Mini-Reviews: Requiem, When We Were Infinite, Concrete Rose

Hello everyone, and welcome back! I hope you’re all enjoying your April so far and had a beautiful Easter yesterday!🌻 Before anything, I want to take a moment to thank everyone for all the support you showed me on my previous post. Reading your comments and responding to them warmed my heart, brightened my day, and thoroughly renewed my love for this incredible community. So thank you ❤️

But why am I back today, you ask? To share some long-overdue mini-reviews of three of my recent reads! This is a pretty varied bunch — we have a poetry collection, a hard-hitting contemporary, and the most recent book from a hugely popular YA author. So hopefully there’ll be something for everyone here! Fair warning that these so-called “mini” reviews do get a bit lengthy, so you might want to brace yourselves 😅

Without further ado, let’s get started!

Resources to #StopAsianHate + 2021 YA Releases by AAPI Authors!

Hello everyone, and welcome back! I’m not sure how to start this post, so I’ll just get right into it: I’m back today to discuss some recent events that occurred here in the United States. On March 16, eight people were killed in Atlanta, Georgia across several spas and massage parlors. On March 22, ten people were killed in Boulder, Colorado in an unrelated incident at a supermarket. The taking of innocent lives is always terrible and tragic, but two mass shootings in such quick succession is especially horrific. My heart goes out to the families and loved ones of the victims. 

In addition, the fact that most of the victims in Atlanta were Asian-American women is heartbreaking and inexcusable. While the suspect has been claiming that the shooting was not racially motivated, the fact that he thought of Asian massage parlors as a sexual “temptation” to “eliminate” says a lot. Whether or not these women were actually sex workers, there is little doubt that this killing is a direct result of the sexualization and fetishization of Asian women — an intersection of racism and sexism.

The Month(s) in Books: Jan & Feb 2021

Hello everyone!! I am so sorry to say this over halfway through the month, but happy March, otherwise known as Women’s History Month! 🙋‍♀️💃 And I just realized I never wished you all a happy Black History Month — I had a couple of posts I wanted to get up to honor the occasion, but I guess those never came to fruition… hopefully sometime soon!

But anyway. Time is really speeding by, isn’t it? We’re already around 20% through 2021, and in just a week or so we’ll be a whole quarter through this year! It’s absurd, I tell you. The past two months have been SO crazy school-wise, what with the craziness of a new school semester and a ton of assessments that my teachers suddenly decided to dump on me all at once. As a result, I haven’t been able to get as much reading done, which is sort of disappointing, but we take what we can get, y’know? But I’m hoping that the worst of the chaos is mostly over now, so I’ve decided to (finally) sit down and give you all a very overdue wrap-up of my January and February! I’ve also sort of changed my wrap-up structure, so let me know what you think of it in the comments! Hope you enjoy 💜

Review: A Vow So Bold and Deadly by Brigid Kemmerer

You all know at this point how passionate I am about my love for the Cursebreakers series. You also all know (or probably can imagine) that I spent the days leading up to the release of this book in a near-perpetual state of hyperventilation. And now here, at long last, is my review of my most anticipated book of 2021 that I will flatter myself by thinking you have been dying to read.

🚨 Full disclaimer that this review will NOT contain spoilers for any of the books in the series. Spoilers for any of the books will be marked as such. In particular, there is one important event from A Heart So Fierce and Broken that defines a lot of the character development in this book, so I’ll be referring to that event as *the incident* (very creative, I know). 

So without further ado, let’s get started!

Author Interview with Brigid Kemmerer (ft. me fangirling over one of my favorite authors 😍)

Hello everyone, and welcome back!! Happy Valentine’s Day ❤️ I hope you’ve all been doing well…. my midwinter break just started yesterday (happy late Lunar New Year, by the way 🎉) and while my teachers have again assigned a crazy amount of homework, I’m so excited to be blogging again!! I have so many post ideas and hopefully I can get some of them published during the next week or so 😊

Today, I’m bringing you something really special — my first ever author interview, with no other than Brigid Kemmerer, one of my all-time favorite authors!! For those of you who don’t know, Brigid has an impressive backlist from a variety of genres, ranging from fantasy (Cursebreakers series) to contemporary romance (Letters to the Lost) to paranormal (Elemental series). I am a HUGE fan of the Cursebreakers books and Brigid’s contemporaries, so imagine my fangirling when Brigid readily accepted my interview request 🤩

Although we had to keep the interview on the shorter side due to time constraints on Brigid’s part, the answers she was able to give are brilliant! I hope you enjoy reading through them as much as I did!!

Lost in Translation Tag + Baby It’s Cold Outside Book Tag!

Hello everyone and welcome back!! I can’t wrap my head around the fact that it’s officially the last day of January?? I honestly can’t understand how time works?? January was a pretty slow reading month for me, so I’m not planning to publish a separate monthly wrap-up, but I’m making it up to you today with two book tags I was tagged for an eternity ago. One is the Lost in Translation Tag, which Eryn @ Love_Your_Shelf — the original creator — tagged me for back in October. The other is the Baby It’s Cold Outside Book Tag, which I’m pretty sure I was supposed to do before the holidays, but…. we’re rolling with it 😂 After all, it’s still cold on the East Coast, and according to the forecast, we’re supposed to get lots of snow tomorrow! Thank you so much to Cherelle @ A Bolt Out of the Book and Nehal @ Books and Words for tagging me 😊

Onto the questions!

Yearly Wrap: All of My 2020 Faves + 2021 Resolutions!

Hello hello hello!! Long time, no see, everyone!! First things first: HAPPY NEW YEAR! How have you all been?? I hope you’ve all been staying safe and happy and are well on your way to achieve all of your 2021 goals. I personally am doing very nicely! I know I disappeared on you for like a month (it’s somehow already three weeks into January?!?!) and I’m sorry about that… I blame it on having more winter break homework than anticipated, plus lack of motivation and procrastination.

Review: A Sky Beyond the Storm by Sabaa Tahir

I am officially deceased. Goodbye, cruel world, you who allow authors like Sabaa Tahir to freely roam upon your surface to wreak havoc on the hearts and minds of innocent readers.

*dies dramatically*

In all seriousness, though, this book nearly killed me with how good it was. So let’s get into the long-awaited review already.

Festive Christmas Book Tag + End of the Year Book Tag!

Hello dear readers, and welcome back!! How have you all been?? Winter is definitely in the air here on the East Coast — we had our first snowfall last week, with more to come in the coming days! After 2020’s snow-less December, the weather has been cooperative enough this year to tune up all of the holiday vibes. It’s the perfect time to cozy up with a book, reading by the light of the Christmas tree. 🎄

Unfortunately, I’ve recently been feeling rather slumpy when it comes to reading (I blame Sabaa Tahir and the massive book hangover Sky Beyond the Storm gave me), so instead, I’ve decided that this is the perfect time to complete some seasonal book tags that my amazing fellow bloggers have tagged me for! Thank you so much to Alexis @ The Reading Addict for the Festive Christmas Book Tag, and to A Couple of B’s for the End of the Year Book Tag! ❤️

My Most Anticipated 2021 Releases!

Hello everyone and welcome back!! I hope you’ve all been enjoying your December thus far. As per my promise to not disappear this month like I did in November, I have returned with another post!

As we all know, 2020 has been a handful. There’s no guarantee that 2021 will be any better, but I think I speak for everyone when I say we’re all looking forward to starting on the clean slate that is a brand new year. In recognition of that, today I want to share with you my 23 most anticipated YA releases for 2021! I’m not going to pretend that I’ll have read all of these by the end of next year, but hey, a girl can dream. 😅