When someone hands me a book and says that it is one of the best books I will ever read I am often skeptical. There is no reason to be skeptical when it comes to Raybearer, the debut novel of Jordan Ifueko. From its first pages I was utterly enchanted by its protagonist, Tarsai, who […]
If you think you have seen it all when it comes to Cinderella stories and you have not read Cinderella is Dead, then you are wrong. Sophia is one of many girls in Lille who has grown up learning the story of Cinderella — the approved palace version, which according to the laws of the […]
Do you ever finish a book and then just take a moment to bask in the glow of how fantastic it was? There is a feeling of wholesome contentment just from the completeness of it all. There will always be little things about any book that we wish there were more or less of, but […]
Over the course of my time writing this blog I’ve reviewed a lot of books, many of which center blackness including books that discuss racism as a larger topic and thus also include marginalization on a wider scale. I thought that, seeing as how this is my last post during Black History Month, it would […]
I’ve been on a bit of a nonfiction kick lately but This Is Kind of an Epic Love Story brought me right back in to remembering why I love YA fiction just as much. There are many epic love stories that are threaded throughout this book, which is representative of so many kinds of love. […]
With all the stress of life, I felt myself yearning for something that I could read as a kind of palate cleanser, and I was directed toward the YA fantasy of my dreams in the form of L.L. McKinney’s excellent debut novel A Blade So Black. As a present-day interpretation of Alice in Wonderland, A […]
Pride and Prejudice has been adapted over and over again, but I think I have found my new favorite in Ibi Zoboi’s Pride.[1] The book is narrated in the first person by Zuri Benitez, a seventeen year old girl living in Bushwick, Brooklyn. The story starts at the beginning of summer vacation, when two important […]
The great thing about an independent study is that I get to focus on what most interests me about a given topic, and time and time again it seems that I am finding myself drawn to Harry Potter. I’ve often joked that given six degrees I can connect anything to the series thematically, and my […]
I have been wanting to read The Hate U Give for over a year now, and I am so glad that I finally got around to doing so. My hesitancy in reading this book was not insignificant. I was assured of its quality, and of that I had no doubt, but I knew that this […]
From the first line about Monday mornings and having an existential crisis I just knew that I was going to love Noteworthy by Riley Redgate. The premise of what is now my new favorite YA novel is that Jordan Sun, a student at the fictional Kensington-Blaine Boarding School for the Performing Arts, has been rejected […]