Thought Train to Pusan

I almost didn't read this book after the first couple of pages: I thought I knew where it was going, and didn't feel like I was in the mood for it. After finally giving in and actually getting through it, I will say that I was pleasantly surprised in some areas, while still being disappointed in others. It was partially what I expected, but not entirely. There are some fun characters in here, and a nice balancing act of flirting between the concepts of "friend zone" and "unrequited love" occurs, but more on that later... A Short History of the Girl Next Door is from the POV of a teenage boy named Matt, whose closest friend is a girl named Tabby who lives across the street from him, and has essentially been like a part of his own family since they were both young children. Matt's main focuses these days are on basketball and of course, his underlying romantic feelings for Tabby, as well as his overactive brain which won't let him get any rest in ...

After being disappointed by the   hockey-themed romance Slammed by Victoria Denault, fellow Cannonballer, Emmalita, had some recommendations for me to check out! And this novel Game Play (first in a series called “Power Play” by Lynda Aicher) was definitely an improvement, and I liked the relationship in this one a lot more. But I was still very frustrated by a lot of aspects: the lack of communicating their feelings clearly and talking about things! Is this a common romance trope? Just talk to one another! (I say this as I am the worst for hiding how I’m feeling at times…) The setup for Game Play is a little meet-cute banter between Dylan Rylie, a defenseman looking to get an extended contract on a local NHL team as his career begins, and Sam Yates, a star player on the US women’s hockey team who is finding her hockey career coming to an end. The two have some great banter and competition between one another, and I totally love that dynamic. After what ...

A part of the “San Francisco Thunder” series by Victoria Denault, I admit I picked this one up because the title made me chuckle. I’m not usually one to read novels in this kind of romance genre (even though I’m a total romantic sap, so it’s surprising that I haven’t delved into this much before!) so the problem with my doing a review is that I don’t per say have a baseline for what to expect or what is good and/or different in the genre. That said, how very Canadian of me that a hockey-themed romance draws me in… and there’s a whole series of them from Denault? Hmm, I do like me a hockey player or two… In any case, Slammed is about a young woman named Dixie, who is working her way up through the PR ranks of a professional hockey team called the San Francisco Thunder; her brother is a player on the team, and she wants to keep this a secret so that her coworkers don’t think her name or family ties led to her getting a job, rather than her actual ability. Dixie...

--> "For eighteen years I've believed what other people told me about what was right and what was wrong. From now. I'm deciding.”  I have seen a few very favorable reviews of this YA novel already, and I must say that I too really liked it for both the clear writing style, but also the handling of the serious subject matter therein, though I do think that perhaps one side of the story was much stronger than the other. Lies We Tell Ourselves shifts between the perspectives of two different students during integration in 1959 Virginia, named Sarah and Linda. Sarah is one of the first black students to attend an all-white school in their town along with her sister and a few fellow classmates, while Linda is a white student who opposes integration and whose father is a loud media voice against it. Sarah and her fellow black classmates endure daily harassment and violence, while Linda believes this is just a problem for her and her fellow white student...