Candy Bunny Reader

Sheeta's Little Big World is manga trilogy by Yuki Kamba . It seems to take inspiration from the Studio Ghibli movie The Secret World of Arrietty , with elements of survival stories. Sheeta lives with other littlefolk in a small village in the woods somewhere after he was abandoned by his father. He becomes close friends with another boy named Nala. One day, the two boys see smoke coming from a giant tree from afar, and Nala runs away to see what it is. Sheeta then has a mission to find Nala and find his father, too. Sheeta relunctantly teams up with another littlefolk named Izuna, who holds a grudge against Sheeta's father for something he did to him in his past. As they travel, they learn to survive of the land, and encounter other littlefolk with problems they help to solve. It doesn't sound too bad, doesn't it? That's what I thought at first. The first book had a solid beginning. Book 2 still wasn;t too bad--I just didn't like how a large chunk of it was sp...

Um, I think I expected a little too much from this one... The graphic novel adaptation of Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera (and illustrated by Celia Moscote) is about 19-year old Juliet, who is queer, Latina, and lives in the Bronx. She gets accepted to do a writing internship with her favorite queer feminist author, Harlowe Brisbane. After coming out to her mother as a lesbian goes wrong, and her girlfriend Lanie starts to seem distant with her, Juliet hops on the first flight to Portland, Oregon to work with Harlowe. Harlowe lets Juliet room and board at her house, and she gets familiar with people in her social circle, mostly Harlowe's ex named Max and her new girlfriend Zaira (they first meet at a writer's club). Juliet also goes a lot to the library to do research and gets close with an intern there named Kira. Juliet is happy to be surrounded by a lot of like-minded people at first, but Harlowe is probably not who she seems to be... This story did a lot of things th...

  I saw this being done over on Instagram so of course I had to join! I tagged some people over on my Instagram, but anyone is free to do this tag. 1. 5 books I thought would be 5 stars, but weren't: This Time It's Real by Ann Liang (3.5 stars) Serafina and the Seven Stars by Robert Beatty (3.5 stars) Ellie Engle Saves Herself by Leah Johnson (3 stars) Love and Gelato by Jenna Evans Welch (2 stars) Magic for Marigold by LM Montgomery (2 stars)        2. 5 books I thought would be 5 stars, and were! Flip the Script by Lyla Lee  Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan If You Still Recognize Me by Cynthia/Holden So Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger The Mothkeeper by K O'Neill  3. 5 books that unexpectedly turned out to be 5 stars Frankenstein by Mary Shelley Bianca Torre is Afraid of Everything by Justine Winans The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern The Morisaki Bookshop duology by Satoshi Yagisawa Pet by Akwaeke Emezi 4. 5 books on my TBR that I t...

  This year, I am just going to repost what I posted on Instagram. Please note: I still like the movie version of Howl's Moving Castle.  

TW: Kidnapping mentioned.  My first two-star book review of the year?!   Firefly Wedding by Oreco Tachibana is set in the Meiji era of Japan. Our MC Satoko is living with a heart condition, and hopes to secure a good marriage. But one day while she is out in town she gets kidnapped, and in order to save her life, she proposes to marry the assassin holding her hostage, named Shinpei. They escape together, travel from place to place, meet unusual people, and even watch fireflies.  It sounds like an okay story on the surface but...ugh! There were a lot of things happening in the story that made me really uncomfortable. I especially did not like love interest Shinpei--he was so creepy and psychotic! Well, I am not sure what I expected from a character who was an assassin.  Yeah, this was disappointing. I won't be reading the rest of the series.  

Trigger warning: mentioning of miscarriages     Ugh, the book was good until it got to the end... You Were There Too by Colleen Oakley is an adult contemporary romance novel with a dash of magical realism. Mia and her husband Harrison have just moved from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to a small town called Hope Springs, thinking life would be easier for them. Instead, Mia has trouble finding a job that she can do with an art degree, and Harrison seems to be hiding something related to his job (he works as a surgeon in a small hospital) from Mia. Even worse, they have been struggling to have children as Mia has already had two miscarriages.  While all of this is going on, Mia keeps having recurring dreams of her encountering a stranger. Well, she's actually been dreaming of this mysterious guy for years. Most of the dreams usually takes place in a carnival, and most of the dreams involve something tragic. Freakier still, Mia ends up finding the guy in real life! His name i...

  Luckily, there is only one book I gave a low rating to this year, but it wasn't even that bad. But it was still disappointing! In other words, it was 3 stars . That book is... Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. I still love the Studio Ghibli movie this book is based off of! Just not the book. This is a case where I found the movie to be waaay better than the book.    But there are lot of books I DNF'd so far.    Here are the ones I DNF because I found them boring/couldn't get into them: 1. Sir Callie and the Champions of Helston by Esme Symes-Smith 2. The Boy on the Porch by Sharon Creech 3. Honey Lemon Soda Volume 1 by Mayu Murata 4. Act Cool by Tobly McSmith 5. Mitch and Amy by Beverly Cleary 6. Dear Mr. Earnshaw by Beverly Cleary 7. Save the Date by Morgan Matson 8. A Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland by Catherynne Valante 9. Hold Still by Nina LaCour 10. Princess Academy by Shannon Hale 11. Mao Vol 1 by Rumiko Takahashi  12. Blue Flag Volume ...

  Yeah, only guess what? I DNF (did not finish) this one too! It was too sad. With everything going on in the world right now, I prefer reading something a lot more uplifting.  That's all for today.   Image of book was found on Google Images

  Unfortunately, I DNF (did not finish) this one... I just couldn't get into it. It was kinda boring and confusing.  Hopefully the next book I had planned to read (Liesl and Po) won't be as disappointing.

  Oh my, this was disappointing... Watch Over Me by Nina Lacour is a YA magical realism and character-driven book about a girl named Mila who just aged out of the foster system. She finds a job working as a teacher in a small remote farm somewhere in California. As she gets to know everybody there she finds out that the farm is haunted by ghosts, and these ghosts force her to confront her dark past. This sounds like a really interesting premise, right? Well, unfortunately this is one of those books where the first half is really good, and the second half is where it completely falls apart. I can't get too much into detail because it would go into spoiler territory, so I'll try to keep it as vague as much as possible. Here's what I liked: The themes of trauma, grief, and healing Mila's big sister-little brother dynamic with one of the younger kids on the farm named Lee. There is some queer representation Now what I didn't like: Ok. Seriously. The farm Mila goes to l...

 😑 Yeah, only guess what? I DNF (did not finish) everything I read! I DNF Crying in H Mart because it was too sad, and then I DNF The Hidden Life of Trees because it was too boring. For real, do I even like nonfiction anymore?! Pretty much everything I picked up this year was a disappointment. Except for They Called Us Enemy by George Takei. I think I am going to take a break from reading nonfiction for a while. I will still participate in the Nonfiction November prompts for this year, but I won't actually be reading any nonfiction books. I don't know when I will pick up another nonfiction book, but for now I'd rather read fiction.  What's been your most disappointing book so far (fiction or nonfiction) this year?

I think this is the worst LM Montgomery book I read.  This was beyond disappointing! Magic For Marigold is a book with no actual plot to it. It's really just a bunch of short stories stringed together that narrate protagonist's Marigold Lesley's life living in the 1920s on Prince Edward Island from when she is born until she is 12 years old. But pretty much every chapter follows the same formula of sweet little imaginative Marigold getting into a situation against her will that gets her in trouble. And we are supposedly supposed to laugh at her misfortunes. Or how dorky she supposedly is for having a big imagination.  I seriously don't get this book. It has the same kind of things you would find in every LM Montgomery book (cottagecore setting in Canada, usually Prince Edward Island, sweet protagonists with a big imagination, eccentric other characters, cute cats, etc.) but the tone of the story is so cynical and...kind of asking us to laugh at how ridiculous everyone...

TW: Parent dying, toxic relationships   (Pic was found on Google Images) Another huge disappointment... Love and Gelato by Jenna Evans Welch is about Lina, who just lost her single mother. Her mother's final wish was for Lina to visit the country she went to college, which was Italy. Apparently Lina's birth father is in Italy, too, and Lina can't believe she's finally meeting him. His name is Howard and he lives and works in a cemetery, much to Lina's surprise. Howard's coworker Sonia gives Lina her mother's journal when she lived and studied in Italy. Lina decides to read through it, as her mother didn't talk much about Italy and her father. One thing that stands out to her is her mother wrote down on one of the pages "I made a terrible mistake". Line tries to figure out what mistake her mother made living in Italy that made her go back to the US. While this is all happening, Lina then meets and starts hanging out with a guy her age who lives...

  Yup, here we go again! Let's see if you can relate to any of these. Or if I ruffle your feathers. Here's Part 1 in case you missed it. 1. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.  Goodreads summary here . The subject matter was too heavy for me in this book. 1 star. 2. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.  Goodreads summary here . I actually do understand why people like this book and its series as a whole, as it is well written and has good messages, but I personally did not enjoy it. I do not like reading about teenagers fighting and dying on live tv, especially if it's something their corrupt government has them do. Too morbid for me. 2 stars.  3. Divergent by Veronica Roth.  Goodreads summary here . The pacing of the story is so bad. There were also many parts in the worldbuilding that didn't make any sense. 1 star. 4. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Patterson.  Goodreads summary here . Even as a kid I remember this book being really boring. The only...

  Yeah, I know I'm late to the party with this one. And I unfortunately didn't like it!  To All the Boys I Loved Before by Jenny Han is about Lara Jean, who has developed crushes on 5 boys over the years, one of them being her childhood friend Peter and another being her next door neighbor, Josh. She has written letters to the boys she has had crushes on, but never mailed them--until one day then somehow get mailed and Lara Jean gets caught up in a crazy love triangle between Peter and Josh.  I've seen so much praise for this book (and the series overall) for years and I finally got around to reading it, but this was just not for me! The main issue I had were the characters. They were all so unlikable! Except for Lara Jean's sisters Margot and Kitty. They were cool. The romance between Lara Jean and Peter was also so badly done, in my opinion. Most of the time they felt like coworkers who barely tolerated each other. I know they were fake dating for most of the book, b...

  Aw man, this was kind of disappointing... Josee the Tiger and the Fish by Seiko Tanabe and Nao Emoto is about Tsuneo, a college student who likes scuba diving and wants to study abroad in Mexico. He works various jobs to save up for his travels. One day he accidentally runs into a wheelchair user and artist (painter) named Kumiko who prefers to go by Josee, and her grandmother. Things get off to a rocky start, but Josee's grandmother decides to hire Tsuneo to be Josee's caretaker. As he keeps coming to take care of Josee every day, he finds out she's been isolated by her grandmother practically her whole life due to her disability. Only now as Tsuneo keeps taking her out, she slowly starts to experience things she never has before.  This story sounded like something right up my alley, and it did do plenty of things I liked. I liked the disability rep, Josee's art, a new friend she makes who is a librarian, Josee's picture book story that's loosely about her a...

I swear at least one of these will really shock you.  Well, have fun looking at my unpopular opinions! Luckily I have only three books that I read that I disliked, but not because they were objectively bad, I was personally just disappointed with them. Here they are: Ellie Engle Saves Herself by Leah Johnson -3 stars Serafina and the Seven Stars by Robert Beatty -3.5 stars Frieren Volume 5 by Kanehito Yamada -3 stars And here are all the books I DNF'd... 😬 Heartstopper Volume 5 by Alice Oseman Unbowed by Wangari Mathai Hurricane Child by Kacen Callendar  A Complicated Love Story Set in Space by Shaun David Hutchison Apollo's Angels by Jennifer Homans To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson The Falling in Love Montage by Ciara Smyth Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer Little Women by Louisa May Alcott Spellbound by Bishakh Som Rickety Stitch Volume 1 by Ben Costa and James Parks Replay by Sharon Creech Purple Cow by Seth Godin The ...

  Uh oh, (semi) unpopular opinion alert... This Time It's Real by Ann Liang is about Eliza Lin, who goes to an international school in Beijing. One day, an article she writes for a class assignment somehow goes viral. The article was about her relationship with her boyfriend. Only here's the thing: Eliza has never had a boyfriend. Yup, she made up the whole thing. So now she feels that has to convince the whole world she is dating someone. She chooses to fake-date the most popular boy at her school: Caz Song, who also happens to be a popular C-drama star. Eliza's viral article ends up also getting her an internship at Craneswift: a popular publishing company. Her main assignment as an intern is to write blog posts about the dates she and Caz go on. With all of this going on, Eliza isn't sure if her relationship with Caz could ever become real, especially since she has trouble getting close to people. Her mother's job requires her to travel a lot, and Eliza has neve...

Uh oh, more unpopular opinions ahead. These are all the books I have DNF'd so far this year. For one reason or another. Either I found a book so boring and I just couldn't get into it, or maybe the story got so bad for me that I had to stop reading.  I also decided to add a list of series I won't be continuing. With those I did read the first book or the first few books, but for whatever reason(s) I lost interest in finishing out the series.  Since I DNF most of these books/series, there won't be any links to read about them, since I obviously never gave them a review.  Books I DNF: Anne of Windy Poplars by LM Montgomery You're Welcome Universe by Whitney Gardner Take me Home Tonight by Morgan Matson Monday is Not Coming by Tiffany Jackson Nancy Drew and the Secret of Red Gate Farm by Carolyn Keene Lunch Money by Andrew Clements American Panda by Gloria Chao The Case of the Missing Moonstone by Jordan Stratford Spinning by Tillie Walden Strawberry Girl by Lois Lensk...