ARC, Books

Book 827: Flash Fire (The Extraordinaries #2) – T.J. Klune

Cover art of "Flash Fire" with Amazon Affiliate link.Holy sh!t balls . . . I knew this one would have a big ol’ cliff hanger and be just as adorable as the last one, but I. Was. Not. Prepared!

This book picks up right after where The Extraordinaries left off. We jump right back into the crazy world that is 16-year-old Nick’s brain. And what a joyous wonderful journey it is. There’s still a bit of fanfic, there’s a lot of awkwardness and internet searching/discovery and there’s the most adorable budding gayby/biby (is that a thing?) relationship that just made me go awwwww so many times.

FULL WARNING – DO NOT GO PAST THIS IF YOU DON’T WANT THE FIRST BOOK SPOILED and trust me you want to read these books!

Continue reading “Book 827: Flash Fire (The Extraordinaries #2) – T.J. Klune”

Books

Book 762: The Extraordinaries (The Extraordinaries #1) – T.J. Klune

Book cover of "The Extraordinaries" with Amazon Affiliate linkI think I found the natural successor to Perry Moore’s Hero. I honestly don’t remember that much about Hero, other than really loving it, but this definitely will stay with me longer.

I found this after someone blogged/Insta’d about Queer young adult books coming out in 2021 when the sequel, Flash Fire, will be released and it’s cover caught my attention so of course I looked into it saw there was a prequel and immediately requested it from this from the library.

Continue reading “Book 762: The Extraordinaries (The Extraordinaries #1) – T.J. Klune”

ARC, Books

Book 761: Mediocre – Ijeoma Oluo

Book cover of "Mediocre" with Amazon Affiliate linkAs soon as I heard that Oluo was releasing another book I immediately sought out a copy. I couldn’t wait until it was released so sought out a galley ASAP.* I will buy a copy as well, because she’s wonderful. My response is definitely messy, but it’s because she makes me think so much about so many things and I just sort of try to regurgitate all of my thoughts at the same time instead of cohesively sharing them.

First, a diatribe about the early reviews I saw on Goodreads: If you ever needed a reason to read books like this (you don’t), you should take a look at the reviews for this one on Goodreads. Not only have a lot of the 1- and 2-star reviews totally misunderstood the entire book, they have attempted to explain their ratings with the thinnest of reasons that frankly annoyed the shit out of me. Not only are there the men (god fearing Christians if they’re to be believed) who completely missed that Oluo isn’t saying all white men are mediocre, just that the racist-ass systems built by white men reward the most mediocre of them, they straight up appear not to have even read the book, let alone tried to understand it.

Continue reading “Book 761: Mediocre – Ijeoma Oluo”

Books

Book 682: Camp Cutlery – Robin Carnilius

cover art for "Camp Cutlery" with Amazon Affiliate linkIf you’re a fan of McTucky Fried High, Carnilius’ hilariously poignant YouTube series about anthropomorphized food surviving high school, you’ll definitely appreciate this one. (If you’re not familiar with McTucky, I included the teaser for Season 1 below.) When they reached out with a review copy of the book, I recognized the name and my response was “definitely!” to reviewing this one.*

Camp Cutlery: A Hunger for Justice picks up not long after the McTucky Fried High series ends and it follows Peanut, a transgender social justice warrior, through their journey at a correctional facility. The biggest challenge by far of reading a work that is a continuation of another work is the pre-set expectations and frankly, no author, can do anything about those. This being said, this story definitely works on most levels, but for me a good portion of the charm was lost from the animated series.

Continue reading “Book 682: Camp Cutlery – Robin Carnilius”

ARC, Books

Book 651: Sorted – Jackson Bird

book cover of I am always on board for reading anything from LGBTQ+ authors, but particularly nonfiction (memoirs, biographies, autobiographies, etc.). So when the publisher reached out about this one I downloaded it (and somehow actually got to it the week it was published).*

Overall, I really enjoyed this. I mean page one is a J.K. Rowling/Albus Dumbledore quote, of course I was going to enjoy this. I had no idea about Bird’s connection to Harry Potter (or that the Harry Potter Alliance, now known as Fandom Forward even existed)! This being said, I wasn’t totally enamored with the book and didn’t figure out why that was until roughly 80% of the way through the book.

Continue reading “Book 651: Sorted – Jackson Bird”