T5W Jul. 12th – Children’s Books

Hello everyone!

Time for another Top 5 Wednesday. Top 5 Wednesday was created by Lainey from gingerreadslainey and is now hosted by Sam from Thoughts on Tomes and if you would like to join, here is the link for the Goodreads group with all the information.

This week’s topic is Top 5 Favorite Children’s Books. The description of the topic on the group’s page says it can be Middle Grade books as well but that we do our best not to recommend Percy Jackson or Harry Potter. However, because I don’t read a lot of kids’ books and it’s my fucking birthday, I will be recommending them!

SO let’s get started!

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June ’17 TBR – Pirates Theme

Hello everyone!

I’ve been looking forward to this month for the longest time! Pirates are absolutely amazing and I love to read about them and watch them. So I decided to try and find as many pirate centric books as I could and make it into a theme for a month. I recently watched the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie too and it just got me extra pumped to dive into all the books I’m going to mention.

SO let’s get started!

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Most Anticipated Spring Releases

Hello everyone!

I am back today to talk about my most anticipated releases of the spring season, from March, April and May of 2017. So I totally forgot that this is something that I do at the beginning of each season and obviously spring is halfway through or almost over by the time I’m sharing and most of the books have already been released. In my defense, the month I would’ve been sharing this if I’d remember was the weekend I moved and I probably wouldn’t have been able to do it anyway so there. I have a total of 24books to talk about so make sure to click on the cover if you would like to see their Goodreads page. Let’s look at some books anyway, shall we?

SO let’s get started!

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March ’17 Wrap Up

Hello everyone!

March has been a pretty crazy month. I moved on the third and didn’t stop traveling until the eighth. I’ve been trying to get myself together since then and it hasn’t been going that well. I had so much to do the first week I was there that it was really overwhelming and therefore, I started getting behind in my blogging schedule. I didn’t post as much as usual also because of that but I really hope that April will be much better as I think things will slow down. Anyway, thanks for sticking around while I’m getting myself together and now I’ll show you what I managed to accomplish this month.

SO let’s get started!

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ARC Review – The Pants Project by Cat Clarke

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The Pants Project

Author: Cat Clarke

Publication: March 7th, 2017

Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky

Format: e-ARC, 272 pages

Genre: Middle Grade, Contemporary, Coming of Age, LGBTQ+

Read: March 2017

Cat ClarkeGoodreads

I received an e-ARC of this book from Sourcebooks Jabberwocky via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you!

Synopsis
My name is Liv (Not Olivia)… I’m not technically a girl.
I’m Transgender. Which is a bit like being a transformer. Only not quite as cool as cool because I probably won’t get to save the world one day.
A Transformer is a robot in disguise. Liv is a boy in disguise. It’s that simple. Liv knows he was always meant to be a boy, but with his new school’s terrible dress code, he can’t even wear pants. Only skirts.
Operation: Pants Project begins! The only way for Live to get what he wants is to go after it himself. But to Liv, this isn’t just a mission to change the policy- it’s a mission to change his life. And that’s a pretty big deal.

I am a cisgender, straight woman and I know very little about transgender issues. If I say anything in this review that can be seen as offensive to the transgender community, please let me know!

Also here’s a review by a multigender writer which I found on this list of reviews of trans/non-binary literature by trans/non-binary reviewers. If you know of any #ownvoices reviews of this book, let me know so I can share them here!

Critically

Plot – 4 out of 5 stars
This book was really entertaining and cute. There’s a lot of passion and several themes that I enjoyed reading about and that I think are important within a middle grade specially. This book talks about acceptance, honestly, family, friendship and sticking up for yourself. Overall, it was a really nice read, super fast and just generally feel good even with the integration of serious topics.

Writing Style – 3 out of 5 stars
The writing style was really fast paced and easy to read. I could’ve finished the book in one sitting if I had had the time to do so. The main character has a very distinct voice and personality which I liked but it also felt very disjointed and there were some weird metaphors. Some things were not explained in the best way in my opinion and kind of made me raise my eyebrows a bit.

Characters – 3 out of 5 stars
I liked the characters in this book, most of all the relationships between them and how they grew and developed as the book went on. Liv was pretty great. He was very determined and had a lot of tenacity which I appreciated. He was very adamant about what he wanted to accomplish with The Pants Project and what it meant to him and I love his purpose. However, he also had a temper that had gotten him in trouble a few times and it was interesting to see that kind of growth, learning how to feel his anger without physically lashing out. He was really vulnerable and secretive for various reasons but he was really kind as well. Like I said above, I really liked the relationships that were explored in the story. The family dynamic is really great and Liv has a sibling with whom he gets along well, as well as you can with a younger sibling and I loved their relationship! There are quite a few side characters and the ones that had most page time I felt were well developed and interesting to read about. I want to mention that there is one character who does say transphobic and homophobic things. They are clearly condemned in the text and the author makes a point to call them out for being bad things to say and to believe but I want to make sure people know before reading in case it’s triggering.

Emotionally

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March ’17 TBR – Historical Fiction Theme

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Hello everyone!

As you read this, I’m probably at the airport waiting to get on a plane to take me away from the place I’ve called home for the last four years. I can’t really tell you how that’s going to feel like right now, because I’m doing this a whole week before but I can tell you that at this moment I’m both really sad and really excited. I hope this change brings me a lot of new opportunities and I am planning on taking advantage of everything new that’s comes my way. If you’d like to stay up to date with my trip, you can probably see some updates on Twitter, so follow me :). Anyway, I’m here to talk about the books that I hope to read in March. All of these are very tentative because I have no idea how much time I’ll have to read but hopefully I get at least a few read.

SO let’s get started!

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The Lunar New Year Book Tag

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Hello everyone!

I’m here today to share a tag with you! I haven’t done one since December so I’m feeling kind of rusty so bear with me. I was tagged by the awesome Joey @ Thoughts and Afterthoughts who created this tag with Tiff @ Mostly YA Lit all about the Lunar New Year. I don’t really know much about this particular celebration but I know it was actually on January 28th and (as found on Tiff’s post) it revolves around the Chinese zodiac, which based on the year you were born and a corresponding animal. There are 12 animal signs and they each represent different personalities. They created the book tag based on those.

SO let’s get started!

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February ’17 TBR – Realistic Fiction Theme

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Hello everyone!

I am already so tired of this year and we’re only on February. It makes no sense whatsoever but that’s how I feel guys. So to hopefully combat this despair that is within me about like life, I stuff my TBRs full of books that I really want to read and that I want to talk about with all of you. Realistic Fiction is basically what I use so I can read contemporary but that doesn’t necessarily revolves around romance.

SO let’s get started!

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Monthly Obsessions #11

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Hello everyone!

I’m here today to talk about my monthly obsessions. This month has been pretty much filled with music and more music haha. I’m going to have a hard time deciding what I want to share with you today. January has been a month filled with anxiety and that’s no fun at all, so I’ve been trying to distract myself and all the things below have helped me do just that.

SO let’s get started!

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Book Traveling Thursdays Jan. 5th – New Beginnings…

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Hello everyone!

It’s BTT time! This is a weekly meme created by Danielle at Danielle’s Book Blog and Catia at TheGirlWhoReadTooMuch. You can find all of the information you’ll need to participate on the Goodreads page.

This week’s topic is New beginnings… Choose a book you would like to read for the first time again. I don’t really know if there are books that I would love experience for the first time again. I thought about Aristotle and Dante but I’ve already used that book for a BTT so I decided on another favorite book that I wish I could read all over again for the first time.

SO let’s get started!

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