Candy Bunny Reader

A new series where I talk and gush about authors whom I've read a lot from and love! The first Lucy Maud Montgomery book I read and loved was Anne of Green Gables , back when I was in middle school. It wasn't until my college years I found out there were more Anne books and she's written other books not about Anne during her lifetime.  I read the first two Anne sequels ( Anne of Avonlea and Anne of the Island ) and enjoyed them both! I can't say the same for Anne of Windy Poplars , the 4th book. I DNF it.  I found out on TV Tropes (link here , look at "Creator Backlash") that LM Montgomery didn't actually like writing most of the sequels of Anne of Green Gables . She put so many sequels out because the public and her publisher kept demanding it. Believe it or not, Anne of Windy Poplars was actually the 7th book published. It's like the Narnia series by CS Lewis  where the books were published out of order. So Windy Poplars is the 4th book in the ser...

  Fun fact: I actually read part of this series way back when I was in middle school, but I never read all of the volumes. Now I'm planning on reading all of them! Yotsuba&! by Kiyohiko Azuma is a cute, chill, slice of life series about a little girl named Yotsuba, her adoptive father, and their new neighbors. Every chapter follows Yotsuba as she goes on little adventures when she becomes fascinated with seemingly everyday items and occurences, from air conditioners to cicadas. The humor in the series often comes from Yotsuba misunderstanding things.  I enjoyed this series when I read part of it as a kid, but I think I love it even more as an adult! I think it's because it's such a sweet and heartwarming series about everyday life with such lovable characters. I definitely needed this book more as an adult especially when life gets so stressful. This first volume got 5 stars from me. Excited to read the rest of the series!

  This book was sooo sweet and sooo cute! The Sprite and the Gardener by Rii Abrego and Joe Whitt takes place in our world--with some magic! Sprites have lived for centuries helping all kinds of plants grow with their magic. Until humans came along and started doing gardening themselves. The sprites are still around but they help less and less. One little sprite named Wisteria secretly discovers a human girl named Elena who takes care of her mother's flower garden, as her mother is out working all day. Wisteria decides to secretly help Elena's garden grow, as long as she isn't discovered.  If you couldn't already tell, Wisteria does get discovered by Elena. And everything changes from there.  What a magical book! I love the whimsical illustrations, and I loved what a chill, slice-of-life cottagecore book this was.  It is a pure 5 star book . I want to read more from this author and illustrator. What was the last "chill" book you read?

  Here is Part 6 of underrated books you should add to your TBR! Check out the first 5 parts on here: Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4 , Part 5 1. Kitchen Princess manga series by Miyuki Kobayashi and Natsumi Ando. I read this manga when I was in middle school and it's one of my favorites. This is about Najika, a girl who is an orphan who likes cooking and baking. Her birth parents were also famous chefs. One day when she was little she met a mysterious boy who gave her some flan and a fancy spoon to eat it with to cheer her up. Years later she still thinks about him and decides to go find him. She calls him "her Flan prince." She gets a clue about him from the spoon he gave her: it has the seal of a famous cooking school. Najika decides to attend the school to learn to make more foods but also to find her Flan prince. There she gets tangled up in a lot of drama, but also makes new friends along the way. This is such a cute, sweet, and emotional shojo manga!  2. In The...

(Pic was found on Google Images) This is the second book I have read (well, this one for today I listened to on audiobook) from this author. I enjoyed it waaay more than the first book I read from her ( The Secret Garden , which I gave 2 stars). It is worth it to give authors another chance! A Little Princess by Frances Hodgeson Burnett is about Sara Crewe, the daughter of a wealthy businessman/officer. She has just come back from India and will attend a boarding school for girls in London. Sara is a sweet girl with a huge imagination, and everyone in the school has taken a liking to her. Especially a girl named Ermengarde and another girl named Lottie. Well, almost everyone likes Sara. Miss Minchin, who is the headmistress, a two mean girls named Jessie and Lavinia, can't stand her. One day, Sara receives news that her father made a bad investment, and he lost all of the family's money. Shortly afterward, her father dies of an illness. Miss Minchin decides to downgrade Sara ...

(Pic was found on Google Images) The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett is an adult historical fiction literary novel about the Vignes twins--Desiree and Stella, and their families. The Vignes family is black and they are light-skinned black people. They lived in a town called Mallard, in Lousiana, which was a town with mostly light skinned people. As they were growing up, the sisters were inseparable. Life wasn't always easy, but they had each other. But when they moved to New Orleans to get jobs, Stella decided to pass as a white woman in order to get a job as a secretary. Then she fell in love with her boss, a white man named Blake, and they moved to Los Angeles and had a daughter named Kennedy. Stella decided to lie about her true heritage and family.  The other sister, Desiree, got in a relationship with a black man named Sam, and had a daughter with him named Jude. Desiree got a divorce from Sam because he treated her poorly, and so she and Jude moved back to Mallard to care for...

(Pic was found on Google Images) So I actually read this book last month. But it's not too late to talk about it! Frenchman's Creek by Daphne du Maurier is a classic historical fiction book set in the 17th century in the UK. It is about Dona St. Columb, a noblewoman who has grown disillusioned and bored with her high class life and decides to engage in escapism to one of her estates in the countryside. While there, she finds out the house has been used as a hideout for a French pirate. She meets the French pirate and his crew one day while out for a walk, and falls in love with him. He also asks her to join his crew. Dona decides to lie to everyone in her social circle back home that she is sick and is not to be visited, but the truth is that she escapes to the Frenchman's pirate crew! She goes on a little pirate adventure with him and makes herself his unofficial cabin boy. However, her little trick causes a lot of tension back home, as everyone in the community knows abo...

So this is just a snapshot of the books I plan on reading and series I want to finish/catch up on in 2024. As always, the list is subject to change. This is just what I am currently in the mood for and can see myself reading/finishing/catching up with at least in the first half of 2024. Tell me your reading plans for 2024! Witch Hat Atelier Volume 11 by Kamome Shirahama Hollowpox: The Hunt for Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townscend Serafina and the Twisted Staff by Robert Beatty Cosmoknights Volume 2 by Hannah Templar A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf The Story Girl by LM Montgomery Little Women by Louisa May Alcott The Trumpet of the Swan by EB White   North and South by Elizabeth Gaskill Unbowed by Wangari Mathai Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson Holes by Louis Sachar Piranesi by Susana Clark Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes If You still Recognize Me by Cynthia So Ellie Engle Saves Herself...

The PERFECT romance book! Fake Dates and Mooncakes by Sher Lee is about Dylan, a teenage boy who works at his Aunt Jade's Singaporean Chinese takeout shop. His family has been struggling financially, and they are worried they won't be able to keep the shop open. Dylan finds out about a mooncake making contest run by a celebrity chef named Lawrence Lim. The winner will get their restaurant showcased on Lim's TV show. Dylan decides to enter the contest, thinking if the shop makes some publicity, they might get more customers.  Then, one day Dylan accidentally gets the order wrong of a rich customer named Adrian, and Adrian makes a big deal out of it. Adrien's equally rich friend Theo, who was there when the incident happened, makes up for it by visiting and eating at the takeout shop. Eventually Theo and Dylan become friends, and Theo decides to make a donation to Dylan's aunt Jade to keep the shop afloat for much longer. Dylan's family is very happy about it. Th...

  I think I found a new favorite manga series! Akane-Banashi by Yuki Suenaga and Takamasa Moue is about Akane, a teenage girl who grew up watching her father practice and perform rakugo. Rakugo is a traditional Japanese art where a sole performer tells a short story and plays all of the characters, usually while seated. While she was in elementary school, Akane's father and a bunch of other candidates took an exam to rise up in the rankings of rakugo performers, but for some reason the judge proctoring the exam decided to expel all of them. Akane's father gets a job in construction work, and Akane decides to take his place in being a rakugo performer to showcase that rakugo can be a real job. Over the years she starts taking secret lessons from her dad's old instructor, and during her teen years she slowly makes herself known among his other pupils and rakugo fans, all while trying to perfect her craft.  I was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed this! I saw this manga...

  You have no idea how long I've wanted to read this memoir. I finally got to read it this past month! My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud'homme is Julia Child's memoir. It is her story on how she got into cooking after she and her husband Paul Child moved to Paris, France. They moved there because of Paul's job at the US Embassy there. In her first few years in France, Julia learned to cook all sorts of French dishes and desserts at a world famous cooking school, and she met two of her long-time collaborators there: Simone Beck (nicknamed Simca) and Louisette Betholle. Julia then got the idea of making a cookbook with French recipes, but for an American audience. Aside from talking about her everyday life in France, she also gets into details on how she, Simca, and Louisette wrote there first and most famous cookbook: Mastering the Art of French Cooking . It was not an easy process! But their book became super-successful overseas (in the United States), to ...

Hey look! Another all time favorite! And that bookmark that matches the book was signed by the author herself.  The Last Cherry Blossom by Kathleen Burkinshaw is a historical fiction book about Yuriko Ishikawa, a 12-year old girl living in Hiroshima, Japan during WW2. The story follows her daily life and other surprises before the city gets bombed, and the aftermath of said bombing. A lot of the "daily life" stuff in this book mostly centers around Yuriko and her family. She grew up living with her single father, and then one day her single aunt Kimiko and cousin Genji start living with them, shaking up the house dynamic, which Yuriko doesn't like. She also doesn't get along with with aunt Kimiko and Genji. Yuriko's father also starts dating another woman named Sumiyo. Aunt Kimiko also starts dating a guy named Akira. The adults then get engaged and have a double wedding. Luckily, Yuriko gets along well with her new stepmom and step-uncle.  Yuriko is also not pop...

I read this book a few days ago and I can't stop thinking about it! I loved every single second of it. Serafina and the Black Cloak by Robert Beatty is a historical fiction fantasy book about Serafina, a young girl who lives with her father in the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC. Well, he father is one of the workers and they live in the basement of the estate. Except for her father and a couple of the other low-ranking workers, no one knows that Serafina exists, and she wonders why her father has to keep her a secret. So she spends her days catching rats, reading books, and a multitude of other things while keeping out of site of the Vanderbilt family and their elite circle.  But one day Serafina sees a man in a magical black cloak magically swallow up a girl named Clara Brahms, who was visiting the estate with her mother. Eventually more kids of the rich families who visit the Vanderbilts go missing, and as Serafina tries to investigate, she ends up meeting and befriending Brae...

 TW: Discussions of death My third Kelly Barnhill book! The Witch's Boy is about Ned, who is the son of the witch of the small village he lives in. Ned lost his twin brother Tam in a rafting accident years earlier. The village outside his family always seemed to prefer Tam over Ned, so for years after Tam died, Ned is ostracized by the rest of the village, which has lowered his self esteem.  On the other side of the continent, a girl named Aine recently lost her mother, and she has a strained relationship with her father, who is the leader of a bunch of bandits. Aine's father also always wears a magic pendant around his neck, which makes him act strange. He and his group of bandits are trying to find and steal the rest of the magic in the world, which Ned's mother, is the protector of. Additionally, before Aine's mother died, she tried to tell Aine something about her future. Something about the wrong boy saving her life, her saving his life, and something else about ...

  (Pic was found on Google Images) Yup, another massively underrated book by LM Montgomery . I listened to it on audiobook this past month.  Jane of Lantern Hill is about Jane Stuart, who lives with her mother and grandmother in a mansion in Toronto. Jane does not have the best life there--her grandmother rules the place with an iron fist and is always being condescending towards Jane. Whenever Jane's other relatives visit, they are not kind to her either. Jane also gets bullied a lot at her school. Only Jane's mother and Jane's next door neighbor and friend Jody are kind to her--but Jane doesn't get to see them every single day (mother likes to go out to parties and hang out with friends, and Jody works as a maid at the boarding house she stays at and the landlady doesn't let her see Jane everyday). The main reason Jane's grandmother isn't kind to her was because she didn't approve of the marriage between her mother and father, so she despises Jane for ...

This is the second Kelly Barnhill book I've read so far. The first one I read was The Girl who Drank the Moon back in 2021, which I gave 4 stars to. The Ogress and The Orphans is set in a fantasy world in a small town called Stone-in-the-Glen, which has fallen on hard times ever since the town's library burned down and other buildings such as the school have mysteriously been destroyed, too. Now no one trusts each other and almost nobody ever leaves their homes. The town orphanage has also been struggling financially. The owners and the orphans are very supportive of one another, and they've been trying to get the town to come together again, especially on market days where they sell handmade soap and food from their mini-farm, but to no avail. At the same time on the outskirts of the town, an ancient Ogress has started to live there and she has noticed how the town has been struggling, so every night she secretly leaves food, baked goods, and handmade cards to the people...

  Another great historical fantasy book that is the third installment of the Lady Janies series! My Calamity Jane follows the perspective of 3 characters: Calamity Jane, Annie Oakley, and Frank Butler (all told in 3rd person POV). They are part of Buffalo Bill's traveling sharpshooter show, and they also track down garou,  aka people who are werewolves. One day while fighting a group of garou in a factory, Jane gets bitten by one and so she becomes a garou herself, which is a problem because she thinks her and her mates have a disdain for garou. Except Frank is secretly one himself. Annie does have a disdain for garou at first because she used to work for a family of one and they treated her terribly, but then when she meets other people who are garou and eventually finds out Frank (whom she has a crush on) and Jane are garou, her opinion eventually changes. Jane finds an ad in a newspaper about a cure for garou, and she goes out farther west of the country to find who is givi...

  (Pic was found on Google Images) I listened to the 2nd Moomins book by Tove Jansson on audiobook a while ago!  Comet in Moominland picks right up where the very first book, Moomins and the Great Flood , left off (review for that here ). The Moomins and Sniff are living in their iconic blue house, and go on many adventures and meet new friends along the way. These new friends are actually the rest of the iconic Moomin characters: Snufkin, Little My, the Snorkmaiden, the Snork, etc. Yes, they all make their very first appearances in this book. The overarching plot is that there are rumors of a prediction that a comet is going to come to Moominland and destroy everything, and everyone is really scared! But since it's the Moomins, you know it will have a happy ending. The comet does fly through the sky and everyone sees it, but it doesn't land in Moominland. Everything is fine, obviously. Just like the other two Moomin books I read, this was a beautiful, heartfelt, masterpiece....

  I loved this one! Note: I actually read this back in June, but it was at the very end of June, and I decided to instead include it in my July reads. Either way, it's worth a read! Cosmoknights by Hannah Templar follows a young woman named Pandora (or Pan as she is usually called) who lives on another planet named Viridian somewhere far off in the future. She is secretly friends with the princess of said planet, named Tara. Tara becomes tired of being raised in isolation and asks Pan to help her escape, which she does, but then the rest of the royal family and the planet get angry at Pan for helping Tara escape.  So Pan ends up spending most of her time in her father's repair shop years after that incident. Around that the same time, there are these televised competitive games where different knights from different planets across the galaxy fight to compete for the hand of the princesses of certain planets. Two of the knights are frequent winners, and they're actually a ...

  (Pic was found on Google Images) Yup, another book I read months ago during the HarperCollins's strike and I am just now reviewing. It's my first Daphne du Maurier book! Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier is about a young woman (her name is never mentioned in the book, but the fake name I came up for her is January 😂) who, while on vacation in Monte Carlo, meets and marries a widower named Maxim de Winter. When she goes to live with him in his estate (called Manderley), she sees that everyone associated with Maxim (his family, friends, and other people working on the estate, especially the head housekeeper Mrs. Danvers) can't stop talking about and reminiscing about Maxim's first wife, named Rebecca, and how wonderful she supposedly was. The MC then feels that no matter what. she will always be in Rebecca's shadow. But then a dark turn of events happen that completely change her views on Manderley, Maxim, and especially Rebecca.  I will tell you right now I gave it 4 ...