Jill lives in Toronto, Canada. She has studied English, Creative Writing, and Publishing. Jill is the creator and content producer of Jill’s Book Blog, where she has published a blog post every day for the last four years, including 5-7 book reviews a week. She can usually be found with her nose in a book.
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 An Ember in the Ashes (An Ember in the Ashes #1) by Sabaa Tahir.
Goodreads Synopsis:
Laia is a slave. Elias is a soldier. Neither is free.
Under the Martial Empire, defiance is met with death. Those who do not vow their blood and bodies to the Emperor risk the execution of their loved ones and the destruction of all they hold dear.
It is in this brutal world, inspired by ancient Rome, that Laia lives with her grandparents and older brother. The family ekes out an existence in the Empire’s impoverished backstreets. They do not challenge the Empire. They’ve seen what happens to those who do.
But when Laia’s brother is arrested for treason, Laia is forced to make a decision. In exchange for help from rebels who promise to rescue her brother, she will risk her life to spy for them from within the Empire’s greatest military academy.
There, Laia meets Elias, the school’s finest soldier—and secretly, its most unwilling. Elias wants only to be free of the tyranny he’s being trained to enforce. He and Laia will soon realize that their destinies are intertwined—and that their choices will change the fate of the Empire itself.
Have you read this book? What did you think of it?
Title: What I Like About You Author: Marisa Kanter Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary Publisher: Simon and Schuster Canada Source: Publisher via NetGalley Format: Ebook Release Date: April 7, 2020 Rating: ★★★★★
Goodreads Synopsis:
Can a love triangle have only two people in it? Online, it can… but in the real world, it’s more complicated. In this debut novel Marisa Kanter explores what happens when internet friends turn into IRL crushes.
There are a million things that Halle Levitt likes about her online best friend, Nash.
He’s an incredibly talented graphic novelist. He loves books almost as much as she does. And she never has to deal with the awkwardness of seeing him in real life. They can talk about anything…
Except who she really is.
Because online, Halle isn’t Halle—she’s Kels, the enigmatically cool creator of One True Pastry, a YA book blog that pairs epic custom cupcakes with covers and reviews. Kels has everything Halle doesn’t: friends, a growing platform, tons of confidence, and Nash.
That is, until Halle arrives to spend senior year in Gramps’s small town and finds herself face-to-face with real, human, not-behind-a-screen Nash. Nash, who is somehow everywhere she goes—in her classes, at the bakery, even at synagogue.
Nash who has no idea she’s actually Kels.
If Halle tells him who she is, it will ruin the non-awkward magic of their digital friendship. Not telling him though, means it can never be anything more. Because while she starts to fall for Nash as Halle…he’s in love with Kels.
Review:
Halle’s parents are documentary directors who travel around the world making films. Halle and her brother move in with her recently widowed grandfather while her parents film a documentary for a year in Israel. Halle is also a famous teen book blogger, but she goes by the pen name Kels on her cupcake book blog. Halle discovers that her online best friend Nash also lives in the same town as she has just moved to when she runs into him at a library. However, Nash doesn’t know what Kels looks like, so he doesn’t know that Halle and Kels are the same person. Kels’s online persona is growing as she gets more opportunities but she has to keep up the division between her online life as Kels and her reality of Halle.
The book blogging community was really well portrayed in this book. There was one incident where an author insulted her teen community by saying that her books are meant for adults. This is a common argument, since many adults read young adult fiction. I think that’s because the young adult or teenage experience is so relatable because every adult was a teenager first. Even if you had different experiences as the characters in the book, most of the themes are relatable.
I found this book so tense. Halle was frustrating me because she wouldn’t tell Nash that she was really Kels. I kept holding my breath when he came close to discovering her identity. I wanted to yell at Halle to tell him the truth, yet at the same time, if she did tell him, it would be the end of the tension 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:
Tweet Cute by Emma Lord
Don’t Read the Comments by Eric Smith
Have you read What I Like About You? 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 Just a Boy and a Girl in a Little Canoe by Sarah Mlynowski. The expected publication date is May 19, 2020.
Goodreads Synopsis:
Sam’s summer isn’t off to a great start. Her boyfriend, Eli, ditched her for a European backpacking trip, and now she’s a counselor at Camp Blue Springs: the summer camp her eleven-year-old self swore never to return to. Sam expects the next seven weeks to be a total disaster.
That is, until she meets Gavin, the camp’s sailing instructor, who turns her expectations upside down. Gavin may have gotten the job just for his abs. Or that smile. Or the way he fills Sam’s free time with thrilling encounters—swimming under a cascade of stars, whispering secrets over s’mores, embarking on one (very precarious) canoe ride after dark.
It’s absurd. After all, Sam loves Eli. But one totally absurd, completely off-the-wall summer may be just what Sam needs. And maybe, just maybe, it will teach her something about what she really wants.
Perfect for fans of 99 Days and Anna and the French Kiss, this unforgettable, sun-drenched summer romance from one of YA’s bestselling and most beloved authors, Sarah Mlynowski, is an irresistible dive into the joys of seizing the day and embracing the unexpected.
Title: Sonic the Hedgehog: Tangle and Whisper Author: Ian Flynn, Evan Stanley (illustration) Genre: Graphic Novel Publisher: IDW Publishing Source: Publisher via NetGalley Format: Ebook Release Date: April 7, 2020 Rating: ★★★★
Goodreads Synopsis:
Join two of the most popular new characters from Sonic’s world in this classic odd-couple team-up adventure!
Tangle the Lemur’s got a problem: there’s not enough action in her life! Whisper the Wolf’s also got a problem: she’s hunting down an incredibly dangerous enemy named Sonic the Hedgehog! Can Tangle and Whisper help solve each other’s problems, or will they just make things worse?
Also collected is Sonic The Hedgehog: Annual 2019. Join Sonic and some of his coolest friends in adventures that show just how wonderful Sonic’s world really is. In the lead story, Tangle the Lemur and Whisper the Wolf team-up to save a friend in need! Then Sonic and Tails take the Tornado for a spin, but is Sonic going too fast? Plus, Silver and Blaze slow down for a minute to go gardening, the Sonic Fan Club has their first official meeting, and Rouge the Bat hunts for treasure!
Review:
This is my first Sonic the Hedgehog comic. It’s about two characters in the Sonic universe: Tangle and Whisper. They encounter a villain, who is a former friend of Whisper. The problem is that this villain, Mimic, can transform into other people, including Sonic. They have to stay on their toes to figure out who is real and who is Mimic.
This graphic novel started out with some short comics about friendship. Each comic had a different set of friends, such as Tangle and Whisper or Sonic and Tails. They had to work together to battle robbers and get justice, or figure out how to build a garden together. These were cute stories to start of the graphic novel. Usually there are short comics at the end of a graphic novel, after the main story, so this one was unique since it started off with them.
It was really cute to see how the other characters idolized Sonic. Some of them even had a Sonic fan club. They liked to copy his racing style, including how he could turn into his ballform to race faster. I liked seeing how Sonic was a celebrity in his own world. It made the story more relatable, since people can be fans of Sonic in real life too.
This was a great graphic novel for fans of Sonic the Hedgehog.
Thank you IDW Publishing for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
What to read next:
Sonic the Hedgehog, Vol. 1: Fallout! by Ian Flynn
Have you read Sonic the Hedgehog: Tangle and Whisper? 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 Books I Enjoyed But Rarely Talk About. Here’s my list:
1. Suitors and Sabotage by Cindy Anstey
2. The Lady Rogue by Jenn Bennett
3. Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging (Confessions of Georgia Nicolson #1) by Louise Rennison
4. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants #1) by Ann Brashares
5. The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
6. The Face on the Milk Carton (Janie Johnson #1) by Caroline B. Cooney
7. The Selection (The Selection #1) by Kiera Cass
8. Impulse by Ellen Hopkins
9. The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan
10. It Beings (The Unseen #1) by Richie Tankersley Cusick
(All photos taken from Goodreads)
What’s your list of books on your Top Ten Tuesday?
Title: Truths I Never Told You Author: Kelly Rimmer Genre: Historical Fiction, Mystery Publisher: Graydon House Source: Publisher via NetGalley Format: Ebook Release Date: April 14, 2020 Rating: ★★★★★
Goodreads Synopsis:
From the bestselling author of The Things We Cannot Saycomes a poignant novel about the fault in memories and the lies that can bond a family together—or tear it apart.
With her father recently moved to a care facility for his worsening dementia, Beth Walsh volunteers to clear out the family home and is surprised to discover the door to her childhood playroom padlocked. She’s even more shocked at what’s behind it—a hoarder’s mess of her father’s paintings, mounds of discarded papers and miscellaneous junk in the otherwise fastidiously tidy house.
As she picks through the clutter, she finds a loose journal entry in what appears to be her late mother’s handwriting. Beth and her siblings grew up believing their mother died in a car accident when they were little more than toddlers, but this note suggests something much darker. Beth soon pieces together a disturbing portrait of a woman suffering from postpartum depression and a husband who bears little resemblance to the loving father Beth and her siblings know. With a newborn of her own and struggling with motherhood, Beth finds there may be more tying her and her mother together than she ever suspected.
Exploring the expectations society places on women of every generation, Kelly Rimmer explores the profound struggles two women unwittingly share across the decades set within an engrossing family mystery that may unravel everything they believed to be true.
Review:
Beth has been struggling since she had her son. She doesn’t know why she hasn’t adjusted to motherhood, but she’s uncomfortable with this new life. Her stress gets worse when her and her siblings have to move her father, who has dementia, into a nursing home. Beth volunteers to clean out his house, where she finds some secrets about her mother. Beth’s mother, Grace, married young against her parents’ wishes. She quickly has children, and she also has trouble adjusting to this new life. However, parts of Beth’s memory and Grace’s story don’t add up. Beth has to figure out what happened to her mother, while dealing with her own struggles.
This story had two perspectives: Beth in 1996 and Grace in 1957. They have similar experiences with depression after they have children, but they don’t know how to ask for help. When Grace asks for help, she’s told she needs to be stronger. Beth is scared to ask for help because her job as a psychologist could be compromised if she is diagnosed with depression. Though their stories take place forty years apart, they still have the same challenges.
There were feminist themes in this book. Some of the issues were abortion, contraception, and postpartum depression. Between the two storylines, there was some progression, though there still was a stigma attached to these things. Even today, the stigma is still there. Someone like Grace would get more help for her depression than she got in 1957, but I imagine that someone in Beth’s position would still have a problem with being diagnosed with depression as a psychologist. The world has improved for women since Grace’s time, but it isn’t perfect yet.
This was an emotional and moving historical novel.
Thank you HarperCollins for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
What to read next:
Before I Let You Go by Kelly Rimmer
Recipe for a Perfect Wife by Karma Brown
Author Info:
Kelly Rimmer is the worldwide and USA TODAY bestselling author of Before I Let You Go, Me Without You, and The Secret Daughter. She lives in rural Australia with her husband, two children and fantastically naughty dogs, Sully and Basil. Her novels have been translated into more than twenty languages. Please visit her at www.Kelly.Rimmer.com
Have you read Truths I Never Told You? What did you think of it?
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 Truths I Never Told You by Kelly Rimmer.
What I’m currently reading:
I’m currently reading What I Like About You by Marisa Kanter.
What I’m reading next:
Next I will be reading The Queen of Paris: A Novel of Coco Chanel by Pamela Binnings Ewen.
What are you guys reading this week? Have you read any of these books?
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 Truths I Never Told You by Kelly Rimmer.
Goodreads Synopsis:
From the bestselling author of The Things We Cannot Saycomes a poignant novel about the fault in memories and the lies that can bond a family together—or tear it apart.
With her father recently moved to a care facility for his worsening dementia, Beth Walsh volunteers to clear out the family home and is surprised to discover the door to her childhood playroom padlocked. She’s even more shocked at what’s behind it—a hoarder’s mess of her father’s paintings, mounds of discarded papers and miscellaneous junk in the otherwise fastidiously tidy house.
As she picks through the clutter, she finds a loose journal entry in what appears to be her late mother’s handwriting. Beth and her siblings grew up believing their mother died in a car accident when they were little more than toddlers, but this note suggests something much darker. Beth soon pieces together a disturbing portrait of a woman suffering from postpartum depression and a husband who bears little resemblance to the loving father Beth and her siblings know. With a newborn of her own and struggling with motherhood, Beth finds there may be more tying her and her mother together than she ever suspected.
Exploring the expectations society places on women of every generation, Kelly Rimmer explores the profound struggles two women unwittingly share across the decades set within an engrossing family mystery that may unravel everything they believed to be true.
Jill's Book Blog 