“Never be sorry for showing the world who you are or who you wish to become. These struggles have brought you exactly where you need to be.”
If you’re looking for a book to escape in to, one full of magic and adventure and ancient stories, then stop what you’re doing right now and go get a copy of The Spinner of Dreams by K. A. Reynolds. This middle grade fantasy was perfect, and gave my imagination a much-needed work out.
“i’m not here to be your example of the good girl
until i’m your warning sign for the wayward one”
To all my fellow fans of poetry and prose, if you haven’t added When You Ask Me Where I’m Going by Jasmin Kaur to your TBR yet, please do so right now!
“No guilt. No moment of awakening. No tearful repentance. My eyes slid over the signs and my heart remained unaffected. I’d made my decision long before we arrived. Those signs were just words.”
Reading a book about a 17-year old on a road trip across state lines to get an abortion may not sound like the greatest story, but in Unpregnant, Jenni Hendricks and Ted Caplan take this topic and spin it into a fast-paced, funny-at-times novel that also deals with the topic at hand.
“What they will lose are concrete things: a place in college, maybe a future job. What I have lost can’t be seen. I’ve lost my courage, my confidence, my belief that I can have a good life.”
I finished reading Take It Back by Kia Abdullah this past weekend, and have been trying to gather my thoughts on the story. This book destroyed me though, and I’m still not sure what to do with myself!
This past weekend I had the pleasure of attending another Frenzy Presents event at the Harper Collins Canada office. For the Fall/Winter preview, the wonderful staff at HCC Frenzy were discussing 24 new middle-grade and young adult books that are hitting shelves over the next few months.
“Some people think I made JerkAlert as part of a malicious, premeditated scheme to humiliate men at large. But in truth, it was just a gut reaction to the futility of the status quo. I’d had a few really bad days, featuring a few really bad dudes. So I did what any disgruntled coder would do: I created an anonymous website where women could rate their dating experiences with the guys they met on Fluttr. Kind of like Yelp, but instead of reviewing restaurants or nail salons, you reviewed your dates.”
“Leaving does not stop the violence, and it doesn’t guarantee freedom. Why doesn’t she just leave? gets asked in living rooms and courtrooms across the country, when a better question would be, Why doesn’t he let her go? It took me a while, but I’ve finally figured out the answer. You’d sooner kill me than let me go.”
“I can see the dark things. They’re trying to hide, but I can spot them, hunched behind corners, pressed against walls. Shadows where there is no one to cast shadows. Nobody’s shadow would look like that anyway. Warped. Bony. Bent almost like branches. They are waiting. I can feel them. And they can feel me pushing back.”
Books With Friends is back, and this week I spoke with Alyssa from The Social Factory about the best thriller I’ve read so far this year: The Hunting Party!
I try to be fairly open about my mental health, and I’ve written posts on here before about certain books that have helped me. While reading Bellevue Square I cried in public quite a bit, and then sobbed uncontrollably when my book club discussed it. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine also tore my heart into pieces because I related to the main character so much. I even have a bookish tattoo that helps me stay grounded during panic attacks.
So when I had the opportunity to read and review a copy of Matt Haig’s Notes on a Nervous Planet, I was both excited and nervous. I knew that this author had written on mental health before, and was looking forward to a fresh, new perspective, but was also worried about what exactly this book would say.
