#ownvoices · Diverse Books · Review

Book Review: Secondhand Origin Stories by Lee Blauersouth (Blog Tour)

Sofia @ BookishWanderessLeave a comment

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Hi guys! I’m lucky enough to be part of the blog tour for this amazing book called Secondhand Origin Stories, which is a diverse book that involves sensitive issues, such as systemic racism and ableism.  I loved the book, here’s my review:

Secondhand Origin Stories cover.png

Title: Secondhand Origin Stories

Author: Lee Blauersouth

Publishing Date: 15 March 2018

Genres: Science Fiction, YA

Pages: 364

Opal has been planning to go to Chicago and join the Midwest’s superhero team, the Sentinels, since she was a little kid. That dream took on a more urgent tone when her superpowered dad was unjustly arrested for protecting a neighbor from an abusive situation. Now, she wants to be a superhero not only to protect people, but to get a platform to tell the world about the injustices of the Altered Persons Bureau, the government agency for everything relating to superpowers.

But just after Opal’s high school graduation, a supervillain with a jet and unclear motives attacks the downtown home of the Sentinels, and when Opal arrives, she finds a family on the brink of breaking apart. She meets a boy who’s been developing secret (and illegal) brain-altering nanites right under the Sentinel’s noses, another teenage superhero-hopeful who looks suspiciously like a long-dead supervillain, and the completely un-superpowered daughter of the Sentinels’ leader. Can four teens on the fringes of the superhero world handle the corruption, danger, and family secrets they’ve unearthed?

Goodreads | Amazon 

This book drops you right in the middle of a world where superheroes, villains and people with habilities exist, there’s especial goverment agencies and police units that regulate them and there’s corruption and injustice surrounding them. You have to learn about this world as you read, you see how everything works through the chracters’ perspectives and that’s how you learn about it. For me this worked really well, it didn’t take me too long to feel like I understood at least the basics of how the world worked and, after a little bit, I was able to keep up with the story without problem.

Something that I really enjoyed about this book was that it was intriguing from the start, there were secrets and mysteries around the four main characters and they didn’t know the answers either and they were trying to figure things out and that sucked me into the story inmediately, because I wanted to know what was going on.

As I said before, there’s four main characters, which were my favorite aspect of this book. I fell in love very quickly with three of those characters: Isaac, Yael and Jamie. They were the children of the superheroes and they were really complex characters,  a genius scientist, an non-binary aspiring superhero and a character that is both vulnerable and so strong. From the pov of these three characters, the reader gets to see the dynamics of the superhero team and how it is not only a team but a family. That element is crucial to the story, because the complicated family dynamics, which I found fascinating to read about, promt a lot of the events that move the plot along.

Then there’s the fourth main character, Opal, which took me a little longer to love. Opal is an outsider to the team, to the family and she very much felt like an outsider to the story for at least the first half of the book. During that first half, I prefered to read from the other 3 perspectives, because from them I could learn more about all the secrets that were being kept. Later on, when the circumstances made it so that all four characters have to be together in a more full time basis, that’s when I fell in love with Opal as well. She is a nice, smart, compasionate, down to earth character with a strong moral sense.

Secondhand Origin Stories is definitely a character driven book much more than a plot driven one. The main problems that the characters are trying to solve are corruption and injustice in such a large scale that one book is not enough to confront all the different characters that  play a part in that. This book, as the first in the series, manages to: make the characters aware of the problems, makes them decide to do something about it and makes sure that the team is as strong as it can be. It’s defintely a book that’s setting things up, but it’s not boring or slow, there’s so many things happening all the time. There’s one main storyline, that’s really interesting,  about technology and the ethical use of it, that’s one of the first issues that the characters have to confront and it has a direct relation to the corruption and injustice that they are trying to change.

I think it’s important to mention that this is a really diverse book. The main characters are all queer, including a non binary main character.  Also, one of the main characters is a black girl and there’s conversations throughout the book about systematic racism and especially about racial profiling and incarceration of black people. Additionally, there are deaf characters and there are characters that use ASL to communicate, and while there’s ableism portrait in this book, it’s called out and talked about on page.

Rating: 4,5 stars 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lee Blauersouth

After about a decade of drawing comics independently or with small presses, Lee started writing prose out of a combination of peer pressure and spite, then continued out of attachment to their favorite made-up people. They live in Minnesota even though it is clearly not a habitat humans were ever meant to endure, with their lovely wife/editor, the world’s most perfect baby, and books in every room of the house.

If you like categories, they’re an ENFJ Slytherin Leo. If you’re looking for demographics they’re an agender bisexual with a couple of disabilities. If you’re into lists of likes: Lee loves comics, classical art, round animals, tattoos, opera, ogling the shiner sciences, and queer stuff.

Author website | Goodreads | Pinterest  | Twitter

BLOG TOUR SCHEDULE

23 April (Monday)

24 April (Tuesday)

25 April (Wednesday)

26 April (Thursday)

27 April (Friday)

discussion · reading challenge

My Reading so Far in 2018: I Completed my Goodreads Challenge of Reading 52 books!

Sofia @ BookishWanderess8 Comments
my reading so far in 2018

I have never read 52 books in 4 months before in my life and I’m so excited! I honestly can’t believe that I completed my Goodreads challenge so early in the year. Since I still have so much of the year left to read, I thought it was a good idea to check my reading statistics in terms of genres, authors, diversity and some other things, and see if there was anything I wanted to change in terms of my reading for the rest of 2018. Here’s what I found:

GENRES

This are the genres I have read, the number of books for each genre and the percentage that the number of books represents in terms of my reading:

  1. Romance= 17 book (33% of my reading )
  2. YA Contemporary = 9 books  (17% of my reading)
  3. Poetry Collections= 7 books (13% of my reading)
  4. Fantasy = 6 books (12% of my reading)
  5. Sci-fi= 6 books (12% of my reading)
  6. Non Fiction (memoir) = 4 books (8% of my reading)
  7. Fiction (chick lit) = 2 (4% of my reading)
  8. Historical Fiction =1 (2% of my reading)

In other years, my two main genres were YA Contemporary and fantasy, but with time romance has climbed to the top of my list. One of the main reasons is that I’m in a fantasy slump, but also it has to do with the fact that when my mental health is not great, reading romance  really helps me. I want to try to read more fantasy again.

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OTHERS 

I used to read mainly YA, but I feel like this year that hasn’t been the case, so I wanted to check how much YA I have read this year. I tried to see how much new adult and adult I have been reading but since I read so much romance and I’m not sure how to separate which one are NA and which one are adult, I decided to stick to just YA:

Young Adult=  19 books out of 52 are young adult (36%)- I like that this % has drop because it means I have more of a balance in terms of how much YA/NA/Adult I read.  

This year I’m trying to read more new releases and I have been writing posts with my anticipated releases for each month, so I wanted to check how I was doing with that goal.

2018  releases= 11 books ( 21%) – this is not that good since I want new releases to be at least 40% of what I read, that’s the goal for this year and I need to start reading more new releases.

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AUTHORS

I have read a total of 46 authors this year:

5 male authors (10%)  VS. 41 female authors (90%)

I checked and found no information about any of the authors being non-binary or gender non-conforming.

I honestly love the fact that the majority of the authors I read are female and I want to keep it like that.

POC Authors = 14 authors out of 46 (26%)

I need to do better, the percentage of POC authors I read needs to increase! Also, I’m latinx, so I checked how many of the POC authors were latinx and I’m ashamed, only 4 authors are latinx. 

Authors that are part of the LBGTQIAP community= 8 authors out of 46 (15%)

Again, I need to do better and read more authors that are part of the LGBTQIAP community. Also, I may have missed some authors because I only counted the ones that have publicly talked about their sexual orientation.

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DIVERSITY 
20 books out of 52 (38%) had LGBTQIAP main characters or, in a few cases, love interests (that had significant roles in the story): 

1 book had a tran character

1 book had a non-binary character

3 books had asexual characters

6 books had lesbian characters

6 books had bisexual characters

8 books had gay characters

In terms of romance, out of the 37 books I read that had romance in the them: 8 books had a m/m romance, 8 had a f/f romance and 21 had a m/f romance. I just want to note that not all the m/f romances are straight couples, since a few have bisexual characters.

15 out of 52 books (28%) had POC main characters. 6 of these 15 characters are latinx. 

Honestly, I need to do so much better in terms of reading more diversely.  I haven’t been paying that much attention to what I read and I haven’t been choosing the books I read as consciously as I should have been.

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Did you set a Goodreads goal? Did you accomplish it already, are you behind or are you right on schedule?  What genre have you read the most in 2018? Are you making the conscious of reading more diversely ? 
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Underrated YA Books (less than 1000 ratings on Goodreads)

Sofia @ BookishWanderess5 Comments

Underrated YA Books

The other day I saw a blog post about the number of ratings books have on Goodreads and I was inmediately curious about the number of ratings that the books I have read have on Goodreads and I was suprised because some books I really enjoyed have less than a 1000 ratings. After realizing this, I felt like it was a good idea to promote these amazing books that a lot of people may have not read.

I didn’t choose books released in 2018, because I feel like they haven’t been out for very long and that may have to do with why they don’t have that many ratings. So, this is a list of backlist books with less than a 1000 ratings on Goodreads that I think deserve more attention and love from the reading community:

Fear the Drowning Deep by Sarah Glenn Marsh (2016)  – 863 ratings on Goodreads

781c3-fearthedrowningdeep

Witch’s apprentice Bridey Corkill has hated the ocean ever since she watched her granddad dive in and drown with a smile on his face. So when a dead girl rolls in with the tide in the summer of 1913, sixteen-year-old Bridey suspects that whatever compelled her granddad to leap into the sea has made its return to the Isle of Man.

Soon, villagers are vanishing in the night, but no one shares Bridey’s suspicions about the sea. No one but the island’s witch, who isn’t as frightening as she first appears, and the handsome dark-haired lad Bridey rescues from a grim and watery fate. The cause of the deep gashes in Fynn’s stomach and his lost memories are, like the recent disappearances, a mystery well-guarded by the sea. In exchange for saving his life, Fynn teaches Bridey to master her fear of the water — stealing her heart in the process.

Now, Bridey must work with the Isle’s eccentric witch and the boy she isn’t sure she can trust — because if she can’t uncover the truth about the ancient evil in the water, everyone she loves will walk into the sea, never to return.

Goodreads| Amazon

If you like very atmospheric books, that are eerie and spooky,  that include fascinating mythology and that manage to mantain a mysterious tone until the end, this book is for you!  Those are defenitely the main strengths of this and they make it feel unique and interesting. If you want to know more , here’s my full review.

When Reason Breaks by Cindy L. Rodriguez (2015) – 832 ratings on Goodreads

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A Goth girl with an attitude problem, Elizabeth Davis must learn to control her anger before it destroys her. Emily Delgado appears to be a smart, sweet girl, with a normal life, but as depression clutches at her, she struggles to feel normal. Both girls are in Ms. Diaz’s English class, where they connect to the words of Emily Dickinson. Both are hovering on the edge of an emotional precipice. One of them will attempt suicide. And with Dickinson’s poetry as their guide, both girls must conquer their personal demons to ever be happy.

In an emotionally taut novel with a richly diverse cast of characters, readers will relish in the poetry of Emily Dickinson and be completely swept up in the turmoil of two girls grappling with demons beyond their control.

Goodreads | Amazon

The contrast this book portraits between the ways the two main characters live depression is what makes this book unique, as well as incredibly important. If you are looking for a very nuance representation of depresion, this book may be for you! Additionally, this book has #ownvoices latinx rep and its done so well! If you want to know more , here’s my full review. 

God Smites and Other Muslim Girl Problems by Ishara Deen (2017) – 45 ratings on Goodreads

god-smites

LIKE NANCY DREW, BUT NOT…

Craving a taste of teenage life, Asiya Haque defies her parents to go for a walk (really, it was just a walk!) in the woods with Michael, her kind-of-friend/crush/the guy with the sweetest smile she’s ever seen. Her tiny transgression goes completely off track when they stumble on a dead body. Michael covers for Asiya, then goes missing himself.

Despite what the police say, Asiya is almost sure Michael is innocent. But how will she, the sheltered girl with the strictest parents ever, prove anything? With Michael gone, a rabid police officer in desperate need of some sensitivity training, and the murderer out there, how much will Asiya risk to do what she believes is right?

Goodreads | Amazon 

The main character in this book has a unique voice that shines throughout the book and it helps keep it funny and charming. This book has amazing #ownvoices muslim rep and the way it talks about muslim problems is insightful and it can be uncomfortable in its truths. If you are looking for a good mystery full of humour and diverse characters, you’ll probably like this! If you want to know more , here’s my full review.

Future Leaders of Nowhere by Emily O’Beirne (2017) – 278 ratings on Goodreads

future leaders of nowhere

“Finn’s solid. Not in body, but in being. She’s gravity and kindness and all those good things that anchor.”

“Willa’s confusing. Sometimes she’s this sweet, sensitive soul. Other times she’s like a flaming arrow you hope isn’t coming for you.”

Finn and Willa have been picked as team leaders in the future leader camp game. The usually confident Finn doesn’t know what’s throwing her more, the fact she’s leading a team of highly unenthusiastic overachievers or coming up against fierce, competitive Willa. And Willa doesn’t know which is harder, leaving her responsibilities behind to pursue her goals or opening up to someone.

Soon they both realise that the hardest thing of all is balancing their clashing ideals with their unexpected connection. And finding a way to win, of course.

Goodreads | Amazon

If you are looking for a book with an interesting setting and premise, with lots of diversity and great characters, this is for you! This book has two main characters, a bisexual girl and an Indian-Australian lesbian girl, that participate in a competition that its a mix between a summer camp and a Model UN. It’s an interesting book that adresses important subject thorughout.

Do you want to read any of these books? Have you read any of these books? Did you like them?
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Review

Book Review: Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire

Sofia @ BookishWanderess4 Comments

Beneath the sugar sky

Title: Beneath the Sugar Sky

Author: Seanan McGuire

Published by:  tor.com

Publishing date: January 9th 2018

Genre: Fantasy, YA

Pages: 174

Beneath the Sugar Sky returns to Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children. At this magical boarding school, children who have experienced fantasy adventures are reintroduced to the “real” world. 

Sumi died years before her prophesied daughter Rini could be born. Rini was born anyway, and now she’s trying to bring her mother back from a world without magic.

Goodreads | Amazon 

The premise of this series is fascinating and, as someone that loves fantasy and that has wanted for a big part my life to get to have an adventure in a magical world, this series speaks to me in a very personal way. I’m always in awe of the amount of worldbuilding that Seanan McGuire manages to accomplish in these very short books.  There’s so much creativity and imagination put into creating the different worlds that these kids call home, they all sound unique and whimsical, but there’s so much logic put into the classification of the worlds and that makes it even more interesting.

This third book in the series has a more concrete plot than the second book, which to me made it more enjoyable. The second book was centered around exploring Jack and Jill’s world and getting their backstory, which we already knew how it ended because we had seen them in the first book. Something different happens in this third book, because there is a quest, a purpose, the characters are working toward something and that made me be more invested in the story. 

Nonetheless, the fact that these books are so short sometimes makes it hard for me to get to know the characters and care about them, and that was definitely the case with the characters in this book. I really enjoyed seeing what happened to the characters of the first book, like Nancy, Christopher, Nadya and Kade. Also, I loved the fat rep that the new character that’s introduced, Cora, brought to the story, I really liked her as a character and her responses to everything that was going on were very relatable. BUT I feel like if a new character was gonna be introduced she could have had a more important role in the story. She is there, she is one of the POV characters, but I didn’t see why she was necessary even when I really liked her as a character.

Overall, I really liked the premise, worldbuilding and plot of this book, but I had some trouble  feeling invested and caring about the characters. 

Overall rating: 3,8 stars
Have you read this book? Did you like it? Do you have it on your tbr?
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Review

Book Review: Meet Cute by Various Authors

Sofia @ BookishWanderess9 Comments

meet cute

Title: Meet Cute: Some People Are Destined to Meet

Author: Various Authors

Published by:  HMH Books for Young Readers

Publishing date: January 2nd 2018

Genre: Contemporary, YA, Anthology

Pages: 320

Whether or not you believe in fate, or luck, or love at first sight, every romance has to start somewhere. MEET CUTE is an anthology of original short stories featuring tales of “how they first met” from some of today’s most popular YA authors. 

Readers will experience Nina LaCour’s beautifully written piece about two Bay Area girls meeting via a cranky customer service Tweet, Sara Shepard’s glossy tale about a magazine intern and a young rock star, Nicola Yoon’s imaginative take on break-ups and make-ups, Katie Cotugno’s story of two teens hiding out from the police at a house party, and Huntley Fitzpatrick’s charming love story that begins over iced teas at a diner. There’s futuristic flirting from Kass Morgan and Katharine McGee, a riveting transgender heroine from Meredith Russo, a subway missed connection moment from Jocelyn Davies, and a girl determined to get out of her small town from Ibi Zoboi. Jennifer Armentrout writes a sweet story about finding love from a missing library book, Emery Lord has a heartwarming and funny tale of two girls stuck in an airport, Dhonielle Clayton takes a thoughtful, speculate approach to pre-destined love, and Julie Murphy dreams up a fun twist on reality dating show contestants. 

This incredibly talented group of authors brings us a collection of stories that are at turns romantic and witty, epic and everyday, heartbreaking and real.

Goodreads | Amazon 

I usually don’t read anthologies, short stories just aren’t my thing, because I almost always end up feeling like I wanted more from them. I only  read this one because I like the concept, I love reading about meet cutes,  and I had heard a lot of great things about it. At the end, I foudn that even if this had highs and lows, like every anthology, there was certain consistency in the stories and I enjoyed most of them.

Here are some thoughts about each individual story:

SIEGE ETIQUETTE by KATIE COTUGNO (2.5 stars) 

This story was told in second person and that didn’t work at all, it kept pulling me out of the story. The main character is unlikeable, which I feel is hard to handle in such a short story, and even when you get the impression that there’s more to her, it’s hard to empathize with her.  Also, the main characters have cero chemestry and I saw the ‘big reveal’ coming, it was pretty obvious.

PRINT SHOP by NINA LACOUR (4 stars) 

This was a very cute f/f couple. All the characters were compelling, even if they only appeared for a couple pages, the set up of the print shop was pretty interesting and it was what I was expecting from this anthology, which was a story that left me with the sense that it was a promising start to something more. I would like to read more this couple.

HOURGLASS by IBI ZOBOI (3 stars) 

This story had some very positive aspects, it addressed race, body image and poverty. Nonetheless, there were too many plot elements for such a short story and the meet cute happened in the last page, so there’s just a few sentences about the guy the main character meets. Honestly, it left me with more questions than answers not only about the romance element, but also about other elements of the plot.

CLICK by KATHERINE MCGEE (5 stars)

This was a really cute story, the concept was interesting and it’s the firt story where the characters get to spend more time together, it’s a longer meet cute. There was some deep to this story since it dealt with grief, shortly but in a very emotional way. Also, the ending was so heartwarming.

THE INTERN by SARA SHEPARD (3 stars) 

I feel like this tried to be a very emotional story from the first moment, but it doesn’t enought time to come to emphatize with the main character. Also, the characters involved in the meet cute didn’t have much chemestry.

SOMEWHERE THAT’S GREEN by MEREDITH RUSSO (5 stars) 

This one was cute and precious and I loved it. It had a f/f romance and one of the chracters was a trans girl and the other a lesbian. This story dealt a lot with transphobia and I do think the conflict was resolved a little too quickly and easily, especially because it was a complex issue, BUT I really liked both characters and in the end the two of them together kind of worked.

THE WAY WE LOVE HERE by DHONIELLE CLAYTON (5 stars) 

This had a really captivating and unique concept, it was the first one to be a bit magical but it worked really well with the other stories. Honestly, I don’t understand how she did so much worldbuilding in such a short stoy and still managed to have compelling charatcers as well. This story almost made me cry, I felt connected to the chracters and I was impacted by what they went throught.

OOMPH by EMERY LORD (5 stars) 

My favorite story! This one was the most adorable story about two girls that meet in an airport. There were amazing characters, good dialogue, so much chemistry and the sense that the meet cute is the beggining of something more. I would love to read more about the two of them.

THE DICTIONARY OF YOU AND ME by JENNIFER L. ARMENTROUT (4stars)

I liked the premise of this one and the funny phone conversations between the main characters. When they actually meet face to face things got awkward for a little while but the ending is really adorable.

THE UNLIKELY LIKELIHOOD OF FALLING IN LOVE by JOCELYN DAVIES (3,8 stars )

This premise of this story was a bit far fetch for multiple reasons but the ending was so cute! There was insta love, which I normally don’t like, but honestly I didn’t mind it that much in this. Also, I found the secondary characters really compelling, especially the family of the main character and that helped  to keep the story interesting.

259 MILLION MILES by KASS MORGAN (3,5 stars)

This had an interesting premise with the little scifi element but the ending was kind of sad even when I could tell it was trying to be hopeful. This story was the only one in this anthology that left me feeling disappointed and sad about the fact that the main characters met. Also, I think this story tried to cover too many topics that had emotional implications, but never got me to feel anything about any of them.

SOMETHING REAL by JULIE MURPHY (3,5 stars)

I didn’t enjoy this story that much, I think the plot didn’t work that well even if the concept had potential. But the characters were really good and helped to redeem this story a little. Also, the ending was adorable! Another f/f romance with really likeable main characters that get stuck in an uncomfortable situation.

SAY EVERYTHING by HUNTLEY FITZPATRICK (2,8 stars)

The characters in this story had cero chemestry and I didn’t like the plot, I felt like it was the kind of plot that was popular in YA contemporary novels a long time ago, this angsty star-cross lovers story that reminds me a little of late 2000’s books.  Also, it was a really forgattable story.

THE DEPARTMENT OF DEAD LOVE by NICOLA YOON  (4 stars)

This story is really good mainly becuase the concept is fascinating and there’s a lot of worldbuilding packed into a really short story. Also, I felt really sad about the break up portion of the story and I liked that this invoked an emotional response out of me, but the problem is that the new relationship that starts to develop fades to the background becuase the old relationship is such a big part of the story,  so I ended up not being as invested in the meet cute

Overall rating: 4 stars
Have you read this book? Did you like it? Do you have it on your tbr?
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My Most Read Authors

Sofia @ BookishWanderess5 Comments

Most Read Authors

I made a post like this 3 years ago for a Top Ten Tuesday post, I was shocked to realize how much time has it been! Sometimes I forget that this blog has been on WordPress for a little over 1 year, but it was actually on blogger for like 2 years before that.

On that post I actually made a list of 14 authors because there was a tie between several of them, but this time I chose only 9. From those 9, 7 were in the old post. This list was really interesting for me to make even if it remained similar to the one I made 3 years ago because it allowed me to think about the ways my reading has changed and why is not reflected on this list.

Before talking about the things I learned from writing this post, here are my 9 most read authors:

Penny Reid (16 books)

She is the only author on this list that is a recent discovery, it has NOT been a year since I read the first book written by her and she managed to be my most read author of all times! I’m shocked! I have read the complete Knitting in the City series (7 books + 3 novellas that are full lenght books), the Winston Brothers series (4 books so far) and 2 books in the Rugby series in which she is a co-author.

Penny Reid

Richelle Mead (14 books):

It’s been almost three years since the last time I read a book by Richelle Mead, but when I was an avid fan I managed to read the complete Vampire Academy series (6 books), the complete Bloodlines series (6 books) and 2 books in the Georgina Kindcaid series.

Richelle Mead

Krista & Becca Ritchie (13 books):

I have read the Addicted series (3 books + 2 novellas that are full lenght books), the Calloway Sisters Series (5 books) and the Like Us series (3 books so far). I actually see these books as part of one long series because all of them are about different characters in the same family. I really like their characters and I’m so attached to them that I will keep reading as many books as they publish in this series.

KBR

Cassandra Clare (11 books):

She is one of the few authors on this list that I started to read her books a long time ago and I’m still reading them. I have read The Mortal Instruments (6 books) ,The Infernal Devices (3 books), 1 book of The Dark Artifices and The Tales of the Shadowhunters Academy.

Cassandra Clare

J.K. Rowling (10 books): 

If I counted all the times I have reread Harry Potter, she would be my most read author but that’s not how this works. I have read the Harry Potter series ( 7 books) and the Cormoran Strike series (3 books so far).

jk rowling

Rick Riordan (10 books):

I read the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series (5 books) and then The Heroes of Olympus series (5 books) a long time ago and then I stopped reading his books because the other ones haven’t grabbed my attention.

Rick Riordan

Sarah J. Maas (9) 

I love her books even when I try not to. I have read 6 books in the Throne of Glass series and 3 books in the Court of Thorns and Roses. I’m waiting impatiently for the next books in both series. 

Sarah J Maas

Abbi Glines (7):

I haven’t read a book by her in 4 years, but there was a time when I was planning to read every single one of her books. I read 1 book in the Too Far series, 3 books in the Sea Breeze series and 2 books in The Vincent Boys series.

Abbie Glines

Jennifer Estep (7):

I read one series by her and it’s the Mythos Academy series, which I read almost 5 years ago. There are 6 books in the series and I also read 1 of the novellas that is a full lenght book.

Jennifer Estep

Things I learned from this:

  1. Some of the authors on this list are on it because I read series by them YEARS AGO, I think there’s so few new authors in it because I have been reading more standalones than series and that means that I read more authors but less books of each one of them.
  2. The new authors that made it into the list are new adult/ romance authors and I think that reflects a change in my reading. I have been reading a lot more new adult/romance than fantasy. I still love fantasy but I have been in a slump when it comes to reading it.
  3.  The fact is that fantasy books are almost always part of a series and the fact that I’m reading less fantasy, also explains why I’m reading more standalones and less series.
  4. Another thing is that I read new adult/ romance books that are part of series, but I’ll only  continue with a series of those genres if the first book is really good. A lot of times I only read the first book, maybe that’s why there’s not more authors of those generes on the list.
  5. I have also tried to read more diversely and I’m more aware of the diverse books coming out lately, which means I end up reading a lot of debut authors that write diverse books, so that also explains why I have only read 1 book from a lot of the authors that I have read lately.
  6. One of the things that remained constant is that I read mainly female authors and that is reflected on this list.
Who are your most read authors? Have you read books by any of the authors I mentioned?  Tell me in the comments! 

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The movie Journal

The Movie Journal: February & March 2018

Sofia @ BookishWanderessLeave a comment

The Movie Journal

The Movie Journal is a feature where I keep track of the movies I watch in 2018 and my thoughts about them. Usually I do it monthly, but since I only watched one movie in february I decided that doing just one post for february and march was better. Here are the movies I watched:

FEBRUARY 

black panther

Black Panther (4.5 stars)

T’Challa, the King of Wakanda, rises to the throne in the isolated, technologically advanced African nation, but his claim is challenged by a vengeful outsider who was a childhood victim of T’Challa’s father’s mistake.

  • Directed By: Ryan Coogler
  • Written By: Joe Robert Cole, Ryan Coogler
  • Cast: Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o , Danai Gurira 
I loved this movie, this had gourgeous visual, amazing music, the acting was fantastic, the representation was meaningful, there was insightful commentary about race and it was a really thought provoking movie. Don’t hate me but…my only little problem was with the plot, I was left waiting for something more to happen.

MARCH 

 

Love Per Square Foot (4 stars)

Love Per Sq Ft deals with the very common predicaments that faces today’s urban youth; finding a house and finding love. Through the course of this romantic comedy we see Sanjay Chaturvedi and Karina D’souza desperately seeking a house, but realizing the difference between ‘ghar’ and ‘makaan’ (house and home). 

  • Directed By: Anand Tiwari
  • Written By: Sumeet Vyas, Anand Tiwari
  • Cast: Angira Dhar, Vicky Kaushal

This one was a fun movie to watch with really well used comedic elements. I was rooting for the characters the entire film, the acting was really good, the leads had a lot of chemestry and that drove the story and madeit easy to be invested. Also, I loved the cultural insight of life in Mumbai, I found it really interesting.

Game Night (4 stars)

A group of friends who meet regularly for game nights find themselves entangled in a real-life mystery.

  • Directed by: John Francis Daley, Jonathan M. Goldstein
  • Written by: Mark Perez
  • Cast:  Jason Bateman, Rachel McAdams, Kyle Chandler, Lamorne Morris 

This was unexpectedly funny, it’s an absurd movie that goes all in and embraces that absurdity and it does it with a sharp script, which makes it work.  McAdams and Bateman give really strong perfomances and the acting of the rest of the cast is pretty good as well.

Moms’ Night Out   (3 stars)

Hardworking mom Allyson has a crazy night out with her friends, while their husbands watch their children.

  • Directed by: Andrew Erwin (II), Jon Erwin
  • Written by: Andrea Gyertson Nasfell, Jon Erwin
  • Cast: Sarah Drew, Patricia Heaton, Sean Astin

This has funny moments, not often and not with a lot of sophistication, but they were there. It was an okay film, the acting wasn’t bad. The main problems is that it requiers a suspention of disbelief from the viewer, like a lot of comedies,  but it doesn’t embraces that and pretends to be a more realistic story that it is.

Coco (4.5 stars)

Aspiring musician Miguel, confronted with his family’s ancestral ban on music, enters the Land of the Dead to find his great-great-grandfather, a legendary singer.

  • Directed by: Lee Unkrich, Adrian Molina
  • Written by: Matthew Aldrich, Adrian Molina
  • Cast: Anthony Gonzalez (VIII), Gael García Bernal

I wasn’t expecting to love this as much as I did. It had me in tears by the end, it’s a heartfelt and magical movie. The music is fantastic and it contribues so much to the story, especially the song Remeber Me, and the visuals are out of this world beautiful, full of color and wonder.

 

Tomb Raider (3 stars)

Lara Croft, the fiercely independent daughter of a missing adventurer, must push herself beyond her limits when she finds herself on the island where her father disappeared.

  • Directed by: Roar Uthaug
  • Written by: Geneva Robertson-Dworet, Alastair Siddons
  • Cast: Alicia Vikander, Dominic West 

I don’t really like action films, so I was not expecting to like this, but it was fun for once to see a female character as the action heroin. This movie is full with ridicusly unbelievable stunts and the scrip wasn’t the best either.

I Am Not Your Negro (5 stars)

Writer James Baldwin tells the story of race in modern America with his unfinished novel, Remember This House.

  • Directed by: Raoul Peck
  • Written by: James Baldwin, Raoul Peck

This was interesting, frustrating, thought provoking documentary and I thoroughly enjoyed seen it. I do think it was missing some female perspectives, that are mention in passing throughout the documentary but never given as much attention as the males. Nonetheless, this was very enlighting.

Wanderlust (2,5 stars)

Rattled by sudden unemployment, a Manhattan couple surveys alternative living options, ultimately deciding to experiment with living on a rural commune where free love rules.

  • Directed by: David Wain
  • Written by: Ken Marino, David Wain
  • Cast: Jennifer Aniston, Paul Rudd

This was terrible, it wasn’t funny and the script was not good. It was vulgar, dumb and quite forgattable.

Annihilation (4,2 stars)
A biologist signs up for a dangerous, secret expedition into a mysterious zone where the laws of nature don’t apply.
  • Directed & Written By: Alex Garland
  • Cast: Natalie Portman , Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, Jennifer Jason Leigh
This was intriguing, suspensful, absorving and thought provoking. The visuals were captivating and magical. This was not an action packed movie, it had an intelligent and a bit complicated scientific element to it that was interwoven with existential questions.

 

 Have you watched any of the movies I mentioned? Did you enjoy them? Do you want to watch any of them? Let me know in the comments! 

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