A Dish of Mini-Reviews: YA & Romance

After reading Autoboyography, I had a pretty good feeling that I’d enjoy another novel from Christina Lauren. This novel turned out to be incredibly enjoyable with such a cute plot and the best romance I’ve read since my last Helen Hoang read. This was so cute and so well written, I highly recommend this to any romance lovers. The pacing was great, I’m an absolute sucker for the hate to love trope and it was just so cute. The character development and emphasis on family relationships was another aspect that I loved – I can’t wait to read more romance novels from this duo.

This was a read I had been wanting to get to for months – I’d seen great reviews, I loved the blurb about grieving daughter going to Taiwan to learn more about her deceased mother. The representation, world-setup from home and of Taiwan and the writing were aesthetically beautiful. However, it was all so beautiful but also quite utterly confusing. I wasn’t really super sure what was going throughout the book with its moments of urban fantasy and it made me lose a lot of interest. It was so emotional but wasn’t explained to the reader well enough for it to be even logical in a fantastical world kind of way. I wish I could’ve understood more, perhaps when if I read it again sometime in the future I’ll be able to maybe understand more of what was going on and its overall abstract meaning. This book was about grieving and it also did hit close to home so even though it was a strange read, I’d still recommend it to anyone interested in Asian-inspired and emotional reads.

One of the super cute graphic novel series I’ve been reading, Fence is a favorite. I almost don’t want to say too much just because this is such an enjoyable graphic novel series to read. The art is beautiful, the humor is adorable and I genuinely love each character especially as you see them develop and learn more about them. CS. Pacat always knows how to give us quality content whether it be in a novel or graphic novel format.

Alice seems to love cliffhangers unlike most of us but gosh, I don’t know how else to describe this graphic novel series other than cute. I love these boys, I just want them to be super happy for the rest of their book life and I really love the art style – definitely looking forward to next installment from Alice Oseman on this.

This book was highly anticipated and I heard so many great reviews about it before I managed to get my hands onto it. I personally gotta love a classic case of the fake dating trope and it didn’t disappoint. The complex family relationships and character development were very well done along with the setting up of the narrative. Unfortunately, what made this book lack, despite all the great representation, was that I couldn’t really make myself care as much about the characters. Frank pissed me off a few times for spoiler reasons and it almost ruined the story at times. It also seemed to lose the plot (no pun intended) a few times and could’ve had better pacing. Nevertheless, it was super enjoyable for the most part and @thebookishbree now has my copy! I’m excited to see what she thinks especially because I gave her my copy with many tabs inside from the hilarious moments in the book.

Overall I enjoyed this book. It had a lot of great representation for CP and I think really embodied the perspective of someone with CP. The cute texts with the love interest reminded me a lot of Tweet Cute and I thought it was such a great addition to the story. Towards the end, I couldn’t really connect with the protagonist as much and her decisions just seemed stupid for someone who’s apparently so smart. Her need to be heard seemed to constantly waver throughout the plot and her parents infuriated me a lot – props to the author for making me feel such rage and annoyance, however. It would’ve been great to see more character development in her sister, her parents and just more of her cool uncle. More backstory with the love-interest would’ve added more depth too. At the end of the day, this book was an enjoyable contemporary that tugged at your heartstrings in many instances but held more potential than anything else.

This is a read that I thoroughly enjoyed way more than I thought I would. It was definitely hard to gush about it since I wasn’t on social media much but I seriously loved this book. It gave me so many fashion runway vibes no other book has before and the fantasy and overall worldbuilding were just fantastic. I highly recommend this one, especially for anyone wanting to do the Asian Reading Challenge. Not to mention that the cover is absolutely beautiful!