Transitive Verve

Thoughts at a glance: ***** (It was amazing!) Summary: Big and tall, with womanly curves that belie her 15 years, Xiomara Batista is hard to miss. And yet, Xio feels largely unseen: to the kids at her school, she is a "ho" or "fast" because of the shape of her body; to her uber-religious mother, she is sin waiting to happen; to her father, she is invisible. But deep inside, where nobody else sees, Xio is a poet. She is full of feelings, and they have nowhere else to go, except her notebook. Her life changes when her English teacher invites her to join the Poetry Club, where students perform their work, and also, she starts developing feelings for a boy in her class, knowing that anything having to do with boys is absolutely forbidden by her mother. Xio's journey through faith and doubt, first love, and the bonds of family is told in poetry.

Thoughts at a glance: *** (I liked it) Summary:  SO many of us want to be more organized and more productive. We all have goals we want to accomplish, but we also need to take care of ourselves mentally and emotionally. We want to do more, but we want to stress less. Bullet journalling has become wildly popular in the last few years, because it offers both of those things: it's a system for planning and organization, but it's also a way to journal and reflect. Bullet journals can range from extremely simple and minimalist, to ornately decorated and complex, and the beauty of the system is that it's completely customizable for your life. You can pretty much learn everything you need to about bullet journalling from the internet these days, so Ryder Carroll, creator of the system , offers a little something extra in this book, along with instructions on the basics, so that no matter where you are in your bullet journal journey, there's something you can get out of...

Thoughts at a glance: *** (I liked it) Summary: This is book 7 of the Throne of Glass series. Therefore, it will contain spoilers for all the previous books. If you would like to check out all my previous TOG reviews, here they are: Assassin's Blade  (Book 0/prequels) Throne of Glass Crown of Midnight Heir of Fire Queen of Shadows Empire of Storms Tower of Dawn  (parallel to EoS) When we last left Aelin and Co. in Empire of Storms , things were really bad. Like, REALLY bad. As in, "Aelin has been captured by Maeve and locked in an iron box and now no one knows where she is, and Lysandra has to pretend to BE her to keep the resistance going, because everyone knows they're probably going to die fighting the evil demon king, Erawan" bad. And Tower of Dawn  had Chaol, Yrene, and Nesryn racing back to the Northern continent with reinforcements and the news that Maeve is really a Valg QUEEN in disguise. And Manon and Dorian are off on THEIR own, trying ...

Thoughts at a glance:  **** (I really liked it) Summary:  Zuri Benitez is watching the world change around her. Having grown up her whole life in Bushwick (in Brooklyn), Zuri is seeing her neighborhood slowly being gentrified; her older sister Janae, who is back after her first year of college, is also different; and Zuri herself is getting ready to finish high school as well. That summer, though, when the Darcy family moves in across the street into the most expensive house on the block, they experience the biggest change of all as Janae takes a sudden interest in friendly elder son Ainsley, and Zuri finds herself constantly in the presence of snobby, judgmental Darius... ... and if you're at all familiar with the story of Pride and Prejudice , you can probably guess how this will go...

While my blog post itself does not contain any sexual content, this book does. This is a review for a book that is meant for mature audiences, and therefore is unsuitable for minors. This book was provided to me for free by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for also providing the press kit with the graphics and blurb. Thoughts at a glance: *** (I liked it)

I am blasting this message on every platform I have--if you have Netflix and some spare time, please watch this wonderful, cute adaptation of Jenny Han's novel, To All the Boys I've Loved Before . This is the sort of movie I wish I'd had when I was in high school and questioning my identity as an Asian-American teen. Every movie I could think of back then that had Asian people were about Asian-Asian people and/or martial arts or whatever, and I never saw just a regular American teenager who looked like me as the main character in a movie. (Sure, there were sidekicks and minor characters. That's how it always is.) While I haven't read the book myself, I can't speak to how well it worked as an adaptation, but on its own, it was cute, funny, and fun. I do know that the protagonist, Lara Jean, and her family were made to be half-Korean, half-white (John Corbett plays their father), whereas I think the book had them as full Asian? And while I DO have thoughts ...

While my blog post itself does not contain any sexual content, this book does. This is a review for a book that is meant for mature audiences, and therefore is unsuitable for minors. Thoughts at a glance: **** (I really liked it!) Summary : After the sudden death of her father, Annie Daschle, her mother, and her two sisters find themselves having to move in with estranged family in New York. Annie, who is 18 and who has spent her life in a small Texas town being extra  sheltered due to a congenital heart defect, is ready to make the most of their new life and is armed with her dad's old camera and a list of ways she wants to live out loud . Starting with, getting a job for the first time ever. And then she literally runs into one of the managers at bookshop/bar, Wasted Words. Greg Brandon, who never really notices any women, finds himself inexplicably drawn to Annie's sunshine and passion-filled approach to life. However, Annie's heart has always had a mind of its o...