young adult – Bookmarked!

#cybilsreads: Nimona

“Wow” was all I could say as soon as I finished Noelle Stevenson’s “Nimona.” Very few books manage to surprise me these days, and I must say Nimona blindsided me — I wasn’t expecting to fall completely in love with this book!

Nimona is a young girl with the ability to shapeshift, and she signs on to be the sidekick of the evil villain Lord Ballister Blackheart. Nimona and Blackheart scheme to expose the treachery of the kingdom’s champion (and Blackheart’s nemesis) Ambrosius Goldenloin and the Institution of Law Enforcement.

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Longbow Girl

The place we’re staying at right now (while our house is getting renovated) has a big tub, and over the summer it quickly became a favorite reading spot when it was too darn hot to do anything else.

This is how I ended up reading Longbow Girl by Linda Davies. Set in the wild Welsh countryside, Merry Owen’s family is struggling to keep their small farm from the clutches of their aristocratic neighbors, the De Courcys.

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Boy Meets Boy

Today I came from the Flips Flipping Pages book discussion for June, David Levithan’s “Boy Meets Boy,” which was chosen by this month’s moderator Orly in celebration of Pride Month, and came right on the heels of the historic decision on same-sex marriage laid down by the Supreme Court of the United States.

(I was going to say this is my first David Levithan, but a search on this blog revealed that back in 2009 I apparently read (and enjoyed) a lesser-known work of his: “Marly’s Ghost,” a clever take on Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol, set around Valentine’s Day and with teen characters. )

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P.S. I Still Love You

I was hedging on whether I would read this book or not, but I’ve been seeing ~~violent reactions~~ reviews on my feed and curiosity got the better of me, so I decided to bump it up my TBR this weekend.

“P.S. I Still Love You” is the sequel to Jenny Han’s “To All the Boys I Loved Before,” which I thought was pretty charming. In this sequel, Lara Jean has a boyfriend (DON’T read after the cut if you don’t want spoilers!), and she finds out being in a relationship is not as simple as she thought it would be.

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Gayle Forman in Manila

This weekend, I had the privilege of meeting New York Times bestselling author Gayle Forman, who was on her Philippine tour.

Gayle Forman is the author of the critically acclaimed “If I Stay” and its sequel “Where She Went,” and a second duet of novels, “Just One Day” and “Just One Year.”

“If I Stay” features Mia, a seveteen year old with a happy family, the boy of her dreams, and a promising future in music when tragic accident strikes. Mia finds herself caught in the in-between, contemplating the choice between life and death. The story continues in “Where She Went,” told from the point of view of Mia’s boyfriend Adam who grapples with life in the aftermath.

In “Just One Day” good girl Allyson Healey is on the last day of her European tour when she meets Dutch street actor Willem and goes with him on a whirlwind tour of Paris, twenty-four hours that irrevocably change Allyson’s life. The companion novel, “Just One Year” chronicles how their Paris interlude affects Willem in turn.

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