September Wrap-Up!

September Wrap-Up!

Please disregard everything I said last month about it being the last month where I was able to read a lot because I read 17 books this month!!! I don't know who I am, honestly. I have never read that many books in a month, ever! It does help that one of them was a children's book, one was a short story, and two were manga, but I read 13 full-length novels. I listened to a bunch of these on audio, but you all know we count audiobooks as real books in this household because it's still reading and if you want to fight me on that, go ahead. As a reminder, I don't give ratings to the books I read for my classes unless I already wanted to read them or they really move me to rate them. I also don't write synopses for the manga I read if they are continuations of a series, I just share the rating so I can avoid spoilers. But anywho, here are my thoughts on everything I read! ~Em

 Nevermoor is the story of a girl named Morrigan Crow who is cursed to die when she turns 12. However, the curse comes to fruition one year early, but she is rescued by a bizarre man named Jupiter North. She is taken to Nevermoor and must compete in trials to be able to attend a school for people with magical abilities. This is such a fun book. It is a middle grade book, but it deals with some dark topics and had twists and turns that I wasn't expecting at all! I love the characters and the magic system. I'm excited to continue the series. Rating: 5/5

 Y'all this is a powerful book. This is a middle grade book I read for my Multicultural Literature for Children and Young Adults class. It is about a young boy named Jerome who is shot and killed by a white police officer after the officer mistakes a toy gun for a real one. Jerome remains in his town as a ghost and can't seem to move on because there are things he is supposed to communicate to other people. Jerome also meets the ghosts of other black boys who were wrongly murdered, including Emmett Till. The discussions of privilege, racism, racial profiling, and stereotyping were handled extremely well and were very moving. I was touched by this book and hope that kids for a long time read this relevant and moving book. Rating: 5/5

Natasha and her family are about to be deported back to Jamaica. She is using her last day in the states to talk with deportation lawyers and trying to find a way for her to stay. Along the way, she meets Daniel. He is supposed to be on his way to an important college interview, but fate keeps bringing Natasha and Daniel together. I read this for my MLCYA class and I was pleasantly surprised by it. Though it is an insta-love story, Natasha and Daniel do have conflict and the ending is very realistic. I love the discussion of each character's cultures, as Natasha is Jamaican and Daniel is Korean-American. It was a fun, cute story in light of the difficult topic deportation. Rating: 4/5

This is a children's book about Josephine Baker, who overcame her origins and became a famous performer. It was a beautifully illustrated book and the story was very interesting! No Rating: Read for Multicultural Literature for Children and Young Adults

 This is the second book in the Diviners series, which I read for the Diviners Read-a-long. My predictions for this book were not as I expected at all. I thought this book was going to be more about Memphis, but it was really more about Henry and Sam, plus a sort of new character, Ling Chan. I didn't expect some of the twists and turns in this book and I was pleasantly surprised by what happened. I did think this one was a little too long and I was really frustrated with Evie for most of this book, because she let fame get to her head and started neglecting the people close to her. One of my favorite things about this series though is how diverse it is. Even though this book is set in the 1920s, there are main characters who are people of color, have disabilities, and different sexualities. I'm excited to read the third book in October! Rating: 4/5

Rating: 5/5

 I reread Long Way Down for my Multicultural Literature for Children and Young Adults class. It was great to revisit this story and analyze it on a deeper level. My rating stayed the same for this book as it was at the beginning of this year. Rating: 4/5

 I read the entire Raven Cycle series this month for the Raven Cycle Read-a-long. I'm only going to give a synopsis for the first book, to avoid spoilers, and just put the ratings for the other three books. Blue Sargent is from a family of psychics but her only ability is to act as an amplifier to the psychics powers. She befriends four boys in a series of unlikely circumstances and ends up going on adventures to find a dead Welsh king named Glendower. Richard "Dick" Gansey III has one goal in life and that is to find Glendower. He has been all over the world to locate this king via ley lines. He will do anything to find this king because it is told that if you wake the king, he will grant you a favor. I really really liked this series. I loved the friendships, the magic, the stakes, and the story as a whole. At first I wasn't a huge fan of the writing style, because it comes off as quite pretentious, however as I continued reading, it fits the characters really well and it made for really funny moments throughout. This is a series I will definitely reread in the future. Rating: 4/5

 Rating: 4/5

 Rating: 5/5

 Rating: 4/5

This is a short story for the Teardrop duology. It is a prequel story about Ander before he is sent to kill Eureka. I found this story very dumb and completely unnecessary. I was only like 30 pages long and didn't really serve any purpose in my opinion. I feel like the author could have just included it at the beginning of the first book if she felt like it was important.  Rating: 2/5

 We read Educated for our faculty/staff book club this month and man this was a difficult book to read. I listened to the audiobook and had to just turn it off a couple times and process the information. This is Tara Westover's memoir about growing up in a survivalist, Mormon family and not receiving traditional education until she went to college. Tara faced a ton of hardships growing up in this living situation. I can't say this was an enjoyable read at all. It was extremely difficult to read. I can recognize the merit of Tara getting out of her situation and getting her doctorate. I didn't give this a rating because of these reasons. Not Rated

 Rating: 3/5

 This is the story of Eden, who gets raped by her brother's best friend her freshman year of high school. He tells her that if she tells anyone what happened he will kill her, so she feels that she has to keep this tragic event to herself. Over the course of her four years of high school, Eden drastically changes her personality and appearance to try to repress what happened to her. She begins having sex with many random guys to try to block out the past. I had some issues with this book. There was some fatphobia about what of the side characters. Eden lies to at least 15 different guys about her age, which brings up a huge problem of having sex with a minor. There was also very little discussion of mental health. Eden obviously experienced a very traumatic event and she become angry and mean to everyone around her and she could have used therapy or the author could have talked about the mental health repercussions of what happened.  Rating: 3/5

Bri is an aspiring rapper. Her father was a famous underground rapper before he was murdered and people keep comparing Bri to him. When Bri releases her first single, it strikes up controversy among white people in the community, gangs, and school representatives. Bri just wants to make a name for herself but she has to learn how to navigate the industry and the hate that she gets for her music. This is a powerful book. The discussions on racism, prejudice, gang rivalries, poverty, and drugs were handled well. I really appreciated that as a 16-year-old, Bri makes decisions that are not the best all the time, and she has to face the consequences from those decisions. This is also a really diverse book with some great representation. Rating: 4/5

This book is about Billie and her five friends, a.k.a. the Hexagon. They live in a small town called Otters Holt, where Billie's father is a pastor. At a church lock-in, Billie and her friends accidentally set the youth room on fire and the community gets upset with the pastor for allowing this to happen. Meanwhile, the Hexagon is also on a mission to help save the town's Harvest Festival. This book was so SO good! I loved the friendship dynamics, the discussion of religion in a small town, the discussion of discovering yourself, and the small town setting. I connected with this story in a lot of ways and it really touched my heart. Rating: 5/5