Mini Review Round-up!

I started school again this week, so here are some mini reviews to tide you over!

I received all of these books at no cost from NetGalley.

The Temperature of Me and You

This is a contemporary light science fiction novel, and when I say “light” I mean really light – it feels like it has barely any substance. The pacing of this book is exhausting; it feels at various points like it’s going too slow or too fast, but you know what? The gay scene deserves some mediocre mildly sci-fi YA romances too. Also, the characters in this book are 16, but I would recommend the age range as being 13+ — perfectly acceptable for middle-graders as well as young adults. It’s fine! I wouldn’t write home about it! Three stars. Storygraph link. Bookshop link.

Manywhere

This is a book of surrealist short stories, and they are all unusual and very Gender. I poked through a couple other reviews, and many misgender the protagonists — from my perspective, as a trans person frequently around other trans people, both online and off, I think I correctly gendered the protagonists. But it’s not explicitly explained to the reader What Exactly is going on, which is something I really like but might not be your cup of tea. This book gets five stars from me — the first short story, The Lightning Man, is my favorite. I think I’d like to actually buy this to keep on my shelf. Storygraph link. Bookshop link.

Wash Day Diaries

This is a slice of life graphic novel about four different best friends! The theme connecting theme of the stories, hair care, is woven into each story. The art style is both cozy and expressive, with each woman having her own color scheme. These stories take place mostly during the summer, and it really feels like a summery story! Unfortunately over the course of the story, one friend tells another that she shouldn’t get antidepressants and gives her a crystal instead, and we see the depressed friend simply crawl back into bed afterwards. While this story is slice of life and we don’t really follow up on any of their individual stories, this was the least cozy story that I wish had a better ending, and knocks the rating down a quarter star. 4.75 stars. Storygraph link. Bookshop link.

Love and Other Disasters

If I knew that romance novels could be just as cozy as cozy mysteries, I would have picked this one up a lot sooner! This story involves a nonbinary POV character dating a girl (also POV) at a cooking competition! Their romance is hot and heady and there are some sex scenes, which I wasn’t expecting at all but was very pleased by (they’re all good!). Something that I didn’t like about this book is that I was really worried about the cooking competition and the main characters kind of ignored that for a while, and then it was suddenly a problem! Also there is a transphobic character which was :/ but the book dealt with it really well. 5 stars! Storygraph link. Bookshop link.

Icebreaker

I got approved for this really close to publish date so here is my lightning-fast review!

• The enemies to lovers seemed REALLY fast and also kind of tame!
• I arbitrarily wanted this book to be more like The Foxhole Court and it was not, but also that’s the only other sports romance I have ever read!
• The voice in this was super strong!
  I barely have any thoughts because I read it so quickly! It comes out this Tuesday! I’ll probably check this out of the library and read it again then! Four stars!
• Storygraph link! Bookshop link!