Really enjoyed the writing in this one, especially during the drag performance. I felt like I didn’t learn a lot about the side characters though, which made it difficult to relate to Mike as a lot of his emotional journey was tied to the people around him. I also found the audiobook to sound a little robotic, which I was extra disappointed about because it is narrated by the author and I was super excited for that. The author definitely didn’t do a bad job narrating by any means, I just set way too high expectations after listening to other novels in verse that were also narrated by the author. Still a great read though, glad I picked it up!

Noni Blake absolutely was a fucking pleasure, I adored this book! It was messy and all over the place, and exactly the kind of chaos that I find in my own everyday life.

The characters, and especially the character development, was really the star of the show. Noni’s journey with trying to love herself and take control of her life was so inspiring, and I saw a lot of myself in Noni. She was so relatable, I found myself laughing and crying along with her at every moment. The humour in this was incredible as well, there were several times where I had to pause the audiobook because I was laughing too hard to listen to what was going on.

Overall, It’s Been a Pleasure, Noni Blake was a genuine joy to read. This is hands down become my favourite romance novel that I’ve ever read. I even went out and bought the physical book after finishing it because I know I’ll be talking about it in many BookTube videos to come

3.5 ⭐️

This was a lot of fun! I think the target audience was a little younger than I typically like to read, but it was still very enjoyable. The plot was painfully predictable and nothing surprised me at all, but it was done in that cheesy comic book way so I actually didn’t mind that. It’s not a new favourite or anything, but I liked it enough that I’m looking forward to the sequels!

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book!

I really don't know how I could describe what A God in a Human Body is about. It is about so many things all at once, but I supposed it's mainly about life.

On a surface level, I enjoyed a God in a Human Body. The writing was good, the topics were engaging, I was interested in what the author had to say.

Unfortunately for me, I found that the poems just weren't enough. They did not dive deep enough into the topics at hand to be thought-provoking. By the end of this poetry collection, I felt like I hadn't read anything. I reread quite a bit of it and tried to think deeper about what the author was saying, but even still I could not find enough substance in most of the poems to feel satisfied.

I think maybe the author was trying to do too much. Perhaps I would have gotten more out of this if there had been fewer topics being discussed, and instead was just more thorough about a handful of them. I'm not sure, but either way I was left deeply unsatisfied. I can see the talent that the author clearly has for writing, and would like to read more from him, but this one was just not for me.

Wow there was A LOT going on here!

Fully review to come!

The first half of Ghosts of the Shadow Market was definitely a lot better than the second half, but either way I'm pleasantly surprised by this! I was dreading this going into it; for some reason I thought Kit was the main character and all the stories would be about his life growing up in the Shadow Markets? Not sure where I got that idea from, but imagine my utter delight when I opened this book to find that it's actually following Jem, AKA Brother Snackariah/Brother Sixpackariah/Brother Hop-in-the-sack-ariah, also known as one of the greatest things Cassandra Clare has gifted to this planet. I loved seeing more of Jem and Tessa's life together, their backstory, and where they were during the times in between. I started to care less once we got more into stuff in the 2000s, but that's just personal preference.

Although I did also really love seeing Kit build a relationship with Jem and Tessa, that was really heart warming.

Overall, a surprisingly great read and I'm glad I finally picked it up! I laughed out loud, I cried several times, and just generally had a really good time reading this

Actual rating: 2.5⭐️ or 2.75⭐️

I’m very underwhelmed by this, to be honest. There were some aspect that I enjoyed, like the character relationships, and the representation this novel presented (bisexual men, bisexual parents, disability/amputee, grief and mental health, to name a few). The characters as individuals, whoever, I wasn’t a fan of. I didn’t outright dislike anyone, but not a single character stood out to me as being anything special. I found the plot to be sorely lacking, and it was way too cheesy for my liking. The cheesiness may have been because of the narrator of the audiobook, which was read very dramatically and had me chuckling at every single serious part. It felt like one of those dramatic readings people do when they’re making fun of something. So I’m not sure if reading this physically would have solved that issue or not, but regardless I did not enjoy the audiobook at all. I wasn’t a big fan of the writing style either, it was very simple and a little too to the point.

Overall, the only thing I liked about it was the queerness and disability rep, and the relationships between the characters. This was sitting at a 2 star rating until the very end with Juniper and Augusta, that bumped it up slightly. But otherwise this wasn’t all that good for me. I’ll still read the next book, mainly because I do like Isaac and I want to see what’s going on with him, but that’s basically the only reason

I had so much fun with this one! I adored the characters and their relationships more than anything else; seeing both the Illori and the humans learn/re-learn how to feel joy again was so fun and I loved the way it was handled. This book deals heavily with the human condition, and what it means to be human, and I found those topics to be deeply fascinating. There are a lot of very important issues discussed in The Sound of Stars, like freedom, discrimination, hatred and violence, but Dow also found ways to weave a childish kind of joy throughout that was a delight to read. It made this book feel like a space opera set on earth, and I loved that aspect of it so much!

This was the July pick for the Queer Joy Book Club over on Instagram, which I had the pleasure of co-hosting this month! If you'd like to hear more in-depth thoughts on it, check out our spoiler-filled discussion here!

4.5⭐️

Review to come!

I love these books because of how ridiculous and outlandish they are, but this one was just a little bit too much