Candy Bunny Reader

 TW: Mentioning of predatory relationships I think I expected too much from this one... Mall Goth by Kate Leth is set in the 2000s and follows a bisexual teenage goth girl named Liv. She has just moved with her mother to a new town with a giant mall. Liv starts spending most of her free time at the mall, and ends up getting a job at Create-a-Critter (like Build a Bear Workshop) through the mall's security guard, Alice. Alice is also one of her mom's friends.  At Liv's new school, she becomes acquainted with two other goths named Jake and Aaron. They really like gaming, and invite Liv to join their server to play a popular MMORPG. The guy named Jake also has an on-again off-again relationship with another girl in their English class named Layla. Liv also becomes friends with Layla, but their friendship is put to the test when it comes to Jake's behavior.  Unfortunately, as all of this is happening, Liv's English teacher Mr. Trent seems to have a thing for her, and w...

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...

 TW: mentions of a sibling dying young Another new favorite from Kasie West ! The Care Bear figurines were very fitting for this book. Moment of Truth is about Hadley, a girl who is very passionate about swimming and plans to get a swimming scholarship to get into the college of her dreams. But one day, a guy who is dressed like popular movie character Heath Hall crashes her swim meet, and Hadley loses the competition. Annoyed with this fake Heath Hall, she and her best friend Amelia try to figure out who this Heath Hall wannabe is. It turns out he goes to their school, and he runs an Instagram page where is showcases wherever he will strike next. Hadley and Amelia go through every boy they think he could be. One of the suspects is Hadley's ex-boyfriend Robert, awkwardly enough. Another suspect is a guy named Jackson that Hadley frequently butts heads with.  But while the Heath Hall mystery is going on, things start to change between Jackson and Hadley. Especially when Jackso...

 TW: D3ath My second book from Colleen Oakley ! The first book I read from her was Close Enough to Touch back in 2019.  The Invisible Husband of Frick Island  is an adult romance novel that follows two characters: Piper and Anders. Piper is a woman living on the eccentric Frick Island, which is a small island community in the Chesapeake Bay. Anders is a reporter working for a small newspaper and on the side, has his own podcast where he talks about random weird stuff, but he is struggling to get any listeners.  Piper recently lost her husband Tom, in a boating accident, but she continues to live on as if Tom were still there. In fact, sometimes she talks to him as if he was still there. The rest of the Frick Island community goes along with it so they don't hurt her feelings. When Anders arrives at the island to do a report on a Cake Walk Festival held there, he finds out all sorts of things about Frick Island: how the island is a victim of climate change, a new ce...

 TW: The disease that shares its name with a zodiac sign, some ableism Stars in their Eyes by Jessica Walton and Aska is about Maisie, an amputee who goes to her first ever fan convention with her mother. She and her mother love to geek out on all sorts of shows, and Maisie is excited to see an actress from one of her favorite shows, Midnight Girls, who is an amputee just like her. While there Maisie and her mother meet Ollie and their dad, who are volunteers and the convention, and they immediately become friends. Ollie and Maisie find out they love a lot of the same things, especially when they see shows that have people who are like them (nonbinary, bi, and/or disabled).  Unfortunately, the panel Maisie wanted to go to gets cancelled because her favorite actress gets really sick. So she spends more time with Ollie, and they get really close. Maisie wonders how they will stay close when each one of them lives so far away. Everything I that I like in storytelling was presen...

 TW: D3ath of a parent and Latin for crab disease mentioned.  My second Jen Wang book for this year! Stargazing is about a girl named Moon who moves in next door to a girl named Christine, and they become friends and bond over their love of the arts, especially K Pop.  Moon is a social outcast due to her strange behavior and her and single mom not having a lot of money.  Christine has her own problems of feeling pressure to be perfect and she sometimes gets jealous of Moon.  But they both really want to dance to K pop songs in school's talent show.  Unfortunately, an emergency happens that changes everything.  This was a very relatable and emotional story. It had great Chinese representation and there are characters who are vegetarian and vegan. I gave it 4.5 stars. There is a d3ath of a parent mentioned in a flashback and another character gets the disease that shares its name with a zodiac sign. Luckily they are treated for it and they live at the ...

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. ...

 TW: Mentions of death and injuries Do you have a favorite stand-alone book about pirates? The Pirate Captain's Daughter by Eve Bunting follows Catherine, the daughter of a notorious pirate captain. After her mother dies, Catherine decides to join her father's pirate crew as a musician, all while disguised as a boy named Charlie. Unfortunately, being a pirate isn't as romantic as she thought it was! Most of the crew is pretty aggressive or dismissive, the conditions on the ship aren't very sanitary, nor is the food any good. Aside from her father and another member named Mr. Trimble, she does find companionship in the cabin boy around her age named William, and (kind of) Red, one of the other musicians. There is the constant worry that everyone will find out she is a girl. Additionally, one particular pirate, named Herc, really wants to steal a jewel that Catherine's father stole a long time ago, and he and his little friend Hopper really don't make things easy...

  TW: Mentioning of toxic relations, cyberbullying, underage drinking, and mild discussions of sex Man, I have some really mixed feelings about this one. Radio Silence by Alice Oseman is a YA contemporary book about Frances Janvier. It is her last year of high school and she is aiming to go to Cambridge University. She doesn't seem to care about anything else except being top of the class and Universe City, a podcast series. Frances considers herself a shy geeky girl and doesn't let anyone see the real her at school. As a result, she has a lot of "fake" friends. As in friends who only like her studious side. One day the creator of Universe City reaches out to her on social media and asks her to do official art for the podcast after seeing her fanart of the series on Tumblr. At first she is reluctant, but then she eventually finds out the creator of Universe City is a student at her school, a guy named Aled Last (if you read Heartstopper, this is the same guy!). They ...

TW: Mentioning of suicide and toxic relationships Pictured above are just the first 6 volumes! As of writing this I have not yet found and read volumes 7 and 8 (there are 8 volumes total), but I will eventually! Fun fact: I watched the anime for Given back in 2018 when it came out, but the anime does not cover the whole story. I decided to read the manga to get the rest of the story, but since it was a while since I watched the anime, I started to read the manga from volume 1. So far me revisiting Given has been wonderful! Given by Natsuki Kizu  is a manga series about a teenage boy named Uenoyama who is part of a new and upcoming band with two college students named Akihiko and Haruki. One day while at school he finds another student named Mafuyu hanging out at his secret location on the stairs, holding a guitar. Mafuyu asks Uenoyama to fix his guitar and teach him how to play. Uenoyama initally finds Mafuyu to be odd and frustrating, but after hearing him sing a song he wrote in ...

 TW: Suicide attempt This was another manga I picked up on a whim at the library.  Our Dreams at Dusk   by Yuhki Kamatani is about a teenage boy named Tasuku who is gay and has been in the closet for a while, but he thinks he's been outed after some classmates took a look at his search history on his phone. Tasuku gets very distressed and tries to jump off of a high building, but is stopped in his tracks when he sees a mysterious person jump off of the same area but they land unharmed, and they enter a small building that looks like a clubhouse. Tasuku decides to check out that small building and finds out it is a drop-in center for people like him (part of the LGBT community!) to socialize, and the mysterious person who he saw earlier runs the place. They preferred to be called Someone-san.  Tasuku starts talking to Someone-san and the rest of the people in the club, and they tell him he is allowed to drop in (hence the name) anytime he wants to hang out. Tasuku sl...

TW: Brief mention of suicide. Ever had dreams of becoming a total hermit? Stranger in the Woods by Michael Finkel is a informational nonfiction book about the true story of Christopher Thomas Knight--a man in Maine who lived in isolation in a tent in the woods for 27 years. Specifically 1986 to 2013. He survived and lived by stealing people's stuff and food from nearby cabins whenever other people weren't around. Journalist Michael Finkel (the author) tells us Knight's life story up until his arrest in 2013, and then shortly after his arrest, and the possible reasons why he chose to isolate himself from society for so long. The book is mostly framed with Finkel telling us how he was able to meet Knight and the conversations he had with him. Intertwined throughout the story are snippets of how Knight's life was before and during his isolation period. Finkel also interviewed people who lived near Knight's camping ground, his family, and other people who knew him growi...

TW: Things catching on fire mentioned  Another great Nancy Drew mystery! I gave it 5 stars . In this book, Nancy Drew is staying at the historical Lilac Inn for the wedding of her friend, Emily. When she arrives there, things start to get weird. Things vanish and move around, and some parts of the Inn's infrastructure seem to be malfunctioning. The Inn is rumored to be haunted, and Nancy is trying to figure out the logical explanation behind all of the mishaps. At the same time, someone stole Nancy's personal information and is pretending to be her, and Nancy starts getting accused of things she didn't do. So then Nancy has to figure out who her imposter is and put a stop to them.  Like the previous novels, the two seemingly separate mysteries happen to be connected at the end, and there are a ton of red herrings that will through you off course as you try to figure out the mystery with Nancy and her friends. I should mention that in the second half of the book there is a...

TW: Brief mentioning of death This is book 2 of the Lady Janies series by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows. My Plain Jane is a historical fantasy retelling of Jane Eyr e by Charlotte Bronte. It follows the perspective of three characters: Charlotte Bronte (yes, she's a character in this book), Jane Eyre, and a new character named Alexander Blackwood.  The story begins at Lowood School where the headmaster, Mr. Brocklehurst, has been murdered. No one knows who did it, but all the students and even some teachers are rather happy that Mr. Brocklehurst is no longer around tormenting them. At the same time, Charlotte, a student at the school, wants to be a writer, and is trying to write a fictional account of her friend Jane, a student who likes to paint. Jane also has the ability to see ghosts, which she at first tells no one about, and is constantly talking to the ghost of her dead friend, Helen Burns. One day after sneaking out to a pub near the school, Jane sees a ghost...

MAJOR TRIGGER WARNINGS:  Animal cruelty, death, s3xual harassment, kidnapping, gaslighting, and predatory behavior are all mentioned in this post. Please be cautious!   Well, there's a reason I didn't talk about any of the books on this list. Since I DNF them! And in my own humble opinion, I don't recommend any of these either. 1. The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall.   This is a middle grade novel about four sisters and their father spending their summer at a cottage. It seemed like a cute book at first, but I was really disturbed at the way the characters were treating their pet dog. They kept on feeding him non food items such as a paper map. It seemed like animal cruelty to me.  2. The Big One Oh by Dean Pitchford This is a middle grade novel about a ten year old kid named Charley who is trying to make friends so he can invite them to his first birthday party ever that is horror-themed. It was okay for the most part but there is a subplot were Charle...

 TW: Mentions of war, internment camps, racism, and politics A few days ago I read Displacement by Kiku Hughes . This is a graphic novel about a teenage girl named Kiku who, during a summer vacation with her mother, gets randomly transported back in time to the WW2 era and experiences first hand what it was like to be in the internment camps a lot of Japanese-Americans got sent to, and she learns that her own grandmother and great-grandparents were victims themselves. She tries to navigate the past while trying to figure out how to get back to her own time, and how to explain all of it to her mother when she gets back.  This graphic novel has a mix of being autobiographical (it's based on the author's own family history), science fiction, and historical, with educational bits and pieces underlying the main narrative.  I really enjoyed this book! The story did get a little sad at times, but it was so fascinating to learn about the author's family history, and what she also...

TW: Spanking as a punishment (including threats), Racial Stereotypes, Eating Disorders I read the first book of the classic middle grade series Mrs. Piggle Wiggle by Betty MacDonald during these last few days. It's a short, quick, simple little book. There are only eight chapters. Mrs. Piggle Wiggle is an eccentric and friendly woman who likes kids. She invites the kids in her neighborhood for tea parties and just to play. Not only do the kids like her, but their parents do, too. That's because she seems to understand how kids are and gives them unique "cures" to their bad behavior when the parents don't know how to deal with them when they act naughty.  Except for the first chapter where we are introduced to Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, every chapter is strictly formulaic: some kid is misbehaving, the parents phone Mrs. Piggle Wiggle on their problem, then Mrs. Piggle Wiggle gives them advice or objects that will get the kid to realize their bad behavior, and by the last...