Bite-sized reviews

Posted April 3, 2022 by geograph in mini reviews, YA / 0 Comments

Oof, some really short reviews for some great books this week. Sorry about that, folks, I’ve been consumed by migraines and looking at a bright screen is exceptionally bad for me. As always, I received everything from NetGalley ahead of time in exchange for an honest review.

She gets the girl cover
She Gets the Girl by Rachael Lippincott and Alyson Derrick
384 pages
Publishes April 5th, 2022

She Gets the Girl

She’s All That meets What If It’s Us in this swoon-worthy hate-to-love YA romantic comedy from #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of Five Feet Apart Rachael Lippincott and debut writer Alyson Derrick.

Alex Blackwood is a little bit headstrong, with a dash of chaos and a whole lot of flirt. She knows how to get the girl. Keeping her on the other hand…not so much. Molly Parker has everything in her life totally in control, except for her complete awkwardness with just about anyone besides her mom. She knows she’s in love with the impossibly cool Cora Myers. She just…hasn’t actually talked to her yet.

Alex and Molly don’t belong on the same planet, let alone the same college campus. But when Alex, fresh off a bad (but hopefully not permanent) breakup, discovers Molly’s hidden crush as their paths cross the night before classes start, they realize they might have a common interest after all. Because maybe if Alex volunteers to help Molly learn how to get her dream girl to fall for her, she can prove to her ex that she’s not a selfish flirt. That she’s ready for an actual commitment. And while Alex is the last person Molly would ever think she could trust, she can’t deny Alex knows what she’s doing with girls, unlike her.

As the two embark on their five-step plans to get their girls to fall for them, though, they both begin to wonder if maybe they’re the ones falling…for each other.

This is super voice-y and ends up being really sweet. Also, I loved the cover! Four stars. 

Bookshop link. Storygraph link.

 

Young Mungo

Mungo
Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart
400 pages
publishes April 5th, 2022

A story of queer love and working-class families, Young Mungo is the brilliant second novel from the Booker Prize-winning author of Shuggie Bain

Douglas Stuart’s first novel Shuggie Bain, winner of the 2020 Booker Prize, is one of the most successful literary debuts of the century so far. Published or forthcoming in forty territories, it has sold more than one million copies worldwide. Now Stuart returns with Young Mungo, his extraordinary second novel. Both a page-turner and literary tour de force, it is a vivid portrayal of working-class life and a deeply moving and highly suspenseful story of the dangerous first love of two young men.

Growing up in a housing estate in Glasgow, Mungo and James are born under different stars—Mungo a Protestant and James a Catholic—and they should be sworn enemies if they’re to be seen as men at all. Yet against all odds, they become best friends as they find a sanctuary in the pigeon dovecote that James has built for his prize racing birds. As they fall in love, they dream of finding somewhere they belong, while Mungo works hard to hide his true self from all those around him, especially from his big brother Hamish, a local gang leader with a brutal reputation to uphold. And when several months later Mungo’s mother sends him on a fishing trip to a loch in Western Scotland with two strange men whose drunken banter belies murky pasts, he will need to summon all his inner strength and courage to try to get back to a place of safety, a place where he and James might still have a future.

Imbuing the everyday world of its characters with rich lyricism and giving full voice to people rarely acknowledged in the literary world, Young Mungo is a gripping and revealing story about the bounds of masculinity, the divisions of sectarianism, the violence faced by many queer people, and the dangers of loving someone too much.

This story is heart-wrenching. Romeo and Juliete except queer and working-class set in Glasgow Scotland. It’s like a Front Bottoms song with a cello. Four stars.

Bookshop link. Storygraph link.

 

Dreams Bigger than Heartbreak

 

Dreams bigger than heartbreak
Dreams Bigger than Heartbreak by Charlie Jane Anders
300 pages
publishes April 5th, 2022

From the international bestselling author of All the Birds in the Sky, Charlie Jane Anders, comes Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak, the sequel to Victories Greater Than Death in the thrilling adventure Unstoppable series.

They’ll do anything to be the people they were meant to be — even journey into the heart of evil.

Rachael Townsend is the first artist ever to leave Earth and journey out into the galaxy — but after an encounter with an alien artifact, she can’t make art at all.

Elza Monteiro is determined to be the first human to venture inside the Palace of Scented Tears and compete for the chance to become a princess — except that inside the palace, she finds the last person she ever wanted to see again.

Tina Mains is studying at the Royal Space Academy with her friends, but she’s not the badass space hero everyone was expecting.

Soon Rachael is journeying into a dark void, Elza is on a deadly spy mission, and Tina is facing an impossible choice that could change all her friends lives forever.

I couldn’t get into this book, maybe because I didn’t read the first one. Everything felt confusing and soaked in neon. I loved the premise, though. Three stars, possibly revisiting this one after I read the first book.

Bookshop link. Storygraph link.

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