nerdinthelibrary's Reviews (926)

I received this book for free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

“You are a child. An infant, and your mocking is thus infantile. That man is not my ‘boyfriend.’ That man is more to me than you can dream in your simpering, pathetic life. That man is the stars in my sky, and the sun that lights my days. That man is the moon when I am lost in darkness, and warmth when I shiver in cold. I love that man beyond measure and reason. His kiss still thrills me, even after a millennium since I first tasted him. His body, to this day, awakens a passion you will never know. His heart overflows with a kindness which this world is not worthy. His very thoughts make music of the mundane. He is not my ‘boyfriend.’ He is not my ‘lover,’ nor is he my ‘partner.’ He is all and more. He is my everything.”

Don't mind me, just sobbing at 11pm because I accidentally read this entire screenplay in one sitting.

content warnings: slavery/the slave trade, attempted suicide, drowning, death, gore, violence, trauma, vomiting
representation: Black main and side characters, sapphic Black protagonist and main characters, f/f main relationship, non-binary Black side character

“‘What is belonging?’ we ask.
She says, ‘Where loneliness ends.’”

I've finally read a Rivers Solomon book! And it ruled! Rivers Solomon is an author I've had on my radar for a long time without realising, adding multiple books of theirs to various TBRs without knowing they all had the same author. I'm definitely going to be prioritising those other books after how wonderful this was.

The Deep is a novella about Yetu, the Historian for the wajinru. The wajinru are the descendants of pregnant women thrown from slave ships and because of their trauma they've evolved to forget their past. All except one: the Historian, who is given all the memories until it's time for another Historian to take over. Yetu is the current Historian but it all becomes too much for her so she flees.

This is a novella that is full of raw pain and longing and trauma. It was a good choice to make it as short as it is because I think if it were a full-length novel it would have become too much to read, but at around 160 pages it's the perfect length. Rivers Solomon's writing is gorgeous and they're able to switch perspectives incredibly well. I was able to tell what perspective we were in at all times even though there are no headers to indicate when the perspective had changed.

Honestly, this is a book that's really hard to talk about because it's so short and is so much about emotion over plot. The ending is absolute perfection and ties all the themes together expertly without making it too neat. I've heard the audiobook is great and want to try it out, but the physical reading experience is still great. It's a little slow at first but it pays off big time.

3.5/5


content warnings: sexism, mentions of racism and homophobia
representation: Indian-American protagonist and main characters, Japanese-American main character, gay Black side character, bisexual side character, interracial m/m side relationship

“Did you hear I’ve tossed and turned without you since you walked away from me?
Did you hear I’m wondering if you’ll ever stop hating me?
Did you hear I don’t care about your brother beyond the fact that he’s your brother?
Did you hear I’m falling in love with you?”

It's decided: my first tattoo is going to be big, bold letters on my forehead saying I LOVE SANDHYA MENON. Okay, maybe a tattoo is a bit dramatic, but I'm definitely going to get a T-shirt or tote bag that says that at some point!

This my third Sandhya Menon book, her sophomore novel, and while it's my least favourite of the three I've read, it's still leaps and bounds better than most YA romances I've read.

From Twinkle, With Love follows aspiring filmmaker Twinkle Mehra who's accepted that, at least for the rest of high school, she's going to blend into the background. Until one day Sahil Roy (the twin brother of her longtime crush, Neil) asks her if she wants to make a film with him to show at a Festival. At the same time, she begins getting emails from a secret admirer called N who she's sure is Neil. But as she continues to work on the film with Sahil she starts to realise that maybe she's developing feelings for a different brother.

This is mostly going to be a gush so I'm going to get my big criticism out the way: I didn't really care about the romance. Which is so frustrating because normally I love Sandhya Menon romances! Dimple/Rishi and Ashish/Sweetie are two of my all-time favourite book couples, but I just couldn't get into it with this book. Part of this might be that unlike with her other two books, FTWL is much more complicated romance-wise. Twinkle's heart is being tugged several different ways, and even though I thought it was pretty obvious who she was going to end up with I still couldn't get super invested.

That out of the way, let's talk about the things I super loved. Number one, the structure. When Dimple Met Rishi and There's Something About Sweetie are both told in dual-POVs from both main characters and it's all very straight-forward. This, however, is told almost entirely from Twinkle's perspective; the only time we get any other perspective is seeing the texts between Sahil and his two friends, Aaron and Skid. It's not just the mostly-one-POV that makes this different though; Everything we read from Twinkle's perspective is from her diary which she formats as if she's writing letters to various female filmmakers.

I love how organic Twinkle's love of film and especially female filmmakers was. It's clearly the thing she's most passionate about but it never felt like it was her entire personality. Sandhya Menon is either just as obsessive as Twinkle or a very good researcher because all the references felt extremely authentic. I especially loved how specific the women Twinkle would write to was. She would write to Nora Ephron when she was wondering about boy-girl friendships; she would write to Sofia Coppola when she was feeling like an outsider; she would write to Ava DuVernay when she was talking about her place as a woman of colour in the film industry.

(Also, every director Twinkle writes a letter to? You should watch all their films, they're amazing. (Claire Denis' are very weird but you'll get used to it.))

The thing I absolutely loved the most about this, though, was the friendships! We all know that Sandhya Menon's great at writing friendships, but I think she really outdoes herself here. One of the main elements of this book is Twinkle's relationship with her maybe-best-friend Maddie which has been on the rocks ever since Maddie started hanging out with a different group who don't seem to like Twinkle. Their complicated relationship was easily my favourite part of this book and I was way more invested in that than the romance.

Twinkle's development as a character was also amazing. We so rarely get to see unlikable female characters in YA and Sandhya Menon really is one of the best. Twinkle isn't mean but she can be, something we see more as the book goes on, but her shitty behaviour doesn't go unchecked. It's acknowledged as valid but people will also call her out if she's gone too far. This goes for a lot of the characters, actually; everyone has good reasons for doing the crappy things they do but other characters also make sure they know that they don't have to put up with it.

Some people sleep on their sides, some people sleep on their backs, and some people sleep on Sandhya Menon's books. If you're one of those people, stop! Go pick up one of her books because they're the cream of the crop in terms of YA romance.

content warnings: toxic relationship, abortion, cheating, mentions of inappropriate age differences
representation: east asian lesbian protagonist, sapphic main character, interracial f/f main relationship, mlm Black side character, mlm side character of colour, m/m side relationship, main and side characters of colour, main and side queer characters

“The truth is, breakups are usually messy, the way people are messy, the way life is often messy. It’s okay for a breakup to feel like a disaster. It doesn’t feel okay, but I assure you it is okay.
It’s also true that you can breakup with someone you still love. Because those two things are not distinct territories: love and not loving anymore.”

This is an incredibly necessary, important book that I wasn't all that into. This follows Freddy and her tumultuous relationship with Laura Dean who keeps, you guessed it, breaking up with her.

I love that there's a graphic novel aimed at a queer teen audience that portrays a toxic relationship and shows the main character romanticising the relationship without ever endorsing it. It also shows that being in a toxic relationship is impacting the way Freddy behaves, and not in a good way. The book is very anti-Laura Dean and Freddy's relationship with her even when Freddy isn't. It also deals with a side character having an abortion in a way I thought was really well-handled.

But this graphic novel is all over the place, especially in terms of side plots. There are so many that don't go anywhere, especially with Freddy's friends, and I understand wanting your side characters to seem fleshed out but there are ways of doing that without making it feel like you're missing a chunk of the story. I enjoyed the framing through Freddy emailing an Agony Aunt-esque advice column about her relationship with Laura Dean, but the framing device was really inconsistent and overstayed its welcome.

I liked the art a lot and that's what got me through this; that, and it's a graphic novel so it was a quick read. I hope that this gets into the hands of many queer teens but it just wasn't for me.

1) Burn Zone ★★★★


content warnings: recovering from a spinal injury, fire-related life-threatening situations, mentions of homophobia
representation: pansexual main character with a spinal injury, gay main character, m/m main relationship, gay side characters, non-binary minor character, polyamorous minor characters

“‘You... You’re special, Rain. I hope you know that.’
‘I do now.’ His voice was soft, and he had to hide his face in Garrick’s neck, not wanting to reveal quite how much those words meant to him. Garrick made him want, made him dream, things he’d thought weren’t meant to be his. All the things he’d told himself that he didn’t want, now those dreams came crashing back into him, one after another. It was almost too much, that kind of hope requiring a bravery he wasn’t sure he possessed. And he could tell himself those feelings weren’t real, that it was only good sex and friendship, but right then, all he wanted was to hold Garrick close and pretend if only for a while that this was real, that Garrick was his, and that all those impossible things were within reach.”

This is now the second time in a row that dogs have played a major part in an Annabeth Albert book, and I for one am very here for it. Fingers crossed for there to be a major dog role in book 3.

This is the second book in the Hotshots series following Garrick, a character from the first book who suffered several major injuries at the end of that book. This is set about a year later and he's still in recovery. One day he finds a dog on his porch and Rain, hot grandson of his neighbour, helps him to get her inside. Turns out Rain wants to be a hotshot so he and Garrick strike up a deal: Garrick helps him train and Rain helps him look after the dog. Easy, right? Except for the fact that they're both hopelessly attracted to each other.

This book has the truly wonderful trope of they're super into each other and decide to start having sex pretending that they won't catch feels, and it's written to perfection. Rain is a character who has trouble staying in one place too long so he and Garrick are both pretending that there's an end date to their relationship which provides exactly the sort of angst I want.

Something that I continue to appreciate about Annabeth Albert's books is the inclusion of LGBTQ+ people who aren't just gay men, which is usually as far as M/M erotica goes. In this, we don't just have a pansexual lead with Garrick, we also have mentions of Rain's parents being polyamorous and one of Rain's brother's friends' being non-binary. I don't want to pat someone on the back too much for just including mentions of LGBTQ+ people who aren't gay but I still want to acknowledge its significance.

While I can't personally speak to the disabled representation with Garrick, I appreciated that it was always a consideration and never forgotten even when it wasn't the focus. Basically all the erotica I've ever read/heard of has had only able-bodied leads so I'm glad that Garrick's injuries from the last book weren't just brushed under the rug, and that he wasn't 'fixed' by the end of this one.

I'm so sad that this is set to be just a trilogy because I'm really falling in love with these dumb firefighters. If you liked the dumb firefighters in the first book, then the odds are high you'll like this one, too.

I received an ARC of this book for free as part of a blog tour in exchange for an honest review.

I finally finished my reading challenge! This isn't gonna be a proper review because I've already read and reviewed the first two novellas in this series, so all I read in this was the first short story and the snippet at the end. They were both great. You're all sleeping on this fantastic queer, sexy, witchy series of novellas.

“Dude, he should totally be called Abraham Thinkin’.”

We're going to ignore that I accidentally read the second volume first and instead focus on the fact that this comic fucking rules. My expectations for any comic that's meant to tie-in to a movie franchise are so incredibly low because they almost always feel like cash-grabs that had little-to-no thought put into them. This, thankfully, was not the case here. This was a comic written by someone who loves Bill & Ted and you can see that on every page.

This comic is set after Bogus Journey, and has Bill, Ted, the Princesses, Rufus and a bunch of their friends from throughout history trying to save Death by going to Hell. With each few pages the conflict escalates to crazy lengths, something which I feel is very in keeping with the spirit of Bogus Journey and the franchise as a whole.

Easily the best part of this comic is how much it centres all the side characters we love. In particular, the Princesses get a much more prominent role in this than they do in the movies and are the absolute coolest. In the movie's, Bill and Ted's relationships with Joanna and Elizabeth are already the absolute cutest and they really just double down on that here. But it's not just the Princesses that have expanded roles; all of the historical figures have mini character arcs and seeing them support each other is so heartwarming. Then there's Death, who remains maybe the funniest character ever created while never losing the depth he has.

The art is also fantastic. I've never read anything illustrated by Bachan but I look forward to discovering more in the future because, despite not being what I typically like in comic book art, it really worked for me.

As with the Bill & Ted movies, this has no right to be as good as it is and makes me extremely excited for Face the Music (even if it is kind of funny to read this now because of all the things they're clearly retconning in that movie).