Month: June 2016

Book Traveling Thursdays: A Favorite Book of the Year So Far

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Hello, welcome back to another Book Traveling 168709Thursdays, which a weekly meme created by Cátia @The Girl Who Read Too Much and Danielle @Danielle’s Book Blog. The goal is to share the covers of a book related to that week’s theme, which you can see at the Goodreads group, indicating the original cover, the one of your country, your favorite and least favorite.

This week’s theme is “We’re halfway through 2016. Choose your favorite book of the year so far“.  Just for the record, my favorite book I’ve read this year so far was A Court of Mist and Fury, but there’s only 2 covers available, and that’s not enough. So I’ll use one of my favorite last reads, and that was Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover.

Original COver:

I love love love the original cover for this book! It has so much more to do with the story than I originally thought too.

COVER FROM MY COUNTRY (PORTUGAL) & COVER FROM THE COUNTRY I LIVE IN (SPAIN):

Oh wow, the book is out in Portugal, but not in Spain?! That’s a shocker! I love that we kept the original cover for this book, though the colors seems somewhat more muted, the book is still gorgeous.

Favorite COVER(s):

                                           

I love the original cover, and then there’s the Danish, which is gorgeous and probably my favorite of the 2.

LEAST FAVORITE COVER(s):

         

My least favorite covers are the French (just no), Polish (no no), Slovak (hmmm NO) and the German (definitly no no no).

Excerpt Blitz: A Fine Mess by Kelly Siskind

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I’m so happy to be a part of the Excerpt Blitz for Kelly Siskind’s new book, A Fine Mess. I’m a huge fan of hers, and I’m in love with these characters – can’t wait to read all about Lily and Sawyer. You can check out my review of the first book of this series, My Perfect Mistake, here.

BOOK DETAILS:

Siskind_AFineMess_ebookTitle: A Fine Mess
Author: Kelly Siskind
Series: Over The Top, #2
On Sale: August 2, 2016
Publisher: Forever
Format: eBook
Price: $3.99 USD

Some guys should come with a warning label…

Sawyer West is Mr. One-Night Stand. He doesn’t do relationships or promises or feelings. He’s never cared enough to get involved. Until Lily Roberts. She’s sweet and shy and sexy as sin, and resisting her is testing his self-control. She believes Sawyer can be a better man, and for the first time in his life, he wants to be. But change isn’t easy, and Sawyer would do anything to protect Lily from his past self. Even break his own heart…

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Pre-Order here: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Google Play | iBooks | Kobo

Excerpt:

Sawyer steps close and waits for me to make eye contact. Slowly, I lift my gaze to his gold-flecked brown eyes, but I can’t find my voice. It’s like I don’t know how to talk to him anymore.

He grins. “Hi.”

From my angle it’s easy to see the scar running down his neck, the remnant of a fall he took through a coffee table while wrestling with his brother. I’ve always wanted to touch it, feel the puckered skin under my fingers. I drop my gaze, but it doesn’t help. The cuffs of his gray button-down are rolled to his elbows, roped muscle exposed below. Something else I’d like to touch.

I blink hard. “Hi,” I say to my feet.

“Look at me, Lil.” I rock on my heels, then do as asked. He raises an eyebrow. “How fucking weird is this?”

My giggle surprises me, and I loosen my grip on my wineglass. “Totally weird.”

Thank God for Sawyer’s candid nature.

He sips his drink, probably Scotch, and a sheen of liquid clings to his bottom lip.

Touch that arm. Kiss that scar. Taste those lips. None of these urges are new, but they’re heightened. Magnified. He watches me watching him, his gaze as probing as mine. What is he thinking?

Then the music changes.

A remix of Madonna’s “Holiday” plays, and Sawyer does Sawyer. He tips his head to the right, his shoulders following, then he pushes out his hip and rolls his torso through. The guy does body waves, alternating from side to side, like he’s in an eighties music video.

People stop. People look. People laugh.

I snort, an unattractive sound I make when my laughter takes over. Sawyer says it sounds like a hyena with sleep apnea. When I snort a second time, he dances harder, and I crack up. My belly aches as he gets into it, the entire room watching now.

I suck in a breath, place my empty glass on the table behind me, then clasp his shoulders. “What are you doing?”

He stops dancing. “Making things less weird.”

“Less? What about you channeling Paula Abdul is less weird?”

“Did you laugh?”

I grin.

Then he says, “I’m sorry.”

The music vibrates in my chest, or maybe it’s his proximity. “Sorry about what?”

“Last week, when you called, I was a dick. You caught me by surprise, and I didn’t handle it well. So, I’m sorry.”

His admission pumps through my core like helium, my body nearly weightless. The confession shouldn’t be surprising, not with how he speaks his mind, but it’s been a week of silence. I was losing hope things could return to the way they were, or progress past it. I step closer, so he can hear me over the noise. “Apology accepted, but do I get an explanation?”

He drags his gaze down my body. It’s a thorough perusal—intimate, penetrating—flames sparking along my skin. His eyes linger on me, but he doesn’t speak. He rolls the pinky ring on his left hand the way he does when he’s puzzling something out. An ache travels up my thighs, heat expanding below my ribs. The longer he stays quiet, the more my skin tingles.

Finally, he releases his ring and slides his hand over my lower back. He leans forward and whispers, “I’ve wanted to do very dirty things to you and with you since Aspen, but I care about you too much to act on it. Hence my dickishness and the weirdness.”

THE OVER THE TOP SERIES

                       Siskind_MyPerfectMistake_ebook    Siskind_AFineMess_ebook

                                My Perfect Mistake, #1                                           A Fine Mess, #2

Series page on Goodreads

Kelly Siskind CREDIT Eirik DunlopABOUT THE AUTHOR

A small-town girl at heart, Kelly moved from the city to open a cheese shop with her husband in Northern Ontario. When she’s not neck deep in cheese or out hiking, you can find her, notepad in hand, scribbling down one of the many plot bunnies bouncing around in her head. She laughs at her own jokes and has been known to eat her feelings-Gummy Bears heal all. She’s also an incurable romantic, devouring romance novels into the wee hours of the morning.

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

FOLLOW FOREVER ONLINE

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June Book Haul

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Let’s just say that I might have used and abused the request button on netgalley… But I didn’t get any physical book 🙂 .

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WWW Wednesday: June 29th 2016

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Well, I’ve never done this meme, but I couldn’t find 5 items for this week’s T5W, so I thought “why not try WWW?“. WWW Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Sam @Taking On A World Of Words, where you have to answer these questions:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

WWW_1

                               

I’ve been reading Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma and I’m loving it, though I’ve been taking it slowly because it is a depressing book. Then I started Crystallum by Laney McMann today, and I’m only 3% in, but it’s nothing like I thought it would be and I’m excited! Finally, I read about 9% of A Mess of a Man by A.M. Hargrove and Terri E. Laine, but then I had to stop because this is supposed to be a buddy read with Cátia @The Girl Who Read Too Much and she couldn’t get to it at the moment :).

WWW_2

            

I finished This is What Goodbye Looks Like by Olivia Rivers a few days ago and I enjoyed it, though the ending kind of disappointed me – you can check my review here. Then I finished Don’t get me Wrong by Marianne Kavanaugh, which was an ARC I got from Netgalley ages ago, but I was pleasantly surprised, and my review for this book just went live today, here. Then last night I finished Tonight by Karen Stivali, which was a super cool M/M short romantic story, and I also finished Stroked by Meghan Quinn, that I also really loved (review coming next month or so 😛 ).

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Next I’ll read Wrong Place, Right Time by Elle Casey with  Cátia @The Girl Who Read Too Much, because its release day is on the 5th. And then I’ll probably read You Before Anyone Else by Julie Cross and Mark Perini, because I’m so excited that I was finally given this ARC 😀 .

Don’t Get Me Wrong (Marianne Kavanagh)

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dontgetmewrong

For fans of Jojo Moyes, David Nicholls and Sophie Kinsella, here is a Pride and Prejudice for the modern era. 

Londoners Kim and Harry can’t see eye to eye…until the life of the person they both love most hangs in the balance. 

Kim has never grasped what her free-spirited big sister Eva sees in a stuck-up banker like Harry and has spent her childhood trying to keep him out, while Harry’s favourite occupation is winding Kim up.

Both Harry and Kim are too trapped in their prejudices to care about what’s really going on beneath the surface of each other’s lives. They’ll never understand each other — until the worst of all tragedy strikes.

Faced with the possibility of losing the person they both love most, long-buried secrets come to a head in ways that will change both Harry and Kim forever.

This was one book I requested on Netgalley and then put it off and off and off, and I wasn’t even believing that I would ever get to it. But the other day I decided to give it a go, and now I’m glad I did.

At first I wasn’t very convinced about it, because the writing style just wasn’t my favorite, at all, and the formating (or lack thereof) of the ARC didn’t exactly help me get into it. The story is told in dual POV, between Kim and Harry, in the third person, and throughout a lot of years. My problem with it was that sometimes, during the present timeline, either of them would recall events of years prior, and it would get really confusing. There was also a big overuse of the “… first person talk…, she/he thought.”. I think the book would have been better and easier if it was either written on the first person or if it used this a little less, because it got too much and too confusing.

There’s also a few times during a certain year that we get 2 or 3 sections from an entirely different POV, and while it took me a bit to understand the importance of those little speeches, they were important, and it gave me an outside perspective to Kim’s relationship with her then boyfriend. I just wish that the person in question would have talked to her friend directly, instead of what happened.

Now about the characters… I didn’t LOVE any character of this book, but I had a huge problem with Kim. Throughout the years – and by the end, she had known Harry for about 17 years – she refused to believe anything he said, and always saw the worst in any situation. She always thought he was faking something, or making fun of something, or that his feelings were never genuine. While I understood this when she was a teenager, when she was in her 20’s, this behaviour started to grate me. She never asked, she always assumed, and that was so wrong. She also blamed Harry for the most stupid things, including Eva’s (her sister) decisions.

I liked Harry, though I wish he had made his move a lot sooner, but I understood why he didn’t. I liked that he saw Eva as family, and that meant that Otis and Kim were his family too. I loved how much he grew up throughout the years, and how he fought for himself, what he believed in and his few friends.

Although Eva has a huge role on the story, I wasn’t a big fan of hers either, but she was a fighter, and damn if the book wasn’t a lot sadder because of some things that happened with her. Now, I know she didn’t talk to Kim about Harry because…. stuff, but she should have insisted with her sister in terms of Otis, because Kim believed, even if just a little, that Harry was Otis father, when you as a reader know that there was no way that if Harry was Otis’ dad, that he wouldn’t have assumed him.

The plot itself is mostly the lives of these two different people throughout 9 years of their lives. We get to see snippets of either of their lives and how they connect sometimes and not others, and how they feel about each other, until it all culminates with a tragedy that brings them together and they finally talk about all the misunderstandings that they had throughout the years. I was glad that Kim actually gave Harry a chance to talk, because he deserved that more than anything. I liked the plot, it was purely character driven, but it was subtle and good.

I have mixed feelings about the ending, because it was so open. For one hand, you can almost be sure that things will work out and the “talk” will evolve to something else, on the other hand though, how will that happen? Because these are 2 people who have known each other for 17 years, and one of them doesn’t know what is feeling at all… how will it work? I somehow wished that the book had a little more to that ending, maybe an epilogue or a chapter one year in the future or something, to make perfectly clear that it actually had a HEA, because I’m not really sure it was possible at all.

I really liked this book, much more than I ever thought possible, and the only reason it doesn’t get a higher rating is mostly the writing style, which I wasn’t the biggest fan of, and the unlikability of one of the main characters. I do recommend it if you like general fiction, or women’s fiction, because I wouldn’t even describe this as chick lit.

Musical Mondays: Can’t Stop the Feeling by Justin Timberlake

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Today I’m happy! Portugal is in the quarterfinals of the UEFA Euro 2016, Iceland just beat England, and Spain went home. Football made me happy this week. And  this song makes me happy as well. And I love love love the video.

(which video makes you happiest?)

I got this feeling inside my bones
It goes electric, wavey when I turn it on
All through my city, all through my home
We’re flying up, no ceiling, when we in our zone

I got that sunshine in my pocket
Got that good soul in my feet
I feel that hot blood in my body when it drops, ooh
I can’t take my eyes up off it, moving so phenomenally
Room on lock the way we rock it, so don’t stop

And under the lights when everything goes
Nowhere to hide when I’m getting you close
When we move, well, you already know
So just imagine, just imagine, just imagine
Nothing I can see but you when you dance, dance, dance
Feeling good, good, creeping up on you
So just dance, dance, dance, come on
All those things I shouldn’t do
But you dance, dance, dance
And ain’t nobody leaving soon, so keep dancing

I can’t stop the feeling
So just dance, dance, dance
I can’t stop the feeling
So just dance, dance, dance, come on

Ooh, it’s something magical
It’s in the air, it’s in my blood, it’s rushing on
Don’t need no reason, don’t need control
I fly so high, no ceiling, when I’m in my zone

‘Cause I got that sunshine in my pocket
Got that good soul in my feet
I feel that hot blood in my body when it drops, ooh
I can’t take my eyes up off it, moving so phenomenally
Room on lock the way we rock it, so don’t stop

And under the lights when everything goes
Nowhere to hide when I’m getting you close
When we move, well, you already know
So just imagine, just imagine, just imagine
Nothing I can see but you when you dance, dance, dance
Feeling good, good, creeping up on you
So just dance, dance, dance, come on
All those things I shouldn’t do
But you dance, dance, dance
And ain’t nobody leaving soon, so keep dancing

I can’t stop the feeling
So just dance, dance, dance
I can’t stop the feeling
So just dance, dance, dance
I can’t stop the feeling
So just dance, dance, dance
I can’t stop the feeling
So keep dancing, come on

I can’t stop the, I can’t stop the
I can’t stop the, I can’t stop the
I can’t stop the feeling

Nothing I can see but you when you dance, dance, dance
(I can’t stop the feeling)
Feeling good, good, creeping up on you
So just dance, dance, dance, come on
(I can’t stop the feeling)
All those things I shouldn’t do
But you dance, dance, dance
(I can’t stop the feeling)
And ain’t nobody leaving soon, so keep dancing

Everybody sing
(I can’t stop the feeling)
Got this feeling in my body
(I can’t stop the feeling)
Got this feeling in my body
(I can’t stop the feeling)
Wanna see you move your body
(I can’t stop the feeling)
Got this feeling in my body
Break it down
Got this feeling in my body
Can’t stop the feeling
Got this feeling in my body, come on

This is What Goodbye Looks Like (Olivia Rivers)

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thisiswhatgoodbyelookslike

Lea Holder watched a boy die in the same DUI accident that ruined Lea’s legs and threw her little sister into a coma. As the only eye-witness to the accident, if she tells the truth in court, the drunk driver will go to prison and the dead boy’s family will have justice. 

But Lea lies.

If she had told the truth, Lea would have put her own mom in prison for causing the accident. With the trial over and her mom set free, Lea attempts to rebuild her shattered life as she waits for her little sister to wake from her coma.

When Lea transfers schools, she finds herself in the same senior class as Seth Ashbury, the brother of the boy her mom killed. As Lea gets to know the person buried underneath Seth’s grief, she quickly falls for his quick wit and passionate soul. But Seth remains completely oblivious that Lea is the same girl who robbed his family of justice.

As their relationship deepens, Lea finally gets a taste of the love that’s been missing from her life since the accident. But soon she’s faced with a choice: she can continue her lies and accept the comfort it gives them both. Or she can tell Seth the truth about everything, and risk destroying both her family and her newfound love.

I read this book as a buddy read with  Cátia @The Girl Who Read Too Much and Kat @Life and Other Disasters, a.k.a., Three Bloagteers (Kat totally named us!). Check out Kat’s review HERE.

This was my second book by Olivia Rivers, I previously read (and loved) Tone Deaf, so I knew I would probably like her writing, and I was really hoping to love the story. And to be honest, I kind of did, until around 75% of the book, and then it crumbled in my opinion and I just couldn’t love it or rate it above 3 stars.

But I DID love the writing, though I still found some words repeated a lot. I mostly liked the characters, and I say mostly because even though I wanted to love Lea, I couldn’t for the most part, because I couldn’t truly ignore how sick I thought her actions were. I did like Seth though, and I liked his relationship with each of his friends, and how much they actually felt like a family, who protected each other fiercely.

I really liked Seth and Lea’s journey with their grief, and in Lea’s case, with her guilt, though I ultimately felt that none of those things were completely dealt with. While I do love the importance given to family and, particularly, to siblings, I thought that Lea’s sister, Camille, was given a weight that I didn’t particularly liked.

I did struggled with some of Lea’s decisions throughout the story, but most of all, with her reasoning behind some of those decisions. When she finally decided to do the right thing, I felt she did it for the wrong reasons, and failed (at a lot of points) to consider the impact of her decisions on not only her family, but Seth’s as well. I also thought she failed to see how her parents were dealing with some things, and she belittled their feelings about her sister, and I didn’t think it was ok.

I didn’t like the ending, at all. Not only did I not agree with a lot of things, but then it wrapped up neatly and so well (while not at all at the same time), that it felt unrealistic, and I honestly felt that it wasn’t the way that served the story better. I thought the goal of the book was their journey to being able to say goodbye to the people they loved and lost, but that turned out not to be quite like that. Some smaller things also bothered me, but they wouldn’t have made such an impact if I wasn’t already mad at something else.

In the end, this had a huge potential, but the last 1/4 ruined it a bit for me. It was still an emotional read, but it made me mad more than anything else. The book as a whole it’s still worth it, and I think most of you won’t have the same issues as me, not at all.

Sunshine Blogger Award

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Today I’m doing another Blog Award post. Oh yeah! I’ll be doing the Sunshine Blogger Award for the 4th (?!) time. A huge thank you to the lovely bloggers who nominated me for this: Sam @A Blast of Random, Yasaman @Following Muses, Shannon @Clockwork Bibliophile and Eve @Eve Messenger’s OtherWORDly Endeavors. THANK YOU!

Rules:

  1. Thank the people/person who nominated you.
  2. Answer the questions from your nominators.
  3. Nominate eleven other bloggers and give them eleven questions.

Sam @A Blast of Random asks:

1. Did you listen to the Hamilton soundtrack?

Yep, I did. When all the Hamilton craziness started.

2. If your answer to that question is Yes (or ‘OMG YES!’ preferably), which are your favourite songs (I know it’s impossible to choose just one), favourite character, favourite voice to listen to? Go on! Fangirl/ fanboy!! 

If your answer to that question is No, what exactly are you even doing with your life?! While that question started out rhetoric, now I’m curious. What’s happening? What’s new? What are you excited about in the short term? Tell me.

My answer was yes. But you know, I think it’s a soundtrack that, no matter how amazing, doesn’t work as well without the actual play, you know? I would love to see that though. But it will probably never happen 😦 .

3. Do you have any tattoos? Would you like any (more)? Describe them. If no, why not?

I do! I also have a photo, will that do? I wouldn’t mind having another one. The pain didn’t really bothered me that much.

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4. If you were a Greek God (or Goddess) what would you be the God of?

I always felt a good affinity with Athena, goddess of reason, intelligent activity, civilization, strength, strategy, crafts, justice, arts and literature, and Apollo, god of light, music, poetry, knowledge and the sun.

5. Why do you think cats can’t fly?

Hmmm, because they don’t have wings?!

6. Which F.R.I.E.N.D.S. character are you? (Take this Buzzfeed quiz and post a screenshot of your answer!)

I’ll just leave the image and ask… WTF?!

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Yasaman @Following Muses asks:

1. How did your reading habits change over time?

Well, in the last year or so, I went from reading mostly YA fantasy to reading mostly NA contemporary, and I have no regrets.

2. Do you like to listen to music while reading?

Nope. No, no, no. Can’t do it. Sounds distract me too much.

3. Are there any books that your whole family loves?

Hmmm, yeah… the Twilight series. And by “all”, I’m only counting the female portion of my family.

4. You have the opportunity to tell an author to write one more book in your favourite series and they have to do it. Which series do you choose?

I would probably go with Penryn and the End of Days series by Susan Ee, because I felt like there were still so much to tell. I wanted more from those characters.

5. Which book got you into your favourite genre?

I’m chosing the New Adult Contemporary genre, because I love love love it. It was probably Right Where You Are by L.E. Bross that first really got me into it. I love this series.

6. A book that you don’t plan on reading, but everyone has read?

I never ever plan to read Divergent by Veronica Roth. I really didn’t like the movies and I’m a bit over the whole dystopian genre.

Shannon @Clockwork Bibliophile and Eve @Eve Messenger’s OtherWORDly Endeavors asks:

1. Why is your favourite genre of books your favorite?

My favorite genre right now is contemporary, either New Adult or Young Adult. I think they’re mostly easier and lighter reads, because they don’t need all the world building. They also deal with more relatable characters and issues.

2. Have you ever felt connected to a character because they have experienced something you have?

You can see the answer above for this. And yes, obviously yes. The more you read, the more likely you’ll find something to identify with, right?

3. What is your favourite book-to-movie adaptation?

I thought that Me and Earl and the Dying Girl movie adaptation was way better than the book, so that!

4. What was the last book you read and did you enjoy it?

The last book I finished was Maybe Someday by Colleen Hoover, and I loved it!

5. What’s your least favourite book that you’ve ever read?

My least favorite book that I’ve read this year was Lessons of the Heart by Jodie Larson. You can check the reasons why I didn’t like it here, on my review.

6. What’s the prettiest cover on your shelf?

SO MANY!!! I’m saying my The Mortal Instruments covers today, though. Look at them!

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The Diverse Books Tag

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Hey guys. I saw this tag in Reg @She Latitude‘s blog and then I was tagged by Jenna @Fictional Neverland, which was totally awesome, because I really wanted to give it a try. I’ll do a mix of books that I’ve read, and books that I want to read, ok? This tag was created by Read Diverse Books.

A Book Starring a Lesbian Character 

South of Sunshine by Dana Elmendorf. Kaycee, the main character of this book, is a lesbian girl.

Although I didn’t exactly love this book, it’s the only one I read with a lesbian character as the MC.  

A Book with a Muslim Protagonist

Unfortunately, the only one I can remember reading is Ms. Marvel, Vol. 1: No Normal – I need to expand my reading, for sure. I do applaud that Marvel expanded their universe like this, and I can only hope that we start seeing more representation all around. There’s a very negative stigma against muslims, and I would like it to stop.

A Book Set in Latin America

For this I’m using a book that isn’t even out yet, but that I really really want to read… Our Own Private Universe by Robin Talley. This book is set in Mexico (from the blurb), and it’s got all kinds of diversity.

Right up my alley! (also… how gorgeous is that cover?!)

A Book About a Person With a Disability

I actually had a lot to chose from for this category 🙂 . I loved Tone Deaf by Olivia Rivers. The main character, Ali, is deaf.

This book also has a lot more diversity to it, including sexual and cultural diversity, and even psychological problems, like PTSD.

A Science-Fiction or Fantasy Book With a POC Protagonist

I have to say The Wrath and the Dawn by Renée Ahdieh. This is a fantasy book, and Shahrzad and Khalid (and most of the cast, really) are POCs.

This book is also set somewhere in the Middle East/South Asia 🙂 .

A Book Written by an Indigenous or Native Author

This one is a tough one. I guess I would like to read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie.

This book has been recommended to me, and I’ve seen a few good reviews of it. Maybe I should get on it.

A Book Set in South Asia

Oh wow. So, I read The Last Song of Dusk by Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi about 10 years ago, and I hardly remember anything about it.

I do remember some clothes descriptions, but that’s it. It’s set in India though.

A Book with a Biracial Protagonist

The main character of Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon, Madeline, is half african-american and half japanese.

How cool is that? There needs to be more books with biracial protagonists though.

A Book Starring a Transgender Character or Transgender Issues

I’ve been meaning to read The Art of Being Normal by Lisa Williamson since I bought the book back in January, and I plan to do it pretty soon.

I’m expecting this book to be spectacular! I’m actually tempted to pick it up right now!

I Tag: