Candy Bunny Reader

    Well, as you can see, I actually listened to it on audiobook.  The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo is a novel written in verse. It's about 15 (later 16) year old Dominican-American Xiomara, who lives in the Harlem neighborhood of NYC. She writes poems narrating her life living in the place. From dealing with her overly strict and religious zealot mother to her friends, first boyfriend, and the poetry club at her school to her bond with her twin brother, Xavier. It's very cathartic for her! I really enjoyed listening to this! I found myself being moved by a lot of the poems, especially the ones about the power of community and generational trauma. It was a nice surprise since I'm a reader who doesn't usually like or read poetry.  It's a very diverse book, too! Most of the characters are Dominican, Father Sean (a priest of Xiomara's church) is Jamaican, and Xiomara's brother Xavier is gay and in an interracial relationship.  I gave it 4.5 stars , but that...

The second book I read for Middle Grade March ! Nightbooks by J.A. White is a middle grade horror novel. The main character, Alex, is a kid who loves all things horror, but has been having a hard time at school because of it. He decides one night to burn all of his "nightbooks" (notebooks that has scary stories he has written) in the boiler room of his apartment complex. But the night he tries to set out to do it, he instead gets lured into a mysterious and magical apartment unit instead. It is owned by a witch named Natacha.  Natacha imprisons Alex and makes him read a scary story to her every night. At the same time, Alex forms a bond (althought they did butt heads at first) with another girl imprisoned in the apartment: a baseball-loving girl named Yasmin. Yasmin's job is to tend to the plants that Natacha makes her essential oils with. Together, Alex and Yasmin figure out a way to escape, and they find out so many more shocking truths about the apartment and Natacha ...

(Pic was found on Google Images) This is my second Morgan Matson book! This first book I ever read from her was Since You've Been Gone back in 2021 or 2022, which I really liked. Did I like this book, too? Well... Take Me Home Tonight is about two best friends: Kat and Stevie. They are both passionate about theatre. Their school's theatre department will be putting on King Lear by William Shakespeare, but for some reason, their theatre director, Mr. Campbell, doesn't put the cast list up on Friday like he usually does. The girls can't understand why, but Kat finds out that down the road in New York City, he will be putting on a play that same Friday night that he wrote himself. Kat decides in order to show Mr. Campbell what a great student she is and to get the role of Cordelia in the play, she and Stevie will go watch his show.  The thing is, that Friday night, Kat gets called to babysit some kids. She decides to lie to her parents that she's going to go babysit ...

Note: Please read the full list of trigger warnings at this link before proceeding:  https://booktriggerwarnings.com/Felix_Ever_After_by_Kacen_Callender Another popular book I was pleasantly surprised that I ended up liking! Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender is about Felix Love--a transgender teenage guy who's never fallen in love, but really wants to. He also is stressed out about putting together a good art portfolio in order to get a scholarship into the prestigious art program at Brown University. He believes if he gets into the program, it will be a ticket for a better future for him and his struggling single father.  Unfortunately, Felix is competing for the position with Declan Keene--who just so happens to be the rather toxic ex-boyfriend of his best friend, Ezra Patel.  But one day, somebody in Felix's school finds pictures of Felix before he transitioned--and they put them up all over the school where everyone can see them. Whoever did it also deadnamed him. ...

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...

  Another great book by Anne-Sophie Johanneau ! French Kissing in New York is a YA contemporary romance book about 18-year-old Margot who is a beginner chef and moves to New York City from a small village in France to fulfill her dream of working at the restaurant of a celebrity chef that her mother personally knew. She begins living in a tiny apartment with her father and his fiancé Miguel and her step-cousin Luz. Margot's father and stepfather are also planning to get married.  Margot also moves to New York City for another reason: to find Zach, an American boy she met one summer day while taking a cooking course at Le Tablier, a famous cooking school in France. However, even though they planned a date and everything ahead of time, Margot does not find Zach at where and when they promised to meet, and while working at Nutrio (the restaurant owned by her celebrity chef family friend), she meets and becomes fast friends with another chef there named Ben, and realize...