This is a weekly meme hosted Devouring Books. This week’s prompt is Books With Multiple Points of View. Here’s my list:
(All book covers from Goodreads)
If you’d like to do this list too, consider yourself tagged!
Did you make a Top 5 Saturday list?
Title: Punching the Air
Author: Ibi Zoboi, Yusef Salaam
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Poetry
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Source: Publisher via NetGalley
Format: Audiobook
Release Date: September 1, 2020
Rating: ★★★★★
From award-winning, bestselling author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam of the Exonerated Five comes a powerful YA novel in verse about a boy who is wrongfully incarcerated. Perfect for fans of Jason Reynolds, Walter Dean Myers, and Elizabeth Acevedo.
The story that I thought
was my life
didn’t start on the day
I was born
Amal Shahid has always been an artist and a poet. But even in a diverse art school, he’s seen as disruptive and unmotivated by a biased system. Then one fateful night, an altercation in a gentrifying neighborhood escalates into tragedy. “Boys just being boys” turns out to be true only when those boys are white.
The story that I think
will be my life
starts today
Suddenly, at just sixteen years old, Amal’s bright future is upended: he is convicted of a crime he didn’t commit and sent to prison. Despair and rage almost sink him until he turns to the refuge of his words, his art. This never should have been his story. But can he change it?
With spellbinding lyricism, award-winning author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam tell a moving and deeply profound story about how one boy is able to maintain his humanity and fight for the truth, in a system designed to strip him of both.
At sixteen, Amal Shahid was convicted of a crime he didn’t commit. He was an artistic student and a poet. The only way he can survive prison is to express himself through his art. Over and over again Amal is let down by the adults around him. He needs to figure out how to speak his truth and fight for justice.
This is a story written in verse. The poetry suited the emotional story. Amal had a lot of emotions that he expressed through his art. He was able to explore his anger in a constructive way by writing poetry and drawing. This story couldn’t have been told the same way if it was written in prose rather than verse.
I listened to the audiobook version of this story. The physical book has some illustrations that I missed out on in the audio version. However, I loved the narrator for the book. He sounded like a teenage boy, so it was like Amal was telling his story. He put a lot of emotion behind the words, which made the story come alive. I really want to check out the physical copy to see the art, but the audio was very good!
This is a great, powerful story!
Thank you Balzer + Bray for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Have you read Punching the Air? What did you think of it?
This is a weekly meme hosted by Wandering Words, where you give the first few lines of a book to hook your readers before introducing the book.
Here are my first lines:
“There was a reason Gavin Scott rarely drank. He was bad at it.”
Do you recognize these first lines?
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And the book is… The Bromance Book Club (Bromance Book Club #1) by Lyssa Kay Adams.
The first rule of book club: You don’t talk about book club.
Nashville Legends second baseman Gavin Scott’s marriage is in major league trouble. He’s recently discovered a humiliating secret: his wife Thea has always faked the Big O. When he loses his cool at the revelation, it’s the final straw on their already strained relationship. Thea asks for a divorce, and Gavin realizes he’s let his pride and fear get the better of him.
Welcome to the Bromance Book Club.
Distraught and desperate, Gavin finds help from an unlikely source: a secret romance book club made up of Nashville’s top alpha men. With the help of their current read, a steamy Regency titled Courting the Countess, the guys coach Gavin on saving his marriage. But it’ll take a lot more than flowery words and grand gestures for this hapless Romeo to find his inner hero and win back the trust of his wife.
Check out my review of The Bromance Book Club here.
Have you read The Bromance Book Club? What did you think of it?
Title: The Bromance Book Club (Bromance Book Club #1)
Author: Lyssa Kay Adams
Genre: Romance, Contemporary
Publisher: Berkley
Source: Gift
Format: Paperback
Release Date: November 5, 2019
Rating: ★★★★★
The first rule of book club: You don’t talk about book club.
Nashville Legends second baseman Gavin Scott’s marriage is in major league trouble. He’s recently discovered a humiliating secret: his wife Thea has always faked the Big O. When he loses his cool at the revelation, it’s the final straw on their already strained relationship. Thea asks for a divorce, and Gavin realizes he’s let his pride and fear get the better of him.
Welcome to the Bromance Book Club.
Distraught and desperate, Gavin finds help from an unlikely source: a secret romance book club made up of Nashville’s top alpha men. With the help of their current read, a steamy Regency titled Courting the Countess, the guys coach Gavin on saving his marriage. But it’ll take a lot more than flowery words and grand gestures for this hapless Romeo to find his inner hero and win back the trust of his wife.
Gavin Scott’s marriage is in trouble. He’s one of the star athletes on the Nashville baseball team, and now his wife, Thea, is asking for a divorce after he walked out during a fight. His friends on the team invite him to the Bromance Book Club, to learn how to get his wife back. They read romance novels to figure out what their wives want. The men in the book club guide Gavin on how to get his wife back, using a regency romance novel.
The Bromance Book Club is such a fun premise for a novel! Since romance novels are usually written for women, they show exactly what women want in a romance. The men in this story have figured out that romance novels are the key to figuring out what women want.
Since Gavin was studying romance novels and how he could use them to get Thea back, the men had to break down how the plot develops in the romance novel. When Gavin got stuck, they pointed out that he needed to figure out Thea’s backstory or past. I loved the way this described how romance novels are plotted, while also creating a romance between Gavin and Thea. This was a clever way to break down the parts of a romance novel within the story.
This was such a great story! I’m so excited to read the rest of this series!
Have you read The Bromance Book Club? What did you think of it?
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 Soulswift by Megan Bannen.
Gelya is a Vessel, a girl who channels the word of the One True God through song. Cloistered with the other Vessels of her faith, she believes—as all Ovinists do—that a saint imprisoned Elath the Great Demon centuries ago, saving humanity from earthly temptation.
When Gelya stumbles into a deadly cover-up by the Ovinists’ military, she reluctantly teams up with Tavik, an enemy soldier, to survive. Tavik believes that Elath is actually a mother goddess who must be set free, but while he succeeds in opening Her prison, he inadvertently turns Gelya into Elath’s unwilling human vessel.
Now the church that raised Gelya considers her a threat. In a race against the clock, she and Tavik must find a way to exorcise Elath’s presence from her body. But will this release stop the countdown to the end of the world, or will it be the cause of the earth’s destruction? And as Tavik and Gelya grow closer, another question lingers between them: What will become of Gelya?
A dark, epic fantasy about a girl who must reevaluate everything she believes after she is betrayed and hunted by the religion that raised her—from Megan Bannen, author of The Bird and the Blade. Perfect for fans of The Winner’s Curse and The Girl of Fire and Thorns.
Have you read this book? What did you think of it?
Title: Unleashed (Jinxed #2)
Author: Amy McCulloch
Genre: Middle Grade, Science Fiction
Publisher: Sourcebooks Young Readers
Source: Publisher via NetGalley
Format: Ebook
Release Date: January 5, 2021
Rating: ★★★★★
The Golden Compass for the digital age in this action-packed sequel to Jinxed.
When Lacey Chu wakes up in a hospital room with no memory of how she got there, she knows something went really wrong. And with her cat baku, Jinx, missing in action and MONCHA, the company behind the invention of the robot pet, threatening her family, she isn’t sure who to turn to for answers.
When Lacey is expelled and her mom starts acting strangely after the latest update from MONCHA, Lacey and her friends work together to get to the bottom of it and discover a sinister plot at the heart of the corporation.
Lacey must use all her skills if she has a chance of stopping MONCHA from carrying out their plans. But can she take on the biggest tech company in North America armed with only a level 1 robot beetle and her friends at her side?
Lacey Chu wakes up in a hospital room with no memory of how she got there. Her baku, her personal digital pet, is missing. After Lacey is discharged from the hospital, her mother starts behaving strangely and doesn’t remember their previous conversations. Then, Lacey is expelled from her elite school. An update to everyone’s bakus, which are run by the company MONCHA, is reprogramming the way people think. Now no one can see the problems with this company taking over everything. Lacey and her friends have to take on MONCHA on their own to save everyone from being reprogrammed by this software update.
This story was very timely with the way that the young students had to stand up to make a change in the real world. Lacey is the one who figured out what was happening with their bakus and how to fix them. Her and her friends had the courage to stand up to a large corporation, and since they were underestimated by the leaders, they were more successful than the adults who went against the company.
Lacey is an inspiring character. She’s very smart and determined to do what’s right. She had to go through some tough challenges, such as when her dad left suddenly when she was a kid and when her mom started acting strangely after getting the update from the company. Lacey also had to be creative with figuring out how to get around the update that would remove her memory of what was going on. She was a fast thinker and strong character.
This is a great conclusion to the Jinxed series!
Thank you Sourcebooks Young Readers for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Have you read Unleashed? What did you think of it?
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 A Lady’s Formula for Love by Elizabeth Everett. The expected publication date is February 9, 2021.
What is a Victorian lady’s formula for love? Mix one brilliant noblewoman and her enigmatic protection officer. Add in a measure of danger and attraction. Heat over the warmth of humor and friendship, and the result is more than simple chemistry—it’s elemental.
Lady Violet Hughes is keeping secrets. First, she founded a clandestine sanctuary for England’s most brilliant female scientists. Second, she is using her genius on a confidential mission for the Crown. But the biggest secret of all? Her feelings for protection officer Arthur Kneland.
Solitary and reserved, Arthur learned the hard way to put duty first. But the more time he spends in the company of Violet and the eccentric club members, the more his best intentions go up in flames. Literally.
When a shadowy threat infiltrates Violet’s laboratories, endangering her life and her work, scientist and bodyguard will find all their theories put to the test—and learn that the most important discoveries are those of the heart.
What books are you waiting on this week?
Title: The Roommate
Author: Rosie Danan
Genre: Romance
Publisher: Berkley
Source: Publisher via NetGalley
Format: Ebook
Release Date: September 15, 2020
Rating: ★★★★
House Rules:
Do your own dishes.
Knock before entering the bathroom.
Never look up your roommate online.The Wheatons are infamous among the east coast elite for their lack of impulse control, except for their daughter Clara. She’s the consummate socialite: over-achieving, well-mannered, predictable. But every Wheaton has their weakness. When Clara’s childhood crush invites her to move cross-country, the offer is too much to resist. Unfortunately, it’s also too good to be true.
After a bait-and-switch, Clara finds herself sharing a lease with a charming stranger. Josh might be a bit too perceptive—not to mention handsome—for comfort, but there’s a good chance he and Clara could have survived sharing a summer sublet if she hadn’t looked him up on the Internet…
Once she learns how Josh has made a name for himself, Clara realizes living with him might make her the Wheaton’s most scandalous story yet. His professional prowess inspires her to take tackling the stigma against female desire into her own hands. They may not agree on much, but Josh and Clara both believe women deserve better sex. What they decide to do about it will change both of their lives, and if they’re lucky, they’ll help everyone else get lucky too.
Clara Wheaton is from an elite family from the east coast. After she graduates with a PhD in Art History, she decides to move to California to stay with her childhood crush. When she gets there, she finds out that he is about to go on tour with his band, and he has rented out a room in his house to someone else. The man who is staying at Clara’s friend’s house is Josh Darling. What Clara doesn’t know at first is that Josh Darling is a porn star. After Clara learns first hand how good Josh is at his job, she decides to fund a project with him. They create a program to teach women how to have better sex. However, there are possible repercussions, with Josh’s contracted job and Clara’s family’s reputation that could be affected by their new venture.
This was a fun, steamy romance. I laughed out loud when Josh’s job as a porn actor was revealed, because I wasn’t expecting that. There were some funny moments, such as when Clara discovered Josh’s job, but there was also a lot of steamy romance.
Since this story was about porn and sex, there were a lot of sex scenes. I felt like they overpowered the story at a certain point, because there was so much sex. I really enjoyed the rest of the story. There was a lot of tension when Josh’s and Clara’s jobs got in the way of their new project, but I wish the rest of the plot was more prominent in the story.
This is a steamy romance!
Thank you Berkley for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Have you read The Roommate? What did you think of it?
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 Most Anticipated Releases of the First Half of 2021. Here’s my list:
(All book covers from Goodreads)
What’s your list of books on your Top Ten Tuesday?
Happy Pub Day to all of these new books!
What books are you most excited for this week?
![Review: Punching the Air [audiobook]](https://jilljemmett.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/book-review-banner.jpg?w=960)
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