Review | Pax Sampson Vol 1: The Cookout by Rashad Doucet & Jason Reeves

March 14, 2021March 14, 2021 DeAnneLeave a comment

Pax Samson: The Cookout is the first volume in a new action-packed, fantasy trilogy that depicts a world struggling to find peace in the midst of threats, and a young superhero chef torn between following his passion and following in his family’s footsteps.

When it comes to the kitchen, no one knows cooking better than twelve-year-old Pax Samson. He’s a hero when it comes to testing recipes and supplying copious amounts of Dragon Noodle Soup at his family’s cookouts. It’s tough being a master chef, though, when the rest of his family are world-famous superheroes, and they expect Pax to take up the beacon to keep the world safe with his telekinetic powers.

Pax’s home planet of Soltellus is home to all walks of life, including humans, gods, as well as elves, orcs, dragons, sprites and other fantasy races known as the “Enchanted” all living in a modern society similar to our own. Among them is the Samson family, led by the fearless and mighty Grandma Samson, the greatest superhero to ever live and the person responsible for always saving Soltellus when trouble strikes. She’s been doing it for hundreds of years, but she’s ready for the younger generation of Samsons, including Pax, to step up.

When the mad god Odin, long-time enemy to the Enchanted race and arch-rival to Grandma, resurfaces in another attempt to regain power, Pax will attempt to put his training into practice, but ends up just making things worse. Tempted to hang up the superhero cape and stick to the kitchen, Pax faces the toughest decision yet when a legendary savior of the Enchanted people arrives, along with a startling discovery that there might be parts of the Soltellus history that are wrong. Pax, determined to protect his family and friends, will do everything he can to stop the new threats set on disrupting the peace between humans and the Enchanted.

Just the premise and cover had me wanting to pick this one up and I was not disappointed. While many may look at this like a fun, superhero story with mystical races and situations – it is far deeper than that. It hints to many real world issues that are prevalent today and the personal journey that Pax goes through is also a very real situation that many people have to work through. Deciding on your path and journey is something that pretty much everyone deals with and the conversations that Pax had with his family were real and refreshing. The color palette and art style went perfectly with the setting and scenes and were fun and dynamic. I definitely look forward to reading the future volumes and finding out what else happens with Pax, his family and friends.

Happy reading!

Review | Clarity and Connection by Yung Pueblo

March 13, 2021March 13, 2021 DeAnneLeave a comment

In Clarity and Connection, Yung Pueblo explores how intense emotions accumulate in our subconscious and condition us to act and react the ways we do. With his distinctive voice, at once spare and evocative, the author guides us through the excavation and release of the past that is required for growth. On the topic of intimate relationships, he reflects:

find a partner who accepts you as you are but also inspires you to evolve because they take their own growth seriously. love will not seek to change you. it will embrace you so unconditionally that you will feel safe enough to heal the old and put effort into the new. the courage you both have to stay committed to the inner journey will reflect brightly on your relationship.

This is a poetry collection that you will have to take your time with and sit with. A lot of it is discussing rising from trauma, healthy and toxic friendships/relationships and being able to grow from your past. Many of the messages do seem to be the same sentiments repeated, so many of the shorter passages could easily be used as mantras. There’s a good mix of prose like writing as well as modern poetry. The overall messages in this collection are useful and beneficial.

Happy reading!

Review | Vampire: The Masquerade Vol 1

March 12, 2021March 12, 2021 DeAnneLeave a comment

Immerse yourself in the hit comic series based in the world of the international best-selling tabletop role playing game, Vampire: The Masquerade!

When Cecily Bain, an enforcer for the Twin Cities’ vampiric elite, takes a mysterious new vampire under her wing, she’s dragged into an insidious conspiracy.

Will she be able to escape with her unlife and protect her aging, Alzheimer’s-afflicted sister, or will she be yet another pawn sacrificed to maintain the age-old secret: that vampires exist among the living.

I was intrigued when I found that there was a new graphic novel series coming out of Vampire: The Masquerade, being someone who was familiar with the role playing game. While I did enjoy the storyline as it came together, I feel like this would be hard to get into for someone who didn’t have some base knowledge of the world. There isn’t a ton of backstory, but some clan information and world information is revealed throughout the story. I would be interested to see where the story goes and did like that there were game sheets in the back.

Happy reading!

Blog Tour | Stalked by Secrets by Deborah Fletcher Mello

March 9, 2021March 9, 2021 DeAnneLeave a comment

If she wants to know his secrets…

This time it could be fatal.

Journalist Neema Kamau will risk anything to uncover the truth. She’ll even get close to politician Davis Black in order to investigate his possible organized crime connections. But when her professional interest turns personal, Neema knows that she risks losing the story—and the man—if she tells Davis the truth. And the stalker who’s circling them both might rob her of the chance to make things right…

I think this is one of those instances where I should have read the previous books in the series first, as that may have given me more of a foundation, but I did still enjoy this story. The beginning was pretty slow for my taste but once it got going it was an enjoyable read with some good twists. I would say that the suspense was on the low side of suspense, but the romance portion was good. I did feel like the setting and situations were very realistic and probably true in their depictions, and enjoyed how real that felt. I would definitely read more of this author’s writing and may pick up the other books in the series to see if they do lend more to the story.

Deborah Fletcher Mello has been writing since forever and can’t imagine herself doing anything else. Her first romance novel, Take Me to Heart, earned her a 2004 Romance Slam Jam nomination for Best New Author, and in 2009, she won an RT Reviewer’s Choice Award for her ninth novel, Tame a Wild Stallion. Born and raised in Connecticut, Deborah now considers home to be wherever the moment moves her.

Happy reading!

Review | Letters to Jupiter by Lotté Jean

March 8, 2021March 8, 2021 DeAnneLeave a comment

Letters to Jupiter is a poetry collection that explores a tale of the fragility of the mind. With each poetic letter, written by an unknown narrator seeking to let go of the past, we see life at its darkest time, brightest, and examine how much a person can grow after a life-changing event.

This poetry collection is another example of the type of modern poetry that I do enjoy. The length of the poems vary depending on the subject matter and there is a definite progression of the poems throughout the collection. Many of them when you sit with them for a minute are poignant and touch on deep emotional experiences. Some of them weave together truly beautiful phrases and language, and even have a lyrical feel to them. All in all I really enjoyed this collection and the progression and growth that was represented within it.

Happy reading!

Review | Home is Not a Country by Safia Elhillo

March 7, 2021March 7, 2021 DeAnneLeave a comment

Nima doesn’t feel understood. By her mother, who grew up far away in a different land. By her suburban town, which makes her feel too much like an outsider to fit in and not enough like an outsider to feel like that she belongs somewhere else. At least she has her childhood friend Haitham, with whom she can let her guard down and be herself.Until she doesn’t.

As the ground is pulled out from under her, Nima must grapple with the phantom of a life not chosen, the name her parents didn’t give her at birth: Yasmeen. But that other name, that other girl, might just be more real than Nima knows. And more hungry.And the life Nima has, the one she keeps wishing were someone else’s. . .she might have to fight for it with a fierceness she never knew she had.

I was instantly intrigued by this title when I saw it was compared to Elizabeth Acevedo and Jason Reynolds so I wanted to give it a read. It’s similar in style as it is a story told in verse and features and American born Sudanese (I believe) girl trying to find her place and also trying to figure out her own identity and being comfortable in it. She faces a number of instances of hate due to how she is perceived and is caught in between being an American and identifying with the country her mother came from. The examination of place and identity was definitely poignant and raw and when we got the magical aspect that was a nice surprise. I really felt that that was when her exploration of self and place really came to a climax and loved how it was handled. It’s a beautiful story that is so valuable right now.

Happy reading!

Review | Let Me Tell You by Shirley Jackson

March 4, 2021March 4, 2021 DeAnne2 Comments

Shirley Jackson is one of the most important American writers of the last hundred years. Since her death in 1965, her place in the landscape of twentieth-century fiction has grown only more exalted.

As we approach the centenary of her birth comes this astonishing compilation of fifty-six pieces—more than forty of which have never been published before. Two of Jackson’s children co-edited this volume, culling through the vast archives of their mother’s papers at the Library of Congress, selecting only the very best for inclusion.

Let Me Tell You brings together the deliciously eerie short stories Jackson is best known for, along with frank, inspiring lectures on writing; comic essays about her large, boisterous family; and whimsical drawings. Jackson’s landscape here is most frequently domestic: dinner parties and bridge, household budgets and homeward-bound commutes, children’s games and neighborly gossip. But this familiar setting is also her most subversive: She wields humor, terror, and the uncanny to explore the real challenges of marriage, parenting, and community—the pressure of social norms, the veins of distrust in love, the constant lack of time and space.

For the first time, this collection showcases Shirley Jackson’s radically different modes of writing side by side. Together they show her to be a magnificent storyteller, a sharp, sly humorist, and a powerful feminist.

I cannot find any patience for those people who believe that you start writing when you sit down at your desk and pick up your pen and finish writing when you put down your pen again; a writer is always writing, seeing everything through a thin mist of words, fitting swift little descriptions to everything he sees, always noticing.
~Memory and Delusion (lecture on the craft of writing)

As an avid fan of Shirley Jackson’s work, I was excited to finally pluck this one off of my bookshelf and get it off of my TBR. If you have never ready any of Jackson’s work I will say that I would not recommend starting with this, I would start with her collection of short stories containing The Lottery.

Having already read a good number of her short stories and novels, this was a wonderful collection of her previously unpublished or uncollected short stories, essays, humor and lectures. Being someone who enjoys the art of writing myself, I especially enjoyed her lectures on the craft of writing. They especially spoke to me when she discussed how she was always composing stories, even while doing every day things.

I’m really happy I was able to explore these stories from her, especially since they were ones I had never read. Anyone who enjoys her work will enjoy this one and be happy to add it to their library.

Happy reading!

Blog Tour | Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers | Review

March 1, 2021March 1, 2021 DeAnneLeave a comment

HONEY GIRL (Park Row Books; February 23, 2021; $17.99) by Morgan Rogers is a stunning #ownvoices debut, a charming, lyrical, and introspective romantic coming-of-age story about Grace Porter – millennial, Black woman, astronomy Ph.D. – who wakes up after a wild night in Vegas married to a woman she doesn’t know.

Strait-laced and structured all her life, Porter now faces life without a plan for the first time ever. Between her disappointed military father, the competitive job market, and a consuming sense of aimlessness, finding and falling in love with her wife across the country seems to be the only right answer. But Porter’s problems are just as big in Brooklyn as they are anywhere else, and she realizes she’s going to have to face adulthood whether she’s ready or not.

I would say that this is a great book for anyone on the precipice of their adult life and at a crossroads. It explores a lot of topics, ranging from depression to more coming of age aspects. It illustrates the feeling of being overwhelmed and unsure of where you want to go, which is often the case after finishing something as all consuming as a college degree (or in this case PhD). I really enjoyed how fleshed out Grace was, she was a wonderfully complex and real character. Some of the other characters weren’t as well established as her and for me some of the relationships weren’t completely believable in some aspects but these were very small nit-picking things. I really enjoyed this novel, and really appreciate that it was an #ownvoices debut novel, I definitely look forward to more from Morgan Rogers in the future.

Morgan Rogers is a queer black millennial. She writes books for queer girls that are looking for their place in the world. She lives in Maryland and has a Shih Tzu named Nico and a cat named Grace that she would love to write into a story one day. HONEY GIRL is her debut novel.

Social Links | Author Website | Twitter: @garnetmorgue | Instagram: @garnetmorgue | Goodreads

Happy reading!

Review | Waiting on a Bright Moon by JY Yang

February 26, 2021February 26, 2021 DeAnneLeave a comment

Xin is an ansible, using her song magic to connect the originworld of the Imperial Authority and its far-flung colonies— a role that is forced upon magically-gifted women “of a certain closeness”. When a dead body comes through her portal at a time of growing rebellion, Xin is drawn deep into a station-wide conspiracy along with Ouyang Suqing, one of the station’s mysterious, high-ranking starmages.

I really enjoyed the glimpse of the world that Waiting on a Bright Moon introduced us to, but I did find myself wishing there was backstory and more depth to some of the characters. As a snippet into another world this was a good taste and introduced integral characters to the main plot point. The writing style was really lyrical and immersive, which was beautiful to read. I just wanted more from this one and could see a whole novel built on some of these characters or their back stories.

Happy reading!

Blog Tour | The Vineyard at Painted Moon by Susan Mallery

February 25, 2021February 25, 2021 DeAnneLeave a comment

MacKenzie Dienes’s life isn’t perfect, but it’s as close as she could ever hope to get. Her marriage to Rhys, her best friend’s brother, is more friendship than true love. But passion is highly overrated, right? And she loves her job as the winemaker at Bel Apres, her in-laws’ vineyard. So what if it’s a family business and, even after decades of marriage and incredible professional success, she’s still barred from the family business meetings? It’s all enough…until one last night spent together leads to an incredibly honest—and painful—conversation. Rhys suggests that they divorce. They haven’t had a marriage in a long time and, while he wants her to keep her job at Bel Apres, he doesn’t think they should be married any longer. Shocked, MacKenzie reels at the prospect of losing the only family she’s ever really known…even though she knows deep in her heart that Rhys is right.

But when MacKenzie discovers she’s pregnant, walking away to begin a new life isn’t so easy. She never could have anticipated the changes it would bring to the relationships she cherishes most: her relationship with Barbara, her mother-in-law and partner at Bel Apres, Stephanie, her sister-in-law and best friend, and Bel Apres, the company she’s worked so hard to put on the map.

MacKenzie has always dreamed of creating a vineyard of her own, a chance to leave a legacy for her unborn child. So when the opportunity arises, she jumps at it and builds the Vineyard at Painted Moon. But following her dreams will come at a high price—one that MacKenzie isn’t so sure she’s willing to pay…

The more I read of Susan Mallery’s writing the more I enjoy it, I’m definitely thinking I’m going to need to pick up more of her books when I’m looking for chick lit. This book really covers the transitive nature of life and truly coming into your own when you discover that what you have may not really be what you need. Even though it was hard at times I really enjoyed Mackenzie’s journey as she found herself after the loss of her marriage and presumed place. It was interesting to see how relationships and actions towards her changed once her marriage ended, but also heartbreaking in some ways. This book will make you feel a wide range of emotions as you follow along with her story.

#1 NYT bestselling author Susan Mallery writes heartwarming, humorous novels about the relationships that define our lives―family, friendship, romance. She’s known for putting nuanced characters in emotional situations that surprise readers to laughter. Beloved by millions, her books have been translated into 28 languages. Susan lives in Washington with her husband, two cats, and a small poodle with delusions of grandeur. Visit her at SusanMallery.com.