3.5 stars

Full review on: Flipping Through the Pages

Camp is a story set in an all-queer summer camp where the main character Randy is trying to make his long-time crush fall in love with him.

Content & trigger warnings: Transphobia, homophobia, gender dysphoria, body dysphoria, use of homophobic slurs, explicit sex scene, PTSD
Representation: Everyone (except for the parents) is queer (gay Jewish MC, gay Jewish-Korean love interest, gay Middle Eastern side character, a demisexual lesbian side character, Afro-Brazilian-American sapphic side character, a non-binary side character, gay camp counselor, a trans-Black camp counselor)

5 reasons to read it:

Full review on: Flipping Through the Pages

Sleepless was fantastic! Poppy is the main character of the story who is an illegitimate daughter of a recently deceased king. Now, her position in the new court is not safe and someone is trying to kill her. But she has Cyrenic, her faithful sleepless knight protecting her. He took an oath to become sleepless to protect the princess.

What intrigued me most is the concept of sleepless, which is also the title of the novel. Basically, once they take the oath, then they can never sleep. That’s strange, right? I like the overall world-building around this concept and the political change in the story.

Looking at the ending, I am hoping that they release the vol. 2 soon. I loved all the characters and their backstories. I was happy to see the slow-burning romance between Poppy and Cyrenic. And yes, to all the diversity 🙂

And the artwork is phenomenal. Poppy’s character has been designed so beautifully. From her dress to her hairs, everything was perfect. She looked elegant and every bit of princess. The background colors used and the details per perfect for this fantasy.

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My rating: 3.5/5 stars

Thank you Diamond Book Distributors and Magnetic Press for providing me this free ARC of Giacomo Bevilacqua's Graphic novel via NetGalley.

This was my very first attempt to read a Graphic novel and I am glad I read it. It was interesting to read a book in the form of pictures.

When I got this book I had no idea what to expect from this. But when I opened it, I was glad. the illustrations were beautiful. You can tell in each image what is happening. This story is about Sam who decided to spent two months in New York without talking to anyone, to write a story on his experience. The writer has used many good quotes here, but my favourite is:

"There are people who would look for or judge their ideal partner according to astrological rules, astral schemes, planetary alignments and influences.
Still, I think the only star we can rely on where love is concerned is the star we can all see. Which, in my humble opinion, divides the world into two great categories.
- Those that would rather watch it rise at the dawn
- Those that prefer it as it sets in the evening
The ideal partner is the one you find in your same category.
Full stop."

Isn't it beautiful? I think this would be favourite of many who will read this.

I liked the characterisation. The story is being told from the POV of two persons. The story was unique. But there are few things that I didn't liked:
1) The narration was quickly changing and at some points it was difficult to understand who was actually telling the story
2) The girl that kept on appearing in Sam's photo is unclear. I mean how Sam met her for the first time is still not clear to me. That last part was little confusing.

But inspite of these, I think you should definitely give it a try, as these are my opinion and it's possible that you don't find these difficulties.

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This graphic memoir by a desi author was a great exploration of identity. Som tells her story of finding herself through a journey of grief and loss. She has created a girl Anjali, to represent her story and the various phases she went through in her life. We get to see her story after she quits her job to work on her graphic novel.

Reading about her parents, all the cultural representation, Bengali food..my heart was full.
There wasn't any such adventure in the story itself. Unlike most of the graphic novels, this wasn't fast-paced and the stories felt a bit disjointed sometimes. Also did I tell you we have an adorable cat in the story?

The biggest complaint I had with this book, however, was the poor font-choice! I don't know why they chose it. It was pretty hard even for my perfectly healthy eyes to read it! I had to pay so much focus and that certainly took away a lot of enjoyment. I wish there was more of the part where she found her identity and transitioned. It felt very sudden. Also, I don't know why it is marketed as YA when it is clearly and Adult memoir?!

Overall, not the best collection, but nonetheless an enjoyable one.

Thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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The first thing that attracted me towards this manga is the beautiful cover. The blue cover definitely attracted me.

I was intrigued by the story of two guys around the same age, one troubled and one a little nicer. It looked cute. So Fynn got dumped by his girlfriend implying he is gay. Fynn is not sure about this. Soon he meets Niko who gets angry with Fynn because he was smoking while Niko was watching the stars. Fynn opposes Niko since it was his place to smoke and relax but from that moment he was hooked and wanted to find out more about Niko, especially after getting a tiny telescope from Niko. Fynn starts going to school on time to so that he can meet Niko and was cute to see the spark going on between them.

Though I liked the story, I was disappointed by the characters. There was a lack of depth in them. I wished they were more fleshed out. I was finding it hard to ship the romance. At one moment it was starting on a good note, and in the next they were fighting. I liked how they were flirting with each other and tried to know each other, but there was very little scope to it. I was happy to see them together because they were really cute, but I never felt that they belonged together. The characters felt two-dimensional to me.

I was a bit let down with the execution of the scene where Fynn realises that he might be a gay. There was literally just a single panel set up and then this plot was gone. In the next panel he was meeting another boy. I wish his sexuality debate was explored a bit more.

There is some back story to Niko and I am hoping that we would get to know about that in the second volume. There isn't much going on in the first collection and also the pace is a bit fast. The artwork is definitely beautiful. I just wished to have a better execution.

Thank you so much to the publisher for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

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Actual rating: 3.5

I don’t usually read mystery or thrillers. This is the one that I read after a long time. This is a debut novel of the author M.J. Tjia. She Be Damned is a historical mystery set in the Victorian era in London. The main protagonist of the story is Mrs. Heloise Chancey who is a courtesan and lives in Mayfair with her Chinese Maid Amah Li Leen.

She got an assignment by Mr. Thomas Avery to find a missing girl named Eleanor, who was from a good family and was missing in London’s dark side, Waterloo. On the other hand, pregnant prostitutes in Waterloo area were being murdered and their sexual organs being mutilated and removed. They get the news of another girl getting murdered and they suspect that it may be Eleanor. Heloise decided to live in Waterloo, where her roots were, for investigating the case further.

During the investigation, Heloise made contacts to try and find Eleanor. But during all this mystery solving she gets into a bigger mystery and the number of events that were happening with the prostitutes. She meets a police sergeant, Bill Chapman who helps her in with the case. Obviously, there is some romance between them. They have a number of suspects for the crime and together they made some progress. She was near to getting the truth when Amah got arrested for the charge of murders.

Will Heloise be able to prove that Amah is innocent? Has does Amah anything to do with all this? What happened to Eleanor? Will Heloise find her? Who is the real killer and what actually is the motive?

All the characters were created beautifully according to the Victorian era of the 1860s. The dressing of Heloise was explained in a detailed manner like how the ladies were supposed to dress in those days. The author does a great job with the London setting and shown the attitudes and morals of the time correctly, as far I can say.

I found that the book is more character driven rather than the mystery driven. All the characters were dynamic and properly described as per their roles. I really liked the relationship between Amah Li Leen and Heloise. They were the perfect pairing while they don’t often get along.

Though the character of Heloise was represented to a big extent, nothing was revealed about her past. I wanted to know her back story, that how she gets to leave the life of the prostitute and got settled in Mayfair. But I guess, the author has saved that backstory to be described in next books of the series (yes, this is to become a series.). Also, bits and pieces about Amah Li Leen were shown, but I wanted to know more about her story, that how she ended up with Heloise. Middle English is used as the language.

At some point it was dark especially the way those prostitutes were being murdered. Those were awful. But I am glad, that there was not too much graphic description for those deaths. Sometimes, you feel as if the story has just skipped some parts and it becomes confusing during parts of the book. There was romance in the story but nothing too graphic.

In spite of having some complaints about the story, I loved the ending. It was surprising and I absolutely didn’t saw it coming.

If you are looking for some quick and assertive read, then this is a decent read. It is certainly worth the read, especially for the ending. That ending specially changed my whole outlook towards the story. As a debut novel, Tjia has done a great job. I will definitely wait for the next book in the series, as I want to know more about Heloise and Amah’s backstory.


*** Thank you NetGalley and Pantera Press fro providing me and eARC in exchange of an honest review.

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When a book’s synopsis says ‘Paris’, I simply can’t resist adding it to my TBR

Trigger warnings: fatophobia, eating disorder, body shaming, anxiety

Mirror, Mirror is a YA novel set in Bangalore, India. Ananya, because of some unfortunate comments from her neighbors about her body, is on the path of loosing weight and shaping herself into the societal expectations of a ‘prefect girl’, living on salads and dry crackers. Every time she looks on the mirror, the scars of the words spoken about 5 years ago, haunted her. On her 17th birthday, she receives the strangest news- her mother was pregnant! The situation complicates when her mother calls her best friend, Aunty V, to live with them and with her comes her son and Ananya’s ex-friend, Raghu, for whom now she has complicated feelings. Moreover, her two best friends are now in relationship and she feels like a third wheel. Navigating between life, school, and her relationships, Ananya has to find her future and the courage to accept herself as she is.

How often we are told we are not enough? Or we would have been perfect if this were that. Being positive towards your body is not an easy feat but the one that is important. As Ananya struggled for losing those extra pounds, I believe everyone of us can see glimpses of ourselves not just in terms of weight loss, but for the other aspects of our bodies too.

Apart from body positivity, this book has beautiful relationships and friendships. The up and downs, understanding between friends and troubles, all have been handled well.

One thing I really want to appreciate is the bare minimum use of Hinglish