Happy Disability Pride Month! 35 YA Books with Disability Rep 💙

Hello all!! How have you been? Isn’t it just like me to disappear for three weeks straight after announcing the end of my hiatus—and for absolutely no reason at all 🙈 I’m happy to report, though, that these past few weeks of inactivity have been filled with amazing books that gave me varying levels of emotional trauma 👍 It’s been so long since I cried my eyes out over a book, and I can’t believe I got to do that not once, but several times this month! I can’t wait to share all my thoughts on my recent reads in my July wrap-up 😊

But today, I’m back with a specific recommendations post in honor of Disability Pride Month!

Mid-Year Book Freak Out Tag (2021 Edition)

Hello friends!! Yes, it’s me, finally back from the dead!! 

It’s been—wow—almost three months since my last post. To go about explaining myself, school has been a real pain in the neck this past semester, especially with finals week and AP exams. And so I decided that blogging had to be pushed back on the priority list. I know I said in my 2020 wrap-up that one of my resolutions for this year is to not make blogging a chore for myself, but I felt awful that I couldn’t tell you guys about my impromptu hiatus. I’m so sorry, but thank you for still sticking with me! I can’t say enough how much I’ve missed interacting with you all and drafting rambly posts of 2k+ words.

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!

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! ❤️

The Liebster Award — Take 2! 🎉

Hello everyone, and welcome back! Three posts in a row is unheard of from me, but today I’m bringing you something extra-special. Naemi @ A Book Owl’s Corner nominated me for the Liebster Award, and I’m just astounded and so grateful to all of you for your support and love. Thank you so much, Naemi. If you’re reading this, please go check out Naemi’s blog — her personality is so sweet, and I’m in love with everything she posts!

The Anonymous Bookaholics Tag!

Happy Thursday everyone! Today, I’m bringing you the Anonymous Bookhaholics Tag! Emily @ Frappes and Fiction nominated me for this tag, and if you aren’t following her already, you should go do that before continuing with this post. Thanks again, Emily, for the nomination, and let’s get started!

Reading Every Treatise on the Shelf: Musicals & YA Books

I love musicals. I love them a lot. They hold an indescribable charm for me that results from the combined effect of the story, the numbers, and the visual performance.

This past weekend, I was one of the 11 million people who streamed The Phantom of the Opera for FREE on YouTube. The YouTube channel The Shows Must Go On! is streaming live one of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s internationally renowned musicals every Friday night and leaving them available to watch for 48 hours as part of a fundraiser for the Actors Fund, in an effort to help theater professionals affected by the coronavirus. This weekend, it was the Royal Albert Hall performance of The Phantom of the Opera. I am ashamed to admit it was my first ALW musical, but boy, was it worth it.

Suffice it to say, I fell completely, head-over-heels in love.