Mini Reviews With Minna (because you know you love me)

This past week I’ve been granted with access to a lot of new novels. Actually, I still have 11 unread books from the library, which I’m super excited to read (and should stop procrastinating because remember that time you had $20 in overdue fees?). I also bought some books, stole some books, and ate some books. Without further ado, here are my reviews of the books I read last week. Does not include books I’m halfway through or books I don’t remember reading. Also, my definition of a week is rather flimsy because time hates me personally. Okay! Here are the reviews.

This Book Is Gay: ★★☆☆☆
This book actually provided some adequate advice for people of different sexualities, and I felt like it discussed some things very well. However, in the stereotypes chart there was some transphobic language, and there was some aphobic language towards the end of the book. A lot of the humour was really forced, and read as being immature. The definition of bisexual was also really narrow and exclusionary. The book claimed to span a lot of different sexualities and genders, but pretty much stuck to gender binaries and mostly talked about gay and lesbian people. Which would be fine if this book wasn’t marketed as being about all sexualities and genders. The topic of religion was not handled well, becoming very generalizing at times. I’m giving this book two stars not because I believe there is anything wrong with the LGBT+ community (which there isn’t) but because it was not written in a inclusive or mature way.

The Accident Season: ★★★★★
In a very sharp turn from my last review, I thought that The Accident Season was a fantastic book. Usually, I don’t particularly like magical realism because it doesn’t get explained a lot and that annoys me. But this story, while being magical realism, explained just enough to help me understand but not enough to ruin the aura of paranormality. The style of writing was so gorgeous it could be a Taylor Swift song, promise. I fell in love with every single one of the characters from page 1, except maybe Sam. I don’t know, Sam is a shady name. Moving on! The premise of this story was both heartbreaking and fascinating, and I thought the way it played out was really interesting. The story was just so beautiful in so many ways and I died. It was also very creepy and dealt a lot with secrets, which I adored and related to quite a bit. Extremely good storytelling. I still can’t get over it. I went into this book with sky high expectations and it met them all.

Wonder Woman Volume 2: Guts: ★★★★☆
I would like to preface this review by saying that this is a comic book, and usually I don’t really read comic books. But I love DC’s New 52, so I decided to give the Wonder Woman series a shot, because I love Wonder Woman. Each story just takes you on this wild ride of adventure and pretty art and murder, which is great. Also, new characters! Not just Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor! Hurrah for Brian Azzarello. Did I mention that these comic books have Greek mythology incorporated? Don’t mind me, I’m just going to run off into the sunset and marry it at dawn. Small star deduction because I feel like the scene changing can get a little confusing at times, and you might not realize who’s who if you didn’t have that weird Percy Jackson phase. (Stop pointing at me. You had one too.) The twist murdered my heart. And soul. Excuse me but this week I was murdered many ways and I blame the books.

Simon Vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda: ★★★★★
Excuse me but this was cute and gay and sad and I loved it for all those reasons. It’s one of those stories where you wanna punch a character in anger on one page and you squeal on the next. Very diverse range of emotions going on here. It also made me want to eat Oreos, which is unfair because I’m not allowed to eat Oreos. The romance was one of my favourites of all time, because it played out beautifully and was adorable and unique and so so well written. Every one of the characters had a very distinct personality, which was nice because I could really tell them all apart from each other, even though I thought Abby was called Abbey for half the book. And I never saw Blue’s identity coming! This might just be because I’m an unobservant starfish, but I actually didn’t see it coming and I didn’t think it was too unbelievable. Yay on this book for being awesome! Now let me run to go get Leah On The Offbeat and sue Becky Albertalli if Leah and Abby don’t get together because the chemistry was so real y’all.

When Dimple Met Rishi: ★★★☆☆
I have such mixed emotions on this book I can’t even. I mean, I thought that an almost-400-pages contemporary might have some actual romantic buildup? Sue me for thinking such an absurd thing! Sorry, that sounded bitter. Let’s talk about what I liked first. I really liked the exposure it gave to Indian culture, which is shockingly underrepresented in YA fiction. The whole premise of the coding camp and the photography activity were also pretty cool. The side romance? Very very cute. Dimple Shah? I mostly thought she was a cool character. However, the focus of this book goes very quickly to being about coding with a strong girl character to being about an underdeveloped romance where I want to strangle both characters. I mean! I get that it’s a romance, but you should never ever sacrifice the personalities of both characters to get them to be in a relationship. Instant romance wrecker. Also, the fact that the talent show (remind me why it needs to exist) got more page time than the actual coding competition drove me insane. Someone remind me why I spent so long wanting to read this book please and thanks.

Strange The Dreamer: ★★★★☆
Laini Taylor is such a great fantasy writer it’s honestly incredible. I just flat out adored this book! And now I want to live in Lazlo’s library please and thanks. The worldbuilding was so absolutely excellent I promise you. It was amazing. We’re all just going to ignore that my favourite character was the six year old creepy girl who can bind ghosts to her will. Yeah. That’s normal. (Her name is just one letter off from mine? Minya/Minna? I want an undead army now wait don’t call the cops.) Sarai’s power? Quite original, very cool, super great. All the characters were well developed and the plot was strong as heck. My only qualm? A case of instalove. The relationship was cute and all, but in a 500+ page book you absolutely have time for more development please and thanks. But it’s such a good fantasy? I wish there were more fantasies like Strange The Dreamer because fantasy is my favourite genre and this was so well done. (Quick note: every time they said “strange the dreamer” in some form, the CinemaSins voice was in my head shouting “roll credits!” It was as weird as it sounds.)

        Anyway, that’s all for now. I might update this post to include The Marrow Thieves and The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue, which are the two books I’m currently reading. Tell me if you’ve read any of these books, and if so, what did you think? Did you agree with my star ratings or am I just a limp piece of chicken trying to have an opinion? Do you like comic books?

       Have fun reading, and try to find The Accident Season, Strange the Dreamer, and Simon Vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda at your local library!

Minna Potter

Her Crooked Shelf