Month: October 2019

Review: More Than a Princess (More Than a Princess #1)

Title: More Than a Princess (More Than a Princess #1)
Author: E.D. Baker
Genre: Middle Grade, Fantasy
Publisher: Bloomsbury Children’s Books
Source: Library
Format: Ebook
Release Date: November 6, 2018
Rating: ★★★★

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Goodreads Synopsis:

From E. D. Baker, a magical new series about a heroic princess who’s more than she seems — and a kingdom whose fate rests in her hands.

Aislin is more than just a princess — she’s half-fairy and half-pedrasi, with magical gifts that let her draw strength from the wilderness around her. When she’s captured and used as bait between two warring kingdoms, she must find a way to break free of their plot… while also minding the human princesses she encounters, conventionally beautiful girls who are all too ready to point out her differences. Thankfully, Aislin’s inner strength goes beyond her magical qualities, and with a few loyal friends by her side, she’s ready to stand up for herself and her kingdom.

E. D. Baker, whose books have sold over 1 million copies, offers a classic, original fairy-tale that celebrates beauty and goodness in all its shapes and sizes, sure to delight readers who love magic, suspense, girl power, and adventure.

Review:

This is a great fairytale story!

Aislin is mixed race. Her parents are a fairy and a pedrasi. They broke down conventions by marrying and joining two different groups of people together. They have magic, so they stay hidden from humans. But their secrets are threatened when a human king finds their kingdom.

Aislin was a strong character. She was very brave to stand up for her people. She had to deal with a lot of racism and criticism on her looks. She didn’t look like a typical human princess because she was built differently. The boys would tease her, but she didn’t let it bring her down. I really liked the way race relations were in this story, though they were represented in fairytale creatures. This can be compared to racism and discrimination in real life.

I really enjoyed this story!

What to read next:

A Royal Guide to Monster Slaying by Kelley Armstrong

Have you read More Than a Princess? What did you think of it?

TBR Thursday – October 17

TBR Thursday is a weekly meme hosted by Kimberly Faye Reads, where you post a title from your shelf or e-reader and find out what others think about it.

My pick this week is Moon of the Crusted Snow by Gita Waubgeshig Rice.

Goodreads Synopsis:

A daring post-apocalyptic thriller from a powerful rising literary voice

With winter looming, a small northern Anishinaabe community goes dark. Cut off, people become passive and confused. Panic builds as the food supply dwindles. While the band council and a pocket of community members struggle to maintain order, an unexpected visitor arrives, escaping the crumbling society to the south. Soon after, others follow.

The community leadership loses its grip on power as the visitors manipulate the tired and hungry to take control of the reserve. Tensions rise and, as the months pass, so does the death toll due to sickness and despair. Frustrated by the building chaos, a group of young friends and their families turn to the land and Anishinaabe tradition in hopes of helping their community thrive again. Guided through the chaos by an unlikely leader named Evan Whitesky, they endeavor to restore order while grappling with a grave decision.

Blending action and allegory, Moon of the Crusted Snow upends our expectations. Out of catastrophe comes resilience. And as one society collapses, another is reborn.

Have you read this book? What did you think of it?

Blog Tour Review: The Upper Case: Trouble in Capital City

Title: The Upper Case: Trouble in Capital City
Author: Tara Lazar, Ross MacDonald
Genre: Children’s
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Source: Publisher
Format: Ebook
Release Date: October 15, 2019
Rating: ★★★★★

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Goodreads Synopsis:

Just when Private I thinks all is calm-now that he’s cracked the case of 7 Ate 9-Question Mark storms into the office.
Mark is worried. All the uppercase letters are M-I-S-S-I-N-G! But that’s absurd. This is CAPITAL City!
Private I is the last letter standing. Will he solve his BIGGEST mystery yet, the UPPER CASE, before it’s too late?!
Filled with the same humor, wit, and quirkiness of the hit 7 Ate 9: The Untold Story, comes another laugh-out-loud whodunit.

Review:

This is a hilarious new children’s picture book.

Punctuation marks and letters walk around in this city. It was so funny to see these symbols brought to life. They sometimes acted out their function, such as periods holding up a stop sign. This is a fun way to teach children letters and punctuation.

I loved the puns in this book. There were so many clever ways that phrases were played with in this book. For example, the phrase “mind your p’s and q’s” was turned into an illustration of an ampersand (&) babysitting or “minding” a baby p and q. These puns were so clever!

I loved this book! It is hilarious for children and adults.

Thank you Disney-Hyperion for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

What to Read Next:

7 Ate 9: The Untold Story by Tara Lazar, Ross MacDonald

About the Author:

Street magic performer. Hog-calling champion. Award-winning ice sculptor. These are all things Tara Lazar has never been.

Instead, she writes quirky, humorous picture books where anything is possible.

Her picture books available now are:

Tara is represented by Ammi-Joan Paquette of the Erin Murphy Literary Agency.

Her last name rhymes with “bazaar”—you can listen to Tara pronounce her name on TeachingBooks.net. She’s not Tara Laser-beam (although that would be awesome).

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Pinterest | Goodreads 

Giveaway:

3 winners will receive a finished copy of THE UPPERCASE, US Only.

a Rafflecopter giveaway https://widget-prime.rafflecopter.com/launch.js

Tour Schedule:

Week One:

10/14/2019Twirling Book PrincessExcerpt
10/14/2019Jill’s Book BlogReview
10/15/2019BookHounds YAReview
10/15/2019Little Red ReadsExcerpt
10/16/2019Southern Girl BookaholicReview
10/16/2019Lisa-Queen of RandomSpotlight
10/17/2019Character Madness and MusingsSpotlight
10/17/2019Ficticiouswonderland Review
10/18/2019The Try Everything / jenifer_readsExcerpt
10/18/2019I Read Kid’s Books Journal / IreadwhatuwriteExcerpt

Week Two:

10/21/2019YA Book NerdReview
10/21/2019Wonder StruckReview
10/22/2019Satisfaction for Insatiable ReadersReview
10/22/2019Two Chicks on BooksExcerpt
10/23/2019books are loveReview
10/23/2019Books a Plenty Book ReviewsReview
10/24/2019Savings in SecondsReview
10/24/2019Lifestyle of MeReview
10/25/2019two points of interestReview
10/25/2019A Gingerly Review Review

Instagram Tour Schedule:

Week One:

10/14/2019Fictitious FoxReview
10/15/2019Ficticiouswonderland Review
10/16/2019BookHounds YAReview
10/17/2019Character Madness and MusingsSpotlight
10/18/2019Savings in SecondsReview

Week Two:

10/21/2019I Read Kid’s Books Journal / IreadwhatuwriteReview
10/22/2019Satisfaction for Insatiable ReadersReview
10/23/2019books are loveReview
10/24/2019StoriesandplottwistsReview
10/25/2019Little Red ReadsReview

Thank you to Rockstar Book Tours for letting me participate in this blog tour.

‘Waiting on’ Wednesday – October 16

This is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine. In this post we highlight a book that’s highly anticipated.

The book that I’m waiting on this Wednesday is Black Canary: Ignite by Meg Cabot, Cara McGee. The expected publication date is October 29, 2019.

Goodreads Synopsis:

Meg Cabot’s first graphic novel!

Thirteen-year-old Dinah Lance knows exactly what she wants, who she is, and where she’s going. First, she’ll win the battle of the bands with her two best friends, then she’ll join the Gotham City Junior Police Academy so she can solve crimes just like her dad. Who knows, her rock star group of friends may even save the world, but first they’ll need to agree on a band name.

When a mysterious figure keeps getting in the way of Dinah’s goals and threatens her friends and family, she’ll learn more about herself, her mother’s secret past, and navigating the various power chords of life. 

What books are you waiting on this week?

Review: Our Wayward Fate

Title: Our Wayward Fate
Author: Gloria Chao
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary
Publisher: Simon and Schuster Canada
Source: Publisher via NetGalley
Format: Ebook
Release Date: October 15, 2019
Rating: ★★★★★

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Goodreads Synopsis:

Seventeen-year-old Ali Chu knows that as the only Asian person at her school in middle-of-nowhere Indiana, she must be bland as white toast to survive. This means swapping her congee lunch for PB&Js, ignoring the clueless racism from her classmates and teachers, and keeping her mouth shut when people wrongly call her Allie instead of her actual name, pronounced Āh-lěe, after the mountain in Taiwan.

Her autopilot existence is disrupted when she finds out that Chase Yu, the new kid in school, is also Taiwanese. Despite some initial resistance due to the “they belong together” whispers, Ali and Chase soon spark a chemistry rooted in competitive martial arts, joking in two languages, and, most importantly, pushing back against the discrimination they face.

But when Ali’s mom finds out about the relationship, she forces Ali to end it. As Ali covertly digs into the why behind her mother’s disapproval, she uncovers secrets about her family and Chase that force her to question everything she thought she knew about life, love, and her unknowable future.

Snippets of a love story from nineteenth-century China (a retelling of the Chinese folktale The Butterfly Lovers) are interspersed with Ali’s narrative and intertwined with her fate.

Review:

This is an amazing second novel from Gloria Chao!

Ali had to deal with a ton of racism, living in a predominantly “white” town. I couldn’t believe the way that her peers and teachers would talk to her, including commenting on how good she must be at math and putting on a Chinese accent in front of her. She was born in America so she was just as much of an American as them. These racist people also assumed that she must date the new Asian boy in the school. It was heartbreaking to read the way people spoke to her.

I learned a lot about Chinese culture in this book. There was a Chinese folktale that was threaded throughout the story and united with the main plot in the end. It had to do with Ali’s mother’s secrets, which was another amazing and suspenseful subplot!

I liked that the Mandarin words weren’t translated directly into English. It brings the reader into Ali’s position of being on the outside of the culture she lives in. I could figure out what most of the words meant from the context, but I liked that it kept Ali’s culture prevalent in the story.

I loved this book!

Thank you Simon and Schuster Canada for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

What to read next:

American Panda by Gloria Chao

Somewhere Only We Know by Maurene Goo

Have you read Our Wayward Fate? What did you think of it?

Top Ten Tuesday – Extraordinary Book Titles

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and it is now hosted by The Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s theme is Extraordinary Book Titles. These are book titles that I think suited the books. Here’s my list:

1. The Love Solution by Ashley Croft

2. The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang

3. Star-Crossed by Minnie Darke

4. The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware

5. The Last Resort by Marissa Stapley

6. Somewhere Only We Know by Maurene Goo

7. Five Feet Apart by Rachael Lippincott, Mikki Daughtry, Tobias Iaconis

8. We Are the Perfect Girl by Ariel Kaplan

9. The Afterlife of Holly Chase by Cynthia Hand

10. Two Can Keep a Secret by Karen M. McManus

(All photos taken from Goodreads)

What’s your list of Extraordinary Book Titles?

Review: Unplugged and Unpopular

Title: Unplugged and Unpopular
Author: Mat Heagerty, Tintin Pantoja, Mike Amante
Genre: Middle Grade, Graphic Novel
Publisher: Oni Press
Source: Publisher via NetGalley
Format: Ebook
Release Date: October 15, 2019
Rating: ★★★★★

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Goodreads Synopsis:

After Erin Song’s parents ban her from using her phone, TV, Internet, and all her screens, she soon discovers mysterious, strange creatures and must foil their plot to take over Earth in this sci-fi graphic novel for tweens.

Erin Song lives in a digital world. Everyone has a phone, a tablet, a computer—more screens than you can count. Even with a world of information at her fingertips, Erin can’t figure out the secret to popularity at her clique-y junior high school. So when uber-popular Wendy asks for help cheating on a test, Erin jumps at the opportunity. This could be her big break! Unfortunately, she gets caught, and her parents ban her from all her devices. Suddenly, Erin Song is the only girl in the world who’s not allowed to look at a screen.

And that’s when Erin notices something funny: small, furry aliens making humans disappear with a weird device Erin’s never seen before. No one else notices them, though—except Erin’s grandmother and two old men who run the local library. They’ve discovered that the aliens are using screens to control the human race, tricking them into thinking they aren’t really there—and that anyone who’s been abducted never existed.

Now it’s up to Erin and her grandmother to save the day! But without technology on their side, do they stand a chance?

Review:

This was a great graphic novel about technology taking over our world.

In this story, Erin gets grounded, and has all of her electronic devices taken away. She can’t use her phone, computer, or even TV. She was already unpopular at school, so this just made her social life even worse. However, since she wasn’t plugged into the devices, she discovered that aliens were actually brainwashing and abducting humans through their phones. It turned out to be a good thing that she had a break from her devices.

Erin works with her grandmother and two elderly men to save Earth from the aliens. The police wouldn’t listen to the old people because they thought they were crazy. They also wouldn’t listen to Erin because she was young. This shows that even though someone may be young or old, you shouldn’t dismiss what they’re saying because it could be important.

I loved this graphic novel!

Thank you Oni Press for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

What to read next:

Ghosts by Raina Telgemeier

All’s Faire in Middle School by Victoria Jamieson

Have you read Unplugged and Unpopular? What did you think of it?

It’s Monday, What Are You Reading? – October 14

This blog meme is hosted by Book Date. It is a place to meet up and share what you have been, are and about to be reading over the week.  It’s a great post to organize yourself. It’s an opportunity to visit and comment, and er… add to that ever growing TBR pile!

What I just finished:

This weekend I finished Unplugged and Unpopular by Mat Heagerty, Tintin Pantoja, and Mike Amante.

What I’m currently reading:

I’m currently reading Our Wayward Fate by Gloria Chao.

What I’m reading next:

Next I will be reading Jackpot by Nic Stone.

What are you guys reading this week? Have you read any of these books?

Jill’s Weekly Wrap-Up – October 13

Here are my reviews for the week with my ratings:

I did 9 weekly blogging memes:

How was your week? What did you guys read?

Sundays in Bed With… Ninth House (Alex Stern #1)

The meme that dares to ask what book has been in your bed this morning? Come share what book you’ve spent time curled up reading in bed, or which book you wish you had time to read today! This meme is hosted by Midnight Book Girl.

This Sunday I’m reading Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo.

Goodreads Synopsis:

Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. By age twenty, in fact, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most elite universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her?

Still searching for answers to this herself, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. These eight windowless “tombs” are well-known to be haunts of the future rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street and Hollywood’s biggest players. But their occult activities are revealed to be more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive.

The mesmerizing adult debut from #1 New York Timesbestselling author Leigh Bardugo.

What book are you in bed with today?