April Book Review (8)

Happy Tuesday everyone it's not Tuesday,

1.) Take me with you by Andrea Gibson

I loved everything about this book! The design is amazingly different. The font, format, and drawings are quirky and cute. It's small and easy to be "take[n]... with you". I tried. The outer corners of the pages are nicely rounded. The back of the front cover and adjacent is a pattern of illustrations from the poetry book. A different pattern is inside of the back cover. The next page in the front of the book is the about the author page. I've never seen it in the front before but I think it makes a lot of sense to read a little bit about the person before you read their poetry so you can understand a bit more. In this case, I think it is monumentally important to go into the poetry knowing Andrea/Andrew Gibson goes by they/them pronouns and is in the LGBTQ+ community. That's another reason I love this book because.

2.) yesterday i was the moon by noor unnahar

At first, I wasn't really into this book and the poetry until I looked to the back of the book where the author has her social media listed. I fell into a deep and long rabbit hole. I went to her Instagram and fell completely in love with her posts about an art journal she keeps where she incorporated her poems into. I fell in love with the poems as they were presented in her art journal rather than in her book. I think she should have just published her art journal.
Once I was on her Instagram I found her twin sister Areeba's Instagram who also keeps a beautiful art journal. And from Areeba's Instagram, I found her blog and youtube channel and from her blog and youtube channel I found Noor's blog and youtube channel. I spent several hours on all of their social media just completely inspired by their beautiful work. (I have their blogs listed on the sidebar where I feature my favorite blogs.) Once my eyes were upset with the amount of screen time I was putting them through I went back to the poetry book and found that I loved the poems but I had fallen in love with them in her art journal rather than her published book. I think a lot of her art is lost in this version of it but I still love it and am glad to have it.

Another thing I like about her is she always reposts pictures other people take of her book on her Instagram highlights which I think is so sweet and down to earth. While reading the book I went out to eat with my boyfriend and he's always on his phone while waiting for our food and I think that's rude so I read while we wait and I decided to snap a picture of it. It turned out cute so I decided to post it with the caption "our relationship in a nutshell" and because she is so active with her fans I tagged her and she liked it!




Noor Unnahar
Blog
Instagram
Youtube

Areeba Siddique
Blog
Instagram
Youtube

3.) Our Chemical Hearts by Krystal Sutherland

The synopsis that I gave my boyfriend about this book is that a boy falls in love with a broken girl. Deep.
This was a book I had on my wishlist for a couple weeks before I bought it and I'm so glad I waited because it went on sale for five dollars! It comes in two different covers, one is hardcover with fish (left) and the other is paperback with a colorful pattern (right). I really wanted the fishy cover but because hardcovers are
more expensive I decided to wait before buying it and then it went on sale.

I was in love with this book from the first page when the character describes a girl who is wearing guys clothes. I love wearing men's clothes and I love other girls who wear men's clothes. So I was immediately attracted to who I assumed to be the love interest.

The other characters are amazing as well. They're so real and vivid. And like in Simon vs the homo sapiens agenda by Becky Albertalli it shows a lot of scenes where the friend group is just hanging out. I love when authors do that because not a lot do even though it's accurate to high school life.

4.) Mister Tender's Girl by Carter Wilson

I have come to find I don't really like the thriller genre. No matter how good the book is I have to finish it because I need to know what happens. Even though this book was very triggering (more details in a moment) and I will be returning it to the store (hence no picture), I read the whole thing. I think this book definitely needs a trigger warning. I understand that thrillers are going to cover an array of sinister things like murder and death but what I wasn't expecting was the main character having very detailed panic attacks and meeting a character who loves to cut themselves. I think that deserves some sort of warning. As I'm doing pretty good on the mental health front I didn't react too badly to reading that but I definitely wish I hadn't read it. That might be my worst review of a book yet.

5.) The Dangerous Art of Blending in by Angelo Surmelis

This book is a bit hard to review due to its sensitive nature and could be hard to read at times but it is so beautiful and amazing. Evan Pano is a seventeen-year-old son of an abusive greek mother and a father who works too much to do anything about it. His mother physically and mentally abuses him because his attraction to boys does not fall in line with her religious beliefs. So this can be a very hard read but I think it's an important one with a powerful message. There are teenagers all over the world going through similar situations as is illustrated in this book. The story itself is a similar one to that of the author. It was too hard for him to write a biography so he turned his experience into a story for young adults.

I don't know if it comes out clearly in the picture but the cover has sprinkles all over it. The characters eat a lot of ice cream. I used it as the theme for this months photo shoot. It was a good excuse to eat ice cream.

6.) The Chaos of Longing by K.Y. Robinson

Yes, I was first drawn to this book because he name is k.y. I thought it was pretty cool. I checked out her Instagram and website to see if it was her initials but didn't really find anything more than her saying her name is KY Robinson. So I wish I knew a little bit more about that. As for her book I found it very inspiring and beautifully written. I related to a lot of what she said about being a plus size woman with a mental illness.

7.) She felt like feeling nothing by r. h. Sin

r. h. Sin just keeps popping out books! There are so many it's hard to keep up with. I think a big book of a collection of all their work is needed. It's hard to keep reviewing his books because I don't want to say the same things over and over. I love r.h. Sin's work. All of his books are amazing and I will continue to buy them.

8.) Love Her Wild by Atticus

I really like how this book was organized: each word in the title is a different section that the poems are organized into. Other than that I have to say I didn't really like the book. The poetry was really cheesy and I couldn't connect with any of it.




Totally Ky