Genre: Fantasy

Apr 06

Bite-Sized Reviews of Tyler Johnson Was Here, Dark Breaks the Dawn, Tom Sawyer and What Maya Saw

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Reviews 12 ★★★★

I’ve got four bite-sized reviews for you today: three YA books and a classic! I hope these bite-sized reviews will be enough to feed your fiction addiction! I’d read that this book was a bit grittier than other books with similar storylines, so I was ready for that when I started reading it. I would agree with that assessment, but I don’t think that it necessarily made the MC less relatable. The story is told from the POV of Tyler’s twin brother, Marvin. Marvin realizes his brother has flaws and has gotten himself involved in some things he shouldn’t, but he also knows the person Tyler is—he knows him in a way no one else can. So, when Tyler is killed, Marvin has trouble reconciling people’s reactions—both the people who want to paint Tyler as a thug and people who want to use him as some sort of symbol of… Read more »

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Apr 03

Aru Shah and the End of Time by Roshani Chokshi: This Book Is the Definition of Delightful!

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Reviews 18 ★★★★★

You guys, I think I could sit here and gush all day about this book! Just everything about it—love the characters, the setting, the pacing. And then there’s the writing … the book took me a little longer to read than usual because I sat down and underlined every line that I loved. And there were a lot of them. I regret nothing. What Fed My Addiction: Fantastic middle grade voice. The main reason I started underlining my favorite quotes was because I’m using this as a study of how to nail middle grade voice—which is tough, trust me. If I can get my book even halfway to this level of amazingness, I will die and go to writerly heaven. Chokshi manages to make Aru funny and sarcastic and flawed and still oh-so-lovable. I think that just about every middle grader on the planet will be able to relate to Aru in one way… Read more »

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Feb 17

Bite-Sized Reviews of The Belles, The Hazel Wood, The Ambrose Deception, The Altered History of Willow Sparks

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Reviews 36 ★★★★

I’ve got four bite-sized reviews for you today: two YA new releases (one of them is an audiobook), a MG contemp and a YA graphic novel. I hope these bite-sized reviews will be enough to feed your fiction addiction! The central messages in this book are fabulous! The book highlights our images of beauty and how far we will go to attain them. This is a society that sees itself as “ugly,” so people will endure great pain (and spend tons of money) in order to “fix” themselves. This is such an interesting commentary on our world, and not that far off from the truth. How many people will go to great extents to achieve a certain standard of beauty? We’re sort of obsessed. Camellia’s personal desire to be the Favorite (an official title of the Belle that works for the royal family) leads to a break in her relationship… Read more »

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Jan 18

Bite-Sized Reviews of Love, Hate & Other Filters, Chaos in Kadoma Ward, Dating Down, and Harry Potter & the Cursed Child

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Reviews 30

I’ve got four bite-sized reviews for you today, and these are pretty varied in theme, genre and format. I hope these bite-sized reviews will be enough to feed your fiction addiction! I was so excited about it when I got this book at ALA last year that I immediately sat down and started reading it in line. This was the only book that inspired me to do that (even though I was surrounded by books and had plenty of long lines to sit in). And I absolutely loved it. I finished the book upon returning home from ALA and felt like I’d just read something important—a book that opened my eyes to another culture and the struggle that many Muslim Americans face in America. The book is told mostly from Maya’s POV, but we also get short sections interspersed from the perspective of the person who eventually turns Maya’s life upside down…. Read more »

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Jan 08

Bite-Sized Reviews of Love, Life, and the List, The Young Queens, Seriously Wicked and The Wolves of Mercy Falls Series

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Reviews 38

I’ve got four bite-sized reviews of YA books today. Three books and a series! I hope these bite-sized reviews will be enough to feed your fiction addiction! This book is SO Kasie West (which is a very good thing, trust me). First off, I pretty much always love stories that involve best friends becoming more—I’m a complete sucker for that trope. But this book is a lot more than the romance. Abby is a pretty typical seventeen-year-old—she thinks she has her life pretty much figured out in a lot of ways but then something happens that shakes her belief in herself and her insecurities come rushing in. I’m sure that a lot of YA readers will be able to relate to this. Family ties are incredibly important in the story. Abby’s relationship with her mom (who struggles with agoraphobia) and her dad (who is stationed overseas, but we still get to see him via email… Read more »

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Dec 15

Island of Exiles and Sea of Strangers by Erica Cameron: Review & Giveaway

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Giveaways (Ended), Reviews 4

Today I’m featuring the first two books in Erica Cameron’s Ryogan Chronicles, a fantasy adventure series that pushes the envelope in many ways. This first book in the series throws us into a strange and deadly desert world where every day is a fight for survival. What Fed My Addiction: Utterly unique. I’ve never read anything like this series, and the world that Cameron has created is beyond anything I could possibly imagine. Like, seriously, how does she come up with all of it? It’s unmistakably brilliant. Diversity. Traditional gender roles are simply not a thing in this book. In fact, the society in the fantasy world features three completely accepted genders. In addition to that, sexuality and romantic relationships seem to be relatively fluid for the people in this society as well (and some people are asexual). This is all accepted without comment, which I loved. Family bonds. The society… Read more »

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Dec 07

Bite-Sized Reviews of Rosemarked, Turtles All the Way Down, My Name Is Jason. Mine Too, and When in Rome

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Reviews 16

I’ve got four bite-sized reviews today. It’s a bit of a mixed-bag—a YA contemp, a YA fantasy, a book of art and poetry, and an NA contemp. I used to try to combine things more logically, but then I had some reviews that I waited forever to write, which didn’t work out so well. Anyway. I hope these bite-sized reviews will be enough to feed your fiction addiction! First off, I want to point out that while this book is set in a fantasy world, there’s no actual magic involved. When the book starts, we learn that Zivah is testing to become a healer, and at first it seems like the potions might have magical properties—but really, they’re basically just medicines. The rose plague is just a plague—though a very interesting one since some people remain carriers even after they’ve seemingly beat the disease (and they eventually die from it… Read more »

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Nov 21

Whichwood by Tahereh Mafi: A Disturbingly Dark Middle Grade Read

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Reviews 28 ★★★

My thirteen-year-old daughter and I both loved Furthermore—she read it first and immediately asked if and when there would be a sequel. So, I was delighted when I got a copy of Whichwood at ALA Annual earlier this year. I couldn’t wait to tell her! But something odd happened: I handed her the book and she took it eagerly—but the next day she reported that she wasn’t interested in reading it. As is typical with my kids, I could get no explanation from her, just “Eh, I flipped through it and I don’t think I’d like it.” Of course, I tried to remind her how much she loved the first book, but to my displeasure, she never did pick the book up again. I was mystified … Until I read the book myself. This book is not my daughter’s cup of tea, and I fear that will be the case for a… Read more »

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Nov 06

Bite-Sized Reviews of Now Is Everything, The First Kiss Hypothesis, Frost Like Night, The Raven Cycle Series and November 9

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Reviews 22

I’ve got five bite-sized reviews today. Most of these are YA, but the last one is New Adult. I thought about trying to split these up, but I don’t read enough NA lately to warrant a full set of bite-sized reviews, and I just decided to go ahead and put it with these YA reads. I hope these bite-sized reviews will be enough to feed your fiction addiction! So, I picked up this book on a total whim. I was glancing through Twitter and saw this adorable pic that the author’s daughter had drawn telling people to read her mom’s book. Since I’m a sucker for that sort of thing, I immediately headed over to Goodreads to check it out, and it sounded like the type of book I’d love! I headed over to Edelweiss, downloaded it and immediately started reading! (See, I wasn’t kidding when I said it was… Read more »

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Oct 11

The Knowing by Sharon Cameron: 5-Star Review & Giveaway!

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Giveaways (Ended), Reviews 12 ★★★★★

Oh. My. Goodness. Do I love these books! If you haven’t read my gushing review of The Forgetting, you should go read it. And then come back here and find out why this second book was just as good. The Knowing is a companion to the first book and takes place a few hundred years in the future—so, by this point, Nadia and Gray’s story is ancient history. (If you go in expecting to see more of them, you’ll be disappointed, so I want to set your expectations accordingly. But we do still get a few little reminders of their story.) What Fed My Addiction: An exploration of memory. So, just like the first book, this book explores how memories shape our lives, but it comes at the subject from a completely opposite angle. Hundreds of years after the events of The Forgetting, we find that Canaan’s society has completely changed… Read more »

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