Source: NetGalley

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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Mar 16

Bite-Sized Reviews of Lake Silence, I Believe in a Thing Called Love, Deception So Dark and Some Kind of Happiness

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Reviews 26 ★★★

I’ve got four bite-sized reviews for you today: one adult, two YA and a MG. (I know—I considered splitting them up, but this is what I’ve been reading lately, and two of them are newer releases that I really wanted to get reviewed). I hope these bite-sized reviews will be enough to feed your fiction addiction! Lake Silence is being called The Others #6, but it’s really more of a spinoff series. It focuses on completely different characters, with only a few minor mentions of our friends in Lakeside Courtyard. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s good to know up front. For some reason, I just didn’t connect to this story as much as I did the original Others Series—I think that’s mostly due to the fact that I didn’t connect to Vicki, the MC, nearly as much. She’s got a lot of trust issues when it comes… Read more »

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Feb 08

By a Charm and a Curse by Jaime Questell: Review, Giveaway & Questell’s Top Ten Addictions

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Author Top Ten Lists, Giveaways (Ended), Reviews 20 ★★★★

Buy Links: Who doesn’t love a book about a magical circus? A circus with both a charm and a curse? Sign me up! What Fed My Addiction: The circus atmosphere. I don’t know what it is about a traveling circus or carnival, but I just love this setting. There’s already such a sense of awe and wonder there that it works really well for a fantastical story. Plus, they’re a little creepy (I think I always think back to Something Wicked This Way Comes), which works well for this story. Emmaline’s curse. The curse itself is, again, creepy in all the best ways. Emmaline is turned into something along the lines of a living puppet. She’s solid, her senses are dulled, and she’s suddenly living a sort of shadow life. There was a lot to play with here, and Questell does it well. You couldn’t help but feel sorry for Emmaline as… Read more »

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Feb 07

Bite-Sized Reviews of Dare Mighty Things, The Peculiar Night of the Blue Heart, The List & Welcome Home

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Reviews 16 ★★★½

I’ve got four bite-sized reviews for you today: two middle grades, a YA audiobook and a YA anthology. Unfortunately, I didn’t absolutely LOVE any of these, but I did enjoy them all. I hope these bite-sized reviews will be enough to feed your fiction addiction! I had high hopes for Dare Mighty Things, but when I started reading it originally, I was in a reading slump and couldn’t get into it. I eventually put the book down and then got the audiobook from the library. This was a good choice for me for this book. I enjoyed the narration by Soneela Nankani—I thought it enlivened the story since the MC’s (Cass’s) voice can be a little dry (she is a very logical thinker and, especially at the beginning of the book is a bit detached from others and from her own emotions). The story was somewhat similar to Nyxia, and I’ll… Read more »

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Feb 02

American Panda by Gloria Chao: Authentic and Moving

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Reviews 16 ★★★★½

American Panda is a truly authentic exploration of the cultural clash that happens for many young Asian Americans whose parents hold tight to their roots. The book is obviously deeply personal, and it resonates with the reader because of that. What Fed My Addiction: Cultural ties. As I said in my intro, this book presents the issue of growing up in America, surrounded by American culture and values, and how that can be difficult with first-generation parents who were raised with a completely different set of values and cultural mores. Mei has always been a “good girl.” She has tried hard to please her parents, and she sees the value in their deeply seeded Taiwanese culture. At the same time, she struggles to find herself when her parents’ expectations start to clash with her own wants and needs. She has to decide if she will live for her parents or live for herself—a… Read more »

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Jan 22

Say You’ll Remember Me by Katie McGarry: Review & Giveaway

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Giveaways (Ended), Reviews 44 ★★★★½

Say You’ll Remember Me is just what I’ve come to expect to Katie McGarry. It’s the type of contemporary that makes me laugh and makes me cry and leaves me truly thinking about all the complexities of the themes. These are my favorite types of contemporaries! What Fed My Addiction: Elle’s Complex family dynamics. Elle’s family life is complicated, to say the least. But I love that McGarry doesn’t give us straight-up villainous, controlling parents. At so many points through the book, they show that they truly care about Elle and think that they’re looking out for her best interests. They pressure her into a lot of things, but they really do try to give her a choice, at least from their perspective—they sit down with her and talk to her about her role on the campaign and ask if she’s okay with it. It’s not that they don’t give her a… Read more »

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Dec 19

Meet Cute: Some People Are Destined to Meet: Anthology Review

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

This fun anthology gives us the genesis of fourteen different relationships (or, at least, possible relationships). Most of the stories are contemporaries, but there are a few fantasy/sci fi stories to tempt those of us who like to escape reality now and again! I wrote down a quick review of each story as I read the anthology because they’re all so different, it’s hard to review the book as a whole. Here are my thoughts: “Siege Etiquette” by Katie Cotugno: 4 stars This little story was a surprise, told in second-person POV. The story centers around two characters who’ve known each other their whole lives but find a connection while hiding out from the police at an underage party (in the bathroom). The story was a lot less “cute” than bittersweet, but I loved how much story Cotugno managed to stuff into such a small package! “Print Shop” by Nina… 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 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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