Oh, I am SO HAPPY that Lucy Knisley is doing middle grade fiction with her amazing drawing and storytelling.
In Stepping Stones, Jen’s coming of age story is told in the aftermath of her parents divorce, moving to the country from the big city, and gaining new family members she certainly did not ask for. It is heavily based on the author’s own experiences, and the emotions of Jen’s highs and lows are certainly on-point and easily identifiable. I couldn’t help but root for her, and her new family by the end.
My daughter and I gobbled up our (signed!!) copy, and we are eagerly awaiting the next installment in this TRILOGY. My love for this author knows no bounds, and I highly recommend all of her books, reviews can be found in the tab above 'by author' and my favorites are definitely Kid Gloves and Something New.
For more reviews and bookish musings, visit http://www.bornandreadinchicago.com/

This boooook!! I would love to put this graphic novel into the hands of every school principal and every girl in the world, as a start.
I’ve been breaking into some of my daughter’s library stash, and Go With the Flow was an absolute delight while confronting the insufferable stigma around menstruation, and exposing period poverty. I was also so impressed with the diversity of the book - not just with race, but body types, sexuality, family structures and even our cycles, and how they can be vastly different. It’s full of heart and a call to action. Highly recommend!!!
For more reviews and bookish musings, visit http://www.bornandreadinchicago.com/

Welp. I am in agreement with most of the reviews that I have seen for A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. The consensus is that the first two parts of the book are engaging, and then the third falls flat. I would argue that it ALL felt dull.
At first I was sucked back into the world of Panem, and the idea of seeing the origins of the hunger games. I just wish Collins would have gone in a less predictable direction with Snow’s character. He was just wooden, predictable, and uninspiring - as a villain or a hero.
On the bright side, I do love how it matches and rounds out my beloved trilogy.
For more reviews and bookish musings, visit http://www.bornandreadinchicago.com/

There's not much I can add to the conversation about this book, other than to say that it does feel like an actual conversation with a friend (I especially enjoyed the audiobook). Oluo clearly lays out the structural racism and bias we all live with, and it was even more impactful as a fellow Seattle dweller. I could vividly picture the story she told of staying with her mother's friend in the small mountain town we have driven through countless times, and I knew exactly where she was going when talking about cultural appropriation when traveling at our local airport. Ooof, the Africa Lounge really ought to go...
For more reviews and bookish musings visit http://www.bornandreadinchicago.com/

Okay, I GET IT. I like to know what’s up with polarizing books, and I wouldn’t say that I came down on either extreme of ‘all time fave’ or ‘worst book ever’ for Normal People. But I REALLY liked it - 4 stars. And I confess that I LOVED the BBC series - 5 big stars.
As for the book, I was enthralled by Connell and Marianne’s back-and-forth through their coming of age, the very real feeling breakups and makeups. Sure, they were insufferable in their constant miscommunication. But they’re teens/young adults figuring sh*t out. And they DO FIGURE IT OUT, which is wonderful and heartbreaking by the end. I also appreciated that they never cheated on each other and acted deferential towards one another.
In my reading experience, I felt very empathetic towards Marianne. Who doesn’t love a story of the bookish nerd girl glowing up and getting the guy? My heart ached for her as she dealt with Connell’s immaturity and her family trauma. It was harder for me to get my arms around Connell and his struggles with anxiety. He didn’t leap off the page for me. But after watching Paul Mescal’s performance on screen, I saw scenes from the book differently. Looking back on what I highlighted, I don’t know how I missed such a beautiful character study the first time around.
“He finds himself rushing to the end of the conversation so they can hang up, and then he can retrospectively savor how much he likes seeing her, without the moment-to-moment pressure of having to produce the right expressions and say the right things.”
Rooney’s writing was hypnotic, nostalgic and so thoughtful about socioeconomic status, family, mental health, trauma, and learning self-worth through it all. And I actually liked how it flowed without quotation marks! I think it lent itself well to such an interior focused narrative.
For more reviews and bookish musings visit http://www.bornandreadinchicago.com/

I finished the Revisioners on a typical June gloom day here in the PNW and it felt like the perfect fit for this amorphous and mystical novel. I am a sucker for a dual timeline narrative, and the common threads that Sexton weaves between present day Ava, and her mother’s great grandmother Josephine, a formerly enslaved woman who becomes a sharecropper, was beautifully nuanced and thoughtful. For only 288 pages, it’s quite an epic family story about the power of mothers and Black women. I do wish it was a tad longer, as I felt that it ended too abruptly and I was just beginning to learn about the Revisioners magic.
For more reviews and bookish musings visit http://www.bornandreadinchicago.com/

I am realizing that one of my favorite genres is the graphic memoir. Good Talk is as FANTASTIC as every person I know that’s read it says it is. It is ‘timely’ for sure, about a dark skinned south Asian woman raising a mixed race child with her Jewish husband. But, in any time, the whip smart art paired with heartfelt prose is utterly compelling and completely gutted me.
“We think our hearts break only from endings - the love gone, the rooms empty, the future unhappening as we stand ready to step into it – but what about how they can shatter in the face of what is possible?”
As with all graphic memoirs, even if you don’t think they’d be for you, I strongly urge giving them a try. Similar to memoirs on audiobook, there is something about the visual arts paired with the prose that gives the reader so much more. In addition to Good Talk, I’d recommend anything by Lucy Knisley, and The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui.
For more reviews and bookish musings visit http://www.bornandreadinchicago.com/

It’s been over two years since I picked up where I left off in reading my beautiful Tundra Books Anne of Green Gables box set. Spending time with Anne is always a perfect respite, and I need to remind myself of this more often! In book three, Anne of the Island, we’re treated to the halcyon days of her college life. It’s filled with all of the drama of young adulthood, immersive scenery, and the mirthful humor of all L.M. Montgomery books.
For more reviews and bookish musings visit http://www.bornandreadinchicago.com/

Another summer, another Hilderbrand novel! I can now see why people are raving about her latest, it is indeed fantastic. It’s a testament to how much I love her storytelling, despite utilizing one of my least favorite conflict tools in storytelling: people just not being truthful and saying how they feel. Ugh. As a riff on Same Time Next Year, it’s built on two people in love who only meet once a year and go back to their separate lives. Normally I get frustrated with the characters obtuseness in these situations and just tap out. For the first part of 28 Summers I was wary of how I would feel by the end. But, Hilderbrand knocks it out of the park with this cast of characters, intricate plot and the realness she brings to each fraught relationship: spouses of course, but also mothers and sons, best girlfriends and, what stood out to me most, the relationship between siblings.
She is one of the few authors I can immerse myself in for hours and wonder where the time went (4 hours of reading until 2 a.m. to read the entire second half of the book). It’s like listening to a friend relay an unbelievable story, filled with sumptuous atmosphere (oh, Nantucket), humor (“Mallory’s breathing is so shallow, she feels like she’s playing a dead person on television.” ha!), nostalgia (especially for us Gen X’ers - I mean, how many people get the Yaz or Michael Hutchence references??), and so much heart.
If you love Hilderbrand’s work, this is a no-brainer. And if you’re new to her novels, this is an excellent place to start.
For more reviews and bookish musings visit http://www.bornandreadinchicago.com/

Thank you St. Martin's Press for the complimentary copy! What You Wish For delivers on what I’ve come to expect from Center’s novels: sweet, funny, romantic, lovable and poignant stories of fallible characters figuring out their lives in the face of trauma.
Recently I posted about a romance novel that felt too predictable to keep me engaged, even though familiar narratives can be comforting. In this novel, and others I’ve read by Center, I generally know where things are going to shake out by the end. But the journey to that comforting ending involved many scenarios I could not have predicted, definitely keeping me on my toes and fully engaged!
If you are new to this author, I’d say that How to Walk Away is my favorite and a great way to get hooked, and What You Wish For has a timely feel that might be inspiring during these trying times we all find ourselves in...
✨”Joy is an antidote to fear. To anger. To boredom. To sorrow.✨