Talia Hibbert's book are so readable, but I think this remains my favourite. Town pariah Ruth is endlessly sympathetic, and romantic hero Evan is an example of a sweet cinnamon roll hero who also has a legitimate character arc (not always a given). While this is a sweet, sexy small town romance, it does involve a coersive relationship (mostly in the heroine's past, but it does rear its ugly head on page too, so readers be aware of that). With consideration of that content warning, I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a sexy small town romance. 

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

🍎 TO TEACH? 
I love Talia Hibbert's narrative voice so much, I wish I could get away with using excerpts in class, but I fear everything is way too sexy to use in a high school! 

This is a fairly basic how-to guide for anyone hoping to experiment with writing erotic fiction. For anyone who has some experience in writing fiction, I'm not convinced this book will offer many new insights. Likewise for those who read romance with any vocacity. The distinction between genre and literary erotica was interesting, but most of what this book offers is pretty straightforward. Packed with exemplars and activities, I do believe this would be a winner with anyone hoping to start a writing practice. 

🍎 TO TEACH? 
I advocate teaching age appropriate romance with high school students to explore genre and internal conflict, but when we're talking erotic fiction rather than genre romance, you are definitely talking to weekend Miss on classroom Miss! 

For some reason Tessa Bailey just isn't working for me at the moment... I relisten to the audio of Love Her or Lose Her often, so I'm not sure what's changed. I appreciate the working class heroes moment that is happening in contemporary romance right now. This book feels a lot like Fix Her Up, a friends to lovers plot with a ladies man dealing with feelings. It's sure to work for a lot of contemporary romance readers. 

💚💚💚 3.5 stars

TO TEACH? 
Let's be real, the NYT bestsellers we're getting from Tessa Bailey recently are way less sexy than her backlist. But still significantly too sexy for the classroom. 😂

Heroine Complex is a delight! Thank you Sarah Kuhn for doing the good and necessary work of addressing the dearth of superhero romances. Lighthearted and action-packed, this novel just knows exactly what it is.  It's fun and knowingly a bit silly, pretty sexy, but at its heart is a complex, realistic female friendship between two flawed women. I tend not to vibe with urban fantasy that takes itself too seriously but a female-led superhero adventure that follows the beats of a romance novel? Yes please! A grumpy romantic interest that has to explain to our clueless protagonist that the making our means he's into her in like a real dating kind of way? Love that. I'm looking forward to the rest of the series... Which hopefully allow Evie and Aveda's friendship to grow in a healthier direction. 

🦸🏻‍♀️🦸🏻‍♀️🦸🏻‍♀️🦸🏻‍♀️🦸🏻‍♀️ 4.5 superheroines 

🍎 TO TEACH? 
There would be excerpts that could work for a study of the superhero genre or action writing, though the sex scenes make this one a bit mature for classroom use. Try Barry Lyga's Generation Wonder for teen readers instead. 

So maybe the conceit of parallel universe hopping in this book, akin to travelling back to particular historical periods, doesn't quite make sense. A Moscow where the Soviet union never broke apart with technological advancement stuck in the 80s makes sense in a Sci Fi reasons way... A universe in which Rome persisted as a world military power and maintained a "Middle Ages" vibe for centuries, less so.

But that's fine! A Million Worlds with You is a fun, action-packed finish to a series that was a breath of fresh air in the 2010s YA landscape of dystopia when it was first published. I love parallel universe stories so much, and this one doesn't disappoint. I was pleased that Margueritte had to grapple with the consequences of her actions when she was possessing the bodies of her other selves. A solid romance; shades of a love triangle but it wasn't, like, annoying; a good amount of technobabble that delighted this job-scientist Star Trek baby. 

🖌️🖌️🖌️🖌️🖌️

🍎 TO TEACH? 
The series could work for a science fiction lit circle. I have the first and second of the series on my bookshelf for DEAR (Drop Everything and Read!) time and it's a popular option! 

The intent behind this book is positive, and the author is cleary passionate about inciting institutional changes that promote sleep schedules more aligned to teenage natural sleep cycles. In a world full of causes to care about, anyone presenting evidence to convince readers to support a proposed logistical changes needs to underscore the importance of their particular social issue. Here, The Sleep Deprived Teens falls into the trap of so much pop science writing, which is to neglect unpacking exactly what is correlation and what is causation. For example, the statistics around adolescent crime are surely more related to whether teenagers are at home under parental supervision, than routinely not getting enough sleep?

I - perhaps incorrectly - assumed that most people understand that adolescents naturally fall asleep and wake up later than preteen children and adults. Mirroring the 9-5 work day, school schedules seem more about getting kids out from underfoot for capitalistic purposes, than adolescent hormonal cycles or positive educational outcomes. If this book leads any frustrated parents to have patience with their sleepy teenager, so much the better. I'd recommend the 'Sleep Epidemic' episode of the wellbeing industry deconstruction podcast "Maintenance Phase" to build understanding around some of the methological issues in the prevailing communication around sleep hygiene. 

All the best to the Star School Later chapters across the nation. 

Thankyou to Libro.fm, Tantor Media, Lisa L. Lewis and Samantha Desz for providing a copy for review.

Enter a bizarre magical universe through this imaginative picture book from the creator of the literary world that became the beloved Dreamworks animated film The Guardians of Childhood. 

TO TEACH?
Though I do teach picture books, this one doesn't showcase a great deal of diversity in its composition (though the illustrations are gorgeous). It's more like an illustrated story in a picture book format than a picture book that uses the pictures and words to tell a story in concert. I would be more likely to use The Man in the Moon as a fun example of the fantasy genre for a junior class. 

For armchair travelling purposes, The Art of Traveling Strangers absolutely hits the spot. The author is clearly knowledgeable and passionate about the artistic wonders that one can peruse in Italy, and this shone through in her art professor protagonist Claire. I had major career envy of Claire's work as a international art guide! 

Unfortunately the book worked less for me as a piece of women's fiction, on the whole. All the right pieces were there - an international adventure with an unlikely companion, a divorce, an affair... but the piece didn't quite click all the way into place for me. Claire was persistently judgemental and dismissive of her companion Viv's interest in fashion, and while there were nods to her growing out of her exclusionary binary thinking of high vs. low art, it didn't feel fully realised. Likewise, the subplot of Viv's homophobia and Claire's reaction to it felt undercooked. I was expecting the relationship between Claire and Viv to grow into something more meaningful than it ever did, and it left me feeling somewhat emotionally under-satisfied (I won't go as far to say UNsatisfied!) 

This was a fun diversion, especially perfect for anyone longing for a "cultured" holiday, featuring more museums than beaches! 

🎨🎨🎨🎨 3.75/5

🍎 TO TEACH?
As I picked this book up, I vaguely thought about it as a source for extracts for studying historical fiction. It is set in the 1980s and while there are hallmarks of historical fiction, there's nothing that leaps out as a exemplar to use in the classroom, particularly. One for personal reading rather than classroom use. 

Cozy is a lighthearted exploration of what constitutes "coziness" and how we can organise our behaviours, habits and environments to facilitate feeling comfortable and at home. My only tension with this book is Isabel Gillies' lack of engagement with some of the fraught political and historical dimesnions of some of the cozy things she explores, such as Anglophilia. Perhaps Gillies would say that part of being cozy is allowing yourself to disocciate from those fraught elements and just enjoy the things you enjoy. I don't think that dissociation is necessary - I usually find that wrestling with the difficult histories of things I love actually increases my nuanced appreciation of them. 
I found this book a delightful diversion!