Thought Train to Pusan

After having read Becky Albertalli's novel Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda earlier this year (which I LOVED also with the super sweet film adaptation Love, Simon which left my heart full of warm fuzzies), I decided to pick up this companion novel, The Upside of Unrequited . And boy, I must say, that just like in my previous Albertalli read, she sure has a knack for personally calling me out through these relatable characters, feelings, and emotions: I swear, a lot of the lines she writes are things that have literally come out of my own mouth, or it wouldn't be a surprise in the least to hear me say. The Upside of Unrequited is told from the perspective of a teenage girl named Molly, who considers herself the unattractive, fat sister compared to her twin, Cassie, as Cassie has no problem finding herself girls to hook up with. Molly, however, is a master at developing crushes on people and then not doing anything about them. That is until she finds things changing in her ...

--> I have previously read Adam Silvera’s two other novels, More Happy Than Not and They Both Die at the End , and found them both to be quite enjoyable and touching to read. So obviously there is some skill there, but I found that with this new novel, I just couldn’t get into it as much as I would have liked. History is All You Left Me follows a teenager named Griffin as he mourns the death of his ex-boyfriend and best friend, Theo. The two had been friends for a long time along with their other friend in their little squad of 3, Wade, but eventually Theo and Griffin started dating. After Theo left for college, the two grew apart, Theo found someone new in a boy named Jackson, and the three former best friends found themselves crumbling within this new structure. The story now focuses on Griffin and his grieving process, showing both present day where Griffin learns all about who Theo became with his new boyfriend, but also switching back to show the history and...

I know that I have read V for Vendetta before, and yet I really didn't remember it at all? Was it so long ago and was I just too young to really grasp it at that time? Who knows, but now I feel like it is a pretty striking time for a re-read, given everything happening in the world today (though to be fair this has been happening in so many places for so long). I guess the last number of years have just really done a number on us all. I'm sure by now most are aware of the general gist of this graphic novel which I've often heard to referred to as a "classic", but in any case: V for Vendetta captures an image of dystopian England in the late 1990s (though at the time of publication, it was deemed to be a "near future" England) wherein a neo-fascist regime now has a hold on the nation, after the chaos of a nuclear war during the 1980s. But the mysterious V who was once a prisoner at a death-camp and experimented on has other ideas for trying to wa...

Adding myself to the list of fellow Cannonballers who have already reviewed One of Us is Lying recently (a few of said reviews made me want to push it further up my to-read pile!) and I must say, it was quite enjoyable! A little mystery involving a setup of various high school students from different groups all ending up in detention together, when suddenly one of them dies and the rest are now suspects in his apparent murder. Right from the start you get a sense that something is fishy about all this, and that those 4 other students in detention don't actually have anything to do with it, but that perhaps they have other secrets of their own that they don't want to get out. Because of course the one who dies is running a popular but nasty blog of secrets that has info on all of the suspects which was about to be released. So what really happened? Being a YA novel, you get some similar tropes of characters as are found in others, but I really did come to like all of these ...

Edgedancer is a small novella about the character Lift from Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive series, wherein we get a little more exposition regarding her character and how she falls into her role in Oathbringer , after first being introduced via a small interlude section in Words of Radiance . As far as the book goes, it is a quick and fun little adventure that fits easily within the already established story. It does, however, also serve (as mentioned in the post-notes) to solve a few problems and continuity issues within the main Stormlight Archive series. Normally, I would be annoyed by this, as I hate having to do extra work and research to understand a series and what's happening (sort of how I feel like I have to see every Marvel movie even about characters I don't particularly care about in order to follow the overall character arcs of others), but given the huge scope of Sanderson's works, I will let it go. And I really didn't notice any issues wit...

Upon reading the premise of this novel, I was immediately drawn in: it's like someone rooted around in my brain and picked out the exact kind of story I wanted to write. But the actual writing and way things played out, I can't say that I enjoyed. All the ingredients are there to make a compelling read, but ultimately didn't come together quite so easily. To be fair, the timeline of the book spans quite a number of decades, but perhaps addressing all that time in such a manner was per say necessary.  The Vintner's Luck follows the life of a man named Sobran Jodeau, a son of a wine maker in France during the 1800s. We begin the story when he is just a teenager, drunk and filled with sorrow about unrequited love. One night, Sobran meets and angel named Xas, who gives Sobran some advice on his love life, and says that he will return in a year to see how things go for Sobran. From here, the two make a promise to continue to meet on the same night every year, and bec...

“ And in my village we have a saying about separated sisters. They are like a woman and her reflection, doomed to stay on opposite sides of the pond.” I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that has managed to stuff so much history, trauma, heartbreak, love, hardship, and resilience into so few pages. At just 300 pages, Yaa Gyasi manages to weave a rich web of connecting stories, spanning hundreds of years in history over 7 generations. We begin with two sisters, Effia and Esi, separated at birth in their home country of Africa, and subsequent generations after them which grow further and further apart, as one sister remains in Africa married to a British officer, and the other is sold to slavery across the Atlantic ocean (the pond, in this case). There is so much to cover here, following 14 main characters in what come across as separate short stories that intrinsically connect through direct descendants. I will admit that I found the characters in the first half w...