant unnerving tone to the book where you kept waiting for something big to happen. Did I necessarily understand everything that was happening towards the end of this book ? Not really, but I enjoyed learning about the Ethiopian culture and about the community in Boston. There are a ton of inserting characters and I liked the how it presents the narrators’ father as this introverted and closed-off man who is being a father the best way he can. At first, it is so easy to find fault with him but as the book goes on you start to understand what kind of father he is.

Check out the audio review atAudioFile Magazine!