Book Review | Loveboat, Taipei | Abigail Hing Wen

Book Review | Loveboat, Taipei | Abigail Hing Wen

When Ever is sent to a summer program in Taipei, she thinks that her world is over. There’s no auditioning for her dance scholarship, and her parents won’t even let her take her dancing gear with her. All they want her to do is focus on going to medical school in the fall. Yet this prestigious summer program is not what anyone expected. As soon as she arrives, Ever is informed of the rules – sneak out to the clubs at night, show up half drunk to your classes the next day, and try to meet your future spouse. Ever loves the break from her parents’ control, but rebelling against her parents’ wishes might just be the exact opposite of what she needs. As her life slowly spirals out of control, Ever is forced to come to grips with what she really wants.

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Book Review | The Darkest Part of the Forest | Holly Black

Book Review | The Darkest Part of the Forest | Holly Black

Children can have a cruel, absolute sense of justice. Children can kill a monster and feel quite proud of themselves. A girl can look at her brother and believe they’re destined to be a knight and a bard who battle evil. She can believe she’s found the thing she’s been made for.
Hazel lives with her brother, Ben, in the strange town of Fairfold where humans and fae exist side by side. The faeries’ seemingly harmless magic attracts tourists, but Hazel knows how dangerous they can be, and she knows how to stop them. Or she did, once.
At the center of it all, there is a glass coffin in the woods. It rests right on the ground and in it sleeps a boy with horns on his head and ears as pointed as knives. Hazel and Ben were both in love with him as children. The boy has slept there for generations, never waking.
Until one day, he does…
As the world turns upside down, Hazel tries to remember her years pretending to be a knight. But swept up in new love, shifting loyalties, and the fresh sting of betrayal, will it be enough?

Goodreads

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Book Review | The City Beautiful | Aden Polydoros

Book Review | The City Beautiful | Aden Polydoros

The City Beautiful is about a Jewish immigrant named Alter living in Chicago during the World’s Fair. All he’s trying to do is keep his head down and earn enough money to bring the rest of his family to America. What he’s not prepared for is being possessed by his friend’s dybbuk after his friend is found dead in the fair. Led to believe that the death was no mere accident, Alter reconnects with someone from his past while searching to find who might have killed his friend.

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Book Review | A Court of Thorns and Roses | Sarah J. Maas

Book Review | A Court of Thorns and Roses | Sarah J. Maas

Feyre’s one job is to keep her family alive during the harsh winter, but when she kills a wolf to get the prey that they’re both after, she finds out that she killed no ordinary wolf but a Faery. Her punishment… either forfeit her life or spend the rest of it in the faery realm. What she doesn’t expect to find there though, is a caring faery who plans to let her live out her life in peace. A faery that has provided for her family while she’s gone. And a faery trying to keep the faery realm together. Now Feyre, a mere human, might be the last chance at saving what’s about to be destroyed.

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Book Review | Graves for Drifters and Thieves | Sophia Minetos

Book Review | Graves for Drifters and Thieves | Sophia Minetos

Jae is a girl on her own. A girl trying to find her father. Taken by ghosts, Jae thinks he’ll be in the Outlands. One problem… the Rangers are the only ones allowed access. Working as a bounty hunter in hopes of gaining the notoriety to become a Ranger herself, Jae stumbles on her biggest bounty when members from the Harney gang sit in her booth at a bar one night. She doubts her luck could be this great. Jae agrees to join them on their next heist in hopes that she can thwart their plan and drag them to the sheriff instead. However, nothing is as the bounty paints it and she learns the deadly gang is on their own hunt. A hunt that could possibly help her reach her father. But getting their help would be to become the very people that she hunts.

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Book Series | Daughter of Smoke and Bone | Laini Taylor

Book Series | Daughter of Smoke and Bone | Laini Taylor

Around the world, black hand prints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky.
In a dark and dusty shop, a devil’s supply of human teeth grows dangerously low.
And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherworldly war.
Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real, she’s prone to disappearing on mysterious "errands", she speaks many languages - not all of them human - and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she’s about to find out.
When beautiful, haunted Akiva fixes fiery eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself? - Goodreads

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Book Review | Sharks in the Time of Saviors | Kawai Strong Washburn

Book Review | Sharks in the Time of Saviors | Kawai Strong Washburn

Three siblings. One born with a gift. The other two left to figure out their own place in life. After the collapse of the sugar cane industry in Hawaii, the Flores family tries to survive, even moving to a new island in hopes of better opportunities. Hope eventually comes when their middle son falls overboard and is saved by sharks. The story spreads, bringing a little wealth to the family, especially when that same son heals a friend’s hand after a bad firecracker accident. But one day, his gift seems to disappear, or at least his ability to use it. As he falls down a dark hole, his two siblings fight to realize their own place in it all when their parents only seem to have eyes for the golden boy. The three of them find their way to the mainland, where the touch of Hawaii is gone, and they struggle to keep on the paths that have brought them there until a tragic brings them running back to Hawaii.

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Book Review | Mexican Gothic | Silvie Moreno-Garcia

Book Review | Mexican Gothic | Silvie Moreno-Garcia

Noemi is being sent on a crazy errand, or so she thinks when she’s whisked up to her cousin’s house after a weird letter that hints at more than the honeymoon bliss that should be happening between her and her husband. Noemi’s father fears it’s a hint of psychosis, or worse, she’s being miss treated, so Noami is to be his eyes and ears. What Noami isn’t prepared for is the rundown nature of the once prestigious High House. The walls are covered in mold, the electricity is all but nonexistent, and the restrictive rules are to keep the head of the house appeased as he suffers through his old age. Barely hosted, Noami is forced to barge her way into the family’s lives and her cousin's room to learn the truth. But when her cousin sends her for more medicine from the healer in town, Noami learns the sordid history of the house. Grabbing the help of her only ali, Noami tries to free her cousin from the family’s grasp.

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