• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact Us
  • Blogs We Heart
  • Nav Social Menu

    • Bloglovin
    • Email
    • Pinterest
    • Twitter

Books and Sensibility

We're an Open Book

  • Reviews
    • Young Adult Fiction
    • Young Adult Nonfiction
    • Adult Fiction
    • Adult Nonfiction
  • Features
  • Diverse Reads
    • Asian Stories
    • Black Stories
    • Latinx Stories
    • LGBTQIA Stories

YA

Audiobook Review: An Ember in The Ashes by Sabaa Tahir

February 17, 2016      Leave a Comment

The popularity of this book seemed to come out of nowhere. I just remember seeing it on an endcap one day in Barnes and Nobles and the next things I knew is was blowing up.

Ember in the Ashes takes place in The Empire,  a vaguely middle ages fictional land with some vaguely Arabic influences. Elias (who by the way is 20 years old….which feels oddly old for YA) is a student at Blackcliff, a ruthless academy that trains Masks, the Empire’s deadliest soldiers. Laia is a Scholar, the conquered class, who  goes undercover as a slave at Blackcliff for the Resistance to help her brother.

I don’t really have much to say about this book, which is weird since the audiobook is over 15 hours long. It wasn’t bad, it just didn’t click with me. I finished this book and I wasn’t amped for the next one. Thinking about the only other YA fantasies I’ve read; Daughter of Smoke and Bone and The Young Elites, I think what this book is missing is characters with skin in the game. Elias and Laia are just kind of going with the flow all the time.

…

Read this Post

Book Review : All These Things I’ve Done by Gabrielle Zevin

December 16, 2011      2 Comments

“Daddy always said you only explained things to the people that actually mattered.” 

― Gabrielle Zevin, All These Things I’ve Done

Synopsis : In 2083, chocolate and coffee are illegal, paper is hard to find, water is carefully rationed, and New York City is rife with crime and poverty. And yet, for Anya Balanchine, the sixteen-year-old daughter of the city’s most notorious (and dead) crime boss, life is fairly routine. It consists of going to school, taking care of her siblings and her dying grandmother, trying to avoid falling in love with the new assistant D.A.’s son, and avoiding her loser ex-boyfriend. That is until her ex is accidently poisoned by the chocolate her family manufactures and the police think she’s to blame. Suddenly, Anya finds herself thrust unwillingly into the spotlight–at school, in the news, and most importantly, within her mafia family. 

Anya Blanchaine is  the daughter of a Russian mob boss, but she isn’t exactly Growing Up Gotti. All These Things I’ve Done is a novel comprised of  17-year-old Anya’s confessions.She has the world on her shoulders; having to take care of her ailing grandmother and siblings while trying to keep out of the notorious family business of selling chocolate–which has become illegal in 2083.

…

Read this Post

  • « Go to Previous Page
  • Go to page 1
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Go to page 3
  • Go to page 4
  • Go to page 5

Primary Sidebar

Hello !

Welcome! Here you’ll find book reviews, features and a glimpse into the bookish life of two sisters because here–we’re an open book !

Subscribe

We Review Romance

Reviews by Rating

  • ★
  • ★★
  • ★★★
  • ★★★★
  • ★★★★★

Archives

Grab Our Button

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Copyright © 2023 · Wordpress Theme by Hello Yay!