February Reads!

[tjs_whatnot]

Last year I broke my reading slump, but I was so shocked by it that I was ill-prepared to organize my cataloging, let alone my thoughts and reviews. I'll probably spend this whole year fixing that mistake because I don't want to forget one book I read last year. (Nevermind, I FINISHED!

I'm determined not to do that again this year. So here:

What I read in January 2024

Books Read/Listened to in February 2024:

Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

Cute. I don't know how I found this book and added it to my Libby holds, but it came to me at the right time as I was just finishing an audio book and was looking for another one and I had a long drive in my future.

I liked it because it was a backstage pass of a book about a subject I'm fascinated with: female comedy writers in a SNL-like show. So much so that I totally cast Tina Fey as the main character and Colin Jost as one of her friends/co-workers. I liked the love interest too--actually I liked him more. The main character did a few stupid things that made no sense but…🤷‍♂️ I guess people do that sometimes?

This Winter by Alice Oseman ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

OK. I have mixed feelings about this short novella. It takes place after Charlie comes home from hospital, but before Nick goes away to university and it's Christmas time. I'll cut for spoilers. My mixed feelings are about Charlie. For the first time ever, I found myself getting upset with him and I didn't know what to do with these feelings. I think it's because I'd read Solitaire and have such a heartmelt for Tori Spring and what an amazing sister she is and Charlie doesn't seem to give any of that back to her. Yes, I know he's in a dark place, but IDK. It just hit me weird.

It was a tough read, but I feel it was a necessary read nonetheless.

Wolfsong by T.J. Klune ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

There were a lot of reasons I should have not liked this book and only one thing going for it. The reasons I shouldn't like it? Werewolves. That was the main one, and there was one other thing and I'm trying to find a way to delicately talk about it, and also not spoil it for anyone. There's just a relationship that bumps precariously close to one of my only true triggers. Pedophilia-- wait, come back!

I get it, I do. I threw “100 Years of Solitude” across the room and refused to read further when an adult male mentioned an attraction to a child. I got RIDICULOUSLY angry at the end of “Breaking Dawn” when the only character I cared about at all imprinted on a child, so yeah… there is a relationship in this book that should have had me running for the hills.

But the one thing the book had going for it?

T.J. Klune.

I trusted him and he did NOT disappoint. In fact-- I've never loved him more. All the reasons that pedophilia in stories is my Hard Pass (sexualizing of a child, using a child's innocence for adult character development, lack of autonomy and consent) were not present here. I could go on and on about this, and I might in the comments if anyone wants to talk further, but I'll leave it at this: I heard a reviewer touch on the issue by calling it the “Reverse Renesmee,” and that's the most accurate description I could imagine.

I really think everyone should read this book. And then they should come back here and talk to me about it nonstop until the end of time.

Ravensong by T.J. Klune ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

And just when you think Wolfsong can't get any better, you realize it's an ENTIRE series of books. ❤️ This one picks up where Wolfsong ended-- while also giving us some of the story from that book from a different point of view. Each book in the series has a different protagonist and while I loved this book a lot, I really missed being in the mind of the last book's main character. ❤️OX❤️

Heartstopper 5 by Alice Oseman ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

ALL IS FORGIVEN CHARLIE SPRING!!

The only thing wrong with this book is that it was too short!

It sort of touches on what the novellas “Nick and Charlie” and “This Winter” did, but in a more… Heartstoppy way? Like in a heartwarming and wholesome(ish) way? Not in the heartstompy way the novellas do.

The Stars and the Blackness Between Them by Junauda Petrus ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

My first f/f of 2024. This is YA and so completely different from anything I've ever read before. It's a dual POV story about an island girl (Tobago) who was ostracized and shipped to the states by her religious mother when she was caught with another girl, and the girl she meets who is obsessed with Prince and a prisoner and death row after she is diagnosed with a fatal disease.

Fun stuff.

And it was really good and really powerful, but it also had a lot of untapped potential to be so much more. I feel like this might have been the author's first book? I will definitely check out anything else they write because they have the something and I want to be there when they realize it.

All M Rage by Sabaa Tahir ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

I think I found this book on a list of YA books that Everyone Must Read and yeah…I would agree. So very powerful and achy and had me uncontrollably bawling for the injustice of it all. This is also told by multiple POVs and you feel for all of them and they all give you a piece of the whole.

And while I did feel for all of them, I got very attached and protective of the boy Saluhdin and I couldn't understand why-- his experiences and life are not even close to mine--he's a first generation from Pakistan with an alcoholic father and a sick mother, but there is this one thing…that I won't spoil. Only to say, there was this line he tells this doctor that wanted to give him some medical history about himself that involved a childhood trauma that he was too young to remember. He stops her and says something like “My mind might have blocked it out, but the body remembers” and I remember having to pull over and just sit with that, let myself absorb and process and apply it to myself in a lot of big and small ways.

I instantly aligned my allegiance to him, which made the rest of the book really hard to read and so powerful at the end. ❤️

If This Gets Out by Sophie Gonzales and Cale Dietrich ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This was such a great reprieve of a book. It reads a bit like a bandom fic and I was THERE for it. It had Bi-Awakening, hidden relationship, coming out, young people sorting their shit.

It was delightful.

 

 

And there you have it, two months in a row! GO ME!

Comments

[profiterole_reads]

Yay! I've read the Alice Oseman ones, the TJ Klune ones and The Stars and the Blackness Between Them. Much love for everything!

[tjs_whatnot]

I'm slowly becoming obsessed with TJ Klune. What's your fave?

[profiterole_reads]

The Wolfsong series and The House in the Cerulean Sea.

[tjs_whatnot]

I slowed down my speeding through the Green Creek series and read The House in the Cerulean Sea. I was not expecting to love it as much as I did. It snuck up on me the ridiculous smile I have on my face now just thinking about it. ❤️❤️

[tinkaton]

I've read a few TJ Klune books but I haven't gotten to the Wolfsong books yet, though everyone seems to like them a lot. Actually I think I put the first book on hold on Libby already because there's a long wait, so hopefully I get to reading it sometime soon!

[tjs_whatnot]

OMG! I'm sorry I'm just seeing this now. But maybe there's been enough time past that you've gotten your Libby hold and started reading? I'm just about finished with the 4th one and I've already re-held Wolfsong because the idea of this story being over is unacceptable to me. ❤️📚🏳️‍🌈🐺❤️🧙‍♀️

[tinkaton]

No worries! Unfortunately I'm still *checks Libby* 14 weeks out on my hold sjdhfksdf I could get it faster as a physical copy but I've got so much to read already I'll just let it come to me in its own time... Sounds like the last book is just as good too?

[tjs_whatnot]

Haha! They really are worth the wait to listen to, the way that Klune wrote them and the way Kirt Graves reads them are just a match made in heaven. My Libby is the only one that has the audio of Wolfsong but my Hoopla has all the rest and there is no wait on Hoopla so, I only have to wait once. ❤️❤️