Tag: contemporary fiction

When We Collided by Emery Lord | ARC Review

Posted April 4, 2016 in Reviews / 20 Comments

I found myself lucky enough to acquire a copy of When We Collided last summer at ALA, when I chatted with a lovely Bloomsbury representative who recommended it when I told her I was interested in heavier contemporaries. I had of course heard Emery Lord’s name due to the success of her first two YA novels, but I hadn’t had a chance to read her work yet. I decided I wanted to go in blind and have my ARC of When We Collided be my first experience with Lord’s work, so I wouldn’t have any preconceived notions or expectations about […]

The Distance Between Us by Kasie West | Review

Posted March 21, 2016 in Reviews / 4 Comments

The Distance Between Us came highly recommended to me after my first, rather lackluster, experience with a Kasie West novel, The Fill In Boyfriend. There seems to be a consensus that The Distance Between Us is the best of West’s contemporary novels, so I decided to assign it my “lunchtime read” at work (which is where I choose a short novel to keep in my desk and only read exclusively on work breaks). I didn’t go into the book with that many expectations, and found it to be a cute and quick read with some plot holes and characters who […]

Tiny Pretty Things by Sona Charaipotra and Dhonielle Clayton | In Which I Trust NO ONE

Posted February 22, 2016 in Reviews / 7 Comments

“The Sugar Plum Fairy has the farthest to fall.” Tiny Pretty Things had all of the makings of a book that I thought would greatly polarize me into the camp of loving it for its darkness and beauty or abhorring it for its drama and pettiness. While the novel definitely did both, I found Tiny Pretty Things to eventually win me over as a compulsively readable story that featured a form of art so often associated with beauty, delicacy, and primness and contrasted it with its harsh realities of its demands, pressures, and feats of athleticism. Charaipotra and Clayton built […]

None of the Above by I.W. Gregorio | Review

Posted February 17, 2016 in Reviews / 8 Comments

“The biggest difference between boy and girls is how people treat them” None of the Above is one of those books that I had on my radar constantly in 2015, but never got around to reading for some inexplicable reason. When I saw that my close friend Lauren from Bookmarklit was reading it this month, I figured it was the perfect time to move it to the top of my TBR. I found it to be an incredibly fast and easy read to finish while in my wisdom teeth recovery, which focused on the issue of intersex with what seemed […]

The Fill-In Boyfriend by Kasie West | Mini Review

Posted January 4, 2016 in Reviews / 10 Comments

I picked up my first Kasie West books in the hopes that it would add some levity to my reading schedule. I was in the middle of slogging through Illuminae (which is very good, but also very depressing) and needed something easy and fun to read- you know, something I could read in the bathtub or while waiting for an appointment. While The Fill-In Boyfriend definitely was fun, fluffy, and quick, I felt like I missed the rave-worthy aspects that I’ve heard so much about regarding West’s writing. The best and worst thing about this novel was the character development. […]

When Tragedy Becomes Incredibly Important: Violent Ends by Shaun David Hutchinson | ARC Review

Posted September 14, 2015 in Five Star Reads, Reviews / 4 Comments

My Review When I was at ALA this summer, I was pitched this book by an editor at Simon & Schuster when I asked specifically for heavier contemporary recommendations. The editor had worked on the collection himself and was SO excited about it, and it’s one of those instances in which I’m seriously glad that I asked for recommendations because it may not have been a title I would have picked up myself. I’m so glad that I spoke with that editor at ALA because this book is so intense and so bold in what it does: it doesn’t essentialize […]

Dumplin’ by Julie Murphy | ARC Review

Posted September 9, 2015 in Reviews / 7 Comments

My Review I guess sometimes the perfection we perceive in others is made up of a whole bunch of tiny imperfections, because some days the damn dress just won’t zip. Dumplin’ is a book that completely took me by surprise this summer. I found out it was being signed at ALA and, despite the fact that YA contemporary isn’t always what I reach for first, found myself drawn to it. The simple cover, the tongue in cheek tagline (Go Big or Go Home)…I had a feeling Dumplin’ was going to be a hot mess or utter YA perfection. I need […]

Book Buddies Review: Nantucket Blue

Posted September 3, 2015 in Book Buddies Reviews, Reviews / 3 Comments

Cristina and Lauren Read: Book Buddies is a discussion style review I participate in every other month with my friend Lauren who runs the blog Bookmarklit. We choose a themed book for the month, read it, and the have a discussion where we both discuss themes and aspects that really stood out to us. Book Buddy Reviews are posted during the last week of the month.You can see our review in a Q&A format with half posted here, and half on Lauren’s blog! 1) How big of an impact did the romance aspect of the book have one you? […]

Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon | ARC Review

Posted August 17, 2015 in Reviews / 14 Comments

My Review “You’re not living if you’re not regretting.”-pg 186 Everything, Everything was quiet in its execution but deafening in its impact. It’s the story of Madeline Whittier, who lives in her white room with her white furniture in her white clothes and eats her white food. She’s trapped due to the fragile nature of her own body, struck with an auto-immune disorder that makes the outside world one giant disease. Madeline’s story is one of what ifs: What if she wasn’t sick? What if she could go outside? What if she could go to school like a normal kid? […]

Mini Reviews: My Life Next Door and What Happened to Goodbye

Posted August 12, 2015 in Reviews / 9 Comments

Feeling like one of the only bloggers who had yet to read and love Huntley Fitzpatrick’s debut novel, I eagerly started it while on my vacation this summer. I expected a light, fluffy read with perhaps some slight shades of dysfunction, similar to a Sarah Dessen novel. However, I found My Life Next Door to be much more nuanced than I anticipated and found it really lived up to the hype and expectations I had for it. While the book is often primarily seen as a romance, and the romance is very present and very well done, this book managed […]