The Next Book On My List

How We Disappeared by Jing-Jing Lee This is a story about family. It’s a story about war. It’s a story about surviving. A story about living after loss. It’s a story of healing and a story about the passing of time. It’s a story of teenage girl taken from her family during World War II and forced to live for years in a brothel as a comfort woman. It’s the story of a women married to a man for decades, who both suffering from the pains of war, never really knew each other or shared their past. It’s the story of a boy whose grandmother left him with a truth that he doesn’t know how to share. This novel takes place in Singapore during both World War II and the early 21st century. It focuses heavily on the atrocities committed by the Japanese during the war and the affect that had on the Chinese communities during and after the war for generations to come. Lee did a beautiful job weaving these stories together and creating these characters. She created such interesting famil...

With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo                 This is one of those books that once you start reading it you can’t put it down. The words just flow through the page, the characters become your friends and you feel entwined in their lives. This story of Emoni, the seventeen-year-old Puerto Rican mother, doing her best to raise her child, finish her senior year in high school and working when she can to help her abuela financially is extremely well done. Emoni loves to cook and that loves is poured into every creation she makes, bringing those who try her food to feel unexpected emotions. Some people call what she can do in the kitchen magic. But she still has a baby father to contend with, classes that she struggles with and a fear of what the future will hold. When an opportunity arises to take a Culinary Arts class at her school, she hesitates but only for a second.    ...

Dactyl Hill Squad by Daniel Jos é Older      This is the story of a group of young orphans, led by our main character Magdalys, who lived at the Colored Orphan Asylum in New York during the Civil War. That is before it was burned down in the Draft Riots leaving Magdalys and her friends homeless and in search of the other orphans who they fear have been kidnapped by the magistrate, Richard Riker and sent down south to slavery. Did I mention they escaped on the back of brachiosaurus? A brachiosaurus they may or may not have been controlled by Magdalys’s mind? Because dinosaurs are alive and well in this historical fantasy novel and they might be the key to helping Magdalys find her friends and hopefully her family.                 I don’t know where to begin with this novel! I had so much fun reading it but it’s set in such a horrible point in our history that shrouds over it. I...

The Book of Flora by Meg Elison And now we have the very last book in the Road to Nowhere series. It has been quite the ride, journey and experience. This review will hold spoilers for the first two books, but I will try my best not to spoil this last book in this review.                 It has been over one hundred years since the Dying has taken place. And the army is on its way to Bambritch Island. The refugees have been pouring in. The leader, sometimes described as a man other times described as a woman, has been destroying cities, killing everyone including pregnant women all in the search for “frags”. Flora had heard of frags, people who can impregnate themselves and have living children, before but had always dismissed it as a myth. As the army comes closer, she reflects on the last 40 years in hopes of understanding why someone could have their sights set on Bambritch.   ...

The Book of Etta by Meg Elison                 This book is the second book in the Road to Nowhere series. The first book, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife¸ was more about the immediate survival of the species, while this book is generations removed from the sickness, or The , that took place in the first book. There will be some spoiler regarding The Unnamed Midwife, so I would definitely suggest at the very least checking out that review before reading this one.                 Etta has known Nowhere as her home her entire life. But Eddy, the male persona she inhabits as she raids has never seen Nowhere as his home. The two are the same and yet they are different. Who Etta chooses to love is frowned upon in Nowhere, where women should be having babies or helping bring babies into this world. Etta knew that was never her ca...

Wildcard by Marie Lu                 Wildcard is the sequel to Warcross . There will be some spoilers regarding Warcross in this review so if you haven’t read the first book I would definitely recommend doing so before reading this review. That is the only disclaimer you are going to get! Moving on.                 It’s been weeks since Hideo’s algorithm took over the Neurolink. People have been turning themselves in for past crimes to the police. Crime is at an all time low. And the Dark Web is slowly fading due to all of the people reporting details to the police. And while the general public has no idea what has happened, Emika knows it’s because of Hideo. Because he has taken away choice and is forcing people to do no harm through his algorithm. But Emika can’t forget the person she saw when the algorithm took over. The...

How We Fight White Supremacy by Akiba Solomon and Kenrya Rankin                 Have you ever asked yourself how you fight white supremacy? You’d have to define it first and then understand what it means before you could answer that. But once you understood what it meant and how you were affected by it, could you say how you fight white supremacy? It’s a question I’ve battled with for the last few years. Definitely more so since 2016. I don’t know if I have a single answer for that, especially when sometime just existing as a Black woman in the United States feels like an act of resistance. I gravitated towards this book because I wanted to see what other people had to say and how other people are fighting back. If nothing else, this book has shown me that there are many different ways to fight. People will do what they are capable of doing, and fight in the best way they know how.   ...